UNIT 0 Key terms (Vocab)! Barrons Review

Humanist Perspective

We must choose most of our behaviors and these choices are guided by physiological, emotional, or spiritual needs.

Psychodynamic Perspective

The unconsious mind controls much of our thoughts and actions.

Biopsychology/Neuroscience Perspective

Explains human thought and behavior in terms of biological processes.

Evolutionary/Darwanian Perspective

Examines human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection.

Behavioral Perspective

Explains human thoughts and behaviors on conditioning (responses to stimuli).

Cognitive Perspective

Examine human thoughts and behaviors of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events (Viewing the world is important to understanding behaviors).

Social-cultural/Sociocultural Perspective

How our thoughts and behaviors vary among cultures and its influence.

Biopsychosocial Perspective

Human thinking and behavior results from a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors.

Hindsight bias

To think you knew it all along after it occured

Confirmation bias

Paying more attention to information that supports our pre-existing ideas

Overconfidence

Overconfident in our beliefs

Quantitative research

Uses numerical measures

Qualitative reseach

Uses complex textual responses for key ideas

Hypothesis

Expresses the relationship between 2 variables

Dependent variable

What is being measured and depends on the independent variable

Independent variable

What’s changed and manipulated

Theory

Aims to explain some phenomenon and allows researchers to generate testable hypothesis in hopes of collecting data for supporting the theory

Operational definition

Explains how you will measure it

Replicated

When research is conducted the same way and produces similar results

Sample

A group of participants

Population

Anyone or anything that can be selected in the sample

Random Sampling

Every member has an equal chance of being selected

Convenience sampling

Collecting data from a group that is easily acessible

Stratified sampling

Process that allows a researcher to ensure that the samples represent the population on some criteria

Laboratory experiments

Conducted in a lab which is highly controlled

Field Experiments

Conducted out in the world and are more realistic

Confounding variable

Factor other than the ones being studied that can influence the study’s results

Random Assignment

Each participant has an equal chance of being placed in either groups

Experimenter bias

Unconscious tendancy for researchers to treat members of different groups differently to increase the chance of confirming their hypothesis

Single-blind study

When only the participants dont know to which group they have been assigned

Double-blind study

Neither the participants nor the researchers know which group the participants are assigned to

Social desirability bias

Tendancy to try to give answers that reflect well upon oneself, pleasing answers that might not be accurate

Experimental group

Recieves the treatment operationalized in independent variable

Control group

Recieves no treatment, none of the independent variable

Placebo effect

Psychological effects of people who think they took a drug

Placebo method

When a pill or drug has to be ingested the researchers may give one group a fake drug to compare effects with the treatment group.

Positive correlation

The prescene of one thing determines the prescence of another

Negative correlation

The presence of one thing determines the absence of another.

Ex post facto (quasi-experimental study)

Seeking to control all other aspects of the research process

Likert scales

Pose a statement and ask people to express their level of agreement or disagreement

Directionality problem/Temporal precedence

Inability to determine which of the variables came first

Third Variable

A lesser cause to a situation

Naturalistic Observation

Observing participants in their natural environments without interacting with them at all

Stuctured interview

Type of interview where an interviewer asks standardized sets of questions in a set order

Case study

Used to get a full detailed picture of one participant or a small group/ examined to hopefully uncover universal principles

Falsifiable

Possibility of a hypothesis, theory, or idea being able to be disproven by an experiment

Measures of central tendancy

Attempt to mark the center of a distribution which includes mean median and mode

Mean

Average of all the scores in a distribution

Median

Central score in a distribution which is the middle number

Mode

The score that appears most frequently

Bimodal

If 2 scores appear equally frequently and more frequently than any other score

Positively Skewed

More low scores than high scores and it looks taller on the left size

Negatively Skewed

More high scores than low scores, making the distribution taller on the right side.

Symmetrical

The mean equals the median

Range

Distance between the highest and lowest scores in the distribution

Standard Deviation (SD)

A measure of how much scores vary around the mean score (Square root of the variance.)

Variance

A measure of how far a set of numbers is spread out from their average value. (computed by finding the difference between each value and the mean, squaring the difference between each value and the mean and then averaging those squared differences).

Normal Curve

Theoretical bell-shaped curve for which the area under the curve lying between any 2 z-scores has been predetermined

Percentiles

Indicate the distances of a score from 0

Correlation

Measures the relationship between 2 variables

Correlation coefficient

Range from -1 to +1 and they help us figure out how closely two things vary together and how one predicts the other

Scatterplot

A graph that represents the relationship between 2 variables, shows the pattern of data points as dots, the slope is the line that fits most the points

Inferential Statistics

Determines whether findings can be applied to a larger population, based on sample data

Statistically significant

Determines whether differences between groups are real or likely due to chance, determined by p values less than 0.05

Effect size

Measure that indicates the magnitude or strength of a relationship between 2 variables

Replication crisis

When replicating an experiment the results are not the same

Meta-analysis

Type of research that combines results from multiple studies to identify overall averages, trends, or effects

Peer review

When paper is read by experts in the field and the author is asked to make revisions in order to ensure high quality publications

No coercion

Participants should be voluntary

Informed consent

Participants must know that they are involved and give consent

Deception

Misleading or lying to participants about the purpose of a study

Confidentiality

Privacy must be protected

Risk/Protection from harm

Cannot be placed at significant or physical risk

Debriefing

After the study, participants shall be told the purpose of the study and any deception used