The Sample Size Effect is a very complicated subject to introduce into the field of psychology. The sample size effect is usually spoken of in the context of statistics. Usually meaning the number of participants, with this the larger the sample size the more likely you are to get accurate or precise results than if you have a small number. Not much research has been done with the sample size effect and psychology but Betsch and Kauffman (2009) was about the only study we could find that spoke about the Sample size effect in relation to psychology. In their paper The Origins of the Sample Size Effect in Explicit Evaluative Judgment (Betsch & Kauffman,2009) they concluded that Evaluative judgments should become less extreme if the variability of the information sample increases. You can see how this relates to statistical definition. We decided to connect this to social psychology by seeing how this idea of the sample size effect affected trust in an internet based informational source. We were interested in seeing if we used a relatively negative stigmatized internet source, Wikipedia, which has been said to be unreliable if we could change the perceived reliability (used to indicate trust in our experiment) of the participant if we varied the sample size. So, if they were told that a high percentage of their peersfellow ivy leaguers, both students and professors used this site and that it was reported as one of the top three websites used by these people then the participants would report trusting the information given to them from this site as more reliable and a lower trust rating if given a lower percentage. In our experiment we used an article on stem cell research taken from Wikipedia. Our diffuse question is how do we decide whether to trust an information source? And the specific question we wanted to answer
with our experiment, how does other peoples perception of an information source, influence our evaluative judgment of credibility in that source? We wanted to look at how undergraduate students can be influenced to either trust or not to trust the information presented on Wikipedia. As stated before previous research has shown that the Sample-Size Effect and Perceived Reliability are factors that are involved in evaluative judgments (Kaufmann & Betsch, 09). Schaller (90) found that even though people have more confidence drawing inferences if there are larger sample sizes there are times in which only looking at statistics can hide crucial third variables which would lead to different inferences. This is relevant because our results could be skewed because of the fact that people choose to trust what they read or the source more so just because of the percentages given or trust them less because of lower percentages and this is exactly what we hope to find. Finally, we found research on Internet forewarning effects (Leon, 03) that demonstrated that people who are forewarned about possible deception, are less persuaded by the subsequent information presented to them, than those who did not receive this forewarning. Using this previous research we narrowed our scope to look at how participants trust in information from Wikipedia can be influenced when presented information that only a small sample of their peers use this site or that a large sample of these people use it. In support of our thoughts, in an article titled Trust in Online Advice. Social Science Computer Review Briggs concluded that In a world fraught with decisions, huge numbers of people are turning to the Internet for advice and guidance with the result that online information is now exerting strong societal and personal influences(Briggs et al, 2002).