Methods, Results and Discussions
Method
Participants
Two hundred and twelve students from Florida International University were randomly selected from the whole population in the University to participate in the research. From these 212 participants 41 %( n=87) were male students and 59 %( n=125) were female students. The minimum age of these students was 15, and the maximum age was 79, with the mean age of 27 years (SD=11.36). The sample population of our study comprised of 30.2 % Caucasian (n=64), 43.4 % Hispanic (n=92), 1.4 % Native Indian (n=3), 13.2 % African American (n=28), 5.2 % Asian American (n=11) and 6.6 % who opted not to disclose their ethnic identity (n=14). See Appendix A
Materials and Procedures
The study was divided into two stages. The first stage was to ask the participants orally if they would be involved in the research. Obtaining consents from the participants was necessary so that to stipulate the importance of the study, the risks involved, the procedures to be carried out, and the benefits they would enjoy from participating in the research. It was perfectly done that right way. Some students did not want to participate in the research. Those who said gave no as an answer were left and found another student. Immediately after getting the informed consent, the participants were given the questionnaires and presented with instructions on how to navigate through the questions. The questions were both closed-ended and open-ended. It was done in a slow and orderly manner. They were presented with Florida International University documents which outlined main independent and dependent variables for the research. The third of the participants were to be in elderly condition, a third in youthful condition and another a third in the neutral condition.
The questionnaires were used in the second stage. The partakers were presented with a survey to complete, which comprised of five parts. The first part the participants were needed to finalize language skills in which they were to come up with grammatically correct 4-word sentence out of the five words that were provided. The second part they were to finish an inventory on feelings if they felt exhausted a scale of 1 to 7 about their feelings if they were energized, tired, excited, felt sluggish, youthful and old with (1=not at all and 7=Extremely) In the third part they were given an ambiguous image for them to identify whatever they could get a glimpse of in the picture where (1= ‘I see a picture of a mountain’, 2= ‘I see a picture of old woman’ ,3= ‘I see a picture of young woman’ and = ‘I do not see any of the above’) The fourth part was to collect the demographic data in which they filled demographic information in the spaces provided. The demographic data included the age, ethnicity of the participant, the language, gender, and if the student was from Florida International University. Those who felt that we were invading their privacy were urged to leave the spaces blank and to proceed with the questions they felt more comfortable with answering. In the final part, the partakers were required to identify if the word they left out in part one while forming a grammatically 4-word complete sentence were elderly, youthful, or neutral aligned. The piece was primarily done to know the number of participants who were well conversant with the primes.
After the study, the participants were debriefed concerning their active contribution to the research. They were offered some illumination about the full research and the hypothesis of the study. The influence of primes on feelings and perceptions of the picture were experimented using the first part of the questionnaire where the participants had to come up with a four-word grammatically correct sentence. The excluded word was different among elderly, youthful, and neutral conditions. Words like helpless, knits, worried, lonely, ancient, Florida, wise, bitter, and forget had elderly conditions. Hopeful, plays, energetic, friendly, young, Disney, learner, bright, and remember had a youthful connection. Slightly, talk, minute, knot, color, Boston, magnetic, paper, and look had neutral association. The study wanted to check if the primes make people have elderly feelings and perceive an older woman in the image and if the youthful prime will influence people to feel young to see a young woman in the picture.
Results
The study used the priming conditions such as elderly, youthful and neutral as our independent variables and the idea of participants seeing an old lady, young woman, a mountain and nothing at all in the image was used as our dependent variables. Significant effect was seen, X2(6) =96.891, p< 0.05. Most participants in the elderly condition said they saw an old woman in the picture (87.3%); most participants in the youthful condition said they saw a young woman in the picture (85.9%) and the partakers in the neutral condition had varied responses, others reported seeing an old woman in the picture (47.1%), other seeing a young woman (45.7%) and others reported seeing nothing in the picture (7.1 %). It indicates that the participants saw the image depending on their primal conditions. see Appendix B
In the first one-way ANOVA, The priming conditions; elderly, youthful and neutral was used as the independent variable and the ratings of ‘I feel old’ was used as the dependent variable., It was found that there was a significant condition effect, F() = 13.325, p < 0.05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants felt older in the elderly condition (M = 4.30, SD = 1.13 ) than participants in both the youthful (M = 3.18 , SD = 1.234) and neutral (M = 3.66 , SD = 1.493) conditions. There was no any significant difference between youthful and neutral conditions It is in support with the forecast that the participants who are exposed to elderly primes will rate themselves as feeling older than all the other conditions. See Appendix C
In our t-test analysis, the priming conditions; elderly and youthful were used as our independent variable and ratings of “I feel youthful” as our dependent variable, There was a significant condition effect, t (140) =-6.310, p < 0.05. Participants felt youthful in the youthful condition (M = 4.70 SD = 1.448) than participants in the elderly condition (M = 3.13, SD = 1.530).It supports the prediction that the participants who are exposed to youthful primes will rate themselves as feeling youthful than those in elderly prime. See Appendix D
Discussion
The study predicted that primes make people have elderly feelings and perceive. The older adults would perceive themselves as being old, youthful people will perceive themselves as being youthful, and the neutral people were between feeling old and youthful. The analyses that were carried out in the study were in support of this claim. It was seen when we tested the three conditions; elderly, youthful, and neutral using the ratings of ‘I feel old’ and ‘I feel youthful.’ It, therefore, begs the question if the same results would be obtained if we use the ratings; ‘I feel exhausted,’ ‘I feel excited,’ ‘I feel energized’ and ‘I feel sluggish’ as our dependent variables.
Appendix A- Study one-Demographics
Appendix B- Study one-Crosstabs and chi-square
Appendix C-Study one-Anova
Appendix D- study one-T-test