methods

-Description: How are people, thinking, feeling, or acting in response -Explanation: Understand what causes an event to occur “how” “why” -Prediction: predict future events based on previous observations Application: how can we help change peoples behaviours and improve lives

Types of psychological questions:

-Description: How are people, thinking, feeling, or acting in response

-Explanation: Understand what causes an event to occur “how” “why”

-Prediction: predict future events based on previous observations

Application: how can we help change peoples behaviours and improve lives

Prior Research on the topic: Covid vaccine

-Hornsey,Harris & feilding, 2018 looked at anti vax attitudes in 24 countries. Attitudes we associated with motivational factors like reactance and disgust

-people don't like to be told what to do

What is Science?

-Must be an observation:systematic empiricism

-Must be testable: empirical research questions

-Results must be shared: public knowledge

What makes an idea testable:

-Can be supported or opposed with data: value judgements cant be tested

-Can be falsified

What isn't science:

-Pseudoscience: activities and beliefs that pretend to be science but dont follow scientific principles

-pseudoscience uses ad hoc hypotheses to make data fit the theory, subjective, avoids peer review, studied are vaguely describes; cant be reproduced

Basic vs Applied Research

-Basic: Conducted to collect better understanding of human behaviour, without trying to solve a problem

-Applied: Conducted to try and solve a problem

Why is Psychology a science:

-Because it adheres to scientific method; uses empirical observation, testable, falsifiable, shares results

-Qualitative methods:

Methods that produce data such as written text, photos, interviews, videos etc

structured vs unstructured interviews

-Structured interviews: asks client a list of questions, record responses

-Unstructured interviews: Let client lead the conversation

cross sectional surveys

Measure some constructs; see how they are associated

-experiments: Manipulate one construct, the measure another (EG. Randomly assign some people to experience awe ( experimental condition) while others do not ( control), and the measure prosocial behaviour

Longitudinal studies:

Measure constructs repeatedly to see how they change overtime

Multimethod Design

Use of multiple designs incorporated into one: Applied question: If we get people to spend more time in nature, will

that increase prosocial behavior over time?

■ Test with a combination of research design elements

● E.g. an experimental manipulation + longitudinal follow ups

Generating research ideas ( what to think about first)

■ Think groundbreaking

■ Basic or Applied?

Degrees of Scientfic Progress:

Large, groundbreaking progress tend to:

■ Tackle questions of broader significance

■ Be relevant to a number of different research areas

■ Shift how researchers conceptualize a topic

Small, incremental progress tends to:

■ Advance a specific question, limited in scope

■ Be relevant to a specialized area

Ground breaking research: Basic Approach

What's an important phenomenon that we do not understand?

○ What’s been holding us back from understanding it?

○ What are some new ways we can bridge that knowledge gap

Important Basic Research Advancement Occurs:

-When a new theoretical model is developed that parsimoniously explains

a phenomenon

-When a key idea (an existing theory, assumption, piece of conventional

wisdom, etc.) is challenged

-When a new method is uncovered that can tackle previously-unexplored

questions

Need to Belong Theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)

People have a fundamental need for social connection,

similar to our need for food

● We need frequent, pleasant interactions with others

● We need relationships with those others, stable, enduring,

with concern for each other’s welfare

● When these needs aren’t met, we suffer

● We only need so many relationships (satiation)

Are Humans Inherently Self Interested? Yamagishi et al., 2014:

People played an online economic game where they

allocated real money to self vs stranger

○ Only 7% of respondents kept all the money

Sebastian-Enesco et al., 2013

Toddlers played a game with an adult

○ Prosocial option (both self and partner benefit) vs

selfish option (only self benefits)

○ Toddlers consistently chose prosocial option, even if

adult partner chose selfish option

Ground Breaking Research: The Applied Route

What’s an important societal problem

○ What’s a factor that we think or know to be causing that problem

○ What are some new ways we can solve that problem

approaches to applied advancement (4)

