Critical Thinking & Research

confirmation bias

when we only seek out agreement to our opinions/only looking for the supporting evidence

hindsight bias

belief you knew something before the fact, even though you never would have known until after the fact (misplaced belief that we knew something all along

proportionality bias

tendency to believe important things have important causes and small things have small causes

overconfidence

we feel we will successful (can be problematic)

critical thinking

examimes assumptions (why?), discerns hidden values (bias?), evaluates evidence (fact?), assesses conclusions (correct? other?)

scientific method

organize observations/make predictions/form a hypothesis (provable)

operational definitions

extremely specific/particular definition, very detailed way of assessing what your thinking (ex: recipes)

reliable

is it repeatable?

valid

does it test what it is supposed to?

descriptive research

lets us observe something and draw conclusions from it, but you have no control over the situation (take what you can get)

naturalistic observations

find what you want to study and form conclusions, see behavior w/o the environment impacting what they do/no external influences

observer bias

going in with certain expectations, when the presence of the researcher impacts their perception of the environment

case studies

observation focused only on a single subject over a long period of time (similar to a longitudinal study) ex) Phinneas Gage, Broca’s area

surveys

problems arise because people tend to lie

extrapolate

to form an observation and apply information from it to other people

courtesy bias

lies to tell people what they want to hear/to spare them

social desirability bias

lies to meet the expectations of our community

correlation

relationship between two quantities

correlation coefficient

a number that indicates the intensity of the relationship (positive or negative), always between -1 and +1 (distance from zero)

positive correlation

both variables move in the same direction, more likely for things to happen and for things to be connected (ex: being sunny outside and skin cancer)

negative correlation

one variable increases as the other decreases, less likely to happen/be related (ex: sleeping in class and grades)

illusory correlation

the correlation exists, but it is not because one causes the other (false connection)

experimental research

gives you control over results and information, not assessing something in its natural environment so it may or may not be applicable to the world at large

independent variable

the factor that the researcher manipulates or changes to see its effect on another variable (cause)

dependent variable

the variable that is being measured and is expected to change as a result of the manipulation of the independent variable (effect)

confounding variable

an extraneous factor that interferes with the relationship between the independent and dependent variables (other factors)

experiment group

a group of participants who are exposed to a specific manipulation of the independent variable

control group

a group of participants who do not receive the experimental manipulation or treatment that is being tested on other groups (but they believe they are being experimented on)

placebo effect

idea that our belief can influences our perception

double-blind

neither the participants nor the researchers administering the experiment know which treatment condition each participant is assigned to

internal validity

there are no confounding variables, the extent to which a study accurately measures the causal relationship between variables without interference from other factors

external validity

the degree to which research findings can be generalized to other situations, populations, and times (does it test what it’s supposed to)

APA experiment requirements

obtain informed consent, be safe from harm (both physically and psychologically), maintain confidentiality, debrief participants

mean

average number

median

middle number

mode

most frequent number

standard deviation

a number that indicates how far you deviate from the average

z-score

how many standard deviations away you are (3 or less)

statistical significance

the hypothesis you formed is 95%+ certain about the information, the likelihood that the observed results in a study are due to a real effect or relationship between variables, rather than just random chance

p-value

measure of how much chance influences your results (a value of less than 5 is very significant)