P211 midterm exam
Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that three fundamental needs 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 necessary only when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Susan's hypothesis was not completely supported by her data. What does this mean?
The theory may need to be amended.
When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose", which two questions should you ask yourself as you read?
"What is the argument?" and "What is the evidence to support the argument?"
What is true of the difference between basic and applied research?
Basic and applied research have different goals.
What is true of variables?
Some variables can be either manipulated or measured
Translational research is best thought of as ________ basic research and applied research.
a bridge between
Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as
confirmation bias
What must a researcher do when using deception in an experiment?
debrief the participants afterward
The absence of random assignment in any study
decreases internal validity
If we cannot observe a behavior, we cannot study it. What does this statement refer to?
empiricism
Which of the following involves using evidence from the senses or from instruments that assist the senses as the basis for conclusions?
empiricism
Which of the following could be an independent variable in a causal claim?
one that is manipulated
Another word for hypothesis is a(n)
prediction
In a scatterplot, the direction of the relationship can be seen by the
slope of the line
A scientist is most likely to accept a theory when
the findings of replicated studies are consistent with the theory.
The principle of justice calls for a balance between ________ and ________.
the kind of people who participate in research; the kind of people who benefit from it
What is a confidence interval constructed around?
the margin of error
Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. What information might she get out of reading the references section of her article?
the name of an article that researched a similar topic
One of the reasons that research studies are superior to personal experience is that
they include at least one comparison group
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 findings accurately."
The American Psychological Association's ethical guidelines have ________ principles and ________ standards.
5; 10
Which of the following is a difference between a debriefing session following a study with deception compared to a debriefing session following a study without deception?
A deception study debriefing must attempt to restore a sense of honesty and trustworthiness.
What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and an interval scale of measurement?
A ratio scale of measurement has a zero value that actually means "nothing" or "the absence of something," but an interval scale does not
A group of students recorded the amount of time they studied for an exam in their research methods course and the grade they received on the exam. The scatter plot shows a positive, linear relationship. What statement best describes this relationship between time spent studying and exam grade?
As study time increased, exam grades increased.
What is the difference between advice from an authority and that from a researcher?
Authorities often base their advice on intuition, while researchers rely on facts.
Your friend Alanna says that when examining validity, you always want to see positive correlations. Why is she wrong?
Both the strength and the direction of a correlation matter when examining validity
All of the following are true of institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States EXCEPT that A. IRBs can be found in settings other than colleges and universities. B. IRBs are mandated by federal law. C. IRBs must have a psychologist as a member. D. IRBs must have at least five members.
C. IRBs must have a psychologist as a member.
Which of the following is a reasonable causal claim? A. No one should text and drive. B. Experts say a majority of drivers text while driving. C. Texting while driving reduces impulse control. D. Teens spend too much time texting and driving.
C. Texting while driving reduces impulse control.
Which of the following constitutes plagiarism? A. Using someone else's words without quotations or providing a citation B. Using your own previously published words without a citation C. Paraphrasing information from somewhere else without a citation D. All of the above
D. All of the above
An educational psychologist is testing the discriminant validity of a new measure of numerical learning difficulties. He gives his measure to a group of students along with another measure of verbal learning difficulties, which he predicts should not be strongly related to numerical learning difficulties. Which of the following correlations would the psychologist hope to find in order to establish discriminant validity? A. r= 1.0 B. r=-1.0 C. r= 0.83 D. r=-0.18
D. r=-0.18
Tim tells you that the best way to make friends is by opening the conversation with a joke. He can easily recall all the friends he met by telling a joke and also the times he opened with chitchat and didn't befriend the person. You are concerned that Tim is making the blind spot bias. As a researcher, what would you most likely ask him to consider?
Do you think that you should test this out by opening some conversations with a joke and some conversations with chitchat?
The study hypotheses belong in which section of the introduction?
The Prediction
What is a disadvantage of using open-ended questions?
The answers must be coded
Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr. Rodriquez calculates a correlation coefficient (r) to examine the relationship between Question 1 and Question 2 and between Question 1 and Question 3. She finds a correlation coefficient of r = -0.73 between Questions 1 and 2 and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.74 between Questions 1 and 3. What is true of her findings?
