Research Methods Unit 1 Flashcards
The Elephant
Automatic and fast processing of information
Outside of consciousness
Cannot be turned off
Elephant flaws
Does not notice when mistakes are made
Jumps to conclusions
The rider
Effortful processing of information
Hard work and time consuming
By choice, concentration/focus
Riders flaws
Does not realize when making mistakes
Is lazy, does not want to spend more than what’s needed
Only going to work if elephant expects it to
Psychology
Scientific study of behaviour and mental processes
Individualistic perspective
Studying humans as discrete individuals, single entities
Holistic perspective
An alternate response from individualist perspective
Belief that their is no sense in studying a person individually
Studied in their environment and seen connected to their environment and social world is what matters
What does studying scientifically benefit us
It avoids confirmation bias- human tendency to want to understand things emotionally
Avoids making claims that to not generalize to a broader group
Variations psychologists study
Between people
In one person, across different situations
In one person over time
The biosychosocial model
There are 3 primary factors that drive variation
1. Biological - genetics, hormones
2. Psychological- depression, memory, personality
3. Social- culture, family, community
How do we measure variation ?
Behaviours and mental processes vary between individuals so we call them variables,
challenge- a lot of behaviours are abstract and cannot be seen directly - shyness, memory, intelligence
Solution- operational definitions - tests, clickable interviews, ratings
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE THAN ONE OPERATIONAL DEFINITION FOR ANY BEHAVIOUR OR MENTAL PROCESSES
Austin and Williams 1977
47 judges read description of crime and provided appropriate sentence for the perpetrator
Key variable- length of jail time
Range 0-25 years
Take home message- considerable variation in judges sentences for the same crime
Non-experimental methods
Describe results related to single variable OR examines relationships or associations between two or more variables
Cannot make cause and effect claims
3 main types of non-experimental methods
- Quasi-experiments
- Descriptive Statistics
- Correlation studies
Quasi- experiments
Still comparing groups, but you cannot randomly assign people to groups for ethical or practical reasons
Whenever the groups your interested in are defined by a property of a person you have to run a quasi experiment
Descriptive Statistics
Research that describes results related to looking at one variable at a time
Epidemiological research- prevalence of disorders
Example, % of people diagnosed with depression in canada this year)
Case studies
Purpose: Unusual situation, deep dive on one person, or a very very small number of people to describe the characteristics of a rare phenomena
Example, louise having HSAM- remember every detail of every thing
PSYC 1F90 project
What are the two social media sites most frequently used by participants
Snapchat
Tiktok
Correlation studies
Purpose: examine relationships (associations) between two (or more) variables
Not comparing groups, more than one variable
Groups and variables are not the same thing!!
Psyc 1F90
Is FOMO (variable1) associated with PSMU (variable2)?
POINT THAT IS OFTEN LOST THAT It’s all about PREDICTION
Examine the relationship between the variables in a sample; assume we can use that relationship to predict scores for other people not in the sample
Correlational studies examine the direction and strength of the relationship between two variables
Direction (Correlational studies)
Positive: variables move in same direction
As one increases, the other also increases
Scatter plot points fo from lower left to upper right
Negative: variables move in opposite directions
As one variable increases the other variable decreases
Scatterplot points go from upper left to lower right
Ex. as depressive symptoms increase, number of friends decrease
Project:
As FOMO increases, PSMU also increases
The reverse is also true in a positive relationship
Strength (correlational studies)
The spread of points in a scatter plot tell you about the strength of the association between two variables
When the relationship is stronger, the points look more like a straight line
Predicting one variable if you know the other is easier
When the relationship is weaker the points are spread out and further apart
Predicting one variable if you know the other is harder
Correlation coefficient tells us
We can see the relationship (association between two variables in a scatterplot)
To simplify, we use a number to capture both the strength and direction of the relationship
The number is called a correlation coefficient ®
Two parts
sign(+ or -): tells direction
Number (0-1): tells us strength, larger numbers mean stronger relationship; you can better predict one variable if you know the other
-1, +1 are perfect relationships - scatter plot straight line
0 is NO correlation- scatter plot circle shape
True experiments
Still have two or more groups that we compare on a variable BUT participants randomly assigned to groups, which allows us to test cause and effect relationships between variables
two (or more) groups of participants to be compared
Participants are randomly assigned to groups
Groups differ only with respect to the IV (extraneous variables controlled)
Measure the DV and compare average group scores on the DV
Superstition vs. Pseudoscience
Superstition is a belief that we hold that does not possess any proper information to back it up or make it true. If the belief seems scientific it could be called pseudoscience “false science”.
These can be related to science because we are careful to not pick out just what supports our hypothesis and avoid confirmation bias.
Clinical psychologist
treats psychological problems or does research about mental disordered
Counseling psychologist
treats milder problems, like troubles at work or school
