Research Methods Flashcards
Limits of Intuition and Bias
- Gut feelings
- Common sense
- Hindsight Bias
- Authority
- Confirmation Bias
- Overconfidence
- Random/Rarities
- Pseudoscience
Hindsight Bias
I knew it all along
Authority
relying on info from authority figures, but they can be wrong
Conformation Bias
We want to be correct in our ideas in the world. So we place emphasis on our perception, and we pay no attention to other views or ideas.
Overconfidence
we think we know more that we actually do
Patterns in Random/Rarities
with a big enough sample size, rarities are bound to happen
Pseudoscience
made up, they claim to be scientific and factual but aren’t compatible with the scientific method
4 Goals of Psychological Research
- Description- of social behavior
- Prediction- establishing a relationship between cause and effect
- Explanation- developing theories about why people behave the way we do
- Application- for example, creating effective therapeutic treatments
3 Aspects of Scientific Attitude
- Curiously- Passion
-
Skepticism- doubting and questioning
- Doesn’t mean rejection without knowledge, it means after knowledge
- Humility- Accept being wrong
5 Principles of Scientific Method
- Rationalism
- Determinism: Behavior can be explained.
- Empiricism: Direct observation and measurement.
- Objectivism: Science should be conducted without prejudice
- Reductionism: Science attempts to simplify and generalize
What must questions be when critical thinking?
falsifiable
Occam’s razor
simple explanations
What are the aspects of replication and why is it important?
-
repeat the original operations with different parameters, materials and circumstances.
- Replication=confirmation
- Do it again in your own lab
- Someone else takes it and finds something similar
Scientific Method
What is a theory and what are the important components of it? What makes a good or a bad theory?
explanations that integrate principles and organize and predict behaviors or events
- They can be disproved – they cannot be proved!
- A good theory is one that:
- can be modified to account for research findings
- Organizes observations
- Implies predictions to check or derive practical applications
- A bad theory is one that is very resistant to change
Hypothesis
testable prediction prompted by a theory to enable us to think about our theory in different ways
Research Observations
- Create scenarios and study them
- Various ways of doing so- naturalistic observation, case/clinical studies questionaries (less effective for our example)
The self-corrective process
when we get the outcomes we can change design, hypothesis, and theory.
Descriptive Methods
-
Case Study- examines an individual or group in depth in hope of revealing something
- An individual can be less accurate since there are always anomalies
- Describes behavior, doesn’t explain it
- Clinical Study- study a person who has a psychological issue
-
Naturalistic Observation- records behavior in natural environments
- Describes behavior, doesn’t explain it
- Regardless, descriptions can lead to findings
-
Survey- see opinions of a population by sample representative of population via questionnaire
- The wording is super important and can change the results of a survey ex: not allowed vs forbidden
- False Consensus effect- overestimate the extent to which others feel the same way
Correlation
observes relationship between two variables
A measure of the extent that to factors that vary together, predict one another
correlation describes and doesn’t explain! AKA correlation doesn’t prove causation because we don’t know which is the cause and which is the effect.
Illusory Correlation
perceiving a non-existent correlation
Regression towards the mean
the tendency for unusual circumstances to regress
Correlation coefficient
The measure of relationship between two values
- or +
closer to 100=strong
closer to 0=weak
Positive Correlation
- they both go in the same direction
- Hotter temp more ice cream people eat
- More I train at gym the bigger my muscles get
Negative correlation
- when one increases, the other one decreases
- Colder the temp the more clothing people wear
Two variables of Experimentation
Independent variable
Dependent variable
Experimental and control groups
- Experimental Group- those who receive treatment,
- Control group- those who don’t receive treatment
- We need control groups to rule out alternative explanations
- Experimentation determines its effect, as opposed to correlation
Double blind placebo
neither the participants nor the researcher knows
What do results include and not include?
- Includes a summary of the raw data and the statistical analyses that were done in the study.
- Does not include any inferences or conclusions that are based on the data.
False Consensus Effect
A tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.
Ethics in Research
- Minimal risk - No harm may be done to the participants.
- Informed consent - Participants must be given information about the research before it begins in order to make an informed decision whether to participate and must be allowed to withdraw from experiment.
- Anonymity and confidentiality.
- Debriefing - Participants must be told the purposes of the research after it is concluded.
operational definition
a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study
meta-analysis
a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies
confounding variable
a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment
