Chapter 2: Psychology as a Science

Question 1

What are two core beliefs that apply to all sciences?

Answer 1

1) The universe operates according to certain natural laws
2) Such laws are discoverable and testable
*Experiments are designed not to confirm what you already know, but instead to test for exceptions, and to challenge your hypothesis.

Question 2

What’s the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning?

Answer 2

• Deductive - Uisng general principles to apply to a specific situation (only applicable until you find an outlier)
• Inductive - Using specific examples to make general conclusions
  *firmly rooted in philosophy

Question 3

What’s the difference between psychology and pseudo-psychology?

Answer 3

• Psychology uses and applies the scientific method, while pseudo-psychology does not
• Pseudo-psychology is not a science because of this (ex. astrology)

Question 4

What does systematic observation imply?

Answer 4

• Testing your hypothesis through an organized form of data colllection (running an experiment)

Question 5

What are the components of the scientific method?

Answer 5

• Specify a problem
• Systematic observation
• Replication
• Form a hypothesis
• Test the hypothesis
• Formulate a theory (are there any patterns)
• Test the theory

Question 6

What’s the difference between a population and a sample?

Answer 6

• Population - the entire group that is of interest to researchers
• Sample - a portion of any population that is selected for the study. Impossible to test the whole population, so you use a small sample

Question 7

What’s random selection?

Answer 7

• Randomly choosing a sample from a population
• Want to ensure that the sample accurately represents the whole population, if not, there will be evidence of sampling bias

Question 8

What’s an operational definition?

Answer 8

• A very detailed description of a researchers procedure for their experiment that they must follow very closely, also so that other researchers may replicate the experiment and garner the same results.
• How the researcher decides to measure the variables.

Question 9

What are the two basic types of research?

Answer 9

• Descriptive - reserch method used to observe and describe behaviour. Used to determine the existence of a relationship between the variables. More so correlational research
• Experimental - to demonstrate a cause and effect relationships between the variables

Question 10

What are the different forms of descriptive research?

Answer 10

• Naturalistic observation - observe people behaving as they normally do, allows one to see patterns in the real world. One downfall is that the Hawthorne effect may occur
• Case studies - Focus on a single interesting case in detail. One downfall is that researcher bias may occur, where a researcher soughts out cases that specifically apply to their research and support their hypothesis
• Surveys - use of a questionnaire or an interview that can be on a range of topics. One downfall is that participant bias may occur, where participants may change their answers in order to seem more socially acceptable

Question 11

What are the advantages and disadvantages of naturalistic observation?

Answer 11

• Advantages - can study things that are too unethical to do in an experiment or that people might lie about
• Disavantages - time consuming, and cannot determine cause and effect, also unable to orchestrate what you want to see (lack control)

Question 12

What are the advantages and disadvantages of case studies?

Answer 12

• Advantages - only method you can use if the type of behaviour you are looking at is rare, also can be very detailed
• Disadvantages - you cannot generalize your results to an entire population, cannot determine cause and effect

Question 13

What are the advantages and disadvantages of surveys?

Answer 13

• Advantages - data collection is quick, also very cheap
• Disadvantages - sometimes people don’t tell the truth, cannot determine cause and effect

Question 14

What is correlational research?

Answer 14

• Studies where the relationships between two or more variables are measured but not manipulated.

Question 15

What’s the difference between a positive correlation and a negative correlation?

Answer 15

• Positive correlation - when one variable increases, the other increases
• Negative correlation - when one variable increases, the other decreases
  *These cannot explain the cause and effect between the variables (correlation is not causation)

Question 16

How is a perfect correlational relationship achieved?

Answer 16

• +1.00 - perfect positive relationship
• -1.00 - perfect negative relationship

Question 17

What do experiments help achieve? The advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 17

• Examines how one variable causes another variable to change
• Can help establish cause and effect, can also eliminate outside influences
• Might not be generalizable, also sometimes unethical

Question 18

How are the effects of experiments designed?

Answer 18

• Designed so that the difference in the dependent variable is due to the changes in the independent variable
• The control group is not exposed to the independent variable, while the experimental group is

Question 19

What’s the double blind procedure?

Answer 19

• A method used to avoid bias in experiments
• Neither the participant nor the researcher knows who is in which group, helps eliminate any predictions of what may occur, and allows the experiment to start without any preconcieved notions

Question 20

What are quasi-experiments? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Answer 20

• Like experiments, but without random assignment
• Aimed to demonstrate causality between an intervention and an outcome
• Strengths - real-world phenomena that cannot be studied in experiments
• Weaknesses - lack of control means limited causal inferences (researcher often does not have control over the treatment)

Question 21

What’s the difference between reliability and validity in experimental research?

Answer 21

• When a study is reliable, it means that the experiment can be repeated and get the same results
• When a study is valid, it means that the results are true and can be trusted
• A study can be reliable, but not necessarily valid, and vice versa.
• Experiments must be both reliable and valid.

Question 22

How do psychologists make sense of descriptive and experimental research results?

Answer 22

• Descriptive: correlations indicate if there is a relationship between the variables
• Experimental: statistics indicate if the hypothesis has been supported or if there is a meaningful difference between the groups (looking at variability)

Question 23

What’s the difference between the mean and the standard deviation in descriptive statistics?

Answer 23

• Mean: average of all the scores
• Standard deviation: how much the participants’ scores vary from one another

Question 24

How is the p-value related to determining cause and effect?

Answer 24

• The p-value tells you the probability that the results of the experiment are not due to chance (the lower the better)
• A low p-value would indicate that there is very much a cause and effect relationship between two variables
• Can never have 100% surety, everything is based of of probability

Question 25

What does it mean when results from an experiment hold “statistical significance”?

Answer 25

• The difference between the groups is very unlikely to have occured by chance, and more so due to causality.