Psychology 2301 chapter 2

1. The belief that strange behavior is linked to the occurrence of a full moon is an example of a(n) ________.

C. illusory correlation

What are clear definitions of inductive and deductive reasoning?

Inductive reasoning describes the process where empirical observations lead to new ideas, whereas deductive reasoning describes the process of ideas being tested against the empirical world.

29. Which of the following represents a strong negative correlation?

*A. -0.9

60. The ________ reviews research conducted using animal subjects.

*A. IACUC

15. ________, an anthropologist, contributed to our understanding of chimpanzee behavior in the wild, using naturalistic observation.

*A. Jane Goodall

31. On a graph of a correlation coefficient, points falling near to a straight sloped line indicate ________.

*A. a strong correlation

21. ________ research uses past records or data sets to investigate research questions or to look for patterns or relationships.

*A. archival

55. Many studies that cannot ethically be conducted as experiments with typical human participants ________.

*A. are possible to test with animal studies

13. Dr. Mattar is interested in knowing more about brain injury to the occipital cortex, and he studies patients individually in order to gain in-depth knowledge about their behaviors. These studies would best be described as ________.

*A. case studies

77. The scientific process is ________, involving both inductive and deductive reasoning.

*A. circular

74. A(n) ________ case study is conducted by gathering detailed information about participants who are psychological patients.

*A. clinical

34. Sandra strongly believes that attending daycare is detrimental to children's development so she decides to write her psychology term paper on this topic. She does a literature search and finds several sources supporting her opinion, but she finds that the majority of research indicates that children attending daycare experience healthy development. She writes a paper using the sources that find negative associations with daycare attendance. This is an example of ________.

*A. confirmation bias

54. ________ is the tendency to ignore evidence that disproves ideas or beliefs.

*A. confirmation bias

33. A(n) ________ is a variable that affects both variables of interest and may falsely give the impression of a cause-and-effect relationship.

*A. confounding variable

18. In order to assess whether viewpoints on decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes change with age, four groups of participants, ages 20, 30, 40, and 50, are asked whether they support this issue. What is one flaw of this design?

*D. Social or cultural factors may influence the results, not age.

62. American researchers studying the effects of physical attractiveness on compliance wish to expand the cross-cultural generalizability of their findings to a Lebanese population. They travel to Lebanon and recruit local residents, whom the American researchers rate as attractive or unattractive, to act as experimental confederates. However, they are unable to replicate their research findings. What is a potential problem with this research?

*D. The study may not be valid due to differences in standards of attractiveness between cultures.

63. Magali and Jean-Gabriel have been asked to design a study investigating happiness across the lifespan. They decide their study will involve going to the mall and asking people of a variety of ages if they are happy or unhappy. What is the most serious flaw of this design?

*D. They have not defined happiness or how it will be measured.

19. ________ research studies the same groups of participants over time.

*D. longitudinal

39. Simply expecting something to happen can make it happen. This describes ________.

*D. placebo effect

46. Drs. Goran and Lieberman are interested in assessing differences in pain threshold between men and women. They recruit male and female participants to a study that assesses tolerance for thermal pain. This is an example of a(n) ________ study.

*D. quasi-experimental

44. In order to maximize the chances that experimental groups represent the population of interest, researchers should conduct ________ and ________.

*D. random sampling; random group assignment

50. Research describing a link between childhood vaccines and autism has been ________.

*D. retracted due to a financial conflict of interest by the author

59. ________ are the most commonly used species for animal research.

*D. rodents

30. A ________ is a graphical view of the strength and direction of a correlation.

*D. scatterplot

12. What is a limitation that affects the generalizability of research results?

*D. small sample size

78. Scientific knowledge is advanced through a process known as ________.

*D. the scientific method

32. Research shows that people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to get lung cancer than those who do not smoke. This research alone demonstrates that ________.

*D. there is a relationship between smoking and lung cancer

41. Devine et al. are interested in assessing whether active versus passive play causes a preference for sweet or salty foods in toddlers. They assign groups of children to either an active play, passive play, or no play group and record their food choices when presented with a variety of sweet and salty foods. In this study, ________ is the independent variable and ________ is the control group.

*D. type of play; no play

52. ________ refers to the ability of an instrument or tool to accurately measure what it is supposed to measure.

