Ch2 ~15q Research Methods

facilitated communication

ouija?

prefrontal lobotomy

surgical procedure that severs fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus

intuitive thinking

also referred to as system 1

quick reflexive and its output consists mostly of gut hunches, requires little mental effort.

analytical thinking

also referred to as system 2

slow and reflective, takes mental effor

heuristic

mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of the world

naturalistic observation

watching behaviour in real-world settings without trying to manipulate the situation

High in external validity

external validity

extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world settings

internal validity

extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences from a study

case study

research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, often over an extended time period

eh, but provide existence proofs

existence proof

demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon CAN occur

random selection

procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate

the key to generalizability

reliabality

consistency of measurement

interrater reliability

consistency of measurement among different researchers

validity

extent to which a measure assesses to what it purports to measure

As in does a questionnaire claiming to measure introversion actually do as it claims? Or is it like measuring anxiety or whatever else

self response measures

pros: cheap, wide, direct, generally honesty

cons: skill issue+dishonesty

response set

tendency of research participants to distort their questionnaire items, be it to make themselves appear better and such

can counter by adding many never/always or perfective choices, a high number of selections of which should arouse suspicion

halo effect

tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to "spill over" to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics, including for external parties, not just self

for negatives, called the horns effect

correlational design

research design that examines the extent to which, 2 variables are associated

positive up<->up

negative up<->down / down<->up

zero up/down<->no inferrability

correlation coefficient

goes from -1.0 to +1.0, size from absolute value you duh

scatterplot

points representing each persons variable scattered across a 2D graph

illusory correlation

perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists.

often form the basis of superstitions

demod by the great fourfold table of life

great fourfold table of life

Event 1yes or no?

Event 2yes or no?

We focus most on the double yesess obviously.

explanation for illusory correlations

experiment

research design characterized by random assignment of participants to conditions and manipulation of an independent variable.

Allows inferences on cause and effects

random assignment

randomly sorting participants into 2 groups

experimental group

in an experiment, the group of participants that recieves the manipulation

control group

in an experiment, the group of participants that does not recieve the manipulation

independent variable

variable that the experimenter manipulates

dependent variable

variable that the experiment measures to see whether the manipulation produces an effect

operational definition

a working definition of what a researcher is measuring

Specify, also specify how you measure it.

confounding variable

oopsie other independent variables!

placebo effect

improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement

most popular pitfall in experimental design

blind

unaware of whether one is in the experimental or control group.

Finding out actually just leads to better performance whether you were in the control or experimental group, lol

double blind

Now even the researcher doesn't now which participants are in the experimental and which are in the control group. the patient obviously still doesn't

counters experimenter expectancy effect

experimenter expectancy effect

phenomenon in which researchers' hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study

informed consent

informing research participants of what's involved in a study before asking them to participate

IRB

institutional review board

debrief

researchers inform the partipants of what the study was about at the end of the study.

statistics

statistics

descriptive statistics

numerical characterizations that describe data

central tendency

measure of the centraal scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster

mean

average, a measure of central tendency

median

50%ile, a measure of central tendency

mode

most frequent score in a data set; a measure of tendency

umm actually it's actually the global peak of the distribution, works in continuity

variability

measure of how loose or tightly bunched the data is

range

measure of variability that consists of the difference between the highest and lowest scores

standard deviation

measure of variability, how far are the data points from the mean?

and for you gigachads, inflection of the normal curve

inferential statistics

math to determine whether findings from sample generalizeable to full population

reporters

usually not scientists