Unit 0 AP Psychology

David went into the voting booth sure his candidate would win. Most people would make the same decision.

Overconfidence

Jamal questions a news article's credibility and looks for evidence to support its claims.

Critical Thinking

Chloe studies connections between the human mind and behavior.

Psychology

Maria said, "I knew they were going to lose all along" after her team lost.

Hindsight Bias

Sarah believes a new moon causes bad luck, even without evidence.

Illusory Correlations

Responses to 1-5 Likert scale questions.

Quantitative Data

Responses to open-ended survey questions.

Qualitative Data

Evidence-based explanation of behaviors and mental processes.

Theory

Prediction that students with higher autonomy, competence, and relatedness have higher motivation.

Hypothesis

A prediction that can be disproven by evidence.

Falsifiable

Measuring academic well-being via survey responses.

Operational Definition

Testing if an instrument accurately measures intrinsic motivation.

Validity

Participant inflates responses to look good to researchers.

Social Desirability Bias

Participant guesses randomly due to poor memory.

Self-Report Bias

Re-administering survey to check consistency.

Reliability

Experts review a study before publication.

Peer Review

Another group repeats the study to see if results are similar.

Replication

Participants randomly told to sleep 4 or 8 hours before a memory test.

Random Assignment (RA)

Randomly selecting 1000 high schoolers across the U.S. to survey sleep habits.

Random Sampling (RS)

500 Instagram users aged 13-25 randomly selected to study self-esteem.

Random Sampling (RS)

100 people with anxiety randomly put in CBT or mindfulness therapy groups.

Random Assignment (RA)

Half the kids play a game with a red or blue villain to test aggression.

Random Assignment (RA)

Using a national database to randomly select 250 parents of children under 10.

Random Sampling (RS)

Studying relationship between social media use and self-esteem via survey.

Correlational Study

In-depth study of a single patient with a rare condition.

Case Study

Observing children in a preschool classroom.

Naturalistic Observation

Statistically combining 50 studies on CBT effectiveness.

Meta-Analysis

Randomly assigning participants to drug or placebo and testing memory.

Experiment

People who watch violent TV are more aggressive; unclear which causes which.

Directionality Problem

Ice cream sales and shark attacks increase in summer.

Third Variable Problem

Chloe scores slightly lower after a perfect score.

Regression Toward the Mean

Social media use goes up and self-esteem goes down.

Correlation

When the line is not as straight, then the r number is...

greater than zero but far away from one

When all of the points on a scatterplot have no correlation, then the r number is...

0

When the line is close to straight, then the r number is...

greater than zero and close to one

Dividing participants into groups randomly.

Random Assignment

Fake pill with no active ingredient.

Placebo

Group taking antidepressants.

Experimental Group

Group taking fake pill.

Control Group

Differences in diet or therapy that might affect results.

Confounding Variables

Whether participant takes the antidepressant.

Independent Variable

Depression symptom improvement.

Dependent Variable

Feeling better from fake pill.

Placebo Effect

Participants unaware which pill they take; researchers aware.

Single-Blind Experiment

Researchers unintentionally treat groups differently due to expectations.

Experimenter Bias

Neither participants nor researchers know group assignments.

Double-Blind Experiment

Bell-shaped curve where most scores cluster around the mean.

Normal Distribution

Small spread of scores around the mean.

Standard Deviation

David scored higher than 95% of peers.

Percentile Rank

Extremely low data point.

Outlier

Long tail to the left.

Negative Skew

Two peaks in distribution.

Bimodal Distribution

p-value

Statistical Significance

Measures practical importance of difference.

Effect Size

Mean

sum all numbers ÷ number of numbers

Median

middle number when numbers are in order

Mode

number that appears most often

Range

largest number - smallest number

Positive Skew (tail right).

Mode < Median < Mean

Negative Skew (tail left).

Mean < Median < Mode

University team reviewing research proposals.

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

Ensuring participants are physically, mentally, emotionally safe.

Protection from Harm

Child agrees to participate.

Informed Assent

Parent agrees to child participating.

Informed Consent

Lying to participants when necessary.

Deception

Fake participants working with researchers.

Confederates

Explaining study truth after conclusion.

Debriefing

Keeping participant info private.

Confidentiality

Fear stems from childhood experiences, unconscious.

Psychodynamic

Fear influenced by upbringing in collectivist culture.

Sociocultural

Focus on personal growth by overcoming fear.

Humanistic

Fear caused by physiological symptoms; recommend medication.

Biological

Fear is adaptive from ancestors.

Evolutionary

Fear is learned; exposure therapy helps.

Behavioral

Fear caused by maladaptive thinking; restructure thoughts.

Cognitive