Ap Psychology Reflection Paper

It truly is crazy that one simple task can determine or even change how happy we are. I remember on the first day of psychology class we were given a survey to show us our level of happiness, overall, I would say I was a pretty happy person. In the middle of our psychology course, we were asked to journal 3 things that we were thankful for on a daily basis, this task was done until we were told to stop. At the end of the activity, we were then given an additional survey determining our level of happiness. The results as a whole show that out of the 18 students that were present that day 9 of them showed an increased score. 3 people of the 18 showed no change at all and 6 peoples score decreased. My score did change, I actually was one of the

ones whose score decreased. Why did this happen? How did this happen? What does this mean? How does journaling have to do with my level of happiness? These were some of the questions I was thinking to myself, and I'm sure some of my classmates were thinking the same exact things. It's easier to understand when it has been broken down because honestly, I think it makes more sense.
Journaling the three things that we are thankful for would be classified as the independent variable, An independent variable is defined as the conditioned being investigated which also can change the behavior. A dependent variable, on the other hand, is the behavior that is affected by the independent, which in this experiment is journaling.
How the variables are measured in a study is the definition of operationalization of variables. In other words, it saying how did we measure the Dependent and independent variables. We measured the Dependent variables by completing the surveys before the experiment and after the journaling stopped. The Independent variables were measured by whether or not how happiness changed, stayed the same, or went down.
Experimental groups and control groups are two different ways to go about testing variables.

An experimental group is a group in the experiment that is getting tested on. Control groups, on the other hand, do not get the experiment tested on them. In most cases when dealing with a control group, a larger group, for example, will get divided into two smaller groups. One of them gets “tested” while the other group will step out just like what happened in class when the health and happiness experiment. When talking about the journaling experiment, though, because of our results I feel like a little bit of both happened. Since we know that some of the students did not participate in the journaling they act like the control group effect. But originally no, both of these shouldn't have happened only one should've and I feel like it would have most likely been an experimental group. If I could change one thing it would be to make this happiness experiment into the style of a control group. By doing so we would know if journaling what we are thankful for actually has an effect on our overall happiness. What would happen is the teacher would randomly choose half of the class to journal what they are thankful for every day and have the other half just continue doing what they do in their everyday lives. Keep the survey before and after the experiment to get an idea of the changes that take

place.