Chapter 2

Question 1

Prefrontal Lobotomy

Answer 1

Surgical procedure that severs fibres connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus

Question 2

Heuristic

Answer 2

Mental shortcut that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world

Question 3

Representativeness Heuristic

Answer 3

Heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype

Question 4

Base Rate

Answer 4

How common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general population

Question 5

Availability Heuristic

Answer 5

Heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds

Question 6

Cognitive Baises

Answer 6

Systematic Errors in thinking

Question 7

Hindsight Bias

Answer 7

Tendency to overestimate how well we could have successfully forecasted known outcomes

Question 8

Overconfidence

Answer 8

Tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions

Question 9

Naturalistic Observation

Answer 9

Watching behaviour in real world settings without trying to manipulate the situation

Question 10

External Validity

Answer 10

Extent to which we can generate findings to real world settings

Question 11

Internal Validity

Answer 11

Extent to which we can draw cause and effect inferences from a study

Question 12

Case Study

Answer 12

Research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period

Question 13

Existence Proof

Answer 13

Demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can Occur

Question 14

Random Selection

Answer 14

Procedure the ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate

Question 15

Reliability

Answer 15

Consistency of measurement

Question 16

Validity

Answer 16

Extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure

Question 17

Response Set

Answer 17

Tendency of research participants to distort their response to questionnaire items

Question 18

Correlation Design

Answer 18

Research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated

Question 19

Scatter plot

Answer 19

Grouping of points on a two dimensional graph in which each dot represents a single person’s data

Question 20

Illusory Correlation

Answer 20

Perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exist

Question 21

Experiment

Answer 21

Research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable

Question 22

Random Assignment

Answer 22

Randomly sorting participants into groups

Question 23

Control Group

Answer 23

In an experiment, the group of participants that doesn’t receive the manipulation

Question 24

Experimental Group

Answer 24

In an experiment, the group of participants that receives the manipulation

Question 25

Between - Subject Group

Answer 25

In an experiment, researchers assign different groups to the control or experimental condition

Question 26

Within Subject Design

Answer 26

In an experiment, each participant acts as his or her own control

Question 27

Independent Variable

Answer 27

Variable that an experimenter manipulates

Question 28

Dependent Variable

Answer 28

Variable that an experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation has an effect

Question 29

Operational Definition

Answer 29

A working definition of what a researcher is measuring

Question 30

Placebo Effect

Answer 30

improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement

Question 31

Blind

Answer 31

Unaware of whether one is in the experimental or control group

Question 32

Experimenter Expectancy Effect

Answer 32

Phenomenon in which researchers’ hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of the study

Question 33

Double Blind

Answer 33

When neither researchers nor participants are aware of who’s in the experimental group or control group

Question 34

Demand Characteristics

Answer 34

Cues that participants pick up from a study that allows them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypotheses

Question 35

Informed Consent

Answer 35

Informing research participants of what is involved in a study before asking them to participate

Question 36

Statistics

Answer 36

Application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data

Question 37

Descriptive Statistics

Answer 37

Numerical characterization that describe data

Question 38

Central Tendency

Answer 38

Measure of the “central” scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster

Question 39

Mean

Answer 39

Average, a measure of central tendency

Question 40

Medium

Answer 40

Middle score in a data set, a measure of central tendency

Question 41

Mode

Answer 41

Most frequent score in a data set, a measure of central tendency

Question 42

Variability

Answer 42

Measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are

Question 43

Range

Answer 43

Difference between the highest and lowest scores, a measure of dispersion

Question 44

Standard Deviation

Answer 44

Measure of dispersion that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean

Question 45

Inferential Statistics

Answer 45

Mathematical methods that allows us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population

Question 46

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

Answer 46

Perception of events outside the known channels of sensation