There appears to be good internal reliability in the scale
A local committee that reviews research that is conducted on animals is known as
an IACUC
Research that is done specifically to solve a practical problem, like increasing memory ability or decreasing symptoms of depression, is known as
applied research
In looking at a scatterplot of interrater reliability, why would a researcher want to see all the dots close to the line of agreement?
because it indicates that the researcher's two research assistants/raters are making similar measurements
Science journalists have argued that cigarette smoking leads to a variety of health problems. What type of claim are they making?
causal claim
What is the term for a researcher's definition of the variable in question at a theoretical level?
conceptual definition
What is the most common sampling technique in behavioral research?
convenience sampling
Anton and his friends are discussing a study he read about in his developmental psychology class. In the study, the researcher made the claim that most middle school students who are bullied have low self-esteem. Clarissa questions the study, saying, "I am not sure that I am convinced. I am not sure you can really say for sure that being bullied leads to low self-esteem because they didn't measure being bullied before they measured self-esteem." Clarissa is concerned that the researcher
failed to establish temporal precedence
Forced-choice question formats are especially good at dealing with which of the following issues?
fence sitting
Luis has just finished planning a study to explore personality traits that predict how open adults are to altering their beliefs when presented with findings from scientific studies. Before beginning data collection, Luis preregisters his hypothesis. One of the primary benefits of preregistering his hypothesis is that
he is less likely to be suspected of developing his hypotheses after analyzing his findings.
Dr. Gonzalez is a peer reviewer for a manuscript submitted to a journal. He is likely to provide comments on which of the following?
how well the research was conducted
Which types of reliability can be analyzed with scatterplots?
interrater reliability and test-retest reliability
The construct validity of observations can be threatened by
reactivity
A research consumer ________ scientific results.
reads
Online surveys commonly suffer from what?
self-selection
Which aspect of the peer-review cycle allows for the greatest amount of honesty in reviews?
the anonymity of the peer reviewers
Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. What is the dependent variable in Dr. Kang's study?
the number of words remembered
In addition to the three principles derived from the Belmont Report, which of the following two principles were added in the principles put forth by the American Psychological Association?
the principle of integrity and fidelity/responsibility
Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Dr. Ewell decides to collect his data at a neighborhood park. He has his two research assistants pose as a married couple having a picnic. While having their picnic, they take detailed records of the sharing behavior of the children and note whether the pairs are same sex or opposite sex. This technique is known as
unobtrusive observation
Dr. Paul is concerned about a fence-sitting response set when he conducts his survey. What might you recommend to decrease fence sitting?
using scales with an even number of response options
Which of the following is an association claim? A. "Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction." B. "A majority of Americans like dogs." C. "Dog traveled 500 miles to find its owners." D. "Being visited by dogs in the hospital causes decreases in recovery time."
A. "Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
Which of the following hypotheses would be best tested with a survey? A. College students with part-time jobs have high self-esteem B. Children who are exposed to more words per day have faster brain development C. Drinking coffee makes people walk faster D. Sharing with others increases dopamine levels
A. College students with part-time jobs have high self-esteem
Which of the following is a causal claim? A. Texting interferes with a driver's ability to pay attention. B. Most drivers have reported texting while driving. C. Texting while driving is associated with poor impulse control. D. Teens spend too much time texting and driving.
A. Texting interferes with a driver's ability to pay attention.
Which of the following is an example of physiological measurement? A. measurements of hormones in the bloodstream B. participants' indications of whether or not they've been diagnosed with high blood pressure C. number of panic attacks a patient reports D. level of anxiety reported by participants
A. measurements of hormones in the bloodstream
In addition to being ethical violations, why are data falsification and fabrication problematic?
They impede scientific progress
Tim tells you that the best way to make friends is by opening the conversation with a joke. He can easily recall all the friends he met by telling a joke and also the times he opened with chitchat and didn't befriend the person. If you were concerned that Tim was making the present/present bias, what would you ask him?
What about the times you opened with a joke and didn't become friends with the person?
Establishing construct validity would probably be most important for which of the following?
a measure of spirituality
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. Sasha would likely draw a different conclusion if she did what?
asked her enemies if she was a nice person
Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse." Which type of claim is Dr. LaSalle making?
association claim
Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr. Sheffield decides to test the criterion validity of his measure. Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people that includes suspected problem gamblers and non-gamblers. What options could he also do to get evidence for criterion validity?
correlate the measure with a behavior, such as amount of money lost in a casino during the past year
According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established what?
criterion validity
Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of his clients and at the same time measures how many times they have been gambling in the past month. He predicts that clients who score higher on his measure will also report gambling more times in the past month. This procedure is meant to provide evidence for which of the following?
criterion validity
Another word for observer effects is
expectancy effects
If you wanted to know exactly which statistical analyses were used in a particular study, you should consult the
results section of a journal article
Negatively worded questions have low construct validity because
they capture people's ability to understand the question rather than their true opinions.
What is the primary purpose of peer review?
to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and integrity of the content
Dr. Knepp studies Extrasensory Perception (ESP) which is the ability to perceive things through telepathy or clairvoyance. She theorizes that ESP exists but only in people who believe it exists and who are not skeptical of ESP. She surveys a large number of adults about their beliefs in ESP and, as expected, only adults who believe in ESP report having those abilities. What is true about Dr. Knepp's theory?
