PSYC - Chapter 2

Heuristic

Mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us streamline our thinking

Random Selection

Ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate

Evaluating Measurements

Reliability - Consistency of measurements

Validity - Extend to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure

If something is reliable, it could be valid, but if it is not valid it cannot be reliable

Naturalistic Observation

Watching behaviors in a real world setting, without manipulating the situation

High in “External Validity” - extent to which we generalize findings to the real world

Low in “Internal Validity” - Extend to which we can draw a cause and effect inference from a study

-Subjects know they’re being watched, which may obscure the results
-Helps describe the psychological world

Case Study

Research design that examines a group in depth. Provides “existence proofs”, which is a demonstration a rare psychological phenomenon can occur.

Disadvantage - hard to infer an actual cause - and effect due to a lack of control and limited generalizibility
-Helps describe the psychological world

Self-Report Measures

Assessing one’s own personality/attitude/behavior

Advantage:
-Reports of traits and behaviours works well

-Easy to Administer

Disadvantage:
-Assumes people possess enough insight into their own personality
Responders may not be honest (response sets)

Interrater

Measure of consistency between multiple raters

Response Sets

Tendency of research participants to distort their response to questionnaire items. Two types;
-Tendency to answer questions in a socially desirable way

-Tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed

Confounds

Variable not under study that affects both the independent or dependent variables, causing mistaken conclusions

Correlation Design

Research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated

-Allows us to generate predictions

Illusory Correlation

Perception of correlation between two variables where none exists, occurs due to “one sided events”, such as remembering when something worked and forgetting when it didn’t

Ethical Considerations

1. Informed Consent

2. Deception - must be justified

3. Do the benefits outweigh the risks

4. Is the harm minimized

5. Culturally appropriate

6. Participants debriefed at the end (deception corrected)

Placebo and Nocebo Effect

Placebo - improvement resulting from an expectation of improvement

Nocebo - Harm resulting from the expectation of harm

Experimenter Expectancy Effect

Researcher’s hypothesis leads them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study, can be counteracted through a “double-blind” experiment (both researchers and participants don’t know who’s in which group)

Demand Characteristics

Cue that participants pick up from a study that allows them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypotheses

Descriptive Statistics

Numerical characterizations that describe data via ‘central tendency’.
Uses mean, median and mode

Range and Standard Deviation

Range - difference between highest and lowest scores

Standard Deviation - average amount an individual data-point differs from the mean

Inferential Statistics

Mathematical method to allow us to determine if we can generalize findings from a sample to the population

Systems of Thinking

Introduced by Kahneman

System 1 Thinking - Use of intuitive thinking, which is fast and reflexive, based on “gut feelings” and utilizes heuristics

System 2 Thinking - “analytical”, slow and reflective method, takes mental effort

Reproducibility and Replicability

Reproducibility - Ability to review and reanalyze data from a stdy and find exactly the same result

Replicability - Replication of an experiment to find the same result

Rating Data

Observers rate the person in question. Helps circumvent issues with self report measures since observers may not have the same “blind spots” as those they’re rating.

Drawback, Halo Effect - tendency of ratings of a single postiive characteristic to influence ratings of other characteristics to be positive

Sharpening and Levelling

Sharpening - Tendency to exaggerate the message of a study

Levelling - Tendency to minimize less central details

Spurious Correlations

Variables that mathematically move together, but there is no actual relationship between them.

Could be caused by a 3rd variable

Experimental Design

Creates specific conditions or treatments to test a hypothesis, and randomly assigns people to them.

Operational definitions, working definition of what is being measured, must be defined

Two Key Components;

-Random assignment of participants into groups

-Manipulation of independent variable

Between-Subjects Design

Different groups assigned to the control or experimental condition

Within-Subjects Design

Each participant acts as their own control