Week 2 Flashcards
What is Psychology?
Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior.
The research cycle
- Theory
- Research question
3.Hypotheses
4.Research design - data
what are psychologist interested in?
As psychologists we are interested in describing, predicting, and explaining behavior
Describing
Observing patterns in the world
EX: You observe stages in Zayan/Coby in playing
Descriptive methods
Naturalistic observation (observing children at play)
Surveys (asking people to self report attitudes)
Descriptive role in variables
Can describe relationships between two variables (at one point in time)
Descriptive limitations?
- Do not allow you to predict or explain behaivor
- Reverse causality ( You dont know what variable caused what)
Why use descriptive methods?
- Descriptive studies also can be highly applicable to “real life” are naturalistic
-Are cost effective
-Many questions can only ethically be studied with descriptive methods
Predicting
Identifying whether one variable predicts another variable
How do we predict
You can predict behavior with longitudinal studies that assess relationships between variables over multiple points in time
Why predictive?
-Many important questions are predictive in nature
-Longitudinal studies can also be highly applicable to “real life” are naturalistic
-Many questions cannot be ethically studied with experiments(e.g., such as the smoking and lung cancer example)
-Deals with issue of reverse causality
But can be very costly
Limitations
-Third variable- occurs when an observed correlation between two variables can be explained by a third variable that hasn’t been accounted for
- Cannot explain behaivor
Explaining
-Identifying whether one variable causes another variable
-Only experiments can explain behavior
Key features of experiments
-Manipulate Variable (IV) and Measure outcome (DV)
-Random assignment and or randomization:The “great equalizer” helps ensure the differences between conditions are due to what was manipulated and not due to individual differences among participants or the order conditions are presented in
Why not alwyas experiments
Sometimes we don’t need to know about causation
Can be artificial
Can be unethical
Can be expensive and time consuming
Not always possible/practical
Within-Subject
All the people experience the same conditons
Ramdomize orde of condition (rule out order effects)
Between Subject
Each group experiences diffrent condition
Ramdomly assign a condition
Levels of analysis
- Brain structure and function
-Individual
-Social interaction
-Communities and culture
Independent Variable
is the factor that is manipulated or changed in an experiment to observe its effect on another variable
Dependent Variable
is the factor that is measured or observed.
○ Null and alternative
-Null Hypothesis (H₀): The null hypothesis is a statement that there is no effect, no relationship, or no difference between groups or variables.
-The alternative hypothesis is the statement that contradicts the null hypothesis
p-value
It tells you the probability of obtaining the observed results, or more extreme results, if the null hypothesis is true.
