PSYC1040 mid-sem quiz

Psychology is defined in this course as:

The scientific study of both mind AND behaviour

why does psychology exist as a scientific discipline?

Because human intuition is powerful, persuasive, and predictably biased

common sense is very good at explaining events after they happen but unreliable at predicting them in advance. This is an example of:

post-hoc reasoning — when we explain outcomes after the fact, both success and failure feel equally "obvious." Explanations which feel compelling are not necessarily correct, which is why systematic evidence matters.

Confirmation bias refers to:

The tendency to seek out information that confirms what we already believe, and overlook information that challenges it

The lectures state that psychological conclusions are "probabilistic." What does this mean?

Psychological findings state what tends to happen under particular conditions, with important limitations

science is best characterised as:

Risking being wrong in a controlled and informative way

One reason psychology is described as difficult is that:

People sometimes change their behaviour simply because they know they are being studied

In the structure of scientific reasoning described in the Week 1B lecture, which sequence is correct?

Claim → Evidence → Inference

The Haidt and Orben example is used in the lectures to illustrate that:

The same evidence, filtered through different assumptions, can support different conclusions

According to the lectures, where do Haidt and Orben primarily differ?

In how they interpret what the evidence justifies us in concluding — that is, in inference

Why is one study never enough to establish a scientific claim?

Because every study uses a particular sample, context, and measures that constrain what the evidence can justify

Operationism in psychology refers to:

The requirement that abstract psychological concepts be tied to specific, measurable operations

According to the lectures, the role of statistics in psychology is best described as:

Making judgment more disciplined by helping evaluate uncertainty

According to the Nickerson reading, confirmation bias is:

A ubiquitous phenomenon that occurs across many contexts and domains

The Nickerson reading on confirmation bias is most relevant to which idea from the Week 1A lecture?

The tendency to seek confirming evidence and overlook disconfirming evidence

According to Nosek and Bar-Anan, what is the primary objective of public science?

To build a shared body of knowledge about nature through open communication

Nosek and Bar-Anan argue that truth in science emerges as a consequence of:

Public scrutiny and open communication among the scientific community

According to Nosek and Bar-Anan, the main barriers to reforming scientific communication are:

Social — existing incentives and norms resist change even when better systems are available

Nosek and Bar-Anan identify several problems with the current scientific communication system. Which of the following is one of those problems?

The system is rooted in 17th-century technologies that limit communication speed, completeness, and access

According to Nosek and Bar-Anan, which of the following is an example of a problem caused by selective reporting in the current scientific communication system?

Studies with null or negative results are less likely to be published, distorting the scientific record

What does Shadish et al.'s counterfactual framework require in order to claim that X caused Y?

Y would have been different if X had not occurred, all else being equal.

The Week 2A lecture describes the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" as "dangerously incomplete." What deeper point does the lecture make?

An observed association between X and Y is compatible with multiple competing causal stories.

In the Week 2A lecture, what threat to causal inference does the ice cream and sunburn example illustrate?

Confounding, because hot weather predicts both ice cream consumption and sun exposure.

Students who attend optional exam preparation workshops perform worse on the final exam than non-attendees. According to the Week 2A lecture, which threat to causal inference most likely explains this pattern?

Selection effects, because academically struggling students are more likely to self-select into the workshops.

A university introduces a wellbeing program for first-year students, and reported stress levels decline over the semester. According to the Week 2A lecture, which two alternative explanations make it difficult to attribute this decline to the program?

Maturation effects (students naturally adjusting to university life) and history effects (other events also occurring during the semester).

According to Week 2B, why does the lecture state that "statistics cannot rescue a design that does not support causal inference"?

Statistics can adjust only for variables that were measured; they cannot create the missing counterfactual or remove unmeasured confounding.

According to Week 2B, what is the most important guarantee provided by random assignment in an experiment?

Differences between groups are not systematic—they are not driven by participants' pre-existing characteristics.

In Week 2B's quick-check scenario, a randomized experiment uses a self-report outcome measure completed by participants who know which condition they were in. What threat does random assignment NOT protect against here?

Measurement bias, because participants' self-reports may be influenced by their awareness of their assigned condition.

According to Week 2B's discussion of the three features of experiments, what specific threat to causal inference is most directly addressed by the fact that a researcher assigns the treatment before measuring the outcome?

Reverse causation, because the outcome cannot have caused the manipulation.

According to Week 2B, how does the basis for causal inference in a quasi-experiment differ from that in a randomized experiment?

The researcher's argument—that the comparison group plausibly approximates what random assignment would have produced—substitutes for the design feature of random assignment.

Shadish et al. describe most causes as "inus conditions." Which option correctly defines an inus condition?

An insufficient but nonredundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition.

According to Shadish et al.'s counterfactual model, how is an "effect" defined?

The difference between what did happen when people received the treatment and what would have happened had they not received it.

According to Mill's analysis of causal relationships, as described by Shadish et al., which of the following is one of Mill's three required conditions for a causal relationship?

No plausible alternative explanation for the effect, other than the presumed cause, can be found.

According to Table 1.1 in Shadish et al., what is the defining feature that distinguishes a randomized experiment from other experimental designs?

Units are assigned to receive the treatment or a comparison condition by a random process such as a coin toss or table of random numbers.

According to Shadish et al., what is the key distinction between causal description and causal explanation?

Causal description identifies the consequences attributable to a treatment; causal explanation clarifies the mechanisms and conditions through which that causal relationship holds.

Which of the following best describes a "construct" in psychological research?

An abstract theoretical property that is not directly observable, such as anxiety or resilience

A researcher decides to measure "academic motivation" by recording the number of hours each student spends in the library per week. This decision is an example of:

Operationalisation

A depression questionnaire consistently produces similar scores for stable patients over time, but an expert review concludes the items reflect general distress rather than depression specifically. This scale has:

High reliability and low validity

Cronbach's alpha (α) is primarily a measure of:

The internal consistency of items within a scale

Studies A and B both claim to measure "happiness" but reach opposite conclusions about whether parents are happier than non-parents. Study A uses momentary mood sampling; Study B uses global life-satisfaction ratings. The most likely explanation is:

The two operationalisations capture different aspects of happiness

Which finding would best demonstrate convergent validity for a new loneliness scale?

A strong positive correlation with an established social isolation measure

A researcher wants to show discriminant validity for a new academic self-efficacy scale. Which outcome provides the best evidence?

The scale correlates only weakly with a broad measure of general self-esteem

Sensitivity to change (responsiveness) refers to a scale's ability to:

Detect genuine change in the underlying construct over time

The jingle fallacy occurs when:

The same label is used to describe constructs that are empirically distinct

A newly developed "perseverance" scale correlates r = .91 with the established Grit Scale. This pattern is most consistent with:

The jangle fallacy, because two different labels appear to refer to the same construct

According to Flake et al. (2017), "arbitrary operationalism" refers to:

Making measurement choices without principled, theory-based justification

What was the central finding of Flake et al.'s (2017) analysis of scales published in a leading personality and social psychology journal?

For the majority of scales, Cronbach's alpha was the only psychometric evidence reported

In Flake et al.'s three-phase framework, which phase evaluates whether a scale's items adequately represent the full theoretical breadth of the construct?

The substantive phase, which evaluates whether items reflect the construct's theoretical definition

Flake et al. found that nearly half of the scales in their sample had no citation. What is the significance of this finding?

Flake et al. found that nearly half of the scales in their sample had no citation. What is the significance of this finding?

Flake et al. argue that arbitrary operationalism contributes to the replication crisis in psychology. Which mechanism do they describe?

Studies using the same construct label but different measures may fail to replicate due to measurement inconsistency, not because the original finding was false

What defines an observational study in research design?

The researcher records what occurs in the world without intervening to change it

In a survey, participants are asked how often they exercise per week. They systematically overestimate. According to Week 4A, this is best described as an example of:

Social desirability bias, because exercise is socially valued and people tend to present themselves favourably

According to Week 4A, what specific threat to causal inference does random assignment address?

Confounding, by distributing pre-existing differences across conditions rather than concentrating them in one group

In a breakfast study, participants are randomly assigned to eat breakfast every morning for eight weeks or to maintain their existing routine, and depression is measured afterward. What specific inferential problem does the manipulation of breakfast condition solve?

The direction problem, because the breakfast assignment precedes the measurement of depression

According to Week 4A, which of the following is a genuine strength of observational research that controlled laboratory experiments often lack?

The capacity to capture behaviour as it actually occurs in real-world contexts, without artificial constraints

A laboratory experiment uses psychology undergraduates completing an artificial word-list memorisation task. The study has high internal validity but raises concern about a different form of validity. Which one, and why?

External validity, because the restricted sample and artificial task may not generalise to other populations and real-world memory

A large cross-sectional survey finds that people who exercise regularly report lower depression scores. Why can this finding alone not support the causal claim that exercise reduces depression?

Regular exercisers may differ from non-exercisers on many unmeasured variables — income, sleep, personality — that could independently explain lower depression

A lab experiment finds that a mindfulness exercise reduces self-reported anxiety. A longitudinal survey separately finds that regular mindfulness practitioners report less anxiety over time. According to Week 4A, what does convergence across these two designs provide?