*D. validity

67. A ________ is least likely to be involved in the IRB decision regarding whether a study will be permitted.

*D. veterinarian

22. Which of the following would be the best example of a valid naturalistic observation study in driving behavior?

*D. watching footage obtained from cameras set up unobtrusively on various streets

76. The D.A.R.E. program is an example of ________.

*D. why empirical research is needed

What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?

A hypothesis is a testable prediction about how the world will behave if our theory is correct. A theory is a well-developed set of ideas that proposes an explanation about observed phenomena. Therefore, testing numerous hypotheses can result in a theory that explains broader phenomena than the results of a single experiment.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of case studies?

A main advantage of case studies is the large amount of detailed data that can be collected. A main disadvantage is that data from case studies do not generate information about cause-effect-relationships.

4. Which correlation coefficient best represents a moderate relationship showing fewer anxiety symptoms in people who report higher life satisfaction?

A. -0.5

66. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was ethically problematic because ________.

*B. participants were not allowed to seek available treatment

51. ________ refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result.

*B. reliability

From a scientific perspective, what is the major criticism of Freud's theories?

Freud's theories are problematic from a scientific perspective because they are not falsifiable: They cannot be tested in a way that either proves or disproves them.

70. One hundred introductory psychology students are surveyed about their intended majors. The results indicate that more women than men intend to pursue a psychology major, whereas more men than women intend to pursue a history major. What do these results indicate?

*D. There is a relationship between gender and intended major.

79. Research on ________ subjects must always involve ________.

*D. human; obtaining informed consent

Using an example, what is the difference between a population and a sample?

A population is the overall group that the researchers are interested in studying, whereas a sample is the subset of individuals who participate in the actual study. For example, preschool-aged children may be the population, but the sample may be a group of 50 preschool children in the Seattle area.

11. ________ is a reduction in the number of research participants as some drop out of the study over time.

A. attrition

Lesley, a sociology major, believes that money is the key to happiness. Her friend Stephen, a psychology major, believes that good health is the key to happiness. How might the two friends resolve their disagreement?

D. They could research peer-reviewed articles to see if either perspective is supported.

What is an example of a longitudinal research study?

Researchers want to investigate whether participating in a breakfast program during elementary school is associated with better grades. They study a group of children assigned to either no breakfast program or receiving a breakfast program. Researchers collect data on their academic progress in grade 1, grade 6, grade 9, and grade 12.

What is the role of skepticism in scientific research?

Skepticism is expected at all levels of research, from study design, to interpreting findings, to peer review, and to thinking about results that are published in scientific journals.

What are four types of study designs used by psychologists?

Study designs used by psychologists include naturalistic observations, case studies, archival research, surveys, correlational studies, quasi-experiments, and experiments.

What is the only type of research design that can give cause-and-effect findings, and why is this type of design not used for all research questions?

The experiment is the only type of research design that can give cause-and-effect findings. However, not all studies are designed as experiments primarily because it would often be unethical or impossible to assign individuals to groups. Also, experiments may create a study context that does not reflect reality.

What is the purpose of creating an operational definition?

The operational definition precisely defines the measures in a study, making it clear to others exactly how and what the researcher is measuring.

A group of researchers are interested in determining if women are more likely than men to use their spouse's name in casual social conversations, and they are further interested to know if it makes a difference whether their conversation partner is male or female. They assign their sample of men and women to engage in conversations with either a male or female experimental confederate (a researcher acting like another participant). Researchers conclude that the gender of the conversation partner causes a difference in the number of times that men use their spouse's name. What type of research design is this, and what is a major criticism of the conclusion?

This is a quasi-experimental design. The major criticism of the conclusion is that cause-and-effect relationships are not possible to determine based on this design.

What are three safeguards to ensure that animal research is conducted ethically?

Three safeguards include the following: the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) reviews all animal research and must give approval before research occurs, there are mandatory inspections of animal care facilities, and research is designed so that pain and distress are minimized.

What is the difference between a positive correlation and a negative correlation?

When two variables are positively correlated they move in the same direction together: both either increasing or decreasing. When variables are negatively correlated they move in opposite directions: one increasing while the other is decreasing.

42. Harrison et al. are conducting a study assessing the ability of depressed versus non-depressed participants to remember negative emotions in a short story about a family whose car breaks down. They plan to ask participants to read the story and then make a list of the emotions expressed in the story. Before beginning the study, they make a list of negative emotions (e.g., sadness and anger) that they will record from the participants' responses. In this example, negative emotions are the ________.

