Participants were asked to read a poem that was written by a male or female author who they were told was a college English major or an English professor. The participants rated the poem written by the professor as being of higher quality than the poem written by the student. From these results, one can conclude there wasa. a main effect of genderb. a main effect of authorshipc. a main effect of qualityd. an interaction between gender and authorship

b. a main effect of authorship

Explanation:

The answer is - -

b. a main effect of authorship

Authorship gives credit to an individual's contributions to one's work and carries responsibility and accountability. Generally authors are judged to have made practical and intellectual contribution to his work and he is accountable to his contribution.

Participants rating the the poem with higher quality which they thought was written by the professor and lower quality to the poem written by a student. In this experiment if the author and the poem are interchanged, then the result that is obtained will also change for the same poem.

This refers to the dependent variable and the independent variable of the experiment.

An independent variable or IV is a variable that is controlled by a experimenter to find whether it brings any change in some other variable, which is known as dependent variable. The dependent variable can be measured and is dependent on the independent variable.

Here the poem is dependent variable and the author is independent variable. The independent variable is one which the researcher changes to have direct effect on dependent variable.

Thus the answer is - --

b. a main effect of authorship