Social Psychology Text Ch. 2 -- Methods

Front 1

hindsight bias

Back 1

people's tendency to be over-confident about whether they could have correctly predicted a given outcome, in retrospect.

Front 2

hypothesis

Back 2

a prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances.

Front 3

theory

Back 3

a body of related proposition intended to describe some aspect of the world.

Front 4

observational research

Back 4

research can be a matter of looking at a phenomenon in a systematic way to understand what is going on and why things are happening as they are.

Front 5

archival research

Back 5

using evidence found in archives of various kinds, collect data and analyze that stuff with statistical tools.

Front 6

surveys

Back 6

surveys can be conducted using either interviews or written questionnaires. can use specific population, random sample (could be anyone) or convenience sample (could be anyone that happens to be available to the researcher).

Front 7

correlational research

Back 7

research that does not involve random assignment to different situations, or conditions, and that psychologists conduct to see whether there is a relationship between the variables.

Front 8

experimental research

Back 8

in social psychology, research that randomly assigns people to different conditions, or situations, and that enables researchers to make strong inferences about how these different conditions affect people's behavior.

Front 9

reverse causation

Back 9

when variable is assumed to cause variable 2, yet the opposite direction of causation may be the case.

Front 10

third variable

Back 10

when variable 1 does not cause variable 2, and variable 2 does not cause variable 1, but rather some other variable exerts some influence on both.

Front 11

self-selection

Back 11

a problem that arises when the participant rather than the investigator, selects his or her level on each variable bringing with this value unknown other properties that make causal interpretation of a relationship difficult.

Front 12

1.0 correlation

Back 12

perfect positive correlation (one-to-one)

Front 13

-1.0 correlation

Back 13

perfect negative correlation

Front 14

0.0 correlation

Back 14

no correlation

Front 15

longitudinal study

Back 15

a study conducted over a long period of time with the same population, which is periodically assessed regarding a particular behavior.

Front 16

independent variable

Back 16

in experimental research the variable that is manipulated; it is hypothesized to be the cause of a particular outcome.

Front 17

dependent variable

Back 17

in experimental research, the variable that is measured (as opposed to manipulated); it is hypothesized to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable.

Front 18

random assignment

Back 18

assigning participants in experimental research to different groups randomly such that they are as likely to be assigned to one condition as to another.

Front 19

control condition

Back 19

a condition comparable to the experimental condition in every way except that it lacks the one ingredient hypothesized to produce the expected effect on the dependent variable.

Front 20

natural experiment

Back 20

naturally occurring events or phenomenon having somewhat different conditions that can be compared with almost as much rigor as in experiments where the investigator manipulates the conditions.

Front 21

external validity

Back 21

an experimental set up that closely resembles real-life situations so that the results can safely be generalized to such situations.

Front 22

field experiment

Back 22

an experiment set up in the real world, usually with participants who are not aware that they are in a study of any kind.

Front 23

internal validty

Back 23

in experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variables could have produced the results

Front 24

debriefing

Back 24

in preliminary versions of an experiment, asking participants straight-forwardly if they understood the instructions, found the set up to be reasonable, and so forth. In later versions, debriefings are used to educate the participants about the questions being studied.

Front 25

reliability

Back 25

the degree to which the particular way that researchers measure a given variable is likely to yield consistent results.

Front 26

measurement validty

Back 26

the correlation between some measure and some outcome that the measure is supposed to predict.

Front 27

statistical significance

Back 27

a measure of probability that a given result could have occurred by chance.

Front 28

basic science

Back 28

science concerned with trying to understand some phenomenon in its own right, with a view toward using that understanding to build valid theories about the nature of some aspect of the world.

Front 29

applied science

Back 29

science concerned with solving some real-world problem of importance.

Front 30

intervention

Back 30

AN EFFORT TO CHANGE PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOR

Front 31

institutional review board

Back 31

a university committee that examines research proposals and makes judgments about the ethical appropriateness of the research.

Front 32

Informed consent

Back 32

participants' willingness to participate in a procedure or research study after learning all relevant aspects about the procedure or study

Front 33

deception research

Back 33

research in which the participants are misled about the purpose of the research or the meaning of something that is done to them.