■interventions

When a new exercise, treatment, way of thinking, etc. can be

implemented to help with a problem

Better Decision Making:

■ When making a certain kind of choice helps the problem

○ Persuasion:

■ When people can be convinced that something is the problem

○ Policy Implementation:

■ When there’s something that the government or another

organization can do to help solve the problem

The Wrong Way to Do a Lit Review:

■ Exhaustively find and read ALL the research that’s been done on

the topic

● Do not discriminate between different sources and journals –

give everything equal weight

■ Make sure your lit review reads like a list of previous work

● Don’t try to tie it together into a narrative – just read and

describe them study by study

■ Then, slap your own research idea on top of that

● Don’t use literature to inform your idea. Just tell us what they

did, and then what you’re going to do, without integration

Conducting a Literature Review

Reviewing existing literature is essential for:

● Figuring out what’s already done and what has not

● Informing your hypothesis

● Informing your design

■ In research, it’s often good to be unoriginal (don’t reinvent the

wheel)

low vs high quality sources (lit review)

■ You want to draw from expert’s stuff first and foremost

■ Consider the source: Research can be everywhere

○ E.g. academic journals, textbooks, news articles,

blogs, pop-psych books, garbage social media posts

● Differ in Target audience: Scientific vs lay audience

● Differ in terms of originality: Primary sources (original research) vs secondary

sources (summaries of research)

○ Primary Sources: Place where the research was originally

published

■ Written for other experts, Preferred by researchers because they

typically Included full methods and results of a study

● Cite claims that are made

What is a literature review?

A summary of the most relevant work that has previously been

published on your specific topic of interest

■ It is NOT an exhaustive list of everything ever done

Secondary Sources:

Summarizes information from primary sources

■ Typically written to be accessible to a

non-expert

■ Less preferred by researchers because they

may be: Incomplete or Inaccurate

-not peer reviewed (quality control problem)

Research ethics: Core principles 1

Core Principle 1: Respect for Persons (most important)

● Respect people’s autonomy with informed consent: Participants should always give free, informed and

ongoing consent

● Ways to Violate the Respect Principle: Failing to disclose risks:

■ Milgram study had this problem

○ Failing to make the study understandable

■ Legalese (complicated legal wording); improperly translated(misinfo); populations with diminished capacities (kids)

○ Coercive incentives: An offer they can’t refuse

Ethics Core Principle 2:

Core Principle 2: Concern for Welfare

The Benefits of the study must outweigh the risks

● Ways to Violate the Welfare Principle: Not doing everything possible to avoid risks

■ There are usually risk reduction steps available, and the onus is on the researcher to

take them

○ Conducting a bad study: Bad research wastes everyone’s time

Ethics core principle 3 (Tuskegee study example)

Core Principle 3: Seek Justice:

● The study should be conducted justly, meaning: Participants must be compensated fairly, Risks and benefits of the study must be distributed

equitably across groups, Researchers must act with integrity

● Ways to Violate the Justice Principle: Unreasonably low compensation, One group participates and another group benefits, Lying to the participants or to the scientific community

●Researchers must uphold ethical standards to maintain participants trust in us

○ Tuskegee Study: No informed consent, Failure to mitigate risks, Benefits of study did not outweigh risks, Study continued when syphilis treatment already existed. 128 people died, 40 wives infected, 19 children born with syphilis

■ The study recruited poor black men specifically and Deeply unjust

■ Long Term Impact: Widespread distrust in medicinal

research within black communities,

What is a Theory

A coherent explanation or interpretation of one or more phenomena

○ It is the answer to the “why” question. What is the mechanism?

