Intro to Psych - OpenStax - Chapter 2

Which of the following represents a weak positive correlation?

+0.2

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

-0.5

Which of the following represents a strong negative correlation?

-0.9

Which of the following statements is not a hypothesis?

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

The ________ reviews research conducted using animal subjects.

IACUC

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?

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

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

They have higher attrition rates than other populations.

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?

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

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.

longitudinal

________ research studies the same groups of participants over time.

longitudinal

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?

naturalistic observation

A negative correlation means ________.

one variable decreases as the other increases

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

operational definition

________ are subjects of psychological research.

participants

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was ethically problematic because ________.

participants were not allowed to seek available treatment

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

placebo effect

Trephination is the ________.

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

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.

quasi-experimental

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

random sampling; random group assignment

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

reliability

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 ________.

replication

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

retracted due to a financial conflict of interest by the author

________ are the most commonly used species for animal research.

rodents

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

sample; population; generalization

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

scatterplot

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

small sample size

________ can be used to assess ________.

statistical analyses; reliability

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

statistical analysis

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

suggesting magazines that may be interested in publishing the research

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 ________.

there is a relationship between smoking and lung cancer

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

watching footage obtained from cameras set up unobtrusively on various streets

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

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

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

explaining the hypothesis to the participants

Peer reviewers ________.

help ensure quality control in reporting scientific findings

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.

high; low

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

illusory correlation

The ________ is controlled by the experimenter.

independent variable

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.

independent; dependent

________ assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.

inter-rater reliability

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

is large and randomly selected

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

Institutional Review Board

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

It is complex.

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

Jane Goodall

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?

There is a relationship between gender and intended major.

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?

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

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?

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

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

a strong correlation

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

archival

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

archival research; surveys

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

are possible to test with animal studies

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

attrition

The possible range for a correlation coefficient is ________.

between -1 and +1

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 ________.

case studies

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

case study

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 ________.

confirmation bias

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

confirmation bias

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

confounding variable

The ________ group does not get the experimental treatment.

control

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

correlation

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

experimental

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.

debrief participants; deception

The ________ variable measures effects of the independent variable.

dependent

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 ________.

dependent variable

Ethics need to be considered when ________ scientific research.

designing, conducting, and reviewing

A major advantage of case studies is ________.

detailed information

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

double-blind

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.

double-blind

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

theory

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

two

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.

type of play; no play

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

validity

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

veterinarian