University of Toronto (UofT) PSY 100 Introductory Psychology Midterm 1 Practice Test

In experiments, you deliberately change the independent variable to create different conditions and then measure the dependent variable to see how those conditions affect the outcome. This description matches that setup: you vary the independent variable and measure the dependent variable to assess the effect. For example, you might adjust caffeine dose (independent variable) and then measure alertness (dependent variable). The other possibilities misrepresent the roles: measuring the independent variable or manipulating the dependent variable reverses the direction of the cause-and-effect test; manipulating both variables isn’t the standard design for testing causal impact; and suggesting the dependent variable causes changes in the independent variable reverses the assumed causal direction.