Empiricism

Question 1

What are the Two Methods of Belief?

Answer 1

Dogmatism and Empiricism.

Question 2

What is Dogmatism?

Answer 2

The tendency of people to cling to their assumptions. Being selected for ‘random’ frisking for your skin colour.

Question 3

What is Empiricism?

Answer 3

When an individual attempts to acquire knowledge by observing objects or events.

Question 4

What to Psychologists Do?

Answer 4

ask how millions of neurons constitute the brain and give rise to thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Question 5

Difficulty in Studying People:

Answer 5

• Complex.
• Variable. No two people are the same.
• Reactivity. Front stage and back stage. When we are in public, we act one way. We accommodate our actions to what is expected of us. Back stage is when there is no expectations. If you know you’re being studied, you do what you think the researcher wants you to do.

Question 6

Describe the Two Steps of Measurement.

Answer 6

• First Step: Define the property (ex. happiness) you wish to measure. Correlate two things so it is measurable (muscle contractions- a smile- indicates happiness),
• Second Step: Identify the device (ex. electromyograph EMG) to detect the concrete conditions/events (happiness).

Question 7

What is an Operational Definition?

Answer 7

It describes the property’s concrete condition in measurable terms (ex. muscle contractions).

Question 8

What is Validity?

Answer 8

The characteristic of an observation that allows one to draw accurate inferences from it.

Question 9

What are the Two Types of Validity?

Answer 9

Construct Validity and Predictive Validity.

Question 10

What is Construct Validity?

Answer 10

The tendency of an operational definition and a property to have a clear conceptual relation. Invalid if you correlate two completely different things ie. hand size to happiness.

Question 11

What is Predictive Validity?

Answer 11

The tendency for an operational definition to be related to other operational definitions.

Question 12

Measurement is Inadequate If:

Answer 12

• Operational definition is inadequate.

* Measure inadequate.

Question 13

A Measure Must Be:

Answer 13

• Valid.
• Reliable.
o The tendency for a measure to produce the same results whenever it is used to measure the same thing. Consistent measurements.
• Powerful.
o The tendency for a measure to produce different results when it is used to measure different things. Ability to detect differences.

Question 14

Case Studies:

Answer 14

Examine the exceptional individuals or outliers to gain in-depth insight into human psychology.

Question 15

Many Observations:

Answer 15

Examining ordinary people to understand the average population.

Question 16

Population:

Answer 16

The complete collection of objects or events that might be measured.

Question 17

Sample:

Answer 17

The partial collection of objects or events measured.

Question 18

Law of Large Numbers

Answer 18

AS the sampel size increases, the attributes of the sample more closely reflect the attributes of the population from which the sample was drawn.

Question 19

Mode:

Answer 19

The ‘most frequent’ measurement in a frequency distribution.

Question 20

Mean:

Answer 20

The average of the measurement frequency.

Question 21

Median:

Answer 21

The ‘middle’ measurement in a frequency distribution.

Question 22

Range:

Answer 22

The numerical difference between the smallest and largest measurements in a frequency distribution.