Everything Flashcards
What is psychology
Why do people think, act, and feel the way they do?
Do men and women differ at how far they can throw a ball?
Men are slightly better.
Do men and women differ in spatial awareness?
Men are marginally better.
Do men and women differ in learning language?
Women are marginally better.
Do Rorschach Inkblot personality tests work to determine people’s personality?
No!
Does each person have a learning style?
No! Learning styles are only for specific tasks.
Does each task/field have a learning style?
Yes!
Do genes affect academic performance?
Yes!
Is the left brain logical and the right brain creative?
No! Any task involves all parts of the brain talking together.
Are ambidextrous people more creative than one-handed people?
Yes. Both sides of the brain talk to each other.
Do we only use 10% of our brains!
No!
Does listening to Mozart make you smarter?
No! Listening to whatever you enjoy gives you a temporary IQ boost.
Are romantic preferences dependent on culture?
No! In every culture, men place more value on physical attractiveness and younger women. Women place more value on ambition and high earning power and older men.
Do baseball players have “hot streaks”?
No! Any random sequence will eventually have random patterns.
Do some countries do better than others in penalty shootouts?
Yes! Players from countries with bad history in penalty shootouts psychologically do worse. Vice versa for players from good history countries.
Can we catch a liar from body language and speech patterns?
No! Except in the case of relatives of missing persons on TV. False appealers are more likely to shake their heads. Real appealers are more likely to express hope.
Did participants in the Millgram prison experiment deliver electric shocks?
Yes! They believed the discomfort caused was outweighed by scientific benefits of the study.
In an experiment what is an independent variable?
The variable under the researcher’s control.
In an experiment what is a dependent variable?
The variable which is not under the researcher’s control. Changes in this variable are measured.
What is random assignment?
Participants in a study are uniformly randomly assigned to their roles. They don’t get to choose.
What is a confound?
Confounds are things that undermine your ability to draw causal inferences. For example, placebo effect if people know what group they are in.
What is a placebo effect?
A person knowing that they are getting some kind of treatment alters their perception and behavior, and perhaps the outcomes of the study.
What is participant demand?
Participants try to behave in a way they believe the experimenter wants them to behave.
What are experimenter expectations?
The experimenter might perceive outcomes of the study that aren’t really there because they know who is in what group.
