Chapter 2 Flashcards
Prefrontal lobotomy
Surgical procedure that several fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus
Heuristic
Mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world
Naturalistic observation
Watching behavior in real-world settings without trying to manipulate the situation
External validity
Extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world settings
Internal validity
Extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences from a study
Case study
Research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period
Existence proof
Demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can occur
Random selection
Procedure that ensures every person and a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
Reliability
Consistency of measurement
Validity
Extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure
Response set
Tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items
Correlation design
Research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated
Scatter plot
Grouping of points on a two-dimensional graph in which each dot represents a single person’s data
Illusory correlation
Perception of a statistical association between two variables were nonexist
Experiment
Research design at characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable
Random assignment
Randomly sorting participants into two groups
Experimental group
An in an experiment, the group of participants that receives the manipulation
Control group
In an experiment, the group of participants that does not receive the manipulation
Independent variable
Variable that an examiner manipulates
Dependent variable
Variable that an experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation produces an effect
Operational definition
A working definition of what a researcher is measuring
Placebo effect
Improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement
Blind
Unaware of whether one is in the experimental or control group
Experimenter expectancy effect
Phenomenon in which researchers hypotheses lead them to unintentionally biased outcome of a study
Double blind
When neither the researcher is not participants are aware of who is in the experimental or control group
Demand characteristics
Cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate gases regarding the researchers hypotheses
Informed contestant
Informing research participants of what’s involved in a study before asking them to participate
Statistics
Application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data
Descriptive statistics
Numerical characterizations that describe data
Central tendency
Measure of the central scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster
Mean
Average; a measure of the central tendency
Median
Middle score in a data set; a measure of central tendency
Mode
Most frequent score in a data set; a measure of central tendency
Variability
Measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are
Range
Measure of variability that consists of the difference between the highest and lowest scores
Standard deviation
Measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean
Inferential statistics
Mathematical methods that allow us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population
