Correlational and Experimental Discipline - Lecture 28

Question 1

Experimental vs Correlational discipline

Answer 1

(Next few flashcards are a few main differences between the two)

Question 2

Experiment vs Correlation

What is the history of each discipline?

Answer 2

• Experimental: First to come about (human thinking aligns more with this discipline by nature, makes sense why)
• Correlational: Took more time to mature

Question 3

Experiment vs Correlation

What is the main difference between the two?

Answer 3

• Experimental: Interest only in variation we create (variance in treatment)
• Correlational: Interested in already existing variation between individuals or groups (variance among organisms)

Question 4

Experiment vs Correlation

What are the benefits of each discipline?

Answer 4

• Experimental: Brings variables under control: allows us to conduct tests of hypotheses and make confident statements about causality
• Correlational: Studies what we haven’t learned to control, or what we’ll never be able to control. The outcome of this is that the correlations we find provide guidance and help for experiments

Question 5

Experiment vs Correlation

How does each discipline treat individual differences?

Answer 5

• Experimental: Individual differences = error variance. They should be reduced as much as possible in any way possible
• Correlational: Main focus is on the variables of individual difference (within individual differences and group differences are important biological and social causes of phenomena)

Question 6

Experiment vs Correlation

What variables was each discipline interested in at first?

Answer 6

• Experimental: Only general, non-individual variables
• Correlational: Developmental variables

Question 7

Experimental discipline

Answer 7

(A bit more detailed stuff about experiment)

Question 8

Experiment

What were the beginnings of the experimental discipline?

Answer 8

The experiment was basically a substitute of observations of how people would perform in their habitat (place the person in an artificial habitat and measure performance)
Initial problem with experiments: can’t describe the person’s feelings, thoughts, or actions
(Standardization of tests were required to get reproducible descriptions)

Question 9

Experiment

What are the two main characteristics of experiments?

Answer 9

• Statistical comparison of treatments
• Concern with formal theory

Question 10

Experiment

Statistical comparison of treatments

Answer 10

• First appeared aroudn 1900 in studies from Thorndike and Woodworth
• Estimation was replaced by inference
• Just using the mean and error was replaced by Confidence Intervals and using critical values of a test statistic to define those CI’s.
• Focus shifted from just observing to manipulating a single variable, to multivariate manipulation (analysis of differences of groups when there are more than on DV’s
  !!! Instead of just being interested with differences within an individual, the experimenter became interested with between-group differences !!!

Question 11

Experiment

Concern with formal theory

Answer 11

In the beginning, experiments were willing to observe any phenomenon, whether or not the data was based on any theoretical issue
Today, all experimenters derive their hypotheses explicitly from theoretical premises and try to put their results in a theoretical structure (think about PTPR)

Question 12

Correlation

Answer 12

(A few extra stuff on Correlational discipline)

Question 13

Correlation

How did the correlation coefficient r come about (Mini history of correlation)?

Answer 13

Came about to study hereditary resemblence

Question 14

Correlation

What is true about all different types of Correlation?

Answer 14

(Different types: Developmental, Personality etc.) All rely on many of the same things (e.g. same principles, same previous research, literature etc.)
- Yerkes said put all types of correlational psychology under the umbrella term of “comparative psychology’

Question 15

What is true about the relationship between Correlational and Experimental Psychology now?

Answer 15

They have growm very far apart
- Journals of one discipline have very small, if nay influence on journals of the toher discipline.
- Agreement with the experimental disicpline correlated -0.8 with agreement with correlational discipline. If you like one, you probably don’t really like the other

Question 16

Differential Psychology

Question 17

Differential Psychology

How did differential psychology start off?

Answer 17

Like the experimental discipline: purely descriptive phase

Question 18

Differential Psychology

What is the defintion of Differential Psychology?

Answer 18

Studies how individuals differ in their behavior, whilst also studying the processes that underlie it

Question 19

Differential psychology

What did the combination of Differential psychology and Correlatino lead to?

Answer 19

1. Partial correlation: measure of strength of a relationship between two variables, while controlling for the effect of one or more other variables
2. Partial correlation leads to Factor Analysis: method of clarifying multivariate relationships
   !!! Factor Analysis is useful for both experimental and correlational analysis

Question 20

Applied Psychology

Question 21

Applied Psychology

What is true about Corr. and Experimental Disciplines when it comes to making a decision?

Answer 21

• Relying juts on one or the other is not useful to make a decision about a real-world situation

Question 22

Applied Psychology

When a psychologist must determine what treatment shall be used for each individual or group of individuals, what must be done?

Answer 22

Psychologist aims to maximize payoff
- In this case, the payoff function refers to relating outcome to people’s natural ability to respond well to a treatment (aptitude)
- See image 1 for the function between payoff and aptitude
- See images 2 and 3 for further understanding as well

Question 23

Applied Psychology

How does each discipline approach this payoff function?

Answer 23

• Experimenter: Assumes a fixed population, strives for maximum payoff, tries to minimize variability
• Correlationist: Assumes a fixed treatment, hunts for aptitudes which maximize the slope of the payoff function

Question 24

Applied Psychology

What’s important to consider regarding the societal relevance of a research on a treatment?

Answer 24

Predicting an outcome of a treatment has no social value unless the psychologist can use the info to make better choices of treatment (obviously, just make sure to remember)

Question 25

United Discipline

Question 26

United Discipline

What is the United Discipline?

Answer 26

Correlation and Experiment combined
- Study the variance among both treatments and organisms
- Also study the interactions between the treatments and organisms
!!! Basically also studies the mechanisms that underlie behaviors/phenomena but in a more concrete and general manner !!!

Question 27

United Discipline

What is an example of a methodology for a joint discipline?

Answer 27

Derymann and Spence were studying stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response associations in theory learning. Their initial formula was R = f(s) (Response is a function of the nature of the stimulus)
Under the United Discipline, this formula was updated to:
- R = f(s, T, D, I), T: innate differences, D: motivation, I: past experiences
!!! This is just one example though, we still need to do a lot fo research to develop a united discipline !!!

Question 28

Ultimate Theory

Question 29

Ultimate Theory

What is the Ultimate Theory?

Answer 29

Focuses on mechanisms that underlie the trait/phenomenon/behavior at hand

Question 30

Ultimate Theory

What is the S-A-R Formula?

Answer 30

A formula of ultimate theory, expresses the predicted response based on individual’s history, individual’s current state, and current situation (environment) (See image 4)
- PROBLEM: Only measures/accounts for behaviors of the individual in the future. Can’t measure current phenomena well

Question 31

Ultimate Theory

If we can’t observe/control the life history of an individual, which formula do we use?

Answer 31

See image 5
PROBLEM: Although it’s suitable for prediction, it also suffers from the same problem as the previous formula: can’t explain current phenomena/behaviors well

Question 32

Ultimate Theory

Which formula is the most required and thus the best?

Answer 32

See image 6