Chapter 2, Methodology

Question 1

What is Hindsight Bias?

Answer 1

The tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted the outcome after knowing that it occurred

Question 2

What is a Theory?

Answer 2

An organized set of principles that can be used to explain observed phenomena

Question 3

What is a Hypothesis?

Answer 3

A testable statement or idea about the relationship between two or more variables

Question 4

Operational Definition?

Answer 4

The precise specification of how variables are measured or manipulated.

Question 5

What is the Observational Method?

Answer 5

Focused on Description - What is the nature of the phenomenon?

Question 6

What is Correlational Method?

Answer 6

Focused on Description - What is the relation between variable X and variable Y?

Question 7

What is the Experimental Method?

Answer 7

Focused on Causality - Is variable X a cause of variable Y?

Question 8

What is the definition of the Observational Method?

Answer 8

The technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements of their behavior

• Ethnography
• Archival Analysis

Question 9

What is Ethnography?

Answer 9

The method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside without imposing any preconceived notions they may have

Question 10

What is Archival Analysis?

Answer 10

A form of the observational method whereby the researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives of a culture

Question 11

What is the definition of the Correlational Method?

Answer 11

The technique whereby researchers systematically measure two or more variables and assess the relationship between them

-Surveys

Question 12

What is a Correlation Coefficient?

Answer 12

A statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable based on another

This is expressed as numbers that can range from -1.00 to +1.00.

• A correlation of +1.00 means that two variables are perfectly correlated in a positive direction.
• A negative correlation means that increases in the value of one variable are associated with decreases in the value of the other.
• Finally, a correlation of zero means that two variables are not related

Question 13

What is a Survey?

Answer 13

Research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes or behavior

Question 14

What is Random Selection?

Answer 14

A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population, by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample

Question 15

What are the limits of the Correlational Method?

Answer 15

It only shows that variables are related not that it is a causation

Question 16

What is the definition of the Experimental Method?

Answer 16

The method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable.

Question 17

What is the Independent Variable?

Answer 17

The variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable

Question 18

What is the Dependent Variable?

Answer 18

The variable a researcher measures to see if it is influenced by the independent variable; the researcher hypothesizes that the dependent variable will be influenced by the level of the independent variable

Question 19

What is Random Assignment to Condition?

Answer 19

The process whereby all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment;

Through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participant’s personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions.

Question 20

What is the Probability Level (p-value)?

Answer 20

A number calculated with statistical techniques tell researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variable.

The convention in science, including social psychology, is to consider results significant (trustworthy) if the probability level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be attributable to chance factors and not the independent variables studied.

Question 21

What is Internal Validity?

Answer 21

Ensuring that nothing other than the independent variable can affect the dependent variables; this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions

Question 22

What is External Validity?

Answer 22

The extent to which results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people

Question 23

What are two kinds of Generalizability?

Answer 23

The extent to which we can generalize from the situation constructed by an experimenter to real-life situations (generalisability across situations),

The extent to which we can generalize from the people who participated in the experiment to people in general (generalizability across people).

Question 24

What is Psychological Realism?

Answer 24

The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life-

Question 25

What is a Field Experiment?

Answer 25

Experiments conducted in natural settings, rather than in the laboratory

Question 26

What is the Basic Dilemma of a Social Psychologist?

Answer 26

The trade-off between internal and external validity in conducting research

Question 27

What is Replication?

Answer 27

Conducting the study over again, generally with different subject populations or in different settings.

Question 28

What is a Meta-analysis?

Answer 28

It is average of results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable

Question 29

What is the goal of basic research?

Answer 29

To find the best answer as to why people behave the way they do, purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity

Question 30

What is the goal of Applied Research?

Answer 30

To solve a particular social problem; building a theory of behavior is usually secondary to solving the specific problem

Question 31

What phrase did Kurt Lewin coin?

Answer 31

“There is nothing so practical as a good theory.”

Question 32

What is Cross-cultural research?

Answer 32

Research that was conducted with members of different cultures to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present across cultures or whether they are specific to a single culture.

Question 33

What is Informed Consent?

Answer 33

agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance

Question 34

What is Deception?

Answer 34

Psychological research involves misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that transpire.

Question 35

What is Debriefing?

Answer 35

It is the process of explaining to the participants, at the end of the experiment, the true purpose of the study and what exactly transpired

Question 36

What is the set of ethical principles applied to Psychological research and clinical practice proposed by the Canadian Psychological Association?

Answer 36

1. Respect for the dignity of persons. The central ethical principle underlying psychological research is respect for human dignity. This principle forms the foundation for the other principles that follow.
2. Informed consent. As much as possible, the researcher should describe the procedures to participants before they take part in a study and document their agreement to take part in the study as it was described to them.
3. Minimizing harm. Psychologists must take steps to avoid harming their research participants.
4. Freedom to withdraw. Participants must be informed that they are free to withdraw from a study at any point and that there will be no negative consequences for doing so.
5. Privacy and confidentiality. All information obtained from individual participants must be held in strict confidence.
6. Use of deception. Deception may be used only if there are no other viable means of testing a hypothesis and only if a Research Ethics Board rules that it does not put participants at undue risk. After the study, participants must be provided with a full description and explanation of all procedures, in a post-experimental interview called the debriefing.

Question 37

How is Social Psych an Empirical Science?

Answer 37

The behaviorism approach of observable behavior has made way for a fundamental principle of social psychology is that human social behavior can be studied scientifically.

Question 38

How does a Social Psychologist formulate Hypotheses and Theories?

Answer 38

Social psychological research often begins with a theory about why people behave the way they do.

Researchers come up with hypotheses that can be scientifically tested, based on their theories or their observations of human social behavior.

Hypotheses often come from earlier theories or research findings.

For example, researchers may conduct studies to test an alternative explanation of previous experiments.

Question 39

How are Personal Observations related to Hypotheses?

Answer 39

Many hypotheses come from observations of everyday life, such as Latané and Darley’s hunches about why people failed to help Kitty Genovese.

Question 40

How has Social Neuroscience created a new way to study behavior?

Answer 40

Social psychologists have become increasingly interested in the connection between biological processes and social behavior.

These include the study of hormones and behavior, the human immune system, and neurological processes in the human brain.

Question 41

How has culture and Social Psych developed new ways to investigate behavior?

Answer 41

To study the ways in which culture shapes people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior, social psychologists conduct cross-cultural research.

Doing so is not simply a matter of replicating the same study in different cultures.

Researchers have to guard against imposing their own viewpoints and definitions, learned from their own culture, onto another culture with which they are unfamiliar.