Midterm 2 Flashcards
What are the goals of scientific research? (Hint: E, P, C)
- explanation: explain properties or relationships
- prediction: predict events
- control: solve problems and gain understanding
What is an operational definition, or operationalization?
Operational definition tells us how to recognize and measure a concept. This is done by stating precisely what you plan on measuring and how.
What is a hypothesis (in the scientific sense)?
A hypothesis is usually a belief about a relationship between two or more variables.
What is the difference between independent variables and dependent variables?
Independent variable: variable that is selected by the experimenter who is testing a hypothesis to see if changes in the independent variable will result in changes in the dependent variable
Dependent variable: variable that is measured in an experiment to determine if its value depends on the independent variable
How can samples be biased? and How can this affect the interpretation of research
They don’t represent the population in which they were drawn from.
You would be unable to draw conclusions from the samples
What are the two main types of error (type 1 and type 2) in research?
Type 1 - false positive, incorrect rejection of the null hypothesis
Type 2 - false negative, failure to reject a false null
What is the purpose of a control group or control variable?
Compare results of an experiment to a controlled setting, to see how results differ from normal conditions
What does the reductive approach entail?
Attempting to understand a complex system by looking at its parts and their interactions
What is meant by ‘levels of analysis’?
the scale or the arena of analysis
The differing complementary views, from biological to psychological to social cultural, for analyzing any given problem
What is a confound?
An additional variable that changes or varies with the independent variable
What is the difference between prospective and retrospective research?
Prospective: A method of conducting research in which possible causative factors of an event are identified before the event occurs.
Retrospective: After an event has occurred, the experimenter looks backward in time to determine the cause.
What is ‘expected value’?
The amount of money you would expect to win in the long run in a betting situation.
What is meant by ‘base-rate neglect’?
Ignoring important information about the prevalence of a phenomenon
What is the gambler’s fallacy?
Belief that a streak will continue to occur *or stop
What biases can affect our judgment of likelihood and probability?
Motivated reasoning: · “ends-driven” · Emotional influences—disgust, attraction, taboo · Dishonesty · Active avoidance · Dissonance reduction · Self-serving biases
Limited perspectives & cognition:
· Perception
· Memory
· Attention
· Follow-through, avoidance of effort
· Self-centeredness of experience
Bad Data and Problems Evaluating Evidence
How does overconfidence affect decision-making?
Overconfidence causes a mismatch between estimation of risks and the actual risks
How does confirmation bias affect decision-making?
The tendency to seek out remember and evaluate information that confirms existing beliefs.
What is the Pollyanna principle?
The idea that if we want something to happen, it will. It is the tendency to believe that pleasant events are more likely to happen than unpleasant ones.
What is ‘psychological reactance’?
Resistance arising from restrictions of freedom. Some people will select a less preferred alternative if they are told they must select the preferred alternative.
(IE: Most people don’t like being told what to do. Example: Because you told me not to push the red button, I’m gonna push it…)
What are the stages of problem solving?
Preparation of familiarization - understanding the nature of the problem
Production stage - producing solution pathways
Judgement stage - evaluates solution paths in order to pick one
What is the difference between an ill-defined problem and a well-defined one?
Ill defined problems - many possible solutions
Well defined problems - clear defined answer
What is the anatomy of a problem?
initial state, goal state, and solution pathways
What is meant by problem-space?
All possible paths from the initial state to the goal state
What is means-ends analysis?
Reduces the difference between current state and the nearest subgoal or goal
(When a goal is broken up into subgoals, the progress from one subgoal to another and eventually to the main goal is called means-ends analysis)
What is incubation?
unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated when conscious, resulting in ideas later
What are the steps in Halpern’s framework for thinking?
Identifying goals, knowns, skills, and reaching outcomes
What is meant by falsification in the context of hypothesis testing?
Trying to prove your hypothesis wrong
What is the principle of parsimony or Ockham’s (Occam’s) razor?
Things are usually connected or behave in the simplest way or among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected, basically the simpler the better
What approaches help researchers deal with high levels of complexity?
Shows how things interact in a complex system Reductive Approach Controlled experiment Converging evidences Level of Analysis Principle Parsimony Factorial designs
What are the advantages of using factorial designs instead of single factor experiments?
Factorial design: “When you are interested in looking at how things interact in a complex system, you can use a factorial design to try to understand it”
Advantages: “Combining them allows you to look for interactions (effects that are not simply the combination of separate factors adding together)
Why can we not conclude causation when we observe a correlation between two variables?
Just because two things co-occur with one another, does not necessarily mean that one causes the other.
(Example: Just because when you cut your hair it starts to rain, does not mean that you are able to change the weather by cutting your hair..)
What are some means of double-checking or evaluating the quality of research?
- Is it peer-reviewed?
