week 1

Correlational research

The study of naturally occurring relationships among variables.

Culture

The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, traditions, products, and institutions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Demand characteristics

Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.

Dependent variable

The variable being measured, which may depend on manipulations of the independent variable.

Experimental realism

The degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants.

Experimental research

Studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others.

Field research

Research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory.

Hindsight bias

The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one's ability to have foreseen how something turned out.

Hypotheses

Testable propositions that describe relationships that may exist between events.

Independent variables

Experimental factors that a researcher manipulates.

Informed consent

An ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate.

Mundane realism

The degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations.

Naturalistic fallacy

The error of defining what is good in terms of what is observable.

Observational research methods

Where individuals are observed in natural settings, often without awareness, to provide the opportunity for objective analysis of behavior.

Random assignment

The process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition.

Random sample

A survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of being included.

Social neuroscience

An integration of biological and social perspectives that explores the neural and psychological bases of social and emotional behaviors.

Social psychology

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Social representations

Socially shared beliefs; widely held ideas and values, including our assumptions and cultural ideologies.

Theory

An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events.