Ch.2

Question 1

Experimental designs

Answer 1

When performed correctly, they permit cause-and-effect inferences. Researchers manipulate variables to see whether these manipulations produce Differences in participants behavior. Putting it another way, in correlational designs the differences among participants are measured, whereas in experimental designs they’re created.

Question 2

What makes a study an experiment:
2 Components 

Answer 2

1. Random Assignment of participants to conditions.
2. Manipulation of an independent variable.

Both of these are necessary, if I study doesn’t contain both, it’s not an experiment.

Question 3

Random Assignment

Answer 3

Experimenter randomly sorts participants into one of two groups. By doing so, we tend to cancel out pre-existing differences between the two groups, such as gender, race, personality traits. One of these two groups is the experimental group: this group receives manipulation. The other is the control group: doesn’t receive manipulation.

In some research designs, one group will be randomly assigned to receive some level of independent variable, while the other will be assigned to the control condition. This is called between-subjects design. (Because experimental manipulation is made between groups.) This is where the placebo effect occurs.

In other studies, participants act as their own control group. Researchers will take a measure before independent variable manipulation, and then measure the same participant again after the independent variable manipulation. This is called within-subject design. (Because experimental manipulations are made within the same individual.)

Difference between this and random selection. Random selection deals with how we initially choose our participants, whereas random assignment deals with how we assign our participants after we’ve already chosen them. 

Question 4

Manipulation of an independent variable

Answer 4

Independent variable is the variable that the experimenter manipulates. Dependent variable is the variable that the experimenter measures to see whether manipulation has had an effect.

Operational definition— A working definition of what we are measuring. It’s important to specify how we are measuring our variables because different researchers may define the same variables in different ways and end up with different conclusions as a result.

Question 5

Confounds: a source of false conclusions

Answer 5

For an experiment to posses adequate internal validity ability— to draw cause-and-effect conclusions— level of independence variable must be the only difference between the experimental and control group. Confounding variable or confound, to refer to any variable that differs between the experimental and control groups other than the independent variable. If there’s some other difference between these groups, there’s no way of knowing whether the independent variable itself exerts an affect on the dependent variable.

Question 6

Cause and effect
permission to infer

Answer 6

To decide whether to him for a cause-and-effect relations from a study.

1. Using the criteria with outlined, ask yourself whether a study is an experimental.
2. If it isn’t, don’t draw casual conclusions from it, no matter how tempting it might be to do so.

Question 7

Pitfalls in experimental design
Placebo effect

Answer 7

The placebo effect— is improvement resulting from the mirror expectation of improvement. Participants who receive the drug may have improved mainly because they knew they were receiving treatment. This knowledge could have installed confidence and hope or exerted a calming influence. Placebo effect is a powerful reminder the expectations can create reality. To avoid possible affects, it’s critical that participants not know whether they’re receiving the real meds or a placebo. Patient must remain blind to the condition to which they’ve been assigned.

Question 8

The Nocebo effect

Answer 8

Is harm resulting from the mirror expectation of harm. Practice of voodoo capitalize Nocebo effect

Question 9

Experimenter expectancy effect

Answer 9

In some cases, the participant doesn’t know the condition assignment, but the experimenter does. It occurs when researchers hypothesis leads them to unintentionally bias the outcomes of a study. Researchers biases affect the result in subtle ways, almost always outside of their knowledge. Fall prey to confirmation bias, because of this, psychological investigators now always tried to conduct their experiments in a double blind fashion. Neither researchers nor participants no who is in the experimental or control group. 

Question 10

Demand characteristics

Answer 10

Research participants can pick up cues, from an experiment that allows them to generate gases regarding the experimenters hypothesis. The problem is that when participants think they know how the experimenter wants them to act, they may alter their behaviour accordingly. So whether the guest right or wrong, their beliefs are preventing researchers from getting an unbiassed view of participants thoughts and behaviors. To combat this, researchers may disguise the purpose of the study, may include “distractor tasks” or “filler”items— measures unrelated to the question of interest.

Question 11

Advantages and disadvantage is of research designs table

Answer 11

Naturalistic:
Advantages- High in external validity
Disadvantages- Low in internal validity. Doesn’t allow us to infer causation.

Case studies:
Advantages- Can provide existence proofs. Allow us to study rare or unusual phenomena. Can offer insights for later systematic testing.
Disadvantages- Are typically anecdotal. Don’t allow us to infer causation

Correlational designs:
Advantages- Can help us to predict behaviour.
Disadvantages- Don’t allow us to infer causation.

Experimental designs:
Advantages- Allows us to infer causation. High in internal validity.
Disadvantages- Can sometimes be a low in external validity

Question 12

Ethical guidelines:
Informed consent

Answer 12

REBs Insist on a procedure called informed consent. Researchers must tell subjects what they’re getting into before asking them to participate. During informed consent process, participants can ask questions about the study and learn more about what will be involved. REBs may sometimes allow researchers to forgo at least some elements of informed consent. Deception is justified only when
(A) Researchers couldn’t perform study without deception.
(B) Use of deception or withholding the Hypothesis doesn’t negatively affect rights of participants.
(C) Research doesn’t involve medical or therapeutic Intervention

Question 13

Debriefing: educating participants

Answer 13

REBs also request that a full debriefing be performed at the conclusion of research session. It’s a process whereby researchers in form participants what the study was about. In some cases, researchers even use it to explain the Hypothesis in non-technical language. All studies that involves use of deception or withholding require this.

Question 14

How culture influences ethics

Answer 14

Ethical research relies on participants giving free consent based on knowing the purpose of research, balancing potential harms with potential benefits to participants, and minimizing deception. These were updated in 2010 to provide more guidance on how to conduct research in a culturally sensitive matter.

For Ex: researchers suggest that research with indigenous communities should always be grounded in local traditional teachings and community norms to ensure the indigenous world views and realities are respected.

Question 15

Ethical issues in animal research

Answer 15

The goal of such research is to generate ideas about how the brain relates to behaviour in humans without having to inflict harm on people. Many rights protesters have raised useful concerns regarding ethical treatment of animals. In contrast, others have gone to extremes that many critics would describe as unethical in themselves. Such as ransacked labs and liberated animals, Incidentally most on both sides of animal rights debate agree liberating animals is a dreadful idea, because many or most died shortly after being released. Rigid guidelines that are in place to make certain that animals used in research are treated humanely.

In Canada researchers follow guidelines of Canadian council on animal care (CCAC). Guidelines state research involving animals must first be reviewed by animal care and use committees. These committees are made up of community members and members with expertise in animal research from institutions where research will take place. Certified veterinarians are integral parts of these committees, as they oversee the care and use of all animals used in teaching and research. Ensures that humane care is provided for the animals while they are in the institution and that there is a clear research goal that greatly outweighs any stress or harm that could come to the animal. 

Knowledge gleaned from animal research on aggression, fear, learning, memory, etc. is doubtful external validity = useless. However, some has led us to direct benefits to humans and immensely useful knowledge.

Ex: Principles of learning are derived from animal research. Without animal research we’d know relatively little about the physiology of the brain. Moreover, there are simply no good alternatives to using animals, without them will be unable to test the safety and effectiveness of many drugs.

Question 16

Descriptive statistics

Answer 16

Describe data. Two major types of descriptive statistics.

1. Central tendency, which gives us a sense of the central score in our data set, or where the group tends to cluster. 3 Measures: mean, median, mowed.
   Mean (average)- Total score divided by the number of people.
   Median- Is the middle score in our data set. Line scores up in order and find the middle one.
   Mode- Most frequent score in our dataset.
2. Variability (dispersion), which gives us a sense of how loosely or tightly bunched the scores are. Simplest measure is the range difference between highest scores and lowest. Standard deviation is the average amount that an individual data point differs from the mean. Less likely to be descriptive than range because it takes into account how far each data point is from mean, rather than how widely scattered the most extreme scores are.

Question 17

Inferential statistics

Answer 17

Allows us to determine how confident we are that we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population. We’re asking whether we can draw inferences conclusions regarding weather differences we were observed in our sample applied to similar samples. To figure out whether Differences observed in sample is believable, we need to conduct statistical tests. It’s based on probabilities that an outcome in test sample reflect reliable patterns in general population. When findings have occurred by chance less than 5 in 100 times, we say that it’s statistically significant.

Stats take into account, sample size, strength, or size of observed effect, and amount of variability in data— that is an important part of avoiding confirmation bias. Another step is called meta-analysis, this approach take sample size and effect size into account, weighing evidence from bigger studies and these with stronger affects more heavily practical. Significance- real world significance. Findings can be statistically significant yet not make much, if any, difference in the real world. Larger sample sizes are valid for increasing the likelihood that a result will be replicable— we don’t want to make a big deal out of findings that were a fluke. But by the same token, larger the sample size, greater the odds that a result will be Statistically significant. With huge sample sizes, virtually all findings— even tiny and truly unimportant ones will become statistically significant.

