A researcher is interested in the effects of a famous author on the persuasiveness of a message. He recruits 50 college students to be in his study and randomly assigns 25 to be in the “high prestige” group and 25 to the be in the “low prestige” group. All of the students read the same document about the importance of improving mental health services at the college. But, the 25 students in the “high prestige” group read on the document that the author is the chairperson of the Psychology Department. The 25 students in the “low prestige” group read on the document that the author is a psychology undergraduate student as part of a class assignment. Everyone is asked after reading the article to indicate how much they agree with the idea that psychological services should be improved at the college.

The information about the author of the document written on the paper the participants read is the…

A. hypothesis.

B. independent variable.

C. dependent variable.

D. confounding variable.