UNIT 0 FOR TIFFANY :D

Ap Psychology

Unit 0: Perspectives/Methods/Ethics/Stats

Perspectives

• Each level of approach by itself is incomplete but together provide many vantage points 

Branches of Study

• Developmental - branch that studies physical, cognitive and social change throughout the life span

• Education - study on how psychological processes affect or enhance teaching + learning

• Personality - study of an individual’s characteristics pattern of thinking, feeling and acting

• Counseling - branch that helps people with problems in living and achieving greater well being

• Clinical - branch that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders

• Psychiatry - branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders. Practiced by those who provide medical treatments as well as psychological therapy.

• Positive - scientific study of human functioning, Goal of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities thrive. 

• Community - branch that studies how people interact with their social environments and how social institutions and groups.

• Industrial - organizational - application of psychological concepts and methods to optimize human behavior in workplaces.

  • Human factors - subfield of I/O that explains how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be safely and easy to use.

• Psychology - the  study of behavior and the mental processes (thoughts)

Research/ Methods
Research is needed  

1. Since intuition and common sense explanations are not scientific

2. Hindsight Bias - after the outcome of an event, people claim/ believe that they could have predicted the very outcome (Knew it all along phenomenon) 

3. Overconfidence- believing you know more than you actually do

4. Perceiving order in random events - human tendency to see patterns where none exists

• Critical thinking - used to not blindly accept arguments and conclusions blindly by

1. Examining assumptions

2. Discerning hidden values 

3 Types of Research in psychology

1. Descriptive methods (non-experimental)

2. Correlational studies (non-experimental)

3. Experimental 

Descriptive Methods

1. Naturalistic observations - observe and record behavior of subjects in their natural habitat without interactions.

Pros 

• Realistic picture

•  Inexpensive

Cons

• Being watched → behavior changes

• Informed consent

• No manipulation of variables

• Observer bias + interpretations based on expectations

2. Surveys - technique for obtaining self reported information (attitudes, opinions, or behavior) on people through interviews or questionnaires. (need to identify population)

Pros

• Fast

• Inexpensive

• Few ethical considerations (anonymous)

Cons

• Misunderstanding of questions/ words

• Framing → wording, tone and the way information is presented in a questions influences how a person perceives and reacts to it

• Social desirability bias - people respond in ways that they think the researcher wants the data.

• Self report bias - people report their behavior inaccurately, on purpose or not

3. Case study - researcher wants to study something unusual/ rare + focus on that on individual or small group who had a rare experience or condition 

Pros

• A lot of detailed data gathered from unusual cases

Cons

• Small sample size

• No generalizability

• No manipulation of variables → can’t show causation

Correlational - examines relationships between 2 or more variables without manipulation or control

• Measures the extent to which two factors vary together and thus how well other factor predicts the other  

• Correlation does not mean Causation

  • Correlation indicates a possibility of causal relationships

• Third variable problem/ confounding variable - there is 3rd, unaccounted, factor that affects both variables

• Uses existing data or  descriptive methods to gather data

• Uses scatterplot to help researchers identify relationships between variables

Scatterplots

• Operational definition - way of measuring DV with units, no interpretation needed at all

• Best fit line - comprise of values of two variables

• Amount of scatter depicts the strength of relationship

• Correlation coefficient (r) - range from -1.0 to 1.0 that tells if it's a negative or positive relationship and how strong it is. 

  • Closer to extremes (-1.0 and 1.0) means the relationship is stronger

  • Closer to 0 means relationship is weaker

  • If r is negative then there is a negative relationship and vise versa

• r > 0/ positive relationship means there is a direct relationship ( two things increase or decrease together)

• r = 0.0 indicates that there is no relationship

Pros

• Inexpensive 

• Few ethical concerns (surveys)

• Not time consuming

Cons 

• Correlation ≠ Causation 

• 3rd variable problem 

• Illusory correlation - perceived correlation and confirmation bias 

  • Confirmation bias - tendency to look for or interpret information that is consistent  with ones expectations

    • Happens because people pay more attention to unusual cases which confirm the misconceptions

    • Regression towards the mean - extreme scores or events will fall back/ regress towards the average performance 

    • Failure to recognize regress will cause a false belief that an intervention is the cause of observed change when in reality is due to chance 

  • Directionality problem - not possible to determine which variable is influencing the change in the other 

Experimental 

• Experiments isolate and discover causes and their effects

• Researchers manipulates 1 variable (independent variable), observes the effect on another variable, the dependent variable (uses operational definition to measure ) 

