Opening Pandora’s Box

I’m glancing at a research article “The Pandora Effect: The Power and Peril of Curiosity” by Christopher K. Hsee and Bowen Ruan recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Since my Oberlin undergraduate days I’ve been interested in the topics of curiosity and intrinsic motivation. Hence, my nom de plume “Curious David.” I wonder how many of my students are familiar with the Greek myth of this first human woman created by the gods. I suspect that more of them are familiar with the radio streaming service by that name.

I’ll probably use the article in my PSY205 course “Statistics and Experimental Design” in several ways. The studies are methodologically simple. They use data analyses I teach in the course. They illustrate the so-called “New Statistics“. In addition, they are amenable to plausible alternative hypotheses. My quick reading suggests additional studies which could be done—-here by my students..

The first and third experiments’ results sections lend themselves well to illustrating how to check the reported effect sizes using the effect size calculators I introduced in an earlier blog piece. I’ll “borrow”  and modify the  theme of these studies when I create the exam over one-way between subjects ANOVA which I am scheduled to give tomorrow. That is, I’ll in essence propose a study that could/should be done here at Carroll.