PSYC 100 - Methods

Sessions 9 & 10

What is the Braitenberg vehicles?

-Basic vehicles that consist of 2 light sensors and 2 light motors

-To explain reverse reductionism

-Helps understand cognitive and behavioural mechanisms

What is the Ockham’s razor?

-Most simple explanations must be accepted

-Easier to falsify or test

What is reductionism?

Explaining complex behaviour in a smaller set of principles

What are the limitations to reductionism?

-Based solely on the full mechanical description of behaviour rather than psychological

-May need another psychological explanation to understand the full nature

-Unpredictable

What is empiricism?

Making observations to explain hypotheses & theories (methods such as experiments)

What is rationalism?

Using reason & logic to explain nature & mind

What is inductivism?

Several observations used to induce theories/ deduce hypothesis

What is falsificationism?

-Hypothesis/statement being capable of being refuted is deducted from a theory

-Prediction failed → theory wrong → tested again & again

What is the Khun scientific process?

Science has many revolutions and phases rather than a continuous evolution

What is the experimenter bias?

Experimenter modifies variable to fit their own hypothesis

What are demand characteristics?

-What participants might do to please the experimenter

-Ex: engaging in an experiment actively to help experiments confirm the assumed hypothesis

What is the Milgram experiment?

Participants were instructed to administer what they believed were painful and dangerous electric shocks to another person (an actor) for incorrect answers during a learning task.

What is representativeness?

Limited diversity of observations (WEIRD acronym)

What is artificiality?

-Tasks asked participants to do are result of a reductionist approach

-Uncertainty of how natural the behaviour truly is

What are some descriptive methods?

Methods used to summarize and organize the main features of a dataset, either numerically or visually

What are inferential statistics?

A sample of data used to make predictions, generalizations, and conclusions about a larger population.

What is the Hawthorne effect?

-Reactivity

When participants believe they’re being observed by an experimenter, they change their behaviour

What is the Hawthorne experiment?

-A series of studies conducted at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in the 1920s and 1930s

-Found that workers' productivity increased simply because they knew they were being observed

What is response bias?

-Our tendency to provide inaccurate, or even false, answers to self-report questions

What is the directionality problem?

-Causation cannot be detected since the direction of relationships is ambiguous

-Unclear whether a ± result is from a decrease/increase of variables

What is the difference between a hypothesis and prediction?

-Hypothesis: Explanation of phenomenon

-Prediction: Forecasts future event that will occur if phenomenon is true

What is internal validity?

-What we can easily influence

-Affects the generalizability of results

-The degree to which a study's results are caused by the variables being tested, free from confounding factors

What is external validity?

-What you can do in lab → used in real world

-It addresses whether the findings from a specific sample and study context apply to a broader population or a different, real-world situation.

What is empirical structuralism?

-View of Sneed

-Argues that external validity is useless

-Theories tied to intended applications and cannot generalize beyond a point

What is the ceteris paribus principle

What is the between-subjects experiment design plan?

-Different groups have separate treatment conditions

What are advantages of the between-subjects experiment design plan?

-Only subjected to one treatment condition

What are disadvantages of the between-subjects experiment design plan?

-Large # of participants needed

-Variance induced due to different characteristics in different people

What is the within-subjects experiment design plan?

One sample of participants subjected to different treatment conditions

What is the advantage in the within-subjects experiment design plan?

-Fewer participants needed

-Differences limited → less measurement errors

What is the disadvantage in the within-subjects experiment design plan?

-Progressive error: experiences continuously repeated → performance decreases

-Carryover effect: treatment in certain conditions might change participants → affects performance

What is type I error in statistical testing?

-A false positive; it occurs when a study incorrectly rejects a true null hypothesis.

-Outcome due to chance

What is type II error in statistical testing?

-False negative; it occurs when you fail to reject a false null hypothesis

-It's a mistaken conclusion that there is no effect or no difference when, in reality, one does exist.