Lecture 3 - Methods

Question 1

What is being described: the degree to which a researcher can determine the environment in which a research question is explored

Answer 1

Experimental control

Question 2

What is being described: the degree to which a study simulates phenomena as experienced in everyday life

Answer 2

Psychological realism

Question 3

What is being described: the degree to which a study can rule out alternative hypotheses

Answer 3

Internal validity

Question 4

What is being described: the degree to which a study’s findings are generalizable

Answer 4

External validity

Question 5

True or false: there is a right method depending on the research question

Answer 5

False - there is no right method, what’s important is the match between the question and the method used

Question 6

What is being described here: a method used to assess attitudes, thoughts or beliefs by presenting a question, several possible responses and having the participant select the response that they believe to be most of their own attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs

Answer 6

Self-report measures

Question 7

True or false: all of the self-report scales are kind of doing the same thing - they are all highly correlated with one another

Answer 7

True

Question 8

What is the typical distribution that you would get with an explicit racial attitudes scale

Answer 8

Large majority (70%) would report no preference of white vs black, about 20% would show a pro-white bias and about 10% would show a pro-black bias

Question 9

What could be some weaknesses of self-report

Answer 9

Social desirability concerns and normative beliefs could skew the data
Does not pick up on implicit attitudes

Question 10

What are indirect measures

Answer 10

Inferring attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs from some type of behaviour rather than from self-report

Question 11

What is the Evaluative Priming procedure and what would be expected to see

Answer 11

A type of indirect measure
A word comes up and you need to decide if it’s a positive or negative word depending on if it’s preceded by a black or a white face
Reaction time is used to identify positive/negative words to infer ‘implicit’ racial attitudes
People should be faster at associating black-bad and white-good and the opposite should be slower

Question 12

Fill in the blank: if certain stimuli facilitate the identification of negative words, then those stimuli are believed to hold a _____ association and if certain stimuli facilitate the identification of positive words, those stimuli are believed to hold a _____ association.

Answer 12

Negative, positive

Question 13

What tends to be the distribution of the data for implicit racial attitudes

Answer 13

More people now are showing a pro-white bias (55%), 30% show no preference and about 15% show a pro-black bias

Question 14

What could be some weaknesses of indirect measures

Answer 14

We are just inferring behaviour
We don’t know the source of the attitude
Lacking consequential validity - pressing buttons might not determine levels of prejudice

Question 15

What do we see when physiological measured are used to infer implicit racial attitudes

Answer 15

There is a higher physiological response - higher HR and sweat response - when interacting with a Black person and you are white than when you’re interacting with a white person

Question 16

What is the main weakness of using physiological measures to infer implicit racial attitudes

Answer 16

There can be different reasons for physiological responses - it’s difficult to put a precise psychological attribute on physical processes

Question 17

True or false: many studies try to capture a behavioural measure during a lab context

Answer 17

True

Question 18

What is an example of trying to capture a behavioural measure

Answer 18

You are given a task related to discriminatory behaviour and the degree to which you engage in that behaviour could be used as a measure of how much you dislike that group

Question 19

What are some potential weaknesses of hypothetical behavioural measures

Answer 19

There is no correct answer
There is a disconnect between the lab context and the real world - hypothetical and real behaviours differ greatly

Question 20

What did Frank Kachanoff do

Answer 20

Used a multi-hour long study where participants join a group, complete computer missions together and develop an entire culture by selecting a flag and identifying group snacks
Uses the maximal group paradigm to look at questions related to how experiencing lower/higher status impacts group identity and behaviour
He combines internal validity, experimental control and tries to increase psychological realism

Question 21

What is the weakness of ‘Intensive behavioural’ measures

Answer 21

Being in a group for a couple of hours is different than being in a lifelong group and the behaviour is still hypothetical

Question 22

What is the main takeaway with predicted and actual behaviours

Answer 22

The hypothetical behaviours need to be taken lightly because of the big disconnect between actual and predicted behaviour

Question 23

What is a measure/task that is meant to capture more impactful behaviour that is hard for participants to control in the moment. Describe it

Answer 23

First-Person Shooter Task: identify if the person on the screen is holding a gun or an innocuous object. We are faster to say gun/shoot if the person is black and innocuous object/don’t shoot if the person is white

Question 24

What are the results in error rates with the First Person Shooter Taks

Answer 24

Higher error rate of shooting an unarmed person if the person is black
Higher error rate of not shooting an armed person if the person is white

Question 25

Weakness(es) of ‘Real Behavioural’ measures

Answer 25

Over reliance on stereotypes due to the time pressure - if given more time there are less errors but the racial bias is still there The behaviour is still hypothetical

Question 26

What is the notion of measuring ‘realer’ behaviour

Answer 26

We are trying to remove the fact that people know they are in a study - increase psychological realism and potentially external validity

Question 27

What could be a potential weakness of measuring ‘realer’ behaviour

Answer 27

The person might for example still have to walk into a certain building (ex: psych building)

Question 28

What are archival analyses

Answer 28

Using existing datasets to understand how social forces might influence real-world behaviour

Question 29

What were the results of the archival analysis on the way police officers spoke to white vs black officers and what are some criticisms of this study

Answer 29

White = more respectful words Black = more disrespectful words which can lead to downstream consequences Criticism: more disrespectful officers might be assigned to black neighbourhoods, no random assignment

Question 30

What are some of the weaknesses of archival research

Answer 30

We are limited by what is available to us and what is actually happening psychologically Lack of experimental control and internal validity

Question 31

What are audit studies

Answer 31

Attempting to combine the experimental control and internal validity of a lab study while also measuring ‘real-world’ behaviour Typically involves finding situations that involve judgement or behaviour that may be influenced by social information. Fake ads or resumes may be created, trained actors hired in an attempt to keep everything constant except social information Governments have been known to run audit studies to explore whether anti-discrimination laws are being respected

Question 32

True or false based on the Butler and Brockman (2011) audit study: the same email was less likely to receive a response if it was signed ‘Jake Mueller’ than if it was signed ‘Deshawn Jackson’

Answer 32

False: the email is more likely to receive a response if it’s signed Jake Mueller than Deshawn Jackson

Question 33

Kang et al. (2016) investigated the phenomena of ‘Whitening’ resumes, where minority applicants remove racial cues from resumes to avoid anticipated discrimination. They found real job ads and randomly sent each one a resume that was either low vs high in ‘Whitening’ cues. What did they find?

Answer 33

Despite having the same qualifications, the ‘UnWhitened’ applicant only received a callback to 10% of the jobs and the ‘Whitened’ applicant got 25% callbacks

Question 34

What were the results of the Dietrich and Sands (2023) study of using traffic cameras in NYC to look at interpersonal forms of “racial avoidance”

Answer 34

On average, pedestrians showed greater deviation in their walking paths towards the Black versus the White confederates. This difference translated into roughly 4+ inches of space given to Black confederates. The effect was stronger among women than men

Question 35

What are some of the weaknesses of audit studies

Answer 35

Very expensive - not practical Not a lot of light in psychological mechanisms - we need experiments in the lab to answer this

Question 36

True or false: lab studies are still of value today

Answer 36

True - they are one tool in our larger tool kit