Question 18

Evaluating accuracy of psychological reports in media

Answer 18

1. Consider the source. Generally place more confidence in finding reported in a reputable science magazine. Moreover, trust in findings from primary sources, such as original journal articles or secondary sources that merely report findings from primary sources.
2. Look out for excessive sharpening and leveling. Sharpening refers to Tendency to exaggerate the Gist, or central message of a study, where is levelling refers to a tendency to minimize less central ideas of a study.

Question 19

Facilitated communication

Answer 19

Technique created to assist severely autistic or other communication impaired individuals in sharing their thoughts, feelings or ideas. Proponents of this technique, believe that these individuals are not actually mentally disabled but have a rich in her life. They claim severely autistic individuals are cognitively the same as any other typical developed person and that their disability stems from an inability to simply make the physical movements required for communication (e.g controlled movement of vocal cords or hands.)

Without research designs, even intelligent and well trained people can be fooled. Their naïve realism let them to see these children’s abuse allegations “with their own eyes” and their confirmation bias created a self-fulfilling prophecy, making them see what they wanted to see.

Another example is prefrontal lobotomy, surgeons severed the neural fibres that connect the brains frontal lobe’s to the underlying thalamus. Stunning reports of effectiveness of prefrontal lobotomy are based almost exclusively on subjective clinical reports. They didn’t conduct systematic research. They were mistaken, when perform studies effectiveness was useless. Operation certainly produced radical changes in behaviour but it didn’t target the specific behaviours. Created a host of other problems including extreme apathy. 

Question 20

A key finding emerging from the past few decades of research

Answer 20

The same psychological processes that serve us well in most situations also predispose us to errors in thinking. That is, most mistaken thinking is cut from the same cloth as useful thinking. Do you understand how and why we can all be fooled it’s helpful to introduce the distinction between two modes of thinking. First is system 1 or intuitive, second system 2 or analytical. 

Question 21

System one thinking or intuitive thinking

Answer 21

Pointed out that our first impressions are at times surprisingly accurate. This type of thinking is quick and reflexive and its output consist mostly of “gut hunches”. When in intuitive thinking mode, our brains are largely on auto pilot. Engage in intuitive thinking when we meet someone new and form an immediate first impression of them, or see an oncoming car rushing towards us as we were crossing the street and decide that we need to get out of the way. Without intuitive thinking we’d all be in serious trouble because much of our every day life requires snap decisions. Often involves use of heuristics (biases) 

Question 22

System 2 or analytical thinking

Answer 22

Is slow and reflective. Takes mental effort. Engage in analytical thinking whenever we’re trying to reason through a problem or figure out a complicated concept in an introduction psychology textbook. In some cases, analytical thinking allows us to override intuitive thinking and reject our gut hunches when they seem to be wrong. You’ve engaged in this process when you’ve met someone at a party who are you initially disliked because of a negative expression on their face, only change your mind after talking to them and realizing that they’re not so bad. When we require complex habits or skills, we often start off with analytical thinking and gradually progress into intuitive thinking. 

Question 23

Guiding principles for applying the scientific method to psychology
Random selection: key to generalizability

Answer 23

In random selection, every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate. Random selection is crucial if we want to generalize our results to the broader population. Although surveying more rather than fewer people seems like it would be more generalizable, obtaining a smaller random sample actually tends to be more accurate.

Ex: If we want to find out how the average person feels about Billie Eilish it’s better to ask 100 randomly sampled people in North America then ask 100,000 people in Nashville, Tennessee, Which is one of the worlds centres for country music. Nashville sample likely be hopelessly skewed towards country music. So, non-random selection can lead to wildly misleading conclusions. 

Ex: Non-scientific polls. Frequently, one will see polls in the news that carry the disclaimer “this is not a scientific pole”. Of course, one then has to wonder, why report the results in the first place? Why isn’t this online pole not specific. Answer: the pole isn’t scientific because it’s based on people who logged onto the website, who are probably not a representative sample of all people who watch con news— and almost certainly not all Canadians.

Question 24

Guiding principles for applying the scientific method to psychology
Evaluating measures

Answer 24

When evaluating the results from any dependent variable or measure we need to ask two crucial questions: is our measure reliable? Is it valid?

