A Theater Department Enlists the Help of a Social Science

Essay

A theater department enlists the help of a social science professor to design a study to see if being surrounded by highly attractive people affects the performance of young actors. Each of 30 student actors is provided a script and asked to enact a particular scene with a group of other performers, and his/her performance is rated by a panel of judges. This enacting of the scene, however, occurs under one of two conditions, to which the actors are randomly assigned: For 13 of the actors, all the other performers are dressed and made up to look very attractive; for the other 17 actors, all the same other performers are made to look very unattractive. The mean performance ratings for the actors with attractive co-performers was 4.3 (S = .86); with unattractive co-performers, the mean was 5.4 (S = 1.30). Do these results suggest that acting with attractive co-performers affects performance? (Use the .05 significance level.)
a. Use the five steps of hypothesis testing.
b. Figure the effect size.
c. Explain your findings.