research

• How Amateur psychologists interpret behaviours (2.1)

  Observing behaviours we often form conclusions based on intuition or experience which lead to mistakes
• Intuition


  Subjective feeling about what makes sense (overconfidence bias)
• Experience


  Physical experience you have in your life (doesn't show all possible events and has no comparison group)
• Scientific method (2.2)


  Process of asking confidence in an idea on systematic observations through research studies to test ideas
• Theory data cycle


  Process of scientific method that a scientist collect data that can confirm/disconfirm a theory
• Theory


  Set of prepositions explaining how and why people think act or feel
• Hypothesis


  Specific prediction stating what will happen in a study if the theory is correct
• Data


  Empirical observations that scientists gather
• Replication


  Study conducted more than once on a new sample of participants and obtain the same basic results
• Journal


  Periodical publishing containing peer reviewed articles on scpecific academic discipline , written for scholarly audiences
• Variable


  Something of interest that varies from person to person/situation to situation
• Measure variable


  Value is recorded
• Maniuplated variable


  Researcher controls usually by assigning different participants to different levels of that variable
• Operational definition


  Specific way of measure or manipulating an abstract variable in a study
• Why operationalize


  1. Practical reasons

  2. dependent of difficulty to collect data

  3. Easier sometimes, better than self report
• Descriptive research


  Studies research, measure one variable at a time
• Self-report in descriptive research

  1 - 5 scale in survey research that summarizes people (ex: ladder of life)
• Sample


  Proud that participates and research belong to a larger population of interest that the research wants to understand
• Population of interest


  Full set of cases the researcher is interested in
• Random sampling


  Choosing a sample of participants for a study that are selected at random
• Descriptive research based on naturalistic observations and case studies

  Descriptive research —> observational research —> naturalistic observation
• Naturalistic observation


  Observational research method to observe behaviours in normal everyday world (ex: observing toddlers playing — w/o them knowing)
• Observational research


  Measure variables by observing and recording what people are doing
• Case study


  Study of an individual with unique conditions in great detail (ex: HM: studied by cognitive psychologist of lobotomy due to epilepsy)
• Correlational research


  Studies two or more variables in the same people and observes the relationship between the variables
• Pattern of associations between variables in Scatterplots

  Positive: high scores on one variable with high scores on the other

  Negative: low scores with low scores

  Zero: no systematic relationship
• Review criterion for correlation and causation

  1. Are the two variables correlated

  2. Temporal evidence: did the causal variable come first before the effect

  3. Are ethereal plausible alternative
• Correlation and causation


  Positive or negative correlation can only predict one variable form another
• Third variable problem


  Relationship between variables there's an existing variable that can explain causation
• Experimental research


  Variable manipulated the other is measured. (Provides evidence of causation b/w variables)
• Independent variable vs dependent variable

  Manipulated in an experiment (x axis) vs measured variable (y axis)
• Random assignment


  Which participants receive which level of instrument variable
• Experimental group


  Condition in which some proposed cause of present
• Control group


  Proposed cause is not present
• Placebo effect


  People expect to review a treatment but are excise to an inert version
• Limitations to descriptive research


  Describe what people do but not who is likely to exhibit those behaviors
• Limits to correlational research

  Yield value insights in research — for variables that cannot be experimentally manipulated (gender, cultural origin)
• Limitations to experimental research

  Can isolate causal effects — limited to manipulating one or two variables in a single study (more variables can be studied simultaneously in correlational research)
• 3 key questions to ask in research study for validity

  1. How weak did researchers operation the variables

  2. Are the prior they situated representatives of the population of interest

  3. Can we rule out the most plausible alternative explanations
• Validity


  Appropriateness of accuracy of the conclusion or decision