chapter 2: how social psychologists conduct research

Question 1

what is the observational method of research

Answer 1

Researcher observes people (research is based on making observations of other people)
-Used to describe behavior
-Realistic information (why they are good)

Question 2

two examples of observational research

Answer 2

ethnography and archival analysis

Question 3

what is ethnography

Answer 3

Description from an “insider’s point of view”
-Try to immerse yourself into the culture of others to gain information about others you might not otherwise be able to get
-Ex. People join cults to learn more about the cult

Question 4

what is archival analysis

Answer 4

Researcher examines accumulated documents (archives)
-Interested in how the weather impacts voting behavior, looking in previous years to see the weather that day and how people actually vote

Question 5

what are three limits of the observational method

Answer 5

1) Some behaviors difficult to observe
-Occur rarely
-In private
-Ex. If someone was interested in sexual behavior this is hard to gain access to because most people are not willing to let you see them having sex

2) Archival analysis
-Missing info
-Record keeping is often not done perfectly, incomplete information, could be variables you are interested in that you cannot access

3) does not show causation

Question 6

what is the correlational method

Answer 6

Two or more variables are systematically measured and the relation between them is assessed

Question 7

how can you do correlational method with one group

Answer 7

Only one group – measure two things at the same time

Question 8

what are the two kinds of correlations you can find

Answer 8

positive and negative

Question 9

what is the correlation coefficient

Answer 9

A statistical technique that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another.

Question 10

what two things must you consider when looking at a correlation coefficient

Answer 10

1. strength: indicated by absolute value
   -Absolute value near 1 – strong correlation, good prediction
   -Absolute value near 0 – weak correlation, poor prediction
2. direction: indicated by sign
   -Positive – as one variable increases the other increases
   -Negative – as one variable increases the other decreases

Question 11

what is a survey (typically used for in correlations)

Answer 11

-Representative sample of people asked about attitudes or behavior
-Correlations computed using responses to questions

Question 12

when are surveys the best/ most representative

Answer 12

Best when random selection is used
-Random selection is when each person in a population has the same probability of ending up in your sample
-But you have to be careful
-We almost never have true random selection which can create problems

Question 13

what can happen if you do not use a representative sample and give the FDR / Landon example

Answer 13

The Perils of using a Nonrepresentative Sample
-Failure to Use Random Selection = Misleading Results

Overwhelmingly the polls showed that Landon would win the election,
-1936 – polled people from phone directory and car registrations and randomly selected people off of the list, showed that Landon was definitely going to win
-Why did this happen? People who had more money had phones and cars and people who have more money tend to vote for republicans, not an accurate sample to pull from (not representative of the population)
-Probably would not happen today because most people have cars and phones nowadays

Question 14

what is good about correlations

Answer 14

-Realistic
-Can be cheap and easy
-Can investigate things you otherwise could not

Ex. The correlation between smoking and lung cancer showed that smoking can cause lung cancer, never can randomly assign people to a smoking condition because of the IRB

Question 15

what is bad about correlations

Answer 15

Typically self-report
-People are biased and not always honest when they self-report, various motivations for lying

Cannot demonstrate causation
-You can never know when there is a confounding variable (another variable that is causing the two variables being measured or that explains the relationship between the two of them, ex. Stress and smoking and lung cancer)
-You can never tell which variable is causing the other, which direction the correlation is

Question 16

explain correlation does not equal causation and the three possible reasons behind a correlational relationship

Answer 16

Three possible causal relations when a correlation is found (e.g., you find that cigarettes smoked is correlated with lung cancer)
-Smoking causes lung cancer
-People with lung cancer smoke more
-Not caring about health leads to…
-Smoking
-Cancer

(direction of relationship or a third variable causing both)

Question 17

explain the birth control and STD example and another explanation

Answer 17

A study found a correlation between the type of birth control women used and their likelihood of getting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Those whose partners used condoms were more likely to have an STI than were women who used other forms of birth control. Does this mean that the use of condoms caused the increase in STIs? Not necessarily.
-Could be that: People in committed relationships are less likely to use condoms because they are only sleeping with one person and might use other forms of birth control

Question 18

what is an experimental design and its three key features

Answer 18

Research design with 3 key features (you need these three things to have a true experiment)
-Manipulation of IV
-Measurement of DV
-Random Assignment of participants to groups (this allows for control of outside variables as well)

Only way to demonstrate that one variable causes another variable

Ex. You flip a coin to determine if people will exercise in a group or by themselves for a week. At the end of the week, you give them a satisfaction with life survey.

Question 19

internal validity in experiments?

Answer 19

Internal validity is typically high in experiments (if the experiment is measuring what it is supposed to be measuring/ does it demonstrate causation)
-Can control variables
-Randoms assignment

Question 20

external validity in experiments?