Reliability refers to consistency of measurement. Ex: A reliable questionnaire should yield similar scores overtime. This type of reliability is called testertest reliability. Interrator reliability is the extent to which different people who conduct an interview, or make behavioural observations, agree on the characteristics they’re measuring. Validity, in contrast, is the extent to which a measure assesses what it Claims to measure.

Reliability is necessary for Validity because we need to measure something consistently before we can measure it well. Reliability doesn’t guarantee validity, although a test must be reliable to be valid, a reliable test can be completely invalid. 

Examples:
Testertest reliability- Administer a personality questionnaire to measure extroversion, to a large group of people today and re-administer it in two months. If measure is reasonably reliable, participants extroversion scores should be similar add both times.
Interrator reliability- If two psychologist who interview patients on a psychiatric hospital unit disagree on most of the diagnosis’s- one diagnoses most as having schizophrenia and the other as having depression. Then there interrator reliability will be low.
Validity- if we purchase a fancy iPhone and open it up to discover a wrist watch, we demand our money back.
Reliability for validity- Imagine Scientistsdeveloped a new measure of intelligence, distance index-middle width intelligence test (DIMWIT), Which subtracts width of index from that of our middle. Would be a highly reliable measure of intelligence because the widths of our fingers are unlikely to change much overtime and are likely to be measured similarly by different rates. But would be completely invalid a measure of intelligence because finger width has nothing to do with intelligence.

Question 25

Guiding principles for applying the scientific method to psychology
Openness and transparency in science

Answer 25

No matter how fascinating, groundbreaking, and compelling initial discoveries strike us, before we embrace them with the highest level of confidence and essential requirement is that they proved to be replicable and reproducible. Reproducibility- refers to the ability to review and re-analyze data from a study and find exactly the same results. Replicability- involves collecting new data from new participants, whereas reproducibility involves repeating the same statistical analysis on already collected data. This was inspired by failures to confirm a number of high-profile findings known as “replicability crisis”. Replication problems don’t appear to reflect deliberate corruption or fraud.

In response to replicability crisis, researchers have started to do the following:
1. Post and share research materials and data sets publicly, inviting other researchers to re-analyze the data to ensure reproducibility and to explore whether different kinds of analysis illustrate hidden patterns.
2. Conduct replication of their own and others’ works before moving onto a new question. Strategy yielded interesting discoveries about ways the results vary across different participant populations and how subtle variations on the same study can yield quite different results.
3. Pre-register research which includes publicly posting hypothesis, research design, and plans for analyzing and reporting the results prior to data collection. Goal is to be transparent about their aims and accountable for a hypothesis they advance— doing so means they can’t change their tune after they’ve collected and analyze the data and claim that they had a different hypothesis all along.
4. Encourage editors of scientific journals to publish all sound science research that’s been carefully conducted, regardless of whether it’s supports a particular Siri or is consistent with previous research.
5. Place less emphasis on the findings of single studies, no matter how novel or intriguing and more emphasis on systematic reviews, including meta-analysis that consider patterns of findings across multiple research programs to arrive at more reliable conclusions based on larger data sets.

Question 26

Naturalistic observation

Answer 26

Watching behaviour in real-world settings without trying to manipulate people’s behavior. That is, we watch people’s behaviour unfold “naturally” without intervening in it. Psychologists who study animals in their natural habitat use this. By doing so, we can better understand the range of behaviours displayed by individuals in the “real-world” as well as the situations in which they occur.
Major advantage- Is that they’re often high in external validity, or the extent to which we can generalize our findings to real world settings. 
Disadvantages- They tend to be low in internal validity the extent to which we can draw a cause-and-effect inferences.

Lab experiments are high in internal validity because we can manipulate key variables ourselves. In contrast naturalistic observation designs, we have no control over these variables and need to wait for behaviour to unfold before our eyes. If people know they’re being observed this awareness can affect their behaviour. 

Question 27

Case study designs

Answer 27

Examine one person or a small number of people, often over extended periods of time. Can be helpful in providing existence proofs: demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur. Also provide a valuable opportunity to study rare or unusual phenomena that are difficult or impossible to re-create in the lab. Finally, can offer insights that researchers can follow up on and test in systematic investigations. In this respect, they can be enormously helpful for generating Hypothesis.

If we’re not careful case studies can lead to misleading and wrong conclusions. Such as facilitated communication is effective for autism. As a consequence case studies almost never lend themselves to systematic tests of hypotheses about why a given phenomenon occurred. A limitation of case studies is that we don’t know if the knowledge gained in a single case study generalizes beyond that case.

