psy chapter 2 Flashcards
prefrontal lobotomy
surgical procedure that severs fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus
heuristic
mental shortcut that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world
representativeness heuristic
heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype
base rate
how common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general population
availability heuristic
heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds
cognitive biases
systematic errors in thinking
hindsight bias
tendency to overestimate how well we could have successfully forecasted known outcomes
overconfidence
tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions
naturalistic observation
watching behaviour in real-world settings without trying to manipulate the situation
external validity
extent to which we can generalize findings to real world settings
internal validity
extent to which we can draw cause and effect inferences from a study
case study
research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period
existence proof
demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can occur
random selection
procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
random selection
procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
validity
extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure
reliability
consequency of measurement
validity
extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure
response set
tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items
correlational design
research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated
experiment
research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable
illusory correlation
perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists
experiment
research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable
random assignment
randomly sorting participants into two groups
experimental group
in an experiment, the group of participants that receives the manipulation
control group
in an experiment, the group of participants that doesn’t receive the manipulation
operational definition
a working definition of what a researcher is measuring
dependent variable
variable that an experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation has an effect
operational definition
a working definition of what a researcher is measuring
placebo effect
improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement
double-blind
when neither researchers nor participants are aware of who’s in the experimental or control group
experimenter expectancy effect
phenomenon in which researcher’s hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study
informed consent
informing research participants of what is involved in a study before asking them to participate
demand characteristics
cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypotheses
informed consent
informing research participants of what is involved in a study before asking them to participate
statistics
application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data
descriptive statistics
numerical characterizations that describe data
central tendency
measure of the ‘central’ scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster
mode
most frequent score in a data set; a measure of central tendency
median
middle score in a data set; a measure of central tendency
mode
most frequent score in a data set; a measure of central tendency
variability
measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are
range
difference between the highest and lowest scores; a measure of dispersion
standard deviation
measure of dispersion that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean
inferential statistics
mathematical methods that allow us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population
