Correctional studies examine the relationships between variables in a study.
Demonstrating that a correlation exists does not prove that changes in one variable are the cause of changes in the other, partly because other factors which are undetected may be influencing both known variables. Thus, knowing that a correlation exits may lead to two or more different interpretations of the correlation. For the studies described below, decide whether the correlation is positive or negative and give two explanations for the finding. The more psychology courses students take during their college years, the higher scores they get on a measure of interpersonal sensitivity. A study on the effects of alcohol found that higher and higher doses of alcohol produced increasingly lower scores on a test of memory recall.