Psych Terms Unit 1 Part 2

Mean - Example

(13 + 18 + 13 + 14 + 13 + 16 + 14 + 21 + 13) ÷ 9 = 15 15 is what?

Dependent Variable - Examples

(Same answer for both blanks.) Researchers want to discover if listening to classical music helps students earn better grades on a math exam. In this example, the scores on the math exams are the __________. Researchers are interested in seeing how long it takes people to respond to different sounds. In this example, the length of time it takes participants to respond to a sound is the __________.

Standard Deviation - Example

(Same answer for both) A professor is interested in the satisfaction of students in her psychology class. She decides to survey the students by asking them to rate the class from one to five. From the surveys, she calculates the average score to be three. From this she can assume that people's satisfaction was average. Wanting to know more she decides to calculate the _____________and finds it to be equal to two--meaning, the amount of variability between the numbers was 2. This means that most scores were either a one or a five (thus producing the average of three), showing that students were either very satisfied with her class or very dissatisfied with her class (they gave ratings of 1 or 5 most frequently). By obtaining a measure of variability, she was able to understand more about how people felt with the class than she would of with just an average score. This is one of the reasons why __________(and variability) is so important.

Percentile Score - Example

(all answers are the same) The 25th p____________ is the number that 25% of the scores are below. ______________ rank is the percent of scores in a distribution which are lower. So someone having a ____________rank of 95% on a test means that 95% of the test takers' scores were lower than theirs.

APA Ethical Guidelines for Consent

1) Any type of academic research must first propose the study to the ethics/institutional review board 2) coercion, informed consent, anonymity/confidentiality, lack of risk, debriefing procedures

Case Study - Examples

1. A researcher could conduct a _______ to investigate the memory processes of an individual with an exceptional ability to remember things. 2. A research could conduct a ___________to investigate the musical abilities of an individual with an exceptional ability to write songs. In both cases he is studying the individual in depth to draw out findings that could be more broadly applied.

Mode - Example

13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 16, 18, 21 13 is what, because it repeats itself the most times

Median - Example

13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 16, 18, 21 14 is what?

Range - Example

13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 16, 18, 21 The largest value in the list is 21, and the smallest is 13, so the ___________is 21 - 13 = 8

Standard Deviation

A computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score

Generalizability - Example

A group of people is taken out of their natural environment and studied them in the lab. We are exerting some control over them and, as a result, possibly limiting how much ____________ will apply to the findings for all people in natural settings - outside the lab.

Hindsight Bias - Example

A letter comes in the mail informing an individual that he was accepted into a college. When he tells his mother she says, "I really had a feeling that you were going to get in" (even though she had expressed doubts to his father earlier that week)

APA Ethical Guidelines for Consent - Example

A psychologist wants to conduct a study but first he needs to propose it to a review board. The board will make sure he applies the highest ideals of psychology - particularly around the study participants agreeing to participate and keeping their data confidential.

Debriefing - Example

A researcher completes a psychological study. After he is done, he provides participants with appropriate information about the nature of the experiment. He also shares with subjects all information related to what the purpose of the research was, as well as what his findings indicate.

Operational Definition - Example

A researcher measuring happiness and depression in college students decides to use a ten-question happiness scale to measure positive outlook in her subjects. In other words, her _______________________ of happiness in this case is a given subject's score on the test.

Critical Thinking - Examples

A soccer coach working during halftime on new tactics for attacking the weaknesses of the other team when the match resumes A student confidently and correctly explaining exactly to his or her peers the methodology used to reach a particular conclusion, or why and how a certain methodology or standard of proof was applied An educator using clever questioning to guide a student to new insights Police detectives, crime scene analysts, lawyers, judges, and juries systematically investigating, interrogating, examining, and evaluating the evidence as they seek justice

Normal Distribution

A symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68% fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes.

Inferential Statistics - Example

A teacher is interested in studying several aspects of her class, such as the personality of her students, whether boys are different from girls or whether different teaching styles lead to different results in her students. In order to understand any of these aspects of the children in her class, the teacher must understand some basic statistics so that she can quantify her understanding, or, in other words, put it into numerical form. She analyzes the data in a way that allows her to make conclusions about whether her hypothesis was supported by the results. Her method of analyzing data is called ___________________.