- Is is part of a body of converging evidence?
- Do you trust the source and reputation?
- Has it been replicated by an independent party?
What is meant by mechanism?
Def: Referred to a system of interacting factors whose details are described well enough that predictions can be made from thema
Ex: Complete pathway of a biochemical process explained
What are the three rules of causation?
Do the variables co-vary?( are they related?)
Temporal Precedence: (Does the causal variable occur before?)
Internal Validity: (Have alternatives been ruled out?)
What do Kahneman and Tversky say about the subjective utility of gains versus losses?
subjective utility: “the value of a particular choice (outcome)to an individual”
Kahneman and Tversky say: “We feel losses more sharply than we do gains….The value of a loss drops more quickly than the value of a gain…” -Slides
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
A thinking error when people make decisions based on prior investments rather than value of resources.
The idea that since an individual has already invested a certain amount into a situation, further investment will eventually yield desired result
(Example: Because you’ve already invested so much money into an old car, you feel obligated to continue fixing it when you find out it needs more parts, even though you’re still losing more money) -Pg 416 in Book
How does framing a decision in terms of gains versus framing in terms of risks/losses affect decision-making?
Framing in terms of gains will generally be preferred as opposed to loss/risk.
-people want to minimize losses and maximize gains
What does Ted mean by the ‘backdrop of the possible’?
context here is probability, it’s easier to remember what did happen rather than what could have happened
How do people’s expectations of randomness (naive people) differ from what true randomness looks like?
Most people tend to believe that randomness forms patterns/lines, but in reality it does not, it forms clumps and is scattered about (IE: the example shown in class with the dots)
What is the conjunction error?
The belief that the occurrence of two outcomes is greater (more likely) than just one occurrence (because of probability)
(Example: Some people would assume a women is more likely to be a bank teller and an active feminist than just a bank teller, however that is incorrect. In reality it is more likely that the women is just a bank teller, than both a bank teller and an active feminist.)
Why is it important to consider both central tendency as well as variability when thinking about scientific measurement or differences between groups?
Central Tendency = mean, median, mode
Variability = Standard Deviation, the deviations from the central tendency
What are the three main ways to ‘get it wrong’ according to Ted’s outline?
Attitude, Bad data (information) and Bad habits and skills
What’s an expert?
A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area
What do Ericcson and Ward have to say about becoming an expert?
It is studied in terms of memory or problem solving performance in a lab situation
The expert performance approach (performance not experience)
Becoming an expert takes time
expertise can change you physically and mentally
deliberate practice is key
What is the role of deliberate practice?
Experience level is also another way of defining an expert so with more deliberate practice the person gains more experience
practice account for more than half the variance in performance among skilled performers
What’s the Dunning-Krueger effect?
Tendency for lower performing individuals to think highly of themselves and over rate their scores
How is expert memory different from novice memory?
How is it similar?
Experts had reliably bettie memory for briefly presents boards (chess)
(“Experts are better at chess and games, arts and sciences”)
Not found in random positioning-when the structure is irrelevant the advantage goes away
Experts are encoding pieces by their meaningful relationships to other pieces which means they are chunking more effectively
For some domains, experts don’t reliably perform better:
psychotherapy
medicine
(beyond initial few years, no improvement)
Thus, experts are (in a sense) no different from novices in these domains
What evidence is there that experience shapes the brain?
I believe this has to do with the taxi driver theory on “The Knowledge” test?
parts of the brain can be changed by different things you learn
(IE: Because the Taxi Driver’s studied the map so much for so long it changed parts of their brains)
What is meant by big “C” and little “c” in creativity?
“C”: Creativity as the study of eminent creative individuals, genius, extremely accomplished artists
“c”:Everyday creativity
What is lateral thinking?
It is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono
Describe two strategies for creative thinking?
Brainstorming, creative ideas checklists
How might creativity relate to problem solving?
Create alternatives, give more ideas/solutions to solve the problem, noticing of a problem.
How have laboratory studies of creativity operationalized performance?
Divergent Thinking Test - looks at the ability to generate as many possible solutions to a problem
Remote Associative Test - 3 random words where you state a world that links all three
Belief bias
Tendency to judge the strength of an argument based on the believability of the conclusion
Shifting Goalposts
to change the goal of a process or competition while still in progress, while the change in goal offers one side an advantage
Dunning-Krueger effect
Tendency for lower performing individuals to think highly of themselves and over rate their scores
Appeal to consequences
determining whether a w is true or false based on whether it produces desirable or undesirable consequences
Fallacy fallacy
believing that a person’s conclusion is wrong because their argument contains a fallacy
Just world hypothesis -
assuming that other people’s actions are inclined to to be fair and just
Halo Effect
your impression of a person can influence the way you feel and think about their character or properties
Halperns stages of problem solving
preparation, production, evaluation
