Module 5: Social and Personality Pillar – Social, Personality, Emotion, Multicultural, Gender, Motivation

Assignment: Evaluating the Evidence Worksheet 4

1. Choose ONE of the Claims above to evaluate. Which type of claim is it: Frequency, Association, or Causal? EXPLAIN your answer.

Claim 7: Opposites Attract.
This is a Casual type of claim. This is because casual claims stipulates that there is a relationship between two events. In this case the two parties are the tow opposite sides and their attraction.

2. Search for and read the entire article for ONE primary source of evidence related to this claim from within the past two decades (2000-2020)

The Evidence: The evidence was found in an article published by the media outlet: The Conversion. The Author is Viren Swami (Professor of Social Psychology: Anglia Ruskin University) and the Article was published in March 14 2017.

The Conversation. Swami, March 14, 2017. Why opposites rarely attract. Retrieved from: https:// theconversation.com/why-opposites-rarely-attract-74873

3. WHAT did the evidence say? Briefly describe the researcher’s methods and conclusions. If you do not have access to the full article, briefly describe the Abstract for the article, in your own words.

The claim that opposite attracts is refuted by this article. In fact the author stipulates that the opposite is true. Opposite rarely attract, people who have similar attributes are likely to be attracted to each other, as opposed to people with different attributes. Therefore concluding that the claim: opposite attracts is a myth.

4. What TYPE of evidence was it? Place an “X” before the types of evidence the researcher produced.

Case study Survey

Correlational study
Quasi-experimental study
Longitudinal study
Controlled Experimental study
Systematic review or meta-analysis of many studies: X

5. Evaluate whether the types of methods used in the study (descriptive, correlational, or experimental) appropriately matched the type of claim (frequency, association, or causal).

As Identified before, the research claim was casual and the researcher utilizes the meta-analysis of many studies to come up with an answer. This type of method appropriately matches with the type of claim. This is because the claim has been studied by various author for ages, therefore making it easy to combine the insights from different studies to come up with an answer.

6. RATE the strength of the evidence on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the strongest), and EXPLAIN why you gave that rating.

The Rating: 9
The reason for this rating, is that the author has utilized different evidence from different studies to come up with a conclusion. It is obvious that having different people pointing towards the same answer/explanation, it means that the conclusion is correct. There is strength in numbers, and the author has used his insights and the insights of other researchers to conclude that opposites do not attract.