○ Theories often deal with theoretical constructs:

■ Variables that can’t be directly observed

■ E.g. memory, costs/rewards, schizophrenia

whats a Phenomenon

○ An established finding

○ Something we know to be true from repeated observation

○ Phenomenon: Over generations, species become increasingly well suited to new

climates

○ Theory: This occurs because of natural selection (Theory of Evolution)

Attachment Systems (relationships + family)

Attachment System (Bowlby, 1979)

○ Theory: We have a biologically based system that promotes attachment to

close others, often one person in particular (attachment figure)

● Origins of Attachment System: Babies are very weak and helpless

■ Staying close to parents in childhood promotes survival

○ Attachment system is adaptive because it promotes infant-caregiver

bonding

● Attachment in Adulthood: Pair bonding is also adaptive:

■ Children were traditionally more likely to survive with the help of

both parents

○ The attachment system, which we use to attach to parents in childhood,

transfers to romantic partners in adulthood

■ Fraley et al, 2005

● Activation of the Attachment System

○ When we are not distressed, there’s no attachment activation

○ When we are distressed, the attachment system activates and motivates

us to seek out our attachment figure

● Activation Theory Explains: New couples rely on each other for support and don’t like to be apart. Couples how physiological stress symptoms when one partner travels for

work

○ Breakups are highly distressing and take about a month to recover from

○ People try to re establish contact with loved ones during disasters

Perspective

A broad approach to explaining a phenomenon

● At what level are you measuring things?

● E.g. Developmental, biological, cognitive

■ Broader and vaguer than a theory

models

Models:

■ A precise explanation of a specific phenomenon

● E.g. Why are some people really clingy with their friends and

partners?

■ Narrower and more specific than a theory

What are theories helpful for

■ Organizing what we know

■ Making testable predictions

Conscientiousness

● Conscientiousness: The propensity to control impulses, be goal directed,

plan, delay gratification

hypothesis

hypothesis: Tentative statements about the association between

variables that can be directly tested

● Theoretical claim: Conscientious people are better at controlling

impulses

● Hypothesis: Conscientious people are less likely to cheat on their

romantic partner

Theory: Formality

■ Formality: How clearly specified is the theory? How specific and detailed are the components of the theory?

■ Informally described: Losses are more painful than gains

Theory: Scope

How broad a range of behaviours is captured by the theory?

● How broad is the theory?

○ How many phenomena does it attempt to explain?

Theoretical Approach

● What kinds of theoretical ideas is the theory constructed

from

● Are you trying to explain how something happens, or why it

happens?

Functional Theories:

■ Explaining something’s function or purpose (the why)

■ Evolutionary psychology contains many functional theories

Mechanistic Theories:

■ Explaining something’s mechanism (the how)

■ Neuroscience contains many mechanistic theories

Theories Are Working Truths

○Testing Hypotheses can modify theories: If hypothesis is supported, theory is supported

○ A single study cannot prove or disprove a theory

○ Replication is critical for confidence in a theory

Direct vs Conceptual replication

Direct Replication:

■ Repeating the study in the same manner

■ Increases confidence in the hypothesis

Conceptual Replication:

■ Using different methods to test the same research question

■ Increases confidence in theory

Open science movement: What creates false positives?

■ Incentives to publish: Academics are rewarded for publishing (with jobs, grants,

tenure, respect, etc.) which can motivate people to take

shortcuts

■ Assuming your effect doesn’t exist, how likely are these results?

○ You should get a false positive 1/20 times

○ But if you try to test the same thing 20 different

ways… then you falsify your findings

whats a p-value

The probability that you would get these results if the

null hypothesis were true

What does it mean to "add or drop experimental conditions"?

It refers to changing the experimental setup by including or excluding certain conditions that were initially planned to be tested.

How do open materials and data improve research transparency?

• Allow readers to see and test all dependent variables (DVs).

• Readers can analyze data with and without covariates (can influence but not main interest).

• Ensure that experimental conditions are visible and testable.

potential downsides of open sharing

Sharing data can have ethical implications.

direct replication

• Direct replication: Conducting the exact same study again to see if you obtain the same results.

  • The best replication attempts use a very large sample (e.g., collected from across many labs).

• Most journals publish these now, even if they fail.

Credibility Revolution

• The movement has expanded to many other ways we can improve research practice.

