Chapter 2 - DONT NEED Flashcards
Explain the hypothesis testing approach to personality:
Take observations, knowledge, and previous theory.
Generate hypotheses
The collect data to see if they’re correct
What is a theory?
A general statement about the relationship between constructs or events.
Ex. speculate about the reasons some people are more motivated to achieve than others
What two things does a good theory contain?
- Parsimonious : the simplest theory that can explain the phenomenon is best
- Useful : It can generate testable hypotheses (If it can’t be tested are hard to investigate)
What is a hypothesis?
a formal prediction about the relationship between two or more variables that is logically derived from the theory.
What is an independent variable? (or treatment variable)
- Determines how groups are split into experimental conditions
- Ex. Amount of a drug each group receives
What is the dependent variable? (or outcome variable)
- Measured by the experimenter (compare experimental groups)
-
Explain a potential problem with placing participants in trait defining groups:
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
What is a manipulated independent variable study?
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
What are nonmanipulated independent variable studies?
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)
What is the prediction vs hindsight idea about?
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.
What is replication in studies?
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.
What is the case study method?
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
What did Freud base most of his ideas about personality on?
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
What are the weaknesses of the case study method?
- problem of generalizing from a single individual to other people
- difficult to determine cause-and-effect relationships with the case study method.
- 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.
Why do we use case studies with all those weaknesses?
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.)
When is the case study method good?
- most appropriate method when examining a rare case (ex. political assassins - good luck sending a survey to 100 of them)
- 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)
- is to illustrate a treatment ( ex. a therapist may use the case study to suggest treatment programs other therapists might explore with their clients)
- 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.
What is statistical significance?
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
What do we call: two averages differed by an amount so small that it could have been caused by a chance fluctuation?
difference has not reached statistical significance
If it’s big - then it has reached statistical significance.
What is the significance level we usually use?
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,
What is a note about statistically significant findings?
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.
What is the correlation coefficient?
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
What number is a perfect positive correlation?
1.00
High score = high score
low score = low score
What number is no correlation?
00
What number is a perfect negative correlation?
-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.
What is reliability in testing?
The extent to which a test measures consistently.
How often you get the same results with the same test
What is a test–retest reliability coefficient?
-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)
What is internal consistency with reliability?
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.
What is an internal consistency coefficient?
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
What is Validity?
The extent to which a test measures what it is designed to measure.
How can we determine validity?
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
What is face validity?
- 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.
What is Congruent Validity?
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
What is Discriminant Validity?
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.
What is Behavioral Validation?
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.
