Chapter 1 Practice

Approximately 95 percent of the cases represented by the normal curve fall within ________ standard deviation(s) from the mean.

2

During the past year, Zara and Ivan each read 2 books, but George read 9, Ali read 12, and Marsha read 25. The median number of books read by these individuals was

9

If participants in the experimental group of a drug treatment study are much younger than participants in the control group, the age of the research participants is a

confounding variable

In an effort to prevent participants in an experiment from trying to confirm the researchers' predictions, psychologists sometimes

deceive participants about the true purpose of an experiment.

Professor Smith told one class that drinking alcohol has been found to increase sexual desire. He informed another class that drinking alcohol has been found to reduce sexual appetite. The fact that neither class was surprised by the information they received best illustrates the power of

hindsight bias

An experiment enables researchers to isolate the effects of one specific factor by manipulating the factor of interest and

holding other factors constant across experimental and control groups.

In an experimental study of the impact of exposure to criticism on self-esteem, exposure to criticism would be the ________ variable.

independent

To assess the influence of self-esteem on interpersonal attraction, researchers either insulted or complimented students about their physical appearance to manipulate self-esteem just before they went on a blind date. In this research, the dependent variable was

interpersonal attraction.

Psychologists who carefully watch the behavior of chimpanzee societies in the jungle are using a research method known as

naturalistic observation

To assess the impact of test difficulty on persistence of effort, researchers plan to give one group of children relatively easy tests and another group more difficult tests. To reduce the chance that the children in one group are more intelligent than those in the other group, the researchers should make use of

random assignment

The scientific attitude requires an open-minded humility because it involves a willingness to

recognize the errors in our own ideas.

After sports magazines give cover-story attention to the recent outstanding performances of an athlete, the individual often suffers a real decline in performance. This may be at least partially explained in terms of

regression toward the mean.

Statistical reasoning can help us to generalize correctly from a

sample to a population

To decide whether observed differences between samples reflect actual differences between populations, you should determine the ________ of the observed differences.

statistical significance

According to the preface on time management, what is the first thing you should do when you start a new chapter of your textbook?

survey and scan the key parts of the chapter