Ball-And-Sock Experiment the Experimental Design I Altered

¶ … Ball-And-Sock Experiment The Experimental Design I altered the experiment slightly to help make sure that it would demonstrate the issues it was supposed to demonstrate without adding extraneous variables. Specifically, I was concerned that if I walked around all day with a sock on my hand, every person who interacted with me would ask about my sock and that would get in the way of the main point of simply forcing me to not to rely on my dominant hand in my daily routine.

Likewise, there seemed to be no point to introducing the variable of self-consciousness since left-handed people don't usually wall around self-conscious and worried what everybody else thinks about their being left-handed.

So, I simply wrapped the fingers of my right hand in some first-aid gauze to make it impossible to use them and then I wrapped an Ace bandage around my hand and wrist so that in accomplished the same purpose and allowed me to apply the same rules of not using my right hand for anything or allowing it to get wet.

Relevance to Cultural, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in a Business Setting The first thing I noticed was that the most ordinary chores, such as brushing my teeth and accomplishing other personal hygiene tasks were extremely difficult and took much longer. On one hand, that represented an inherent limitation in the experimental design, because those issues do not ordinarily affect anybody who has always been left-handed; they would only be issues for people who have lost the use of their dominant hands and not anybody who has been left-handed since birth.

However, from the perspective of a manager in business, it certainly is relevant to understanding the challenges of the thousands of injured military veterans whose lives have been changed by the loss of limbs in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 and 2011, respectively. However, I did immediately notice that my toothbrush is shaped for the right hand and that I cannot ever remember even seeing a toothbrush labeled "left-handed" in the drug store or supermarket.

Possibly the most significant problem I encountered was that I was completely unable to drive my car even though it is an automatic transmission. The transmission shifter is on my right side and requires pushing a button with my thumb. I realized that learning how to drive must be that much more difficult for left-handed people because it probably is easier to use your dominant hand on the gear shifter.

In principle, the experiment reinforced how much most of us live our lives totally oblivious to many of the challenges faced by others. For example, males typically do not appreciate that when a female speaks in a group situation in the workplace, she might have concerns about the attitude of others (especially her superiors) about the competence of women, or about whether being proactive or assertive might be considered negatives when they would not be seen that way if she were male.

Similarly, a Caucasian manager who lacks cultural sensitivity might not consider that an African-American or Hispanic coworker might worry that his colleagues think he might not have earned his position by merit and that he might have to work.