title: An alternative approach to analysis of mental states in experimental social cognition research.
abstract: Establishing the mental states that affect human behavior is a primary goal of experiments on social cognitive processes. Such mental states can be manipulated only indirectly; therefore, after delivering a manipulation, researchers attempt to verify that the mental state of interest, the representation of a mental state, was in fact changed by the manipulation and that this change caused the observed effect. The usual procedure is to examine mean differences in a measure of the mental state of interest (a manipulation check) among experimental conditions and to infer whether the manipulation was effective. We describe a procedure that strengthens the construct validity of manipulations and, hence, causal inferences in experiments that focus on mental states using analyses familiar to most researchers. This procedure employs a traditional manipulation check that assesses the relationship between manipulations and mental states but, additionally, tests the relationship between the manipulation check and dependent measure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-4235, USA, hlench@tamu.edu.
authors.forename: Heather C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Lench
authors.forename: Aaron B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Shane W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Bench
mesh_terms: D032763:Behavior Control / Q000523:psychology*; D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000379:methods*; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012107:Research Design; D012919:Social Behavior