Sexual Orientation Cannot Be Judged by Behavior - Research Paper Example

?Research question Can sexual orientation be judged from behavior? Hypothesis Sexual orientation cannot be judged from behavior Research design Forthis research, two samples would be collected. One sample would be of the research participants and the other sample would be of the judges. For balance, an equal number of male and female research participants would be selected; half of which would be heterosexual and half would be homosexual. The homosexual research participants would be selected from the gay groups on social networking websites like Facebook. The heterosexual research participants would be selected from the page of “Anti-gay marriage” on Facebook. To be sure that there are equal number of homosexual and heterosexual research participants and that the members of the two groups really belong there, the research participants would be asked to rate their response to the statement; “I have heterosexual tendencies” on a 6-point scale that approximates the method used by Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1948) to gauge sexual orientation where “0” on the scale means “totally heterosexual” and “6” on the scale means “totally homosexual”. Research participants that rate their heterosexual tendency from 0 to 2 would be considered heterosexual and those that rate themselves from 4 to 6 would be categorized as homosexual. Response from more and more participants would be gained until there is an equal number of homosexual and heterosexual research participants. From now on, this would be referred to as “Sample 1”. Same method would be used to collect the sample of judges which henceforth would be called as “Sample 2”. The judges would be asked an additional questions; “do you know any of the research participants?” Any judge familiar with any research participant would be changed for the one who is not so as to ensure that the sexual orientation of the research participants is not already known to any of the judges. Once the two samples have been collected; each research participant from the Sample 1 would be asked to express themselves in a 1-minute video. They would be allowed 10 minutes to think about the topic and they would be free to choose any topic they would want to. Those 1-minute sessions for each research participant would be videotaped. After that, each participant would be paid a fee for his/her collaboration. The videos would be shown to the judges and they would be asked to rate the characters in the videos according to their perception of the characters’ sexual orientation on the same scale that approximates the one used by Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1948). The judges’ rating would be compared with the original ratings of the research participants to draw the conclusions. Justification of the research design I would use this research design because it would allow me to draw a comparison between the original responses of the research participants and judgments of the judges. This resembles the research design adopted by Ambady, Conner, and Hallahan (1999). This research method leads to the conclusions directly and only from the observation of the research participants’ behavior by the judges. There is balance of gender and sexual orientation in both the samples to remove any bias because of saturation of people from a certain gender or sexual orientation in any of the samples. The judges are totally non-familiar with the research participants so there would be no prior thoughts about anybody’s sexual orientation. Research question 2 Does sleep hypnosis work to relieve depression? Hypothesis Sleep hypnosis does not relieve depression Research design Research participants for this research would be approached through a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist would first be approached to identify patients of depression. The identified patients would be approached through emails to gain their consent to participate in the research for a reasonable monetary compensation. The research participants would vary in age, gender, and the duration for which they have been suffering from depression. Once the sample has been collected, the research participants would be shown a video of sleep hypnosis that is very popular for the treatment of depression. The video with a fairly large or maximum number of likes would be selected from Youtube for this purpose. Services of the psychotherapist would also be used in the selection of the right video for the research purpose for expert opinion. After the research participants have seen the video, they would be asked to fill in a questionnaire survey in which they would be required to rate the effectiveness of the video in relieving their depression on a 6-point scale in which “0” would indicate “not effective” and 6 would mean “totally effective”. The research participants would also be asked their perceptions about this method of treatment of depression; whether they ever believed in its effectiveness, have they had unsuccessful experiences with such videos in the past, and if they would like to see this video again and how often. Once the data has been collected, correlations would be drawn between the research participants’ self-perceptions of the effectiveness of this method and their ratings of the videos. Justification of the research design Hypnosis has been checked and considered effective to relieve depression by a number of studies in the past (Yapko, 1993; Lynch, 1999). This is the suitable research design for this because it not only takes the research participants’ response to the video but also draws correlation between that response and their prior perceptions of this method to remove any bias of perception. Furthermore, the research participants selected for this research would be the real patients of depression whose cases are so serious that they have decided to render the help of a psychotherapist. The research participants would be asked the questions in the survey after seeing the video so as to identify the effect of their self-perception of the effectiveness of this method on the video’s effect on them. This research design helps answer my question because it would be based on a very popular video of sleep hypnosis that would be selected with due consultation of a psychotherapist. This is a suitable way because many people these days use such videos on the social media websites for the cure of their depression; this research would analyze its effectiveness. References: Ambady, N., Conner, B., and Hallahan, M. (1999). Accuracy of Judgments of Sexual Orientation From Thin Slices of Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77(3), 538-547. Kinsey, A., Pomeroy, W., and Martin, C. (1948). Sexual behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: W. B. Sanders. Lynch, D. (1999). Empowering the patient: Hypnosis in the management of cancer, surgical disease and chronic pain. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 42(2), 122-131. Yapko, M. (1993). Hypnosis and depression. In J. Rhue, S. Lynn & I. Kirsch (Eds.), Handbook of clinical hypnosis (pp.339-355). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Read More