• Only one that can show casual relationships

Experimental terms 

• Hypothesis - a testable prediction that can be falsifiable

  • Falsifiable - able to be disproven through and empirical test 

• Control group - does not receive treatment

  • Used for baseline/ basis of reference and/or comparison 

• Experimental group - receives the treatment

• Random sampling - picking people for the study from the population you identified randomly. Provides a representative sample of the population which allows for generalizability 

• Convenience bias (avoid) - creating a sample using respondents who are convenient to the researcher 

• Double blind procedure - both participants and researchers are blind about who receives the IV

• Placebo effect - effect caused by expectations alone

• Validity - the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it;s supposed to 

• Group matching - when researchers wants to make groups equivalent on some criterion

Pros

• Manipulation of variables

• Identify cause-effect relationship

• Repeatable

• Generalizability

Cons 

• Confounding variables 

• Experimenter bias - unconsciously treat groups different which affect the results

• Replication - process of repeating a study to see if the same results are obtained 

• Peer review - experts within the field are submitted for publication in academic journals

  • Both increase validity and reliability of findings

• Reliability is consistency

• Validity is accuracy 

• Both are quality control mechanisms 

Ethics

Researcher needs to:

1. Informed consent - Participants must know 

• They are involved in research

• What the research is about

• And give their consent

• Informed assent - minors consent to participate in a clinical trial that is not legally binding 

Participants must be

• Competent

• Able to comprehend

• Volunteers (no coercion, threats, offers that can't be resisted)

2. Nonmaleficence - participants must be protected from harm, physical or emotional

3. Confidentiality/ Anonymity - participants

• Privacy protected

• Identity and actions can’t be revealed

• No ability to match responses to person

4. Full debriefing at the end of the study - participants 

• Are informed of the purpose of the study

• If deceived,  the real purpose of the study must be told

• Contact information of the researcher

5. Deception is allowed if:

• Researchers can’t do without it

• There is scientific/ educational importance

• No trauma

• Cannot invalidate informed consent

  • Similar enough to actual study

• Full debriefing is at the end

Two institutions

1. American Psychological Association (APA)

• Established ethical guidelines for human and animal research

• First ethics code published in 1953

2. Institutional Review Board (IRB)

• An ethics committee

• Universities and hospitals where research is conducted

• Reviews proposed research and approves/ disapproves study proposals

Statistics

Two types of statistics

1. Descriptive statistics - numerical data used to measure and describe a distribution

• Tabular/ Dictatorial graphs can have misleading information by changing y axis → solution is to examine their findings and methods with critical thinking

Uses measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode) and variation (range and standard deviation)

Central tendency

• Means is a deceptor since outliers affect the mean the most

• Skewed distribution - most scores fall on one side of the scale and few fall on the other side

• Outliers are one/few data points that are extremely different from the others that skew the results

Positive skew

• Outliers of high values

• Mean > median

• Gives tail in positive direction

Negative skew

• Outliers of low values

• Mean < median

• Gives tail in negative direction

• Use the median for skewed data since it is the least affected by outliers

Normal distribution (no skew) 

• Median = mean = mode

• Perfectly symmetrical

We don't use mode because bi modal distribution and extreme mode are possible

• Bi-modal distribution - 2 modes that don’t produce a clear center

• Extreme mode - doesn’t take all score into account and can be very far from the center of the data

Variation 

• Range - largest number minus smallest number

  • Low range = more predictable

  • High range = less predictable

• Standard deviation = a calculation of the average distance of scores from the mean. Tells how spread out the data is/ is data is packed or dispersed

  • ± 1 SD = 68%

  • ± 2 SD = 95% 

  • ± 3 SD = 99.7% 

The two types of data

• Quantitative data - research method that relies on quantifiable, numerical data

• Qualitative data - research method that relies on in-depth narrative data that are not translatable into numbers

  • Uses structured interviews - interviews with predetermined set of questions asked of every candidate 

2. Inferential statistics - process of making an estimate, prediction or decision about a population based on a sample 

Reliable if:

• Representative sample (random sampling)

• Less variable observations (small SD)

• Large sample size

Statistical significance: 

• How likely result is due to chance or the experimental treatment (change in IV)

• Is not saying if result is important

• Reported as p-value

  • P value =.05 means there is a 5% likely results are due to chance or there is 95% chance that results occurred due to change in IV

P-value of .05 or less means

1. Data is statistically significant

2. Can be generalized to a larger population

3. Indicates results are likely not due to chance

4. Indicates results are likely due to experimental treatment 

Effect size - looks at the magnitude of difference 

• Larger effect size = stronger the relationship between two variables

Meta analysis - combines data from multiple studies to reach a single conclusion to a similar research topic

• Makes sense of conflicting or inconclusive data from multiple studies

• Produce more accurate and precise results

Histogram - bar graph depicting a frequency distribution (no space between bars)