A stronger basis for the causal claim, because each design's weaknesses are offset by the other's strengths

A researcher surveys 2,000 Australian adults and reports that 42% experience moderate or higher work-related stress. According to the inference ladder from Week 4B, this is best classified as:

A descriptive claim, because it states the prevalence of a characteristic in a sample without examining relationships between variables

A cross-sectional survey finds that people who use social media more frequently report lower life satisfaction. The headline reads: "Social media lowers life satisfaction." According to Week 4B, what is the key problem with this framing?

The word "lowers" implies causation, but the observational design only supports an associative claim

A longitudinal study measures screen time and depression in adolescents at two time points a year apart. Higher screen time at Time 1 predicts higher depression at Time 2. A researcher concludes: "Screen time contributes to adolescent depression." According to Week 4B, what inferential limitation remains?

Temporal order shows screen time preceded depression, but confounding variables could still explain the association

Applying the three diagnostic questions from Week 4B, what does the absence of manipulation tell you about a study's causal inference?

Reverse causation cannot be ruled out, because the researcher did not control which variable came first

A randomised experiment assigns university students to a two-week social media break or normal continued use. The break group reports lower anxiety afterward. The paper concludes: "Reducing social media use improves mental health." According to Week 4B, what type of claim inflation is present?

Scope inflation, because "mental health" is a far broader claim than the single self-reported anxiety measure used in the study

A cross-sectional survey of 800 employees finds that high-mindfulness employees report lower burnout. What is the most accurate characterisation of the inference that mindfulness "reduces" burnout?

Not justified, because the cross-sectional design cannot rule out confounders or establish which variable preceded the other

According to Week 4B, what does calibrated confidence require when evaluating a research finding?

Matching the degree of belief in a claim to what the study's design actually supports — neither dismissing all evidence nor accepting it uncritically

The Nuremberg Code was issued following the trial of Nazi doctors after World War II. According to Week 5A, what did it formally establish for the first time?

That voluntary consent from research participants is absolutely essential

According to Week 5A, why are Human Research Ethics Committees deliberately composed to include people with no stake in the research being approved?

To introduce independent scrutiny and counteract researchers' natural tendency to rationalise in favour of their own projects

A researcher proposes to study PTSD symptoms in combat veterans by asking them to describe their traumatic experiences in detail. According to Week 5A's risk categories, the primary ethical concern is:

Harm and distress, because the study may re-traumatise participants through recall of distressing events

According to Week 5A, which of the following accurately describes the conditions under which deception in psychological research is ethically permissible?

When the study could not be conducted without it, participants would not have been harmed had they known the true purpose, and full debriefing follows

According to Week 5A, the principle of "justice" in research ethics is primarily concerned with:

Making sure that the burdens of research participation and the benefits of the resulting knowledge are fairly distributed

According to Week 5A, which statement most accurately captures the meaning of the unconditional right to withdraw from research?

Participants can withdraw at any point, without giving a reason, and the researcher must create conditions that make this genuinely exercisable

A researcher completes a deception study, reads participants a short prepared statement explaining the real purpose, then thanks them and ends the session. According to Week 5A, what does this approach fail to meet?

The standard that debriefing must give participants the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered to their satisfaction

According to Week 5A, why do studies involving children, prisoners, or people with cognitive impairments require a higher standard of ethical protection?

The capacity to give truly free and informed consent may be compromised by power imbalances or reduced decision-making capacity

A researcher studies whether sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance. Participants are randomly assigned to sleep either four or eight hours, and reaction time is measured the following day. According to Week 5B, which is the independent variable?

Sleep duration, because it is what the researcher manipulates and represents the proposed cause

A study codes participants' cultural background as 1 = Australian, 2 = Asian, 3 = European, 4 = Other. According to Week 5B, why would it be inappropriate to calculate a mean for this variable?

The numbers are too small to produce a meaningful average

According to Week 5B, what is the key distinction between ordinal and interval measurement?

Ordinal scales have a meaningful rank order but unknown intervals between points; interval scales have equal, known intervals

According to Week 5B, which property distinguishes a ratio variable from an interval variable?

Ratio variables have a true zero point representing the complete absence of the quantity being measured

A mindfulness group has a mean stress score of 48 after the intervention; a control group has a mean of 62. According to Week 5B, why is this 14-point gap not sufficient on its own to conclude the intervention worked?

The difference could reflect the real effect of the intervention or just random variation — statistics is needed to distinguish between the two

A dataset of ten stress scores includes one extreme score of 140, with all other scores falling between 30 and 51. According to Week 5B, why is the median a better description of the typical score?

The extreme score of 140 pulls the mean upward, making it unrepresentative of where most scores actually cluster

According to Week 5B, what did Anscombe's Quartet demonstrate about descriptive statistics and data visualisation?

That four completely different datasets can share identical descriptive statistics, making visualisation essential for understanding what data actually contains