Lecture 1 Part 2 Flashcards
Psychology as a Science
What is the evidence based method?
the empirical approach: observation and experimentation
What is the scientific attitude?
curiosity, skepticism, humility
What is the hindsight bias
tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that we could have predicted it
What are the three ways that our human tendencies affect our judgement in psychology?
- Hindsight bias
- we tend to be more confident than correct in our abilities
- we perceive patterns in random events
What is a theory?
- a theory explains relationship between variables
- leads to predictions about behaviours or events
- stimulates research
What is a hypothesis
a testable prediction, often implied by a theory
What is an operational definition?
a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study
What is replication in a scientific study?
repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see if the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances
what is descriptive research?
a systematic, objective observation of people
- provides a clear and accurate picture of people’s behaviours, thoughts and attributes
What are the three types of descriptive research?
case study, survey/interview, naturalistic observation
What is a case study?
examines one individual in depth, provides ideas, no conclusions
What is a naturalistic observation?
records behaviour in natural environment, describes but doesn’t explain behaviour
What is a survey/interview? what are the pros/cons?
examines many cases in less depth; depends alot on how it is worded
pros: efficient, cheap, easy to make, diverse
cons: nonresponse bias, poorly designed, limited answers can influence, social desirability bias
What is a correlation?
observation that two traits are related to eachother, or (scientific) measures how well you can predict a change in one from observing a change in the other
What is an experiment?
one or more variable is manipulated by the researcher
What is an independent variable?
the variable that you manipulate in the study to explore its effects
- not influenced by other variables in the study
What is a dependent variable?
- the variable that changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation
- the outcome that you’re interested in measuring
What are the best practices of experiments? (4)
- double blind
- eliminate placebo effect
- random assignment
- eliminate confounding variables
What is statistical significance?
A measure of how likely something could have occurred by chance (<0.05)
What is the effect size?
helps readers understand the magnitude of differences found
