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Psychology > Psychology chapter 2 terms to know > Flashcards

Psychology chapter 2 terms to know Flashcards

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1
Q

What is a prefrontal lobotomy?

A

Surgery that severed the neural fibres that connect the brain’s frontal lobes to the underlying thalamus.
Reports of its effectiveness were based purely on subjective clinical reports.
After controlled studies were performed, it was found to be virtually useless in treating severe mental disorders and instead caused other problems.

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2
Q

What is a heuristic?

A

Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world. Sometimes they work but often they lead us to oversimplify reality.

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3
Q

What is the representativeness heuristic?

A

We judge the probability of an event by a superficial similarity to a prototype. When applying this heuristics, we often neglect its low base rate.

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4
Q

What is the base rate?

A

Term for how common a behaviour or characteristic is.

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5
Q

What is the availability heuristic?

A

We estimate the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds-on how available it is in our memories.

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6
Q

What are cognitive biases?

A

Systematic errors in thinking

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7
Q

What is the hindsight bias?

A

Refers to our tendency to overestimate how well we could have forecasted known outcomes.
Hindsight is always 20/20.

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8
Q

What is overconfidence?

A

Our tendency to over-estimate our ability to make correct predictions.

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9
Q

What is a naturalistic observation?

A

Watching behaviour in real-world settings without trying to manipulate people’s behaviour.
By observing subjects in nature, we can better understand the range of behaviours displayed by individuals in the “real world”, as well as the situations in which they occur.

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10
Q

What is external validity?

A

A major advantage of naturalistic observations. This is the extent to which we can generalize our findings to real-world settings.

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11
Q

What is internal validity?

A

The extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences.

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12
Q

What is a case study?

A

Researchers examine one person or a small number of people, often over an extended period of time.
There is no single recipe for a case study.
Case studies are helpful in providing existence proof.
They also provide a valuable opportunity to study rare or unusual phenomena that are difficult or impossible to re-recreate in a lab setting.

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13
Q

What is existence proof?

A

Demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur.

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14
Q

What is random selection?

A

Every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate.
Random selection is crucial is we want to generalize our results to the broader population.

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15
Q

What is reliability?

A

The consistency of measurements

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16
Q

What is validity?

A

Extent to which a measure assesses what is claims to measure.

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17
Q

What is a response set?

A

Tendencies of participants of self-report measures to distort their answers to items, often in a socially desirable direction.

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18
Q

What is a correlational design?

A

Psychologists examine the extent to which two variables are associated.

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19
Q

What is a scatterplot?

A

A grouping of points on a two-dimensional graph.

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20
Q

What is the illusory correlation?

A

The perception of statistical association between two variables when none exists.

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21
Q

What is an experiment?

A

Permits cause-and-effect inferences.
Researchers are manipulating variables to see whether these manipulations produce differences in participant’s behaviour.
An experiment consists of random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable.

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22
Q

What is random assignment?

A

Experimenter randomly sorts participants into groups.
By doing so, we tend to cancel out pre-existing differences between groups, such as differences in their gender, race, or personality traits.

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23
Q

What is a control group?

A

The group that does not receive the manipulation.

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24
Q

What is an experimental group?

A

The group that receives the manipulation.

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25
Q

What is a between-subjects design?

A

Group of participants is randomly assigned to receive some level of the independent variable while another group will be assigned to the control condition.

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26
Q

What is a within-subjects design?

A

Participants act as their own control group. In this case, a researcher will take a measurement before the independent variable manipulation.

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27
Q

What is an independent variable?

A

Variable that the experimenter manipulates.

28
Q

What is a dependent variable?

A

Variable that the experimenter measures to see whether this manipulation has had an effect.

29
Q

What is an operational definition?

A

A working definition of what an experimenter is measuring.

Different researchers can adopt different operational definitions for their own purposes.

30
Q

What is the placebo effect?

A

Improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement.

31
Q

What is a blind?

A

Refers to participants not knowing which fate they were assigned.

32
Q

What is the experimenter expectancy effect?

A

Occur’s when a researcher’s hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study.

33
Q

What is a double-blind experiment?

