Why do cowboys fight

Operalization

turning psychological constructs into numbers and manipulations

random assignment

defeating the variation between people and situations by surrendering to it

Strengths and weakness of correlational studies

techniques surveys interviews

strengths practical and (usually) ethical exploratory predictive

weaknesses non-causal

ethnography

Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior

correlations

althouth they can be useful, correlation does not mean causation

E.g. Age of Miss America correlates with Murders by steam, hot vapours and hot objects

e.g. Number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool correlates with Number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in

descriptive methods

Descriptive methods cannot establish causality could be a third factor can’t specify direction of causation We need to control the situation, not just measure

experimental methods

independent variable what the experimenter controls dependent variable what the experimenter measures well designed experiments connect the two causally

confound variables

can act as a second independent variables which can weaken the validity of the experiment

control conditions

lacks any treatment or manipulation of the independent variable. People assigned to the control group serve as the basis of comparison for the people in the experimental condition. Everything in a control condition is the same as the experimental conditions except that the independent variable is absent or held constant

Francis Bacon

father of empricism. Scientific analysis and careful observation

culture of honor

The "culture of honor" in the Southern United States is hypothesized by some social scientists^[1] to have its roots in the livelihoods of the settlers who first inhabited the region. Unlike those from the densely populated South East England and East Anglia, who settled in New England, the Southern United States was settled by herders from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England, and the West Country.^[2] Herds, unlike crops, are vulnerable to theft because they are mobile and there is little government ability to deter such theft. The theory holds that developing a reputation for violent retribution against those who stole herd animals was one way to discourage theft of livestock.