How can musicians be both more and less empathic than nonmusicians? Using R and Shiny to reveal how Simpson's Paradox emerges when comparing unbalanced groups
van Vugt, Floris · DOAJ Open Access Articles
Imagine we want to understand whether musicians are more empathic than non-musicians. We recruit two groups of individuals, musicians and nonmusicians, and administer empathy tests. To compare the empathy scores we could use a two-sample t-test, or, equivalently, a one-way ANOVA. However, before we do so, textbooks advise us we have to investigate whether th…