Lecture 2 Flashcards
What is the hindsight bias?
The tendency to overestimate our ability to have foreseen an outcome after learning the outcome. I knew it all along mentality.
The tendency to seek out, pay attention to, and believe only evidence that supports what we are already confident we know.
Confirmation bias
How is social psychology believable and scientific?
It systematically tests ideas by collecting direct observations of the world (data).
Research methods make it scientifically acceptable.
What is the difference between a theory and a hypothesis?
- Theory = an integrated set of related principles that explains and generates predictions about some phenomenon in the world.
- Hypothesis = a testable prediction about what will happen under specific circumstances if the theory is correct.
What is a variable?
Anything that can take on different values
What is the difference between measured and manipulated variables?
- Measures variable —> a variable whose values are simply recorded
- Manipulated variable—> a variable whose values the researcher controls, usually by assigning different participants to different levels of that variable.
What is operationalizing a variable?
It usually ,means turning a variable into a number, which can be recorded and analyzed.
How does a self report work?
People describe themselves and/or their behaviour in an interview or a survey, using a rating scale.
Advantages: easy, inexpensive, may have date from more participants, which can make the study stronger
Limitations; people can answer questions how they think we want them to answer, or they can have unrealistic views about themselves. Memories can be inaccurate or biased.
What is the social desirability bias?
The tendency to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by others.
How does observation work as a research method?
Researchers observe and record the occurrence of behaviour.
Advantages: more objective than a self report. May observe real world behaviour, or at least a good approximation of it
Limitations: more expensive, time consuming, and difficult. Not as many participants. There needs to be a constant consistency and objectivity in the observations. Difficulty in measuring really what we want to measure.
Why is non random sampling problematic ?
It can be problematic if skewed by interest in the topic researched or other factors that can really change the data collected. For ex, if interviewing people only coming out of target about target’s utility, we will get biased data since people are biased in their view of target.
What is descriptive research?
It’s often the first step in scientific research.
It’s scoping out the problem or phenomenon. Can help to generate hypotheses.
What is correlational research?
A type of study that measures two or more variables in the same sample of people, and then observes the relationship between them.
How to interpret scatter plots?
If the line in the dots is going upward to the right, then the relationship is positive, if it’s going down, it’s negative. The strength of the relationship is dictated by how close together the dots are.
What is the r Coefficient?
It’s a statistic also called Pearson’s r. It ranges from -1.0 to +1.0. The direction of the relationship is indicated by the negative or positive sign. The closer it is to 0, the weaker the relationship. The closer to -1.0 or +1.0, the stronger the relationship.
