PSYC2001 - Exam Notes

• Research methodology and techniques

  Used in psychology
• Assignments: APA 7th edition
• Producer role


  • Brain anatomy
  • Documenting the behaviour of dolphins or monkeys
  • Analyzing data
• Empiricism


  Answering psychological questions with direct, formal observations and communicating with others about what they have learned
• Importance of empiricism


  • For coursework in psychology
  • Graduate school
  • Working in a research lab
  • Knowing why scientists randomly assign people to groups, how to measure attitudes accurately, or how to interpret results from a graph
  • Helps deepen understanding of psychological inquiry
• Consumer role


  • Reading about research so they can apply it to their work, hobbies, relationships, or personal growth
  • Evidence-based treatment
  • Empiricism
  • Critical consumer of information
  • Being able to tell what high-quality research information is
• Scientist


  • Not based on intuition, casual observations or what other people say
  • Conclusions based on empirical methods or research (lots of tests)
  • Talk to the world from journal to journalism
  • Peer review
• Characteristics of the scientific community

  • Universalism (evaluate the claim, not the scientists)
  • Communality (created by a community for the community, transparent and shared)
  • Disinterestedness (strive for truth without being swayed by conviction, idealism, politics, or profit)
  • Organized Skepticism (questions everything)
• Types of scientific research

  • Applied research (solve practical problems)
  • Basic research (enhances the general body of knowledge about a particular topic)
  • Translational research (a bridge from basic to applied research)
• Theory


  A set of statements that describes general principles about how variables relate to one another
• Hypothesis


  Predictions about the outcome of your research based on theory
• Preregistered


  A term referring to a study in which, before collecting any data, the researcher has stated publicly what the study's outcome is expected to be
• Data


  A set of observations; does the data support the hypothesis and strengthen the theory, or does not support the hypotheses and thus lead to...
• Cupboard theory


  A mother is valuable to a baby mammal because she is a source of food. The baby animal gets hungry, gets food from the mother by nursing, and experiences a pleasant feeling (reduced hunger). Over time, the sight of the mother acquires positive value because she is the "cupboard" from which comes.
• Comfort theory


  Babies are attached to their mothers because of the comfort of their warm, fuzzy fur. In a natural world, a mother provides food and contact comfort at once, so when the baby clings to her, it is impossible to tell why.
• Variable


  Something that varies, so it must have at least two levels or values
• Comparison group


  A comparison group enables us to compare what would happen both with and without the thing we are interested in
• Collecting data from multiple groups is important, as it allows researchers to determine whether a treatment is (a) worse than, (b) about the same as, or (c) better than other treatments
• Basing conclusions on personal experience is flawed because even if a change has occurred, we often can't be sure what caused it
• Behavioural research is probabilistic, its findings are not expected to explain all cases all the time
• Research is better than experience because it uses comparison groups and control groups to show different results
• Ways that intuition can be biased

  • Swayed by a good story
  • Availability heuristic (things that come to mind easily are more "available" to memory and can guide and/or bias our thinking)
  • Present/present bias (we notice what is present and miss the things that are absent)
  • Confirmation bias (seeking and accepting only the evidence that supports what we already think)
  • Biased blindspot (belief that we are unlikely to fall prey to the other biases)
• Authority


  Celebrities create a platform (podcast, social media) and listeners believe it is correct because someone of authority answered
• Sources of information


  • Consulting scientific sources (journal articles, chapters in edited books, full-length books)
  • Asking questions
  • Empirical sources (research projects)
  • Review-journal (systematic review, qualitative approach)
  • Peer-reviewed journal articles
• Legitimate scientific sources


  • PsycINFO
  • Google Scholar
  • Quality Matters
  • Paywalled versus open-access sources
• Abstract


  Summary of the study
• Introduction


  Presents the problem, reviews and summarizes the literature, introduces the contribution and current study, and states the hypotheses
• Components of the methods section

  • Participants
  • Materials
  • Procedure
• Results


  Outlines the statistical tests, provides the results, and compares the results to the statistics
• Discussion


  Summarizes the main results, integrates findings into current literature, outlines the conclusions, and discusses implications
• Reading with a purpose involves understanding the argument and evidence in empirical journal articles, and the argument and evidence in chapters and review articles
• Legitimate journalism avoids disinformation, which is the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false, often motivated by propaganda, passion, politics, provocations, profit, or parody
• Variable


  Something that changes or varies, so it needs to have at least two levels or values
• Constant


  Something that does not vary, it stays the same
• Measured variable


  Levels are simply observed and recorded
• Manipulated variable


  Is controlled, something given or not given
• Conceptual definition


  Based on how the variables are theoretically defined
• Operational definition


  Based on how the variables are measured
• Methods of operationalizing variables

  • Self-report questionnaire
  • Checking records
  • Teachers observations
• Claim


  An argument someone is trying to make