Exam 1: Chapter 2

Question 1

Prefrontal Lobotomy

Answer 1

surgical procedures that severs fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus

Question 2

Heuristic

Answer 2

mental short cut or rule of thumb, can lead to oversimplification

Question 3

External Validity

Answer 3

the extent that our finding generalize to real world settings

Question 4

Internal Validity

Answer 4

the extent to which we can draw cause and effect inference

Question 5

Case Study

Answer 5

research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over and extended time

Question 6

Existence Proof

Answer 6

demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can occur

Question 7

Random Selection

Answer 7

every person in the population has the equal chance of being chosen

Question 8

Reliability

Answer 8

consistency of measurements

Question 9

Validity

Answer 9

extent to which a measure asses what it is supposed to measure

Question 10

Response Sets

Answer 10

tendencies to distort their answers to questions, often in a positive light

Question 11

Malingering

Answer 11

tendency to make our self appear psychologically disturbed to achieve a personal goal

Question 12

Halo Effect

Answer 12

tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to influence other characteristics

Question 13

Correlational Design

Answer 13

examines the extent to which two variables are associated

Question 14

Correlation coefficient

Answer 14

0-1, closer to 1 means more correlation

Question 15

Scatter plot

Answer 15

grouping of points on a two dimensional graph

Question 16

Illusory Correlation

Answer 16

the perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists

Question 17

Experiment

Answer 17

Manipulation of an independent variable and random assignments of participants to groups

Question 18

Random Assignment

Answer 18

randomly sorting participants into groups

Question 19

Experimental Group

Answer 19

group of participants that receive the manipulation

Question 20

Control Group

Answer 20

does not receive the manipulation

Question 21

Independent Variable

Answer 21

manipulated by the researcher

Question 22

Dependent Variable

Answer 22

measured to see if the manipulation has an effect

Question 23

Operational Definition

Answer 23

working definition of what a researcher is measuring

Question 24

Confounding Variable

Answer 24

any variable differing between test groups other than independent variables

Question 25

Placebo Effect

Answer 25

improvement resulting from the expectation of improvement

Question 26

Blind

Answer 26

unware of whether one is in the experimental or control group

Question 27

Nocebo Effect

Answer 27

harm resulting from the expectation of harm

Question 28

Experimenter Expectancy Effect

Answer 28

phenomena in which researchers unintentionally bias the outcome

Question 29

Double Blind

Answer 29

researchers and participants are unaware of who is in which group

Question 30

Demand Characteristics

Answer 30

clues picked up by participants about hypothesis during the experiment

Question 31

Informed Consent

Answer 31

informing research participants of what is involved in a study before asking participation

Question 32

Statistics

Answer 32

application of mathematics describing and analyzing data

Question 33

Descriptive Statistics

Answer 33

describe data

Question 34

Central Tendancy

Answer 34

measure of central scores in a data set where points tend to cluster

Question 35

Standard Deviation

Answer 35

measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean

Question 36

Inferential Statistics

Answer 36

mathematical methods allow us to determine whether we can generalize to entire population

Question 37

Statistically Significant

Answer 37

less than 5% probability that results are due to chance

Question 38

Practical Significance

Answer 38

Applicable to the real world