. Harrison et al. are conducting a study assessing the ability of depressed versus non-depressed participants to remember negative emotions in a short story about a family whose car breaks down. They plan to ask participants to read the story and then make a list of the emotions expressed in the story. Before beginning the study, they make a list of negative emotions (e.g., sadness and anger) that they will record from the participants’ responses. In this example, negative emotions are the ________.a. operational definition b. significant variablec. independent variable d. dependent variable

The independent variable is the one researchers can control and that will have an effect on another variable.
The dependent variable is the one that will be measured and that researchers cannot control and is being affected by the independent variable.

In this example, the researchers are conducting a study assessing the ability of depressed versus non-depressed participants to remember negative emotions in a short story. We can see that they think that depression will have an effect on the negative emotions they will remember. They cannot control the results of this study or the negative emotions the participants will remember. Therefore, since they will measure negative emotions and these are being affected by depression, we can say that negative emotions are the dependent variable.