From a Time

Essay

From a Time.com article entitled "Why Men Shouldn't Listen to Rock Music While Playing Board Games," published on December 13, 2016.
Researchers Fancourt, Burton, and Williamon wanted to find out whether different types of music would impact participants' performance on a mock-surgery game, "Operation." Many real-life surgeons listen to music while operating, so the authors were interested in whether this may actually help performance, and whether that differed by sex of the participant.
The psychologists asked male and female participants to play the mock-surgery game, "Operation," in which they needed to remove three different organs from a "patient" using tweezers. The experimenters played either rock music, classical music, or operating-room sounds. They found that the type of music made a difference on the performance of male participants, who were slower to complete the task (in seconds) while listening to rock music compared with classical music. The performance of female participants did not differ based on the type of music they listened to.
Explain the difference between a variable and a constant. Give an example of each from this study.