Experimental design with Vishal

You and Vishal hole up in one of the discussion rooms in the library, but missing from the table is the usual stack of books ten miles tall.

“Bit of a weird thing, this one,” Vishal says. “A partner assignment to design a psych experiment? How’s that even going to be graded?”

“At least we don’t have to run it,” you say. “That would be actual hell. Remember what he said a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah, that we’d suck at this. But it can’t be that hard, can it?”

“I don’t know, he’ll probably make up some bullshit excuse to fail half the class. Or quiz us about it live in class.”

“He’s the worst,” Vishal says, groaning.

“I’d still take this any day over reading two dozen books,” you say. “But we need an idea. Something to run an experiment about. I don’t know. How do people come up with ideas for this shit?”

“Oh, I got something. It’s a real brainwave,” Vishal says, clapping his hands together excitedly.

“Yeah?” you ask.

“Sex,” he says.

“Sex?” you ask.

“Sex,” he says, nodding slowly.

“Oookay,” you say. “You’ve got me hooked. Give me a little more.”

“We’re going to make an experiment about sex! One about banging hot chicks, if that wasn’t clear. Some kind of experiment that, if it were run, would let us bang hot chicks. It’ll be the dog’s bollocks,” he says.

“Come again?” you ask.

“It’ll be like the mutt’s nuts,” he says.

“Oh, like the bee’s knees,” you say.

“Yeah, exactly!” he laughs.

“Okay, I’m on board,” you say. “But we’ve got to find an angle to make it seem like a legit study. We can’t just turn in the word ‘sex’ now, can we?”

Vishal shuts his eyes, and you wave a hand over his face.

“Hello? Stayed up too late talking to your girl again? You can’t leave me hanging with just the words ‘banging hot chicks’,” you say.

“Shhh… I’m ideating,” he says.

You laugh and shake your head. How could you possibly turn this idea into a psychology study? Maybe you could test what happens if you put a hot guy and a hot girl in a room together, naked. That sounds like it could be fun, except…

“I got it!” Vishal says. “We do it just like the speed dating experiment the other day, except this time, we make it about sex. Put two people together and tell them to fuck! Then we see if they do or not.”

“Whoa, great minds think alike,” you say. “I was just about to say that! But small problem.”

“What?” Vishal asks.

“There’s not really a research question there,” you say. “What are we trying to find out with this study?”

“Okay, maybe that won’t work. But at least it’s a start!”

You nod slowly, not wholly convinced, but he’s right. It’s a start. In fact, maybe this speed dating idea has quite a bit of merit to it.

“Here’s an idea,” you say. “We get people to submit something that represents themselves, like something psychologically interesting, I don’t know what yet, and then they get to swipe on each other. If they swipe right on each other, then they get put in a room together with a big bed and tell them that they can do anything they like.”

“So we’re not forcing them to have sex?” Vishal says. “Okay, you know what, fair enough. We can’t **** them to fuck. That sounds unethical. But now we need to come up with something psychologically interesting. It can’t just be the usual shirtless gym pics, right? What do psychologists care about?”

“I got an idea,” you say.

Vishal +10