A recent study reports that students who just finished playing a prosocial video game were more likely to help others than students who had played a neutral or antisocial game. For this study, what is the independent variable?

Question

a.
The students who were given the neutral or antisocial game.

b.
The helping behavior of the students.

c.
The students who were given the prosocial game.

d.
The kind of game given to the students.

Answer 1

The independent variable in this study is:

d. The kind of game given to the students.

The independent variable is the factor that is manipulated or changed in the experiment to observe its effect on the dependent variable, which in this case is the helping behavior of the students.