In the experiment done by Schachter and Singer in 1962, which is called Cognitive labelling, there is need of arousal and labelling to get emotion. If we are aroused, we will attempt to label it in some way. Emotion occurs when we label our arousal in a particular way. They have done an experiment. They had three groups of people. Each group had different independent variable (IV;variable that you as an experimenter want to change). First group was given an adrenaline and told what the consequences are. Second group was given an adrenaline but they were not told what the consequences are.
And the third group was given a placebo ( it is a pill, but it does not influence us. It can be for example a vitamin and it is given to a people with words that it is some kind of pill which will cure them for example. And they believe to it and they can change from psychological view). All three groups were placed into “angry” or “happy” environment. Each person’s behaviour was observed and each of them was interviewed afterwards. The results were that, first group did what was expected , because they knew what the consequences are – they explained their arousal in terms of the drug.
The second group experienced changing emotions, they experienced anger and happines. Even without knowing that they got adrenaline. They though it is some kind of drug but what kind of drug they did not know. And the third group had no significant change in emotions. But the problem with this experiment was that they did not ask the participants what was the emotional state of the participants before they have done the experiment. IT was also unethical, because they gave them drugs. Therefore we can’t do the experiment( no replication).
It lacks of ecological validity- the environment around them could influence the results). And lastly if we believe in assumptios of biological psychology, then the cognitive labelling must have a biological basis. In this case we meet here with independent and dependent variable. It is manipulation of Independent variable (IV) to determine the effect it has on Dependent variable (DV). We change IV to observe what effect it has on DV. In psychology when we form an experiment we consider two things. Independent and dependent variable..
Independent variable is the variable that you as an experimenter want to change. The experimenter control this. Dependent variable is the thing that we want to expect to change as a result of changing independent variable. The variable that we observe and measure. Dependent variable must always be a quantifiable data (data that can be represented in numbers). The IV in the research done by Schachter and Singer is expectations of participants and DV is emotional response to “happy + angry” environment.