SUGGESTED ANSWER TO QUESTION 1-5

One way to test this superstition is to divide married couples into two groups; those in which the bride wore "something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue" on their wedding day, and those in which the bride was missing one or more of these items. We then could wait a period of time, perhaps 10 years after the wedding day, and determine which couples had divorced during that time. Of course, you might argue that some couples who are unhappy in their marriage may not have obtained a divorce (at least, not yet); but we would expect that whether or not a couple has divorced and whether or not a couple is happy would be closely associated.

We then would put the results into the following table:

 
Divorced
Not divorced
Wore the 4 items during wedding
a
c
Did not wear the 4 items during wedding
b
d

If the superstition is correct, there should be a larger proportion of couples in cell b (brides who did not wear the four items should be divorced more often) and in cell c (brides who did wear the four items should be "not divorced" more often) when compared to cells a and d. If, on the other hand, the superstition is incorrect, the proportion of couples in cells b and c should be equal to those in cells a and d.

Of course, if we found that the superstition is correct, we then would want to figure out why this is so. That is, we would want to develop a theory that would explain why brides who wear the four items are more likely to have a successful marriage than brides who don't. One explanation might be that, when a bride takes care right from the start of her marriage to make it a happy one (by taking care to wear the four items), this means that she is very motivated to make the marriage work and, thus, that she is more likely to work hard to get through the difficulties that face most married couples. In other words, in this theory, it is not the four items that are causing a happy marriage, it is the wife's attitude towards the marriage.

Of course, there are other possible theories we would need to examine if the superstition were found to be true. We would need to think of a number of possibilities and then make direct observations that would help us to determine which theory was most likely to be the correct one. In future critical-thinking lessons, we will work more on learning how to do this.