Thinking With Psychological Science Flashcards
What is the theory of natural selection?
- There is variation among any population of organisms
- There is competition for finite resources
- Those organisms with better traits will survive and reproduce
What does the scientific method consist of?
- A theory
- A hypothesis
- Observations
What does cognitive theory of depression state?
- Negative thoughts = Negative emotions.
- Therefore, low- self esteem underlies depression.
- Thus, raising self- esteem will alleviate depression
What is the neurobiological theory of depression?
- Neurochemical activity underlies all of our experiences, including feelings.
- Serotonin (a neurotransmitter) is associated with mood- chemical imbalance of low serotonin= depression
- Thus, serotonin prescription= alleviated depression
What is a hypotheses?
- Testable prediction
- Logically flows from theory
What is a case study?
- Examination of a single individual in- depth
- Purpose= detailed description of behaviour
- You would use this method of someone has a rare disorder or brain injury that you want to study in depth
What are the drawbacks of case studies?
- Not representative of the majority of people
- Cannot conclude the cause of behaviour
What is a survey? What are the drawbacks?
- Many cases in less depth
- Asks people to report their behaviours, attitudes, experiences, etc
Drawbacks= Wording effects, inaccurate responses
What is a sample?
- A subset of the population that’s selected and studied (population= group of interest)
- Representative sample= representative of the pop. of interest
- subgroups must be proportionately represented
- Representative sample= representative of the pop. of interest
What is random assignment?
- Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance
- Minimizes pre-existing differences between those assigned to the different groups
What is naturalistic observation?
- Unobtrusively observing and recording spontaneous behaviour in natural environments
What is the Hawthorne effect?
- Measured behaviour is changed behaviour
- If someone knows they are being watched, they alter their behaviour
What is a correlation?
- Relationship between 2 different behaviours
- Have a direction (positive or negative)
What is a variable?
- Any characteristic that can vary/ take on different attributes
What is a correlation coefficient?
- Value ranges from -1 to +1.
- Represents the direction of the relationship:
- Positive (0 and +1)
- Negative (0 and -1)
What are the roles of operational definitions?
1: Protect against experimenter bias
2: Allow for replication
What is the role of the experimental method?
- Allow for conclusions about causation
- Cause- effect relationship between 2 variables, involves manipulation of one variable
What is a dependent variable?
- The measured variable (characteristic of the people you’re investigating)
- Hypothesized to depend on the other variable (independent)
What is the independent variable?
- The manipulated variable
- Hypothesized to cause the level of the dependent variable
Explain the differences between the control group, and the experimental group.
Control= Given a placebo.
- Used for comparison.
- Reveals whether a response to treatment is due to expectation or not.
Experimental= Exposed to the treatment.
What is a confounding variable?
- Factor that could influence the dependent variable
Ex: A study of the effect of room temperature on memory ability. - Independent variable= Room temp.
- Potential confounding variable= seat comfort
- Dependent variable= memory
What is an experimenter bias? How do we prevent it?
- The experimenter’s preconceived notions that influence the behaviour of participants (I.e tone of voice, gestures)
- Prevention= double- blind technique ( neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimenter and control groups)
What are the measures of central tendency?
- Mean
- Mode
- Median
What are the measures of variation?
- Range
- Standard deviation
What is standard deviation?
- The degree to which the scores vary
- An estimation of the “average difference” amongst scores
To calculate:
1) Get sample mean
2) Obtain individual scores deviations from mean
3) Square deviations
4) Add up all the squared deviations & divide by # of scores
5) Take square root of that #
What is statistical significance?
-Take into account the means
- Looks at difference between groups.
Significant if;
- The difference is reliable
- The difference is large