Answer 20

External validity is often low in experiments (whether or not the findings can be generalized to other populations or situations)
-People
-Situations

Question 21

why is external validity low in experiments

Answer 21

It is low because in real life things are not as controlled as they are in experiments, there are a lot more things going on in life that might impact the results (a lot of experiments do not resemble real life); also is low because of the kinds of people that are participating in the studies (selection bias, the sophomore problem is people who need to participate in studies to get credit)

Question 22

how can you deal with low external validity (4 ways)

Answer 22

-psychological realism
-replications
-meta-analysis
-field experiments

Question 23

what is psychological realism and how does it help external validity

Answer 23

Using Psychological Realism (this is the extent to which the variables in which you are interested in are actually operating in your experiment/ the extent to which you are actually manipulating the variables you are interested in studying, ex. If you are interested in studying fear you have to create a situation that is impactful where people actually feel fear); try to create situations as similar to the real world as possible
-Perhaps with a cover story
-Ex. People interested in drinking behavior will set up their lab to look like a bar

Question 24

explain replications and how they help external validity

Answer 24

No research results rest on one particular study, people study the same thing over and over so we can have more confidence in what we are finding

Question 25

explain meta analysis and how they help external validity

Answer 25

-Where you take a bunch of studies looking at the same phenomenon and analyze all of the results together, the participants in your study are other studies that people have done
-These things give you a good idea about how strong the findings are in a whole body of literature

Question 26

explain field experiments and how they help external validity

Answer 26

Getting out of the lab and doing experiments in the environment in which your variables operate

Question 27

why does random selection not work to help external validity

Answer 27

(unfortunately, not by using random selection)
-This would be the best way to solve this issue (using true random selection), but this is very seldomly done because it is essentially impossible to do, you would need a list of everyone in the country or in the world and pulling random people off, this is typically not feasible

Question 28

explain replications and why replication studies rarely occur in psychology

Answer 28

Replications:
-Repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings
-Ultimate test of external validity

Replication crisis in psychology
-Few people actually try to do replications
-No incentives for this (does not typically get published)
-And when they do, many findings don’t replicate
-Especially for social psychology

Question 29

explain the open science collaboration and the replication crisis (why things dont replicate)

Answer 29

Open Science Collaboration
-Wanted to reproduce research findings on a large scale
-Tried to replicate 100 recent research findings
-Used original materials, contacted original authors
-97% of original studies had significant results
-36% of replications had significant results

Question 30

why did the studies not replicate in the replication crisis

Answer 30

-Biases in reporting and publication (studies with significant results are more likely to get published in the first place, people without significant results they are not likely to get published); we only know how many significant findings there are not how many insignificant findings there are

-Think of alpha level, there is a 5% chance of finding a result that is significant even if there is not a relationship, the type 1 error will still get published because it found significant results

There are also changes in people overtime, ex. The changes in technology overtime can change people as well

P-hacking: doing what you need to do to get a significant result
-Altering data, taking participants out of your study,
-Happens a lot at universities where you have to publish high quality research or else you lose your job

Question 31

how can we help the replication controversy

Answer 31

-Questioning things even if they are published, pushing for more replication studies, look at things in totality and not rely on individual studies
-A lot of journals require you to pre-register your study with them so you cannot alter or change data, register hypotheses ahead of time
-Paying more attention to non-significant results

Question 32

what is good about experiments

Answer 32

-Demonstrates causation
-can control variables

Question 33

what is bad about experiments

Answer 33

-Expensive and time consuming
-May not resemble real world

Question 34

what is a quasi experiment

Answer 34

Quasi-Experiment (more similar to correlational studies than experiments)

Uses existing groups
-Anytime you are using any pre-existing groups this is a quasi experiment, if you are not doing random assignment they are not experiments

Lacks at least one key feature of experiments
-Manipulation of IV
-Random assignment
-But still have measurement of DV

Cannot identify causation

ex. You ask people if they exercise by themselves or in a group. Then you give them a satisfaction with life survey.

Question 35

what is good about quasi experiments

Answer 35

-Realistic
-No one can question whether or not things work this way in the real world
-Can be cheap and easy
-Can investigate things you otherwise could not

Question 36

what is bad about quasi experiments

Answer 36

Cannot demonstrate causation

Question 37

what are the two goals in conflict with one another in social psych (ethical dilemma)

Answer 37

1) Create experiments that resemble the real world and are well controlled
-Social psychology is different than cognitive psychology because a lot of the topics we are interested in are relevant in the real world

2) Avoid causing participants stress, discomfort, or unpleasantness
-A lot of the things that happen in the real world can lead to these results

Question 38

how to we settle the ethical dilemma in social psychology

Answer 38

Protect participants:
-Informed Consent
-Allow participants to discontinue

Create realistic situations
-Good design
-Deception: Must be necessary; Must not be something people would care about; Must debrief; Usually people don’t mind; Research shows that people do not care when deception is involved ; Not all social psychology involves deception

Question 39

what kick started the guidelines for ethical research

Answer 39

-The syphilis study was incredibly unethical, which led to the creation of the Belmont report which helped establish rules and regulations for future research
-Men who had syphilis were not given treatment for it, and were not aware that they had it, research had the point of seeing the long term effects of the disease

Question 40

what are the guidelines for submitting ethical research now

Answer 40

Submit to Institutional Review Board (IRB)
-Started in early 1970’s
-For institutions receiving federal funds
-One scientist, one nonscientist, and one person who is not affiliated with the institution

Question 41

explain Facebook’s mood experiment

Answer 41

-Facebook has an algorithm that influences what you see in the newsfeed which changes all of the time
-Tweaked people’s Facebook feeds, two groups (emotional contagion: if you are exposed to certain moods or emotions are you more likely to take those on), some people saw more posts from friends that included negative words, some people saw more posts from friends that included positive words; measured people’s posts that they made or status updates
-Had a computer program that would go through all of the status updates and see if you were exposed to more negative words did you have more negative words in your status updates (found that this was true and happened)
-Found evidence for emotional contagion
-Got away with this by having people sign the terms of use which stated you can participate in any research they conduct
-Not good from an ethical standpoint