• Credibility is not just about statistical results.

• How can we improve the validity of:

  • Our measures?

  • Our experimental manipulations?

  • Our samples? (e.g., greater diversity)

constructs

Variables that cannot be observed directly

■ E.g. traits, emotions, attitudes, abilities

conceptually vs operationally defining constructs

• Conceptual Definition: Explains what a construct means in theory (e.g., happiness is a state of well-being and contentment).

• Operational Definition: Specifies how the construct is measured or observed in practice (e.g., happiness is measured by self-reported satisfaction on a scale of 1-10).

Types of measurement

● Self report measures: Interviews or questionnaires

○ People report their beliefs, behaviour, history, etc.

● Behavioural measures: Observations of behaviour

○ Could be naturally occurring or lab induced

● Physiological measures: Assessment of bodily states

■ E.g. brain imaging (fMRI, PET); heart rate

Methodological Advances

New measurement options can become available with

new technology

Feasibility

Resource limitations (e.g. time, money) may constrain

your choice

Reliability (true score, obtained score)

■ Does your measurement consistently measure the same thing?

■ Accuracy: No measure is going to be completely accurate

○ E.g. scale will be slightly off, questionnaire scores

won’t be identical

● True Score: The real score on the variable

● Obtained Score: The score the measure gives

measurement error

-Difference between true score and obtained score

● Want to minimize measurement error: Does your measure give consistent results under the same conditions? (repeating questionnaire questions)

● E.g. If nothing changes: Scales should give the same weight. Questionnaire results shouldn’t change if taken twice

test-Retest reliability

○ Test it with test-retest correlation

○ Same test is given twice with some time in between

○ Good for stable qualities (e.g. personality) not good

for temporary states (e.g. mood

Parallel Forms Reliability:

○ Different forms of the same test used

Internal Consistency:

Test with split-half correlation:

■ Top half of questionnaire is compared to

bottom half

interrater Reliability

Multiple raters observe behavior to increase reliability

Validity

■ Does your measurement consistently measure the right thing?

■ How do you test the validity of a measure?

Face Validity:

Does the measure look like it measures the thing it’s

meant to measure? (how effective is it)

content validity

○ Does the measure capture all the important facets of

the construct?

Criterion Validity:

○ Convergent Validity:

■ Does it correlate with similar variables?

○ Predictive Validity:

■ Does it predict expected outcomes?

Discriminant Validity

○ The measure does not strongly correlate with unrelated constructs.

○ Also known as Divergent Validity

○ If you don’t achieve discriminant validity, your measure is likely too general or broad

Grit Measure:

■ “You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do

much to change it”

■ Your talent is something about you that you can’t change very much

■ “You can learn new things, but you can’t really change your basic

intelligence”

categorical data

■ Represent with Pie charts and bar graphs

■ Each value represents a discrete category

■ Order does not matter

Numerical Data

■ Represent with histograms and scatter plots

● Sometimes time series graphs, if data collected over time

■ Each value represents either a real number (e.g. age) or a place on

a continuum (e.g. a rating scale)

■ Order Matters

● E.g. Happiness where 1 = very unhappy, 7 = very happy

discrete vs continuous numerical data

■ Discrete: The variable has a discrete, finite number of values

○ E.g. Day of the month on which you bought your last

avocado, Only 31 possibilities

■ Continuous: The variable has an infinite number of values

● Usually Assumed to be Normally Distributed

Time series graphs

■ A special kind of line graph that shows how something changes

over time

■ X-axis: Time, usually as a discrete variable

■ Y-axis: A continuous variable you care about

survey research

Survey research uses self-report

■ People are reporting on their own thoughts, feelings, behaviors, etc.

