What is the main goal of psychology?
To develop explanations for behavior and mental processes
What are the three key attitudes of scientific inquiry?
Curiosity, Skepticism, and Humility
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What is the main goal of psychology?
To develop explanations for behavior and mental processes
What are the three key attitudes of scientific inquiry?
Curiosity, Skepticism, and Humility
What is a hypothesis?
A statement predicting the outcome of a scientific study
What is a variable?
Anything that can vary among participants in a study
What two qualities must all hypotheses have?
Testable and falsifiable
What is an operational definition?
Describing exactly what the variables are and how they are measured
What is the independent variable?
A stimulus condition that the experimenter changes independently
What is the dependent variable?
The measured outcome of a study
What does the independent variable represent?
Stimulus or cause
What does the dependent variable represent?
Response or effect
What occurs during the analyzing the results step of the scientific method?
Looking at the data to see if it supports or disproves the hypothesis
What does it mean to replicate a study?
To do a study over to see if the same results are obtained.
What is applied research?
Has clear, practical applications.
What is basic research?
Explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used.
What is the experimental method?
A kind of research in which the researcher controls and manipulates the conditions including the IV.
What are confounding variables?
Variables that have unwanted influence on the outcome of an experiment.
What is random selection?
Each subject of the sample has an equal likelihood of being chosen for the experimental group
What is a random sample?
A sample group of subjects selected by chance, or without biased selection techniques.
What is group matching?
Ensure that experimental and control group are equivalent on some criterions
What is a representative sample?
Reflects the distribution of important variables in the larger population
What is ex post facto research?
Research in which we choose subjects based on a pre-existing condition
What is a correlation study?
Researchers try to show the relationship or correlation between two variables
What is illusory correlation?
The perception of a relationship where none exists
What is positive correlation?
The variables go in the SAME direction
What is negative correlation?
The variables go in opposite directions
What is survey method?
Method for collecting information or data as reported by individuals
What occurs in naturalistic observations?
Subjects are observed in their natural environment
What is a case study?
A detailed picture of one or a few subjects
What occurs in a longitudinal study?
One group or subject is studied for an extended period of time
What occurs in cross-sectional studies?
Looks at a cross section of the population and studies them at one point in time
What is personal/ experimenter bias?
When the researcher allows his or her personal beliefs affect the outcome of the study
What is expectancy bias?
When the researcher allows his or her expectations to affect the outcome of the study
What occurs in a double-blind study?
Neither the participants or the experimenters know who is receiving a particular treatment
What is sampling bias?
The sample is not representative of the general population
What is selection bias?
Occurs when the participants in the sample are not equally and fairly selected
What is hindsight bias?
The tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you “knew it all along”.
What is overconfidence?
We tend to think we know more than we do
What is the Barnum Effect?
Tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterizations of themselves
What is False Consensus Effect?
Tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
What is the Hawthorne Effect?
People work harder and perform better when they are participants in an experiment
What is the Placebo effect?
Sometimes the act of taking a pill produces an effect if the person believes the pill is active
What are Order Effects?
The positioning of question or tasks influences the outcome
What is descriptive statistics?
Just describes set(s) of data
What is a frequency distribution?
A summary chart which shows how frequently each of the various scores in a set of data occur.
What is a histogram?
A bar graph that uses vertical columns to visually show frequencies.
What is a frequency polygon?
A line graph made by connecting the top center scores of the columns of a frequency
What is the mean?
The measure of central tendency most often used to describe a set of data.
What is the median?
A measure of central tendency represented by the score that separates the upper half of the scores in a distribution from the lower half
What is standard deviation (SD)?
A measure of variability that indicates the average distance between the scores and their mean
What is a normal distribution?
A bell shaped curve