*A. dependent variable

72. A major advantage of case studies is ________.

*A. detailed information

58. Which of the following is not part of obtaining informed consent?

*A. explaining the hypothesis to the participants

64. Which of the following statements is not a hypothesis?

*B. Anxiety disorders are caused by a combination of genetic and environmental influences.

61. Simplicity of conducting the study is to ________ as ability to test large numbers of participants is to ________.

*B. archival research; surveys

26. The possible range for a correlation coefficient is ________.

*B. between -1 and +1

36. The ________ group does not get the experimental treatment.

*B. control

25. ________ means that there is a relationship between two or more variables.

*B. correlation

65. An upper-level psychology class is conducting an experiment on racial prejudice that involves having participants rate the likeability of faces in a set of photos. However, they tell participants that the study is about the effects of aging on likeability. When participants are finished, they are thanked for their time and leave the experiment. In this example, the class forgot to ________ in order to resolve the ________ in the study.

*B. debrief participants; deception

71. The ________ variable measures effects of the independent variable.

*B. dependent

38. Researchers are conducting a study where they have concerns that the participant's beliefs and/or the experimenter's beliefs may skew the results. Therefore, they chose to conduct a ________ study.

*B. double-blind

80. Which of the following is a scientific way of determining facts?

*B. empirical studies

75. The only way to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables is to conduct a(n) ________.

*B. experiment

23. Which of the following research designs will allow cause-and-effect conclusions?

*B. experimental

49. Peer reviewers ________.

*B. help ensure quality control in reporting scientific findings

53. An intelligence test yields the same results when administered on three separate occasions. However, the test's results are more strongly correlated with hours spent doing homework than they are with other standardized intelligence tests. This test has________ reliability and ________ validity.

*B. high; low

16. ________ assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.

*B. inter-rater reliability

27. A negative correlation means ________.

*B. one variable decreases as the other increases

69. ________ can be used to assess ________.

*B. statistical analyses; reliability

35. A basic experiment involves a minimum of ________ participant group(s).

*B. two

28. Which of the following represents a weak positive correlation?

*C. +0.2

57. ________ (IRB) reviews research that is conducted using human participants.

*C. Institutional Review Board

43. Which of the following is not a potential problem associated with relying on college students as participants in psychological research?

*C. They have higher attrition rates than other populations.

56. Ethics need to be considered when ________ scientific research.

*C. designing, conducting, and reviewing

40. The ________ is controlled by the experimenter.

*C. independent variable

45. A sample that ________ is most likely to yield generalizable results.

*C. is large and randomly selected

20. A group of preschool-age children are enrolled in a study that plans to follow them over time in order to assess behaviors and other characteristics that may predict later development of schizophrenia. This is an example of a(n) ________ design.

*C. longitudinal

14. Patwardhan et al. report data from a study where they hired experimental confederates to attend speed dating events, posing as daters, and carefully take notes on the behaviors of the daters. What type of research design did they use?

*C. naturalistic observation

37. A(n) ________ is a description of how the researchers will measure the variables of interest.

*C. operational definition

68. ________ are subjects of psychological research.

*C. participants

24. Stan and Jenny are in a psychology course that requires them to repeat an experiment that researchers have conducted in the past, in order to determine whether they produce the same results. This is called ________.

*C. replication

17. Green et al. used a ________ from their ________ of interest in order to make a ________.

*C. sample; population; generalization

47. A(n) ________ is conducted in order to determine whether there are meaningful differences between two groups in a study.

*C. statistical analysis

48. What is one task that a peer reviewer is not likely to participate in?

*C. suggesting magazines that may be interested in publishing the research

73. ________ is/are often conducted with large numbers of participants and can even be conducted by phone, email, or mail.

*C. surveys

5. Krista and Tatiana Hogan are participants in a(n) ________ of conjoined twins who are joined at the head.

A. case study

A telephone survey is conducted, asking 3,000 participants to anonymously report the number of hours that their children watch television for each week. What is one advantage and one disadvantage of this study design?

An advantage is that the large number of participants increases the generalizability of the results. A disadvantage is that the researchers are relying on self-reported findings, which often have limitations.

