Psy102 - Unit 2 (Research Methods)

Front 1

Prefrontal Lobotomy

Back 1

Surgical procedure that severs fibres connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus.

Front 2

Heuristics

Back 2

Mental shortcuts that help us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world.

Front 3

Representativeness

Back 3

Heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype.

Front 4

Base Rate

Back 4

How common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general population.

Front 5

Availability

Back 5

Heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds.

Front 6

Cognitive Biases

Back 6

Systematic errors in thinking.

Front 7

Hindsight Bias

Back 7

Tendency to overestimate how well we could have successfully forecast known outcomes.

Front 8

Overconfidence

Back 8

Tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions.

Front 9

Naturalistic Observation

Back 9

Watching behavior in real-world settings.

Front 10

External Validity

Back 10

Extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world settings.

Front 11

Internal Validity

Back 11

Extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect infernces from a study.

Front 12

Case Study

Back 12

Research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period.

Front 13

Existence Proofs

Back 13

Demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur.

Front 14

Correlational Design

Back 14

Research design that examines the extent to which two variables are association.

Front 15

Scatterplot

Back 15

Grouping of points ona two-dimensional graph in which each dot represents a single person's data.

Front 16

Illusory Correlation

Back 16

Perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists.

Front 17

Experiment

Back 17

Research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable.

Front 18

Random Assignment

Back 18

Randomly sorting participants into two groups.

Front 19

Experimental Group

Back 19

In an experiment, that group of participants that receives the manipulation.

Front 20

Control Group

Back 20

In an experiment, that group of participants that doesn't receive the manipulation.

Front 21

Independent Variable

Back 21

Variable that an experimenter manipulates.

Front 22

Dependent Variable

Back 22

Variable that an experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation has an effect.

Front 23

Confound

Back 23

Any differnce between the experimental and control groups other than the independent variable.

Front 24

Meta-Analysis

Back 24

Investigation of the consistency of patterns of results across large numbers of studies conducted in differnt laboratories.

Front 25

File Drawer Problem

Back 25

Tendency for negative findings to remain unpublished.

Front 26

Placebo Effect

Back 26

Improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement.

Front 27

Blind

Back 27

Unaware of whether one is in the experimental or control group.

Front 28

Nocebo Effect

Back 28

Harm resulting from the mere expectation of harm.

Front 29

Experimenter Expectancy Effect

Back 29

Phenomenon in which researchers' hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of the study.

Front 30

Double-Blind

Back 30

When neither researchers nor participants are aware of who's in the experimental or control group.

Front 31

Hawthorne Effect

Back 31

Phenomenon in which participants' knowledge that they're being studied can affect their behavior.

Front 32

Demand Characteristics

Back 32

Cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher's hypotheses.

Front 33

Random Selection

Back 33

Procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate.

Front 34

Reliability

Back 34

Consistency of measurement.

Front 35

Validity

Back 35

Extent to which a measure assesses what it purports to measure.

Front 36

Response Sets

Back 36

Tendencies of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items.

Front 37

Informed Consent

Back 37

Informing research participants of what is involved in a study before asking them to participate.

Front 38

Statistics

Back 38

Application of mathematics to describing and analyzing data.

Front 39

Descriptive Statistics

Back 39

Numerical characterizations that describe data.

Front 40

Central Tendency

Back 40

Measure of the "central" scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster.

Front 41

Mean

Back 41

Average, a measure of central tendency.

Front 42

Median

Back 42

Middle score of a data set; a measure of central tendency.

Front 43

Mode

Back 43

Most frequent score of a data set; a measure of central tendency.

Front 44

Dispersion

Back 44

Measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are.

Front 45

Range

Back 45

Difference between highest and lowest scores; a measure of dispersion.

Front 46

Standard Deviation

Back 46

Measure of dispersion that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean.

Front 47

Inferential Statistics

Back 47

Mathematical methods that allow us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population.

Front 48

Explain what research designs accomplish that we can't discover by intuition alone.

Back 48

Numerous examples from history and recent times demonstrate that our intuitions that a particular phenomenon has occurred can be wrong. Only when there is an objective, consistent, replicable measure can we confirm our subjective hunches.

Front 49

Identify heuristics and biases that prevent us from thinking clearly about psychology.

Back 49

Our heuristics are highly useful but can sometimes steer us wrong. Representativeness and availability heuristics can lead us to rely too heavily on inaccurate measures of the probability of events. Biases such as hindsight bias and overconfidence can lead us to overestimate our ability to predict outcomes accurately.

Front 50

Distinguish the types of research designs and the conclusions we can learn from each.

Back 50

Four key types of research designs are naturalistic observation, case studies, correlational designs, and experimental designs. Naturalistic observation involves recording behaviours in real-world settings but are often not carefully controlled. Case studies involve examining one or a few individuals over long periods of time; these designs are often useful in generating hypotheses but limited in testing them rigorously. Correlational studies allow us to establish the relations among two or more measures, but do not allow causal conclusions. Experimental designs involve random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable, and they allow us to draw conclusions about the causes of a particular behavior.

Front 51

Identify the potential pitfalls of each research design that can lead to faulty conclusions.

Back 51

Placebo effects, experimenter expectancy effects, and response sets are examples of problems in research designs that can lead to faulty conclusions. Other limitations, such as halo effects and errors of central tendency often arise for rating data.

Front 52

Explain the ethical obligations of researchers toward their research participants.

Back 52

Concerns about ethical treatment of research participants have led research institutions to establish research ethics baords (REBs) that review all research and require informed consent by participants. In some cases, they may also require a full debriefing at the conclusion of the research session.

Front 53

Describe both sides of the debate on the use of animals as research subjects.

Back 53

Animal research has led to clear benefits in our understanding of human learning, brain physiology, and psychological treatment, to mention only a few advances. To answer many critcal psychological questions, there are simply no good alternatives to using animals. Those who question the ethics of animal research have raised useful questions about the treatment of these animals and emphasized the need for adequate housing and feeding conditions. Many protest the large number of laboratory animals that are used each year and question whether animal research offers sufficient external validity to justify such uses.

Front 54

Explain how to calculate measures of central tendency.

Back 54

Three measures of central tendency are mean, median, and mode. The mean is the average of all scores. The median is the middle score. The mode is the most frequest score.

Front 55

Identify uses of various measures of central tendency and dispersion.

Back 55

Among the three measures of central tendency, the mean is the most widely used measure and is also the most sensitive to extreme scores. Two measures of dispersion are the range and standard deviation. THe range is a more intuitive measure of variability, but can yield a deceptive pictures of how spread out or clustered individual scores are. The standard deviation is a better measure of dispersion, although it is more difficult to calculate.

Front 56

Show how statistics can be misused for purposes of persuasion.

Back 56

Reporting measures of central tendency that are nonrepresentative of most participants, creating visual representations that exaggerate effects, and failing to take base rates into account are all frequent methods of manipulating statistics for the purposes of persuasion.

Front 57

Identify flaws in research designs.

Back 57

Good research design requires not only random assignment and manipulation of an independent variable, but also inclusion of an appropriate control consition to rule out placebo effects. Most important, it requires careful attention to the possibility of alternative explanations of observed effects.

Front 58

Identify skills for evaluating psychological claims in the popular media.

Back 58

To evaluate psychological claims in the news and elsewhere in the popular media, we should bear in mind that few psychology reporters have formal psychological training. When considering media claims, we should consider the source, bewards of excessive sharpening and levelling, and be on the lookout for pseudosymmetry.