BM Ch2

• Why is basing conclusions on personal experience problematic?

  Because daily life usually doesn't include comparison experiences and even if a change has occurred, we often can't be sure what caused it.
• What is an advantage of systematic data collection?

  Basing conclusions on systematic data collection has the simple but tremendous advantage advantage of providing a comparison group
• What are confounds?


  A confound occurs when you think one thing caused an outcome but in fact other things changed, too, so you are confused about what the cause really was
• Define probabilistic


  The findings do not explain all cases all of the time
• What are scientific conclusions based on?

  Patterns that emerge only when researchers set up comparison groups and test many people. Your own experience is only one point in that overall pattern
• What is the availability heuristic?

  A bias in thinking that states that things that pop up easily in our mind tend to guide our thinking. When events or memories are vivid, recent, or memorable, they come to mind more easily, leading us to overestimate how often things happen
• What is the present/present bias?

  When testing relationships, we often fail to look for absences; in contrast, it is easy to notice what is present. This tendency reflects out failure to consider appropriate comparison groups
• What is confirmation bias?


  The tendency to look only at information that agrees with what we want to believe
• What is bias blind spot?

  The belief that we are unlikely to fall prey to the other biases
• What is the role of empirical journal articles?

  Report, for the first time, the results of an (empirical) research study
• What is the role of review journal articles?

  To summarise and integrate all the published studies that have been done in one research area
• What is a meta-analysis?

  A quantitative technique which combines the results of many studies and gives a number that summaries the magnitude, or the effect size, of a relationship. It is valued by psychologists because it weighs each study proportionately and does not allow cherry-picking particular studies
• Define the abstract


  A concise summary of the article. It briefly describes the study's hypotheses, method, and major results
• Define the introduction


  Typically explains the topic of the study
• Define the method


  Explains in detail how the researchers conducted their study. It usually contains subsection such as Participants, Materials, Procedure and Apparatus
• Define the results

  Section describing the quantitative and, as relevant, qualitative results of the study, including the statistical tests the authors used to analyse the data
• Define the discussion


  The opening paragraph of the discussion section generally summarised the studies research question and methods and indicates how well the results of the study supported the hypotheses. Next the authors usually discuss the study's importance. In addition they may discuss alternative explanations for their data and pose interesting questions raised by the research
• Define the references


  Section that contains a full bibliographical listing of all the sources the authors cited in writing their article