93. The textbook discusses the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as an example of research that would not be considered ethical by today's standards. If this study were proposed today, who would make the decision about whether it can proceed using federal funding, and who participates in this committee?

An institutional review board (IRB) composed of members of the institution's administration, scientists, and community members would decide whether this study could be conducted.

6. In a ________ study, both the researchers and the participants are unaware of the group assignments.

B. double-blind

Trephination is the ________.

B. procedure where a large hole is created in the forehead so that evil spirits can escape

10. Which of the following is not a characteristic of a good hypothesis?

C. It is complex.

3. A(n) ________ is a well-developed set of ideas that proposes an explanation for observed phenomena.

D. theory

2. Spurling et al. investigated the effects of two vocabulary learning strategies on word retention two weeks later. In this example, learning strategy is the ________ variable and word retention is the ________ variable.

D. independent; dependent

What is a debriefing?

Debriefing occurs after the participant's involvement in the study is finished, and it must occur if deception has taken place. Debriefing includes a discussion of the true and complete study purpose, how the data will be collected and used, reasons why debriefing was necessary, and how to obtain more information about the study.

What does empirical mean?

Empirical means that research findings are grounded in observable, tangible evidence that can be replicated by any competent researcher.

Research regarding the D.A.R.E. program, as discussed in the text, is an example of psychological research that can be used to help shape public policy. Why is it important to have empirical findings on this widely implemented and expensive program?

Empirically based findings are important to have because they allow for objective facts to be available. In the case of the D.A.R.E. program, empirically based findings allow the public and public policy makers to critically evaluate the effectiveness of the program and determine whether the resources used to implement it are justified.

What is experimenter bias, and what is a strategy that experimenters can use to minimize this effect?

Experimenter bias is when the researcher's expectations may skew the study results. Experimenter bias can be reduced by conducting a double-blind study: Neither the researcher conducting the study nor the participants know which group they are in.

91. Jamila is in a study that aims to evaluate the effects of a new vitamin drink on energy levels. She is told that she will be in the group receiving the drink and is asked to rate her energy levels at different points throughout the day. She feels very energized by the drink and rates her energy levels high. At the end of the study, she is debriefed and told that the experiment involved deception. She was actually in the group that received only flavored water. What is this type of effect called, and how could it be prevented in a future experiment wishing to evaluate the vitamin drink?

Jamila experienced a placebo effect. In future experiments, the placebo effect could be prevented by conducting a blinded study.

Give an example of a researcher from another discipline who has conducted research relevant to psychology.

Jane Goodall, an anthropologist, has contributed to the field of psychology through her observational studies of chimpanzees in the wild.

What is one strength and one weakness of archival research?

One strength of archival research is that it is an inexpensive type of study to conduct, and one weakness is that the researcher does not have control over the type of data that is collected.

Patil et al. have conducted a survey of alcohol use in college students on three campuses in one city and have found widely varying results by campus. How could the researchers follow up on these results and get more detailed information about opinions regarding alcohol use on each campus.

The researchers could design a new survey that focuses on opinions related to alcohol use, rather than just levels of alcohol use. The researchers could also gather data on other variables that they believe might be related to alcohol use in order to conduct correlational analyses.

102. In a statistical analysis, what is the threshold for determining whether a result is significant, and what does the threshold mean?

The threshold for significance is that we expect that 95 times out of 100 we would observe the same results. Therefore, we expect that only 5 times out of 100 we would get the results by chance alone. When this happens, we can attribute experimental results to effects of the independent variable.

83. There is a positive correlation between taking multivitamins and using recreational drugs. What does this mean, and what are three possible underlying relationships between the variables?

There is a relationship between taking multivitamins and using recreational drugs, and the two variables increase in incidence together. It could be the case that taking multivitamins causes an increase in drug use, that drug use causes an increase in taking multivitamins, or there could be a third variable underlying both effects. Therefore, multiple cause-and-effect relationships are possible, but none are demonstrated by this correlational relationship.

Ava and Ben are both observing the same participants and recording data to compare later. What type of reliability are they planning to assess, and why would they do so?

They are assessing inter-rater reliability as a way to ensure that their study is well-designed with clear operational definitions and an easily measurable dependent variable

Which of the following would be difficult to assess using empirical research?

whether the id, ego, or superego is most responsible for emotional reactions