○ Survey research tries to obtain generalizable samples

■ Ideally large and random

Survey Advantages:

■ Can assess non-observable variables, as well as variables that you

cannot (ethically) manipulate

● Demographic information (e.g. sex, age, ethnicity)

● Attitudes and beliefs

● Past behaviour

● Current behaviour that cannot be observed

● Quick to administer and score

Can gather a lot of information

● Requires few resources

interviews

● Structured or unstructured:

● Costly

● Interviewer bias

● Social desirability concerns

phone survey

■ Phone surveys:

● Structured or unstructured

● (Used to be) easy to get random samples

○ Cell phones and telemarketing ruined that

● Cheaper

● Fewer social desirability concerns

questionnaires

● Paper or electronic

● Cheapest

● Fewest social desirability concerns

● We are focusing mainly on questionnaires

Survey Disadvantages

Accuracy may be low

● Participants may lack insight about certain variables

● May forget previous behaviour

● May respond in a socially desirable manner (i.e lying)

Not manipulating IV, thus cannot determine causation

● True of all correlational/non-experimental research

Developing Valid Survey Questions:

■ Each item should be BRUSO: Brief, Relevant, Unambiguous,

Specific, and Objective

■ A good survey item is Brief: Avoid long or run-on sentences, unnecessary words, technical terms, acronym, jargon

■ A good survey item is Relevant: Avoid the temptation to include lots of extra items “just in case” (Especially personal, “nosy” questions)

■ A good survey item is Unambiguous: Avoid vague or imprecise terms

● Avoid negative wording: “Do you disagree with the idea that parents should not

spank their children”

■ A good survey item is Specific: Avoid Questions that ask two things at once

■ A good survey item is Objective: Avoid leading questions, emotionally charged words

Open-Ended vs Closed-Ended Items:

Open-Ended Items: Allow participants to respond however they want

○ What is the most important thing in running a

business?

■ Closed-Ended Survey Items: Closed-ended questions give a limited number of responses

■ Closed-Ended Categorical Items: For categorical questions, simply provide a list of options

■ Closed-Ended Continuous Items: For continuous items, we use rating scales

○ Pick a number on a scale (e.g. 0 to 10)

● Key researcher decisions: How many points on the scale?

○ What are the anchors: The labels on the ends of the scale

● Likert Scale: Common type of rating scale used to assess degree

of liking or agreement

Simple Random Sampling:

■ Everyone in the population has an equal chance of participating

Stratified Random Sampling:

○ Stratified Random Sampling: Important Subgroups are identified:

● E.g., ethnicity, gender, age, income, etc.

■ Obtain a random sample of each subgroup to mirror the population

■ E.g., sample students from public, Catholic, and private elementary

schools in London

Nonrandom Sampling

Everyone in the population does not have an equal chance of

participating

● May lead to a biased sample: Characteristics differ from the population

● Often due to selection bias: Sampling procedures that favour certain characteristics

Convenience sampling:

● Use participants who are easily available

● Very common

● Limits external validity

Student Populations:

■ 81% of research participants are university students

■ Advantages:

● Easy access to students, free

● Educate students about research

■ Disadvantages:

● Less variability in age, education, intelligence, wealth

Internet Populations

■ Tend to: Have a lot of free time

● Be lower income

● Be more tech savvy

● Take research less seriously

Voluntary Participation

■ Ethically, participation must be voluntary, but this can affect external

validity

● Volunteer bias:

○ Volunteers are different than non-volunteers

○ More educated

○ Higher social class

○ Higher intelligence

○ Higher need for approval

○ More social

○ More “arousal-seeking”

○ Women volunteer more

Generalizability

■ Is random sampling always necessary?

■ Need to consider how much participant characteristics are likely to

affect results

● Sometimes, very much

○ E.g. political polling

● Sometimes, less so

○ E.g. Vision and reaction time

○ E.g. Mere exposure effec

what do employers want

communication skills, strong work ethic, sense of inititive, teamwork skills, interpersonal skills,

Building an academic network

Advantages of an academic network:

■ Opportunities:E.g. scholarships, internships

■ Advocacy: E.g. reference letters

■ Mentoring and support

Getting to know your professors: Office hours:

■ Class discussions: