Psych 317 Exam 1

Front 1

Psychology

Back 1

The study of behavior and mental processes

Front 2

Self serving bias

Back 2

the tendency to see ourselves more favorably than we might actually be.

Front 3

Hindsight bias

Back 3

The "I knew it all along" Phenomenon

Front 4

Randomness

Front 5

Three Reasons for methods

Back 5

Self serving bias, hindsight bias, randomness

Front 6

3 Goals for psychological science

Back 6

Description, Prediction, Explanation

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Description

Back 7

Characterize a construct

- What type of cereal certain people buy

- Voting preferences

- Changes in behavior across the lifespan

- Patterns of aggression among chimpanzees

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Prediction

Back 8

Identify relationship between two couples

- Who will do well in a particular job

- What personalities put people at risk for criminal behavior

- Factors that predict happiness

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Explanation

Back 9

Identify underlying causes of relationship

- research goes beyond what happened to see why it happened

- Most behavioral researchers view explanation as the primary goal of science

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Formulating Hypotheses

Back 10

- All hypotheses should be made a priori

- It needs to be falsifiable

- Beware of post hoc explanations

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4 Main Methods

Back 11

-Descriptive/ Case Studies

- Correlational Studies

- Experiments

- Quasi-Experimental

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Descriptive

Back 12

Characterizes the behaviors, thoughts, or feelings of a particular group of individuals

- Public opinion polls

- Developmental changes in behavior over age

- Marketing studies of consumer preferences

- Incidence of particular mental disorder

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Correlational

Back 13

Investigate the relationship between two or more variables

- Is self esteem related to how shy people are?

- Do people who have cats study more?

- Do men and women communicate their feelings differently?

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Experimental

Back 14

Determines whether certain variables cause changes in behavior, thought, or emotion

- Involve the manipulation of at least one variable.

- Control the extraneous influences so that you know that variable was the reason for the change.

Front 15

Quasi-experimental

Back 15

Examines the effects of naturally occurring events

- Unable to manipulate or control the variable you are interested in

- Does someone experience depression?

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3 Musts for Research

Back 16

- Systematic Empiricism

- Public Verification

- Solvable Problems

Front 17

Systematic Empiricism

Back 17

Rely on systematically obtained observations to draw conclusions about the world

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Public Verification

Back 18

Findings must be observed, replicated, and verified by others

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Solvable Problems

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Must study questions that are potentially answerable through already available techniques

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Pseudoscience

Back 20

Claims of evidence that act like they have been done scientifically, but violate the scientific approach.

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The Problem with Studying People's Behavior

Back 21

- Behavior varies widely

It can vary depending on:

- Who we are observing perform the behavior

- When we are observing the behavior

- What else is going on around the person

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3 Types Of Variability

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- Situational variability

- Individual Variability

- Time Variability

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Situational Variability

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Would you always help someone?

- Usually depends on if you have time

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Individual Variability

Back 24

Not everyone likes the mixture chocolate and peanut butter

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Time variability

Back 25

Fashion choices from the past

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Because there is variation within peoples behavior we need to...

Back 26

Ensure we can systematically measure the behavior of interest

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Two ways to measure variability

Back 27

- Through our study design

- Statistically

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How do we systematically measure

Back 28

We need both conceptual and operational definitions.

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Conceptual

Back 29

Define the variable you are interested as a dictionary would.

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Operational

Back 30

Clearly describing how you will measure it.

Front 31

Statistically Measuring Variables

Back 31

Calculate descriptive statistics:

- Range

- Mean

- Variance

Front 32

Range

Back 32

- Calculated by subtracting the smallest value from the largest.

- Tells me the how far apart the most extreme scores were, but not how different each person was.

Front 33

Mean

Back 33

- Calculated by adding all the scores together and dividing by the total number of scores.

- The spread of the scores around the mean tell us how small or large our variance will be.

- More spread, the larger the variance

- Less spread, the smaller the variance

Front 34

Variance

Back 34

- Need the mean and number of people/scores we collected

- Tells us how much our scores differ from the mean in squared units

- Larger the variance, the more people differed

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Variance is comprised of...

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- Systematic variance

- Error variance

- Add these to get total variance

Front 36

Systematic Variance

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The variance that is due to our measurement

- E.g. Test performance

- ask students how much time they studied

- compare content in lecture to the content on test

- Explains if these variables can predict whether or not we do well on an exam

Front 37

Error Variance

Back 37

The variance that is due to things we didn't measure ( or didn't know to measure)

- E.g. Test performance

- distracting classmates

- hot room temperature

- not a mistake, just factors we have yet to investigate

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Minimizing Noise

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Ensure that we are carefully measuring the variables of interest while controlling for everything else in the environment.

Front 39

Cohen's d

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- Refers to the mean difference between measures

- Larger the difference, the larger the effect

- Rage from .2 (small), .5 (medium), >.8 and up (large)

- (d)

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Correlation effect size

Back 40

- Shows the relationship between measures

- Range from (absolute value) .00 to .1

- Larger values indicate more systematic variance is accounted for

- Coefficient of determination: squaring the coefficient gives us the proportion of total variance that is systematically related to the measurement

- (r or r2)

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Observational Methods

Back 41

research involving the observation of behavior

- will the observation occur in a natural or contrived setting

- will participants know they are being observed

- how will participants behavior be recorded

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Naturalistic observation

Back 42

observation of ongoing behavior as it occurs naturally with no intrusion or intervention by the researcher

- observe people or animals in their natural environment and record their behavior

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Participant observation

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researcher engages in the same activities as the people or animals under observation

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Contrived observation

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behavior is observed in setting that are arranged specifically for observing and recording behavior

- most take place in the lab

-sometimes situation outside of the laboratory to observe people's reactions.

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Problems with undisguised observation

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Reactivity: participants act different because they know they are being watched

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Problems with disguised observation

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- may violate right of participants choice to take place int he study

- potential violation of privacy

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3 ways to minimize reactivity

Back 47

- partial concealment

- knowledgable informants

- unobtrusive measures

Front 48

Partial concealment

Back 48

participants know they are being observed but not the specific aspects of behavior

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Knowledgable informants

Back 49

people who know the participants well observe and rate their behavior

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Unobtrusive measures

Back 50

measures that can be taken without participants knowing they are being studied

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3 types of behavioral recording

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- Narrative records

- Field notes

- checklists

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Narrative records

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full description of a participants behavior

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Field notes

Back 53

summary descriptions with no attempt to record everything

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Checklists

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record whether behaviors or attributes were observed

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4 Measures of latency

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- reaction time

- task completion time

- inter behavior latency

- duration

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Reaction time

Back 56

time between the presentation of a stimulus and the participant's response

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Task completion time

Back 57

length of time to solve a problem or complete a task

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Interbehavior latency

Back 58

time between two behaviors

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Duration

Back 59

how long a particular behavior lasts

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Observational Rating Scales

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Researcher rate the quality or intensity or a certain behavior

- rating a child's crying as 1) slight, 2) moderate, or 3) extreme

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Increasing the reliability of observational methods

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- must have clear and precise operational definitions for behaviors that will be observed and recorded

- raters should practice using the coding system by comparing and discussing their practice ratings

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Neuroscience

Back 62

- a broad, interdisciplinary field that studies biochemical, anatomical, physiological, genetic, and developmental processes involving the nervous system

- Focus on the relationship between brain processes and psychological phenomena

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5 types of psychophysiological measures

Back 63

- measure of neural activity are used to measure the electrical activity (EEG)

- Neuroimaging (fMRI)

- Measures of autonomic nervous system activity (heart rate, respiration)

- Blood and saliva assays (hormones)

- Precise measurement of overt reactions (EMG)

Front 64

5 self report approaches

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- Questionnaire

- Interview

- Item

- single item measure

- multi item scale

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Questionnaire

Back 65

participants respond by writing their answers

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Interview

Back 66

participants respond orally to an interviewer

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Item

Back 67

any prompt that leads a participant to provide an answer, rating, or other verbal response

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Single item measure

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item intended to be measure and analyzed by themselves

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Multi item scale

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set of items used together to assess the same construct

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Writing good items

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- be specific and careful in phrasing items

- write the items as simply as possible, avoiding difficult words, and big phrases

- avoid making unwarranted assumptions about the participant

- conditional information should precede the key idea of the item

- do not use double-barreled items

- chose an appropriate response format

- pretest the items

Front 71

Questionnaires

Back 71

- most ubiquitous method of self-report measurement used by almost all researchers

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Interviews

Back 72

Interview schedule: series of questions used in an interview

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How to make interview more effective

Back 73

- create a friendly atmosphere

- maintain an attitude of interest

- conceal personal reactions to respondent's answers

- order sections of the interview to build rapport and create a logical sequence

- ask questions exactly as they are worded

- don't lead the respondent

Front 74

3 biases in self reports

Back 74

- social desirability response bias

- acquiescence response style

- nay-saying response style

Front 75

Social desirability response bias

Back 75

tendency to answer questions in socially acceptable way

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Acquiescence response style

Back 76

tendency to agree with statements, regardless of their content

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Nay-saying response style

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tendency to disagree with statements, regardless of the content

Front 78

Archival data

Back 78

- analyze from existing records, such as census data, medical charts, court records, personal letters, etc

Front 79

Content analysis

Back 79

- a set of procedures for converting textual information to numerical data

- goal to classify words, phrases, or other units of text into a limited number of meaningful numbers