False Consensus Effect - Example

An attractive male comes along and asks the females for their phone numbers. Maggie, one of the women in the group, responds by telling him 'No, thank you.' She proceeds to say that they all have boyfriends and feel like giving out their numbers to strangers would not be appropriate. Lindsay is fine with it and hands the stranger a piece of paper with her number on it. Shocked, Maggie asks her other friends if they agree with her or Lindsay. Only one other girl in the group agrees with Maggie. What Maggie has just experienced is called ___________ (Maggie assumed that her belief was normal and that everyone felt the same way).

Quasi Experiment

An experiment that contains many of the same features that a controlled experiment does, but does not ensure the random assignment of participants to the treatment and the control groups.

Correlation Coefficient - Example

An index showing the way that scores go up and down together (as with smoking and cancer). Or in the case of a negative one of these, as one score increases, the other score decreases (as in the relationship between self-esteem and depression; as self-esteem increases, the rate of depression decreases). 2nd example: A researcher hypothesizes that taller people have higher self-esteem. After analyzing his data and coming up with an r-value of .08, he abandons his hypothesis because the two variables do not appear to be strongly related at all. What do you call that index that shows the degree of relationship?

Descriptive Statistics - Example

Analysis of data, summarizing the data in a meaningful way, that might show you: • A distribution displayed using percentages or depicted in graphical or tabular format, including histograms and stem-and-leaf display. • The shape of the distribution that tells you about the clustering of values or a wide variation •Mean, Median and Mode

Mean

Arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores.

Quasi Experiment - Example

Dr. Jones is a personality expert who studies the impact that personality traits have on intelligence. For the purposes of her current research project, she is interested in examining the IQ scores of people who score highly in each of the five 'Big Five' personality factors. Each of the five personality factors are a quasi-independent variable. Personality traits are inherent to each person, so random assignment cannot be used. Participants would initially be assigned to groups based on their personality assessment score across each of the five personality factors. Now that Dr. Jones has her participant group assignments, she can examine the impact that personality factors may have on intelligence. (If a true experimental design were used, each participant would be randomly assigned to each personality group regardless of whether or not they possessed those personality traits, which would not really address the question that Dr. Jones is asking.) In this type of experiment, the researcher is interested in independent variables that cannot be randomly assigned

Theory - Example

Erik Erikson believed that personality develops in a series of stages. Erikson was interested in how social interaction and relationships played a role in the development and growth of human beings. One of the main elements of Erikson's view is the development of ego identity. Ego identity is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction. According to Erikson, our ego identity is constantly changing due to new experiences and information we acquire in our daily interactions with others. As we face each new stage of development, we face a new challenge that can help further develop or hinder the development of identity.

Experimenter Bias

Expectations by the experimenter that might influence the results of an experiment or its interpretation.

Independent Variable

Experimental factor that is manipulated; variable whose effect is being studied.

Placebo Effect

Experimental results caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent.

Generalizability

Extent to which the findings from one group (or sample) can be generalized or applied to other groups (or population).

Control Group - Example

For example, a medical study will use two groups, giving one set of patients the real medicine and the other a placebo, in order to rule out the placebo effect. In this particular type of research, the experiment is double blind. Neither the doctors nor the patients are aware of which pill they are receiving, curbing potential research bias. This definition is for the group that received the placebo (pill containing no medicine at all.)

Hypothesis - Example

If {these changes are made to a certain independent variable}, then we will observe {a change in a specific dependent variable}." A few examples: "Students who eat breakfast will perform better on a math exam than students who do not eat breakfast." "Students who experience test anxiety prior to an English exam will get higher scores than students who do not experience test anxiety."

Placebo Effect - Example

Imagine that a participant has volunteered for a study to determine the effectiveness of a new headache drug. After taking the drug, she finds that her headache quickly dissipates, and she feels much better. However, she later learns that she was in a group where she was given just a sugar pill.

Random Assignment - Example

Imagine that a researcher was interested in the influence of music on job motivation. Some participants would be assigned to a condition in which they would hear music while working. Other participants would be assigned to a condition in which they would not hear music while working. A coin could be flipped to determine which condition each participant is assigned to. This process would be called ______________________.

Independent Variable - Example

In an experiment looking at the effects of studying on test scores, studying would be the __________. Researchers are trying to determine if changes to studying result in significant changes to the test results.

Statistical Significance

It is attained when the observed p-value of a test statistic is less than the significance level defined for the study.

Sampling Bias - Examples

Measuring professional American basketball players to estimate the mean height of American men A famous example is a political telephone survey conducted during the Truman-Dewey presidential race. Survey results indicated that Dewey would win by a landslide, failing to account for the fact that telephones were expensive at the time and only owned by a small, wealthy fraction of the population — people who tended to support Dewey more than the average voter.

Double Blind Procedure

Most computer-generated surveys are ______________ as the participant is completing the survey online and unaware of the researcher's targeted hypothesis. The researcher is not aware of who is participating in the experiment. In this scenario, since the participant is unknown, the study is free from interviewer bias. Both parties are unaware of the other's motivations and cannot influence the outcome.

Mode

Most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution

Inferential Statistics

Numerical data that allows one to generalize - to infer from sample data the probability of something being true of a population.

Descriptive Statistics

Numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics of groups. Includes measures of central tendency and measures of variation.

Hawthorne Effect - Example

One study was performed at a factory to discover if a change in lighting would affect productivity. Productivity did increase but only because of the increased attention due to the study. As soon as the study had ended, productivity decreased again. In this example, the change in productivity had nothing to do with the lighting but rather the existence of the study in the first place.

Population - Example

Psychologists may want to study, for example, the effect of some new test on all college students, but this is obviously not possible. Instead, what they do is test on a sample or a smaller group of college students. In this example, everyone who could possibly be a participant in the study (meaning, all college students) is part of the ___________. College students would be the __________ the researcher wants to study and from which they select a sample.

Replication - Example

Researchers conduct a second and third version of their experiment with different sets of participants to ensure their results are accurate.

Naturalistic Observation - Example

Researchers interested in looking at certain aspects of classroom behavior, such as interactions between students or even the dynamics between the teacher and students, might opt to watch them relate to one another in their normal classroom environment as part of their research.

Experiment - Example

Sarah is a researcher at a children's psychiatric center. Her office has just been asked to conduct a pilot study on a new prescription medication used to treat anxiety called Drug X. Sarah wants to figure out if Drug X causes a reduction in anxiety like the drug company claims. How can Sarah answer this question? One method would be to conduct an _______________

Survey - Example

Students at a university are asked to provide what they feel are the characteristics of being intelligent. They are asked the following question: In your opinion, what are the characteristics of being intelligent?

Random Sample - Example

Suppose you wanted to research the effects of receiving a bad grade on the morale of 100 high school freshmen. You might assign each student a number from 1-100, place the numbers in a hat, then choose 30 numbers from the hat.

Hawthorne Effect

The alteration of behavior by the subjects of a study due to their awareness of being observed.

Range

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

Validity and Reliability

The extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Normal Distribution - Example

The most commonly known example comes from IQ tests with the majority of the population scoring within the "normal" or middle-range of intelligence. The data is dispersed symmetrically around a bell curve.

Dependent Variable

The outcome factor, the variable that may change in responds to manipulations of the independent variable.

Percentile Score

The percentage of scores at or below a particular score.

Debriefing

The post-experimental explanation of a study, including its purpose and any deceptions to its participants.

Experimenter Bias - Example

The results of the study are likely skewed since the researchers knew which patients were actually receiving the test drug and which were getting the placebo. The researchers may have __________________, which could skew those results.

Frequency Distribution - Example

These are the numbers of newspapers sold at a local shop over the last 12 days: 22, 20, 18, 23, 20, 25, 22, 20, 18, 20, 18, 25, What is it called when we show how many times 18 papers were sold vs. 20 papers etc?:

Informed consent - Example

Thousands of Facebook users were involved in a study without their knowledge. This is an example of NOT providing what?

Validity and Reliability - Example

Two part answer If a study were to be done a second time, would it yield the same results? If so, the data is _______. If more than one person is observing behavior or some event, all observers should agree on what is being recorded in order to claim that the data is _________. __________refers to the credibility or believability of the research. Are the findings genuine? Is hand strength a valid measure of intelligence? Almost certainly the answer is "No, it is not." Is score on the SAT a valid predictor of GPA during the first year of college? The answer depends on the amount of research support for such a relationship.

Scatterplot Diagram - Example

We create a graph to plot key elements of our experiment and see that there is a negative correlation between age and Internet usage. That means that as age increases, the amount of time spent on the Internet declines, and vice versa. The direction of the indicators is a negative correlation! The graph is called a ___________________

Statistical Significance - Example

When you hear that the results of an experiment had ________________, it means that you can be 95% sure the results are not due to chance...this is a good thing. :>)

Correlation - Example

You are conducting research on school achievement. You want to know if a relationship exists between school achievement and attendance. You collect the grade point average (GPA) and days present during the school year from 15 high school students. you look at the data closely, you will begin to notice that as the days present increases, GPA also increases. What is another word for that relationship?

Skewed Distribution - Example

You are interested in studying the annual income of students one year after they have completed their Masters of Business Administration (MBA). You collect data from 400 graduates and find that their yearly income ranges from $20,000 to $150,000. You make a table that summarizes the data that you have collected. You are also interested in examining the number of applications each graduate completed before they found their current job. Using data collected from the same 400 graduates, you find that the number of applications they completed ranges from 1 to 15. This table summarizes the data that you have collected. Your data points cluster more toward one side of the scale than the other, creating a curve that is not symmetrical. In other words, the right and the left side of the distribution are shaped differently from each other.

Illusory Correlation - Example

You may have had some experiences with lawyers, some good, some not so good. It is possible that you only recall the bad experiences (maybe where you felt as though you were lied to by the lawyers) which leads you to formulate the conclusion that all lawyers are liars. Thus, you could come to associate (wrongly?) lawyers with lying, and conclude that all lawyers are liars.

Experimental Group - Example

You usually store your microwave popcorn in the kitchen cabinet, but you read an article that recommends storing it the refrigerator. You want to find out if microwave popcorn actually pops better if it is stored in the refrigerator. You have two bags of popcorn, so you keep one in the cabinet and place the other in the refrigerator. The next day, you pop each bag of popcorn for the same amount of time in the microwave. You measure the amount of popcorn that popped in each bag to see which bag produced more. The bag you put in the refrigerator is called the __________ since it received the new variable.

Confounding Variable - Example

You want to study whether bottle-feeding (Cause) is related to an increased risk of diarrhea in infants (Effect). It would seem logical that bottle-fed infants are more prone to diarrhea since water and the bottle could get contaminated, milk could go bad, etc. But if you were to conduct this study, you would learn that bottle-fed infants are less likely to develop diarrhea than breast-fed infants. It would seem that bottle-feeding actually protected against the illness. But in truth, you would have missed a very important ___________________- mother's education. If you take mother's education into account, you would learn that better-educated mothers are more likely to bottle-feed their infants, who are also less likely to develop diarrhea due to better hygienic practices of the mothers. In other words, mother's education is related to both the Cause and the Effect. Not only did the __________suppress the effect of bottle-feeding, it even appeared to reverse it!

Operational Definition

a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study. For example, human intelligence may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures.

Case Study

a descriptive technique in which one individual or group is studies in depth in hope of revealing universal principles.

Confounding Variable

a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment.

Sampling Bias

a flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample

Scatterplot

a graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables. The slope suggests the direction of the relationship between the two variables. The amount of scatter suggests the strength of the correlations.

Frequency Distribution

a math function showing the number of instances in which a variable takes each of its possible values

Correlation

a measure of the extent to which two variables change together and thus of how well either variable predicts the other

Skewed Distribution

a representation of scores that lack symmetry around their average value.

Experiment

a research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (interdependent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (the dependent variable). By random assignment of participants, the experimenter aims to control other relevant variables.

Random Sample:

a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion.

Correlation coefficient

a statistical index of the relationship between two variables

Survey

a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group.

Hypothesis

a testable prediction, often implied by a theory

Population

all those in a group being studied, from which principles may be drawn

Informed Consent

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

Double Blind Procedure

an experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo. Commonly used during drug evaluation studies.

Theory

an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events

Experimental Group

in an experiment, the group exposed to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent varialble

Naturalistic Observation

observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation.

Replication

repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic findings extend to other participants and circumstances.

Random Assignment

the assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between the different groups.

Control Group

the group not exposed to the treatment; contrasts with the experimental group and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment

Median

the middle score in a distribution

Illusionary Correlation

the perception of a relationship where none exists

Hindsight Bias

the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it

Critical Thinking

thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, assesses the source, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.

False Consensus Bias

type of cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical