Midterm 1 Flashcards
define social psychology
the scientific study of how the presence of others, whether real or imagined, influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviours
social psych is not.. philosophy sociology abnormal / clinical / counselling psych personality psych why what are the differences
not philosophy as we have experimental studies
not sociology as we study the reactions of a single person in a gorup, sociology looks at the whole group
not abnormal / clinical / counselling psychwe study the average person
not personality psych as we focus on the situation whereas they study characteristics of the person (but most orgs etc group together)
ABCs of social psych
affect - feelings
behaviour
cognition - thoughts
what is subjective construal
the way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world
eg 2 people in the same situation = 2 totally different viewpoints
Scientific method accronym
HOMER
scientific method explain
H
hypothesize
-develop a research question
what is the hindsight bias and when must we watch for it
tendency to think we would have know about events that have happened in the past
must watch when hypothesizing
theory vs hypothesis
theory
- broad ideas or collection of facts that may explain a range of behaviours
-very broad
hypothesis
- specific, testable statements that explain a particular behaviour in a particular situation
-multiple hypotheses for the same theory
-must be falsifiable (otherwise not scientific)
eg theory = gravity, hypothesis = stuff falls
scientific method explain
O
Operationalize
- variable defintions
- psych = a unique field, so we must determine out terms carefully in two ways (conceptual vs operational definitions)
conceptual defintion
dictionary definition
broad, conceptual
kinda like theories (general)
Operational definition
researcher definition in their study
specific, concrete
how we can evaluate studies on their operational definitions
whether thei operational definition matches the conceptual definition
what is construct validity
does the conceptual definition match the operational definition
(are they measuring what they think they are)
scientific method explain
M
measure
3 measurement strategies
observational
correlational
experimental
what is the observational method
observe people and systematically record measurements or impressions of their behaviour
purpose = to describe behaviour
2 kinds
-naturalistic (as naturally as it happens, no intervention)
-participants observation (you get involved so might change what is going on)
advantages and disadvantages of the observational method
adv
-easy to do
-real world behaviours
-in the lab or the field
dis
-limited (only so much you can see) and time consuming
-how do we observe behaviour without influencing the behaviour itself
-is what we observe accurate (subjective construal)
what is the correlational method
NOT CAUSATION
used to predict 1 variable from another
systematically measure and asses the relationship between variables
is a measure of the direction and strength between 2 variables
r scores in correlation (specify when weak, moderate, stong etc)
-1 <= r <= 1
sign = direction
-positive, negative and zero
number = strength (0.1 = weak, 0.3 = moderate, 0.5 = strong)
why correlation is not causation
A cause B
B cause a
C caused both A and B
what is the experimental method
how wer understand causation / test causal claims
gold standard
researchers must randomly assign participants to conditions and controls all other variables
differences between the conditions allow for causal claims
whats is experimental control
making sure that only the things that change in an experiment are the independent variables we manipulate
what is a confounded variable
variables that change along with the independent variable
extra variables that mess up ability to make causal claims
muller and oppenheimer study on laptops in classrooms study
what is better for learning - taking notes by hand or laptop
watch TED talks, filler tasks then test of factual knowledge and conceptual knowledge
results
laptop = verbatim word count - basically copied put word for word, stopped concentrating and didn’t engage in deep processing so both groups = factually but writing group did better at conceptual knowledge test
advantages and disadvantages of the experimental method
adv -only way to establish causality dis -we can't do everything -there are some things we cannot randomly assign
scientific method explain
E
evaluate
demand evidence and think critically