Modern Psychological Studies Volume 25 Number 1 Article 8 January 2020 Evaluation of Antecedent Ambiguity on Identification and Categorization of Behavior in Lunar-Effects Research Brenda M. Gabbert University of Alaska Anchorage,
[email protected] Mychal A. Machado University of Alaska Anchorage,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.utc.edu/mps Part of the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Gabbert, Brenda M. and Machado, Mychal A. (2020) "Evaluation of Antecedent Ambiguity on Identification and Categorization of Behavior in Lunar-Effects Research," Modern Psychological Studies: Vol. 25 : No. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://scholar.utc.edu/mps/vol25/iss1/8 This articles is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals, Magazines, and Newsletters at UTC Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Modern Psychological Studies by an authorized editor of UTC Scholar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. IDENTIFICATION AND CATEGORIZATION OF BEHAVIOR 1 Abstract We created an online survey to determine the degree to which 114 participants could correctly identify and categorize scripted visual examples of typical and atypical behavior when the antecedent preceding those behaviors was not present. We also asked participants to determine whether our visual examples of behavior occurred in the presence of a full moon, and subsequently evaluated these data in the context of participant’s self-reported belief in lunar- effects. Our results show the absence of an antecedent event influenced some participants’ identification and categorization accuracy scores, and that participants with a prior belief in lunar effects were more likely to attribute atypical behavior to the presence of a full moon.