A

Neither researchers, nor participants know who’s in the experimental or control group.

34
Q

What are demand characteristics?

A

Cues from an experiment that allow participants to generate guesses regarding the experimenter’s hypotheses.

35
Q

What is informed consent?

A

Researchers must tell subjects what they’re getting into before asking them to participate.
During the informed consent process, participants can ask questions about the study and learn more about what will be involved.
Sometimes deception can be allowed when the nature of the study needs to be kept private.

36
Q

What are statistics?

A

The application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data.

37
Q

What are descriptive statistics?

A

Statistics that describe data. These include central tendencies, variability and standard deviation.

38
Q

What are central tendencies?

A

Gives us a sense of the central score in our data set or where groups tend to cluster.
There are three measures of central tendency: mean, mode, median.

39
Q

What is the mean?

A

The sum of all measures divided by the sample size. Often the best to report when data has a normal distribution.

40
Q

What is the median?

A

Middle score in the data set. Less affected by censored data and outliers.

41
Q

What is the mode?

A

The most frequent score in a data set.

42
Q

What is variability?

A

How loosely or tightly bunched scores are.

43
Q

What is the range?

A

The difference between the lowest and highest score.

44
Q

What is standard deviation?

A

Average amount that an individual data point differs from the mean.

45
Q

What are inferential statistics?

A

Allow us to determine how much we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population.
When using inferential statistics, we’re asking whether we can draw “inferences” regarding whether the differences we’ve observed in our sample apply to similar samples.

46
Q

What is extrasensory perception (ESP)?

A

Ability to use clairvoyance, telepathy or prediction. Using the mind’s “sixth sense”.

47
Q

What is facilitated learning?

A

Use of a facilitator to help an autistic child communicate. Refuted.

48
Q

What are self-report measures?

A

Often called questionnaires, used to assess a variety of characteristics, such as personality traits, mental illnesses, and interests.

49
Q

What are surveys?

A

Used to measure people’s opinions and attitudes.

50
Q

What is test-retest reliability?

A

Ability of a test to yield similar results over time.

51
Q

What is interrater reliability?

A

Extent to which different people who conduct an interview, or who make behavioural observations, agree on the characteristics they’re measuring.

52
Q

What is positive impression management?

A

Tendency to make ourselves look better than we are.

Issue in self-report measures.

53
Q

What is malingering?

A

Tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed with the aim of achieving a clear-cut personal goal.

54
Q

What is the Halo effect?

A

Drawback of the rating effect.
Tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to “spill over” to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics.

55
Q

What is the Horns effect?

A

The ratings of one negative trait, such as arrogance, “spill over” to influence ratings of other negative traits.

56
Q

What is a confound variable?

A

Any difference between the experimental or control groups other than the independent variable.

57
Q

What is the nocebo effect?

A

Harm resulting from the mere expectation of harm.

58
Q

What happened in Tuskegee?

A

Researchers wanted to know about the natural progression of Syphilis. Participants had no informed consent.

59
Q

What is an REB?

A

Research Ethics Board which reviews all research carefully with an eye toward protecting participants against abuses. Every major North American research college and university has at least one REB.

60
Q

What is debriefing?

A

Process by which researchers inform participants what the study was about.
All studies that involve the use of deception, or withholding of the hypothesis, require that the participants receive further information upon completion of the project.

61
Q

What is the CCAC?

A

Canadian Council on Animal Care. States that research involving animals must first be reviewed by animal care and use committees.
These committees are made up of community members and members with expertise in animal research from the institution where the study will take place.
The goal in research must greatly outweigh the potential stress or harm that could come to the animal.

62
Q

How is data statistically significant?

A

When data can be almost certainly identified as not due to chance alone.
When the findings would have occurred by chance less than 5% of the time, we say that it’s statistically significant.

63
Q

What is practical significance?

A

A finding that is significant in real world application.

Something may be of statistical significance but not of practical significance.

64
Q

What are multiple end points?

A

Psychics keep their predictions so open-ended that they’re consistent with almost any conceivable set of outcomes.

65
Q

What is cold-reading?

A

The art of persuading people we’ve just met that we know all about them.

Psychology (51 decks)

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