It does not have a hypothesis.
Dr. Jewell is interested in measuring people's attitudes toward proposed tax cuts. One of his items reads, "People who support cutting taxes are not well informed about how the government works." What is the problem with this question?
It is a leading question
Compared with doing a generic internet search, why is PsycINFO a superior way to find scientific sources?
It searches only sources in psychology and related fields.
You are using information from another paper you wrote previously. Do you need to cite yourself?
Only if the previous paper was published
Why would behavioral observation be a good research method for studying a high-frequency behavior? (ex: number of words spoken in a day or number of steps taken in a week)
Participants would not be able to accurately keep track of so much data
Zariah placed five identical pairs of black socks on a table and asked passersby to rate which pair of socks were their favorites. Although the socks were exactly the same, people rated the last pair of socks as having the highest quality. How should Zariah interpret this result?
People are not always able to accurately explain their responses
What is the primary difference between researchers and non-researchers?
Researchers test their intuition with systematic, empirical observations
What makes certain constructs harder to operationalize?
Some constructs are difficult to observe
What is true of operational definitions?
Some psychological concepts are more difficult to operationally define than others
What is true about research using surveys and polls?
Surveys and polls can efficiently measure people's subjective feelings
Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning, participants will be asked to take a sample SAT test. To address the Belmont principle of beneficence, Dr. Kushner would need to ask what question?
What can I do to decrease the potential harm experienced by my participants?
Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can feel threatened by racism, men of color feel threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment. The results of this study can be generalized to what groups?
White women and men of color
Dr. White reads about a new theory that states that depression is caused by increased levels of estrogen in the womb. To test this theory, she conducted a study comparing the level of estrogen in amniotic fluid in individuals who were later diagnosed with depression with the level of those who did not develop depression. Dr. White found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. In this study, estrogen levels in participants were the
data
Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Dr. Ewell is concerned that the children will behave differently because of the presence of research assistants. Which of the following could he do to address this concern?
hide a video camera in the daycare center and record the children playing without them knowing
A question that suggests a particular viewpoint to respondents is known as a(n)
leading question
The difference between a cluster sample and a multistage sample is
multistage samples sample both clusters and participants; cluster samples just sample clusters
For his research methods class, Felipe plans to watch how students treat other children in their classrooms who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He will evaluate how positively or negatively the children are treated by their classmates. This is an example of what type of measurement?
observational measurement
A study by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) involved telling teachers that some of their students were "bloomers" and would achieve rapid academic success within the next year. In fact, these students were no different than any of the other students in the class. At the end of the year, the "bloomers" showed more gains in IQ than the other students. It appeared that the teacher had unintentionally treated the "bloomers" in special ways. This is an example of which of the following?
observer effects
Dr. Ellison finds a relation between amount of sleep and problem solving. Specifically, having a higher amount of sleep the night before an exam is associated with higher scores on two measures of problem solving. This is an example of which type of association?
positive association
What is the best way to balance characteristics about participants that can lead to alternative explanations for findings?
random assignment
When conducting animal research, which guideline states that alternatives to animal research should be considered?
replacement
Observer bias relates mainly to ________, whereas observer effects stem from ________.
researchers; participants
In considering whether research is ethical, which of the following are balanced against each other?
risk to participants versus value of the knowledge gained
A helpful tool for visualizing test-retest reliability and interrater reliability is a
scatterplot
If a question has response options that are anchored with adjectives, this is known as a(n)
semantic differential format
Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr. Sheffield wants to establish the discriminant validity of his pathological gambling measure. He gives his measure and three others to a group of 100 people. What provides the best evidence for discriminant validity?
that his measure is not strongly correlated with a measure of impulsivity
Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Dr. Kang's decision to assign participants randomly to Group A and Group B increases what?
the internal validity of the study
Another word for discriminant validity is ________ validity.
divergent
Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning, participants will be asked to take a sample SAT test. Dr. Kushner suspects that the people who will most benefit from his study are high school and college students, who are asked to perform cognitive functions in various states of sleep deprivation. Given this information, what type of participants should Dr. Kushner recruit for his study?
students from a community college
Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. She then compares the scores between the two time points. This is a test of which of the following?
test-retest reliability
Dr. White reads about a new theory that states that depression is caused by increased levels of estrogen in the womb. To test this theory, she conducted a study comparing the level of estrogen in amniotic fluid in individuals who were later diagnosed with depression with the level of those who did not develop depression. Dr. White found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. Another depression researcher reads Dr. White's findings. This new researcher is MOST likely to
thoughtfully consider reasons why these findings might not support the new theory.
Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?
to obtain evidence for criterion validity