Question 28

Self-report measures and surveys

Answer 28

Often called questionnaires, to assess a variety of characteristics, such as personality traits, mental illness and interests. Surveys use to measure peoples opinion and attitudes. Bear in mind that we can obtain quite different answers depending on how we phrase the questions. Moreover, we shouldn’t us assume that people even understand the questions they’re given.

Advantage: easy to administer. Have a question about someone? Often a good idea is to ask that person directly. That person has access to subtle information regarding their emotional states about which outsiders aren’t aware of. Self-report measures of personality traits and behaviours often work reasonably well.

Disadvantages: typically assume that respondents possess enough insight into their personality characteristics to report on them accurately. (Narcissism) Typically assume participants are honest in their responses. Response sets tendency to distort their answers to questions, often in a way that paints them in a positive light. Tendency to answer in a socially desirable way.
Malingering: tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed with the aim of achieving a clear-cut personal goal. Especially likely to observe this response set among people trying to obtain financial compensation for an injury, mistreatment on the job or trying to escape consequences for criminal actions. (faking insanity)

Question 29

Rating data

Answer 29

An alternative to asking people about themselves is asking others who know them well to provide readings on them. Can circumvent problems with self report data. Observers may not have the same “Blindspot” as the people they’re rating. Good evidence that observers ratings are often more valid than self reports.
Halo effect- Tendency of rating of one positive characteristic to spill over to influence ratings of other positive characteristics. Raters who fall victim to this regard targets as “angels”- who can do no wrong.
Horns effect- Ratings of one negative trait, spill over to influence the ratings of other negative traits. 

Question 30

Correlational designs

Answer 30

Psychologists examined the extent to which two variables are associated. If two things are correlated, they relate to each other— not interpersonally, but statistically. Allow us to generate predictions about the future. Are limited because we can’t be sure why these predicted relationships exist. Whenever researchers conduct a study of the extent to which two variables “travel together” their design is correlational even if they don’t describe it that way.

2 Basic facts about correlations.
1. Can be positive, zero, or negative. Positive correlation means that as the value of one variable changes, the other goes in the same direction: one goes up, other goes up. One goes down, other goes down.
Zero correlation means variables don’t go together at all. If math ability has zero correlation with singing ability, then knowing someone is good at math tells us nothing about their singing ability.
Negative correlation means as the value of one variable changes, the other goes in the opposite direction: one goes up, other goes down, and vice versa. 

2. Correlational coefficient (statistics that psychologists used to measure correlations) Range in value from -1.0 to 1.0. -1.0 is a perfect negative correlation, whereas +1.0 It’s a perfect positive correlation. Values lower than 1.0, such as 0.23 or 0.69, indicate a less-than-perfect correlational coefficient. To find how strong correlation coefficient is, look at the absolute value size of the coefficient without + or - sign. +0.27 is 0.27 & -0.27 is also 0.27. Both equally large in size but going in opposite directions. The strength of the correlation (how close the absolute value is to 1.0) tells us how effectively one variable predicts the other.

Question 31

Scatterplot

Answer 31

A grouping of points on 2D graph. Each dote on a scatterplot depicts one person within the sample and the placement shows where they scored on each of the two measures. To argue against the existence of a correlation- if we’re trying to refute the overwhelming scientific evidence- that cigarette smoking is correlated with lung cancer, we might insist “but I know a person who smoked 5 packs a day for 40 years and never got long cancer” This anecdote doesn’t refute the existence of the correlation because that correlation isn’t perfect because it’s less than 1.0, such expectations are completely expected in fact, there mathematically required. 

Question 32

Illusory Correlation

Answer 32

The perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists. Illusory correlation is a statistical mirage. Many people are convinced of a strong statistical association between a full moon and a variety of strange occurrences, like violent crimes, suicides, psychiatric hospital admissions, and births. Yet mountains of data shows that full the moon isn’t correlated with any of these events. Illusory correlation form the basis of many superstitions. 

Question 33

Correlation Vs causation

Answer 33

Shouldn’t confuse the correlation vs causation fallacy- The error of equating correlation with causation. With illusory Correlation- Refers to perceiving a correlation we’re not exists. In the case of correlation vs causation fallacy, a correlation exists, but we mistakenly interpret it as implying a casual association.

Bottom line: we should be on the lookout for headlines or new stories that proclaim a casual association between two variables. If the study is based on correlational data alone, we know they’re almost always taking their conclusions too far.