Unit Extra Questions Flashcards
What two traits illustrate why we can’t rely solely on intuition
Hindsight bias and overconfidence
What helps us sift reality from illusion
Scientific inquiry
What are the three main components of scientific attitude
Curious eagerness to
Skeptically scrutinize competing idea and
An open minded humility before nature
(Critical thinking)
By letting facts speak for themselves the approach is called
Empirical approach
Humility
Awareness of our own vulnerability to error and an openness to surprises and new perspectives
Copernicus and Newton were
People whose religion made them humble before nature and skeptical of human authority
Theories are useful if
It effectively organized a range of self reports and observations. And implies clear predictions that anyone can use to check the theory or to derive practical applications.
Descriptive methods
Describe behaviors often using case studies, surveys, or naturalistic observations
Correlational methods
Associate different factors
Experimental methods
Manipulate factors to discover their effects
What do experiments enable researchers to do
To focus on the possible effects of one or more factors by manipulating the factors of interest and holding constant (controlling) other factors
Variable
Anything that can vary
Experiments aim to
Manipulate an independent variable, measure the dependent variable, and control confounding variables
Descriptive method basic purpose, how conducted
To observe and record behavior, conducted in case studies, surveys, or naturalistic observations
Descriptive method strengths
Only require one participant
Fair, quick, inexpensive
Not ethical to manipulate variables
Descriptive weaknesses
No control of variables, single cases can be misleading
Correlation method basic purpose,
Detect naturally occurring relationships, to assess how well one variable predicts another
Correlational method conducted
Compute statistical association sometimes among surveys
Correlation all strength
World with large groups
Used in situations where an experiment isn’t possible
Correlation all weakness
Does not specify cause and effect
Experimental method
To explore cause and effect
How experimental is conducted and manipulation
Manipulate one of more factors and use random assignment
Independent manipulated
Experimental strength
Specifies cause and effect and variable are controlled
Experimental weaknesses
Sometimes not feasible, results many not generalize to other context not ethical to manipulate certain variable
Safe to generalize three principals in mind
Representative samples are better than biased samples
Less variable observations are more reliable than those that are more variable
More cases are better than fewer
Ethnical principles
Obtain the informed consent of potential participants
Protect from harm and discomfort
Treat information about individual participants confidentially
Fully debrief people
The scientific attitude of skeptical is based on the belief that
Ideas need to be tested against observable evidence
Psychologist personal values
Can bias both scientific observation and interpretation of data
Well done surveys measure attitudes in a representative subset, or
Random sample, of an entire group, or population
When a difference between two groups is statistically significant this means that
The difference is not likely to be due to Chance variation
Most affected by extreme scores
Range
The set of scores that would likely be most representative of a population from which it was drawn would be a sample with a relatively
Small standard deviation
IRB
Institutional review board
Bell curve negatively skewed
To the right
Bell curve positively skewed
To the left
Bell curve percentage
.1, 2.15, 13.5, 34, 34, 13.5, 2.15, .1
Bell curve standard deviation
-3, -2, -1, mean, 1, 2, 3
55, 70, 85, 100, 115, 130, 145
