Pyschology Chapter 1 Flashcards
any action that can be directly observed (e.g., walking, talking, crying, or smiling).
behavior
a distribution of scores that has two modes.
bimodal distribution
an experiment that tests whether a clinical treatment (e.g., a specific form of psychotherapy) is effective.
clinical outcome study
a commonly used method for calculating effect size.
Cohen’s d
anything that causes confusion in terms of what the results of a study might mean.
confound
a variable held constant across all conditions of an experiment so as not to influence its results.
control variable
choosing a sample based on convenience
convenience sampling
a relationship between two variables.
correlation
a measure of how precisely one variable (e.g., X) can be predicted when all that is known is another variable (e.g., X).
correlation search
a research design that attempts to determine whether two or more variables are related to each other.
correlational research
any aspect of a study that clues participants to how they are expected to think, feel, or behave.
demand characteristics
the variable that is measure in an experimental design; hypothesized to be affected by the independent variable.
dependent variable
a research design most commonly used in psychology to describe a population of people (or animals depending on the type of research) in terms of a variable.
descriptive research
the difference between an individual’s score and the mean
deviations
This type of experiment contains two major protections against confounds: (1) a placebo-control experimental condition and (2) procedures that make participants and experimenters “blind” to which experimental condition participants are assigned.
double-blind placebo-control experiment
How strongly the experimental manipulation affected the dependent variable in an experiment
effect size
How strongly the experimental manipulation affected the dependent variable in an experiment
experimental condition
occurs when experimenters’ expectations influence study results
experimenter bias
the belief in something regardless of what the objective evidence suggests.
faith
a graph showing how many people in a sample reported each possible value of a variable.
frequency plot
a factual statement that can be objectively tested.
hypothesis
the variable that is manipulated or changed in an experimental design; is hypothesized the change the dependent variable
independent variable
changing an independent variable to determine whether doing so causes something to happen to the dependent variable.
manipulation
the average score in a set of data
mean