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Jay Scerbo

Dr. Paharik

Research Methods

12 December 2019

Final Paper: Research Methods

The topic of my paper is the ability that us humans have to multitask in different

scenarios. We are going to focus on Selective attention which is defined as, “psychol the process

by which a person can selectively pick out one message from a mixture of messages occurring

simultaneously” (Selective). Now I am going to focus on one particular scenario or situation but

the main point to this paper is to design an experiment of some sort, that exploits that statement

of humans not being able to multitask. To be more specific, humans ability to multitask when

given outside influence in some sort. Going off of that this all sprouted from the “Invisible

Gorilla Experiment”. The Invisible Gorilla experiment was a study done by Harvard University

in 1999 in which they were testing the ability of people being able to effectively multi-task (The,

2016). And in the last paper that we did, we were to find three other experiments that were along

the same lines as the original one which was The Invisible Gorilla.

Not all of the examples that I found were experiments, for example the one source that I

found simply was a story about a journalist who went to do a study on an indeginous group of

people. There he was taught a lesson which was, to pay attention to your surroundings because

your surroundings give back to you yet we never pay attention to our environment (Howley,
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2018). In another example called, “Doing many things at a time: Lack of power decreases the

ability to multitask,'' by Alice Ran Cai and Ana Guinote, the study focused on multitasking but

more detailed and looked into how the power and the control of a person can affect their ability

to multitask. There it showed how with less power people do not multitask well. From that

research it showed with an outside influence people did not multitask well or if at all. For the

final experiment that I found was, “Is it Possible to Multitask in Dynamic Environments?” by

Richard B. Gasaway. In this article that I read they more along the lines discussed how you

should not say that you are multitasking when taking on more than one task at a time. All of

these experiments connected to the original one, The Invisible Gorilla.

My hypothesis would simply state, “College students from Dr. Paharik’s Research

Methods class will not be able to multitask while under pressure from another source”. The

experiment is going to be done with a single college class at Seton Hill. The independent

variable in this experiment would be the ability to multitask while the dependent variable would

be the college students from Dr. Paharik’s research methods class. We can say that we are using

our class from Research Methods to demonstrate the experiment. How the experiment is going to

go is that we are going to take the class and walk them into the room within our table groups

which was six total. They are all going to be doing the same thing each time but just not all at

once. So before each group goes in they are going to be given direction to count how many

people are in the room while there is one single person wearing a white shirt. Their only goal is

to count how many people are in that room within a short period of time which would be eight

seconds. There are going to be a total of 13 people in the room with one of those people wearing

a white shirt while everyone else is wearing black shirts. Once each group has gone into the
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room for their eight seconds I will then record the number of people that they said were in each

room. Once every group has gone I am then going to call everyone into the room and go over

how many people are in fact there. Then I will ask them if they saw the one person within the

classroom that was wearing the white shirt. From that we will be able to see who is capable of

multitasking while trying to achieve something that they were told to do.

Some of the drawbacks that I would say would come from the experiment would be that

once people are told that there was someone in the room that was wearing a white shirt then they

will agree that they in fact saw someone when in reality maybe they did not. I feel that that the

only way we could measure if someone is telling the truth is if we use somewhat of a lie detector

test so that we can monitor them telling the truth or not because if someone says that they saw

someone with a white shirt then maybe they will try to agree when they might not actually have.

To collect all of this data I would use a qualitative data method. Through that method it is

simple and done with ease. I would simply just interview people and get a number from them

and that would be about it. There would be no questioning just a simple question of how many

people were in that room. Once that is over with then we would carry over to the other

questioning of whether or not they saw the single person in the room with the white shirt on with

them not knowing that this was really the entire goal of the experiment. There will also be human

observation done within the entire project with watching how they react to everything that is

going on during the experiment. It is just a bunch of chaos going on and they have to try and

make out how many people are in the room, and then ask them a question of whether or not they

saw the one person with a white shirt on. The basic questions that I would ask would be, “How

many people did you observe in the couple seconds you were in the room?”, “Were you
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overwhelmed with everything that was going on?”, and “Do you feel that it was a sufficient

amount of time to finish your task?”. After they answer all of those questions I will finish off

with, “Did you ever recognize the one person in the room wearing a white shirt?”.

Like I said before I would split up the class into six different groups that our classroom

has sat in the entire semester. Form there those groups will walk in within their groups and take

part in trying to count the amount of people within the room. Therefore, I believe that there are a

total of nearly 36-40 participants total. I chose this type of sampling and the amount because I

feel that if it is done with in a group then you can try to prove my hypothesis correct even more. I

also feel that this is the easiest and best way for my experiment to be carried out. The experiment

is not complicated itself so why make obtaining everything complicated. Keep everything simple

from the beginning and I believe that you will get the best results.

Well from the beginning I would let them know that none of the information that was

being taken from the experiment is going to be used in any public setting so that they do not get

worried about any of their names being used. The experiment would only be used for this

purpose only. Then I would also have each one of them sign a waiver stating that their safety will

not be in danger considering what the experiment was. But just to make sure I would let them

know in the waiver so that if anything does happen that I would be totally responsible for it.

From an ethical standpoint I feel that none of this has to do with ethics. Its a simple project that

seriously has nothing to do with ethics, it has to do with counting and responding to a simple

question of how many people were in there. That should go against nobodies ethical beliefs. If it

does we will go from there and work around it.

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Works Cited

Cai, A. R., & Guinote, A. (2017). British Journal of Social Psychology. ​“Doing Many Things

at a Time: Lack of Power Decreases the Ability to Multitask,”​ ​56(​ 3), 475–492.

Howley, B. (2018, September).

Is It Possible to Multitask in Dynamic Environments? (2012, December 1). Retrieved

November 7, 2019, from www.fireengineering.com.

Selective Attention. Retrieved November 7, 2019, from

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/selective-attention.

The 25 Most Influential Psychological Experiments in History. (2016, January). Retrieved

November 7, 2019, from

https://www.onlinepsychologydegree.info/influential-psychological-experiments/.