Chapter 2 - DONT NEED

Question 1

Explain the hypothesis testing approach to personality:

Answer 1

Take observations, knowledge, and previous theory.
Generate hypotheses
The collect data to see if they’re correct

Question 2

What is a theory?

Answer 2

A general statement about the relationship between constructs or events.

Ex. speculate about the reasons some people are more motivated to achieve than others

Question 3

What two things does a good theory contain?

Answer 3

1. Parsimonious : the simplest theory that can explain the phenomenon is best
2. Useful : It can generate testable hypotheses (If it can’t be tested are hard to investigate)

Question 4

What is a hypothesis?

Answer 4

a formal prediction about the relationship between two or more variables that is logically derived from the theory.

Question 5

What is an independent variable? (or treatment variable)

Answer 5

• Determines how groups are split into experimental conditions
• Ex. Amount of a drug each group receives

Question 6

What is the dependent variable? (or outcome variable)

Answer 6

• Measured by the experimenter (compare experimental groups)

-

Question 7

Explain a potential problem with placing participants in trait defining groups:

Answer 7

Ex. Want to see the effect violent television programs have on the amount of aggression people display in real life.

Sort into people who watch violence, and those who do not.

Put them in a situation to act violently

Now: You can say violent tv causes aggression, BUT it could also be that some people watch violent TV shows precisely because they are aggressive

Question 8

What is a manipulated independent variable study?

Answer 8

Solution to the previous example (violence and TV)

An independent variable for which participants have been randomly assigned to an experimental group

So: randomize which group they get sent to. Then just keep note over who is in what category.

Then: show Tv (violence / baseball / or nothing)

Observe behaviour after - it should be connected to what they watched

Question 9

What are nonmanipulated independent variable studies?

Answer 9

An independent variable for which condition assignment is determined by a characteristic of the participant.

• For example, researchers might divide people into high self-esteem and low self-esteem groups
• participant already belonged to a group, and the researcher simply had to determine which group that was.

PROBLEM? Cannot assume participants are identical - even if they fit in the same category (ex. not all violent tv watchers watch the same amount, or at the same frequency) (also just personal difference - diet, interests, aggression lvl can all effect their result)

Question 10

What is the prediction vs hindsight idea about?

Answer 10

Researchers need to state their hypotheses before they conduct their research, and test if it’s true.

Cannot just look at raw data and come up with an explanation.

Question 11

What is replication in studies?

Answer 11

Solves the problem of a one off fluke

Replications often examine participants who come from different populations than used in the original research.

This procedure helps to determine whether the effect applies to a larger number of people or is limited to the kind of individuals used in the initial study.

Question 12

What is the case study method?

Answer 12

An in-depth examination of one person or one group.

ex. researcher records in great detail the person’s history, current behavior, and changes in behavior over the course of the investigation, which sometimes lasts for years

Question 13

What did Freud base most of his ideas about personality on?

Answer 13

his own in-depth analysis of patients

came from his observations of one early patient, Anna O

• Cannot base a whole discipline around one persons experience

Question 14

What are the weaknesses of the case study method?

Answer 14

1. problem of generalizing from a single individual to other people
2. difficult to determine cause-and-effect relationships with the case study method.
3. the accuracy of some the case study observations is questionable. Researchers can’t help but form expectations, which may cause them to see that which confirms their hypotheses and to overlook that which does not.

Question 15

Why do we use case studies with all those weaknesses?

Answer 15

Other methods might not work

Ex. Freuds study on unconscious mind wont show up in a survey (whole pt. is that they don’t know about it)

It’s also a good place to start (valuable for generating hypotheses about the nature of human personality, which researchers can then examine through more rigorous scientific procedures.)

Question 16

When is the case study method good?

Answer 16

1. most appropriate method when examining a rare case (ex. political assassins - good luck sending a survey to 100 of them)
2. appropriate when researchers can argue that the individual being studied is essentially no different from all normal people on the dimension of interest (ex. split brained patients - physical functions of the brain are like normal peoples)
3. is to illustrate a treatment ( ex. a therapist may use the case study to suggest treatment programs other therapists might explore with their clients)
4. simply to demonstrate possibilities. (ex. a researcher using one or two easily hypnotizable people might demonstrate impressive changes in behavior.) - doesn’t say results are universal, but boy it was weird here.

Question 17

What is statistical significance?

Answer 17

How much higher must one of the averages be before we conclude that the difference is not just a chance fluctuation but, in fact, represents a real difference

Question 18

What do we call: two averages differed by an amount so small that it could have been caused by a chance fluctuation?

Answer 18

difference has not reached statistical significance

If it’s big - then it has reached statistical significance.

Question 19

What is the significance level we usually use?

Answer 19

0.05

Meaning: This means that if the difference between the scores is so large that it would occur less than 5% of the time by chance,

Question 20

What is a note about statistically significant findings?

Answer 20

statistically significant findings are not necessarily “significant” in all ways.

When researchers use a large number of participants, even small differences can be statistically significant

How to fix: investigators often examine and report the size of the effect through statistical values known as effect size indicators.

Question 21

What is the correlation coefficient?

Answer 21

A statistic that indicates the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables.

Ex. relationship between loneliness and depression

If they’re related: those with high on lonely should score high on depression

And those with low on lonely should score low on depression

Question 22

What number is a perfect positive correlation?

Answer 22

1.00

High score = high score

low score = low score

Question 23

What number is no correlation?

Answer 23

00

Question 24

What number is a perfect negative correlation?

Answer 24

-1.00

Ex. high score on one = low score on other

EX. compared scores on a loneliness scale with scores on a sociability measure, we probably would have anticipated that a high score on one test would predict a low score on the other.

Question 25

What is reliability in testing?

Answer 25

The extent to which a test measures consistently.

How often you get the same results with the same test

Question 26

What is a test–retest reliability coefficient?

Answer 26

-first administer the test to a large number of people.

-Some time later, usually after a few weeks, the same people take the test again.

-The investigators then calculate the correlation coefficient between the two scores

Should want a high correlation coefficient (1.00)

Question 27

What is internal consistency with reliability?

Answer 27

A test is internally consistent when all the items on the test measure the same thing.

Let’s say 10 items on a 20-item test of extraversion accurately measure the extent to which a test taker is an extraverted person.

This test suffers from poor internal consistency.

Question 28

What is an internal consistency coefficient?

Answer 28

statistic called an internal consistency coefficient can be calculated. A high coefficient indicates that most of the items are measuring the same concept; a low coefficient suggests items are measuring more than one concept

Question 29

What is Validity?

Answer 29

The extent to which a test measures what it is designed to measure.

Question 30

How can we determine validity?

Answer 30

For example, if the purpose of a test is to predict employees’ sales numbers for the year, researchers can simply compare the test scores with the sales data to determine the predictive validity of the test

BUT! Harder to do with personality: cuz they measure hypothetical constructs

Question 31

What is face validity?

Answer 31

• Most of us would accept that a test asking people “Do you feel nervous interacting with others?” or “Are you uncomfortable meeting new people?” is probably measuring something like social anxiety.
• The test would have good face validity. That is, on the face of it, the test appears to be measuring social anxiety.

Question 32

What is Congruent Validity?

Answer 32

extent to which scores from the test correlate with other measures of the same construct.

If two tests measure the same thing, scores from the two tests should be highly correlated.

Ex. introversion should be scored low on two introversion tests

Question 33

What is Discriminant Validity?

Answer 33

Discriminant validity refers to the extent to which a test score does not correlate with the scores of theoretically unrelated measures.

Ex. Give 1 creativity test and 1 intelligence test - if they are super correlated it might be actually measuring intelligence, and not creativity.

Question 34

What is Behavioral Validation?

Answer 34

In other words, it is important that test scores predict relevant behavior.

It is possible that test takers respond to assertiveness scales by indicating how they think they would act or how they wish they would act.

In other words, it is possible to demonstrate a test’s face validity, congruent validity, and discriminant validity, and yet still not have a valid measure.