Experimental Psychology Exam 1
What three things do experimental researchers try to incorporate in their work?
1. comparison groups 2. control for confound 3. evaluate information without bias
Your friend Gaby loves reading articles about psychology studies in her monthly women's magazine. Which of the following would you tell her?
Be careful about reading those articles because they may not present accurate findings.
When reading an empirical journal article "with purpose," why should you read the abstract first?
Because it provides an overview of the article
Sasha believes that she is a nice person. To confirm this, she asks all her friends whether she is a nice person; they all agree that she is. Sasha concludes that she is a nice person and says she has evidence of it. However, she does not ask any of her enemies whether they think she is a nice person. This is an example of which of the following?
Cherry-picking of evidence
Which two theories together explain all of our waking hours?
Cupboard theory and Contact Comfort theory.
How does the research by Dr. Rush on bloodletting and Dr. Bushman on catharsis help illustrate the limitations of research experience and strength of experimental designs?
Dr. Rush- left out comparison groups. did not hold a constant group, therefore confounds ad a play in it.Dr. Bushman- experiment proved popular assumption/idea wrong about venting/catharsis helping people out more than just sitting in a quiet room. By doing an experiment with comparison groups, they were proved wrong. If this exp had not been done then peoples beliefs would have put them on the wrong path via assumption or their personal exp.
Contact Comfort Theory (of mother-infant attachment)
Harlow proposed that comfortable touch would explain a greater amount of infant behavior than food.
Harlow and the Contact-Comfort theory
He hypothesized that a wire "mom monkey" that supplied milk would be more utilized by the baby monkey because food is a reinforcement. However, the baby monkey spent more time with the fabric mom than the wire mom and only utilized the wire mom when it was hungry.
Elliott is double majoring in English and psychology. He plans on being a high school English teacher and is only majoring in psychology because he finds the classes interesting. All of the following are important reasons for him to be a good consumer of research EXCEPT:
He will likely need to be a producer of researcher as well
What did Maslow work on?
How the primary reinforcers (related to Harlow's monkey study) can be overcome by other needs and behaviors
Both James and Thomas have theories that explain why listening to classical music while reading is associated with increased recall of the material. James's theory is much simpler than Thomas's. Thomas created his theory a few months before James did. Which of the following is true?
James' theory would be considered better because it is more parsimonious
behaviorism
Love= whatever provides reinforcing food
psychoanalytic theory
Love= whatever satisfies oral needs
Rat study on separation from mom and hippocampus damage.
Study showed that rats who were separated from their mom had more stress=higher cortisol levels=more damage to the hippocampus=harder time finding the maze (affected memorization)
Sherif
Used autokinetic effect to study conformity (small light moving in dark room)
Translational research is best thought of as ____________ basic research and applied research.
a bridge between
How is a review article different from an empirical study?
a lit review discusses past studies while an empirical study discusses the methods and findings of original research conducted by the authors
Benjamin is a social psychologist who studies marriage. He believes that marital satisfaction has two components: the ability to trust one's partner and a belief that one can be a good spouse. This is known as:
a theory
RESEARCH STUDY 1.1 Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that there are three fundamental needs that are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Susan predicts that students who have these needs met in their psychology class feel happier and more satisfied with the class. She collects data and finds that students who feel more related and competent do feel happier but that feeling more autonomous does not seem to matter. Susan thinks that maybe autonomy is only necessary when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Refer to Research Study 1.1 above to answer the following question. After Susan collects and analyzes her data, which of the following is the next logical step?
a theory
What is a confound?
anything that affects a dependent variable and that may unintentionally vary between the experimental conditions of a study
confirmatory hypothesis testing
asking questions to get the answers we want
Research that is done specifically to add to our general understanding of psychology, like distinguishing the components of extraversion or predicting the time it takes a person to determine whether an object is a face or another object, is known as:
basic research
After reading the chapter, Cyril says to himself, "I am sure other people might engage in faulty thinking but I never would." What is Cyril experiencing?
bias blind spot
translational research
bridge from basic to applied
Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as:
confirmatory hypothesis testing
Lana is writing her first empirical journal article. Although she thinks she knows why she found the results she did, she also wants to mention some alternative explanations for her findings. In which section will she mention these alternative explanations?
discussion
Of the options listed below, which of the following is the last section of an empirical journal article?
discussion
Which of the following people will likely NOT find it important to be a consumer of psychological research professionally?
gardeners
basic research
goal is to enhance the general body of knowledge
Cupboard Theory (of mother-infant attachment)
infant values mothers ability to provide nourishment overtime, infant associates mother with pleasure such as reduced hunger (mom is like a cupboard to offspring)
availability heuristic
making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind
Basic matrix task study
people did not cheat when more money was involved because they felt it compromised their integrity. This shows rationalization theory because they chose to maintain self respect
Psychological scientists may choose to publish their work in all of the following EXCEPT:
popular magazines
rationalization theory
predict that a person who cheats, does so because he/she compares the gains to one's self respect
applied research
research undertaken to solve a specific problem
Which of the following sources is most likely to contain only information that has been rigorously peer-reviewed?
review journal articles
R and R
revision and resubmission
Which of the following is true of the distinction between scientific journals and popular magazines?
scientific journal articles are peer-reviewed; popular magazine articles are not.
Gain-Loss theory
suggests that people focus strictly on how the costs and benefits of the behavior will affect them.
Benjamin is a social psychologist who studies marriage. He believes that marital satisfaction has two components: the ability to trust one's partner and a belief that one can be a good spouse. He conducts a study to test his ideas. Assuming that his data match his theory, which of the following statements should he make?
the data provide support for my theory
Theory-Data Cycle
theory, research questions, research design, hypothesis, data, revision
Research studies are superior to personal experience because:
they include at least one comparison group
All of the following are reasons psychological scientists publish their research EXCEPT:
to get money from the journals where their work appears
T or F? A focus group study is empirical but not experimental.
true, empirical=real world evidence, experimental=experimental evidence