PSY Ch.2

Human beings have 3 qualities that make them more difficult to study:

1). They are highly complex 2.) They are highly variable 3.) They are highly reactive

Psychologists have an honor code of 3 things:

1.) when writing reports and publishing their studies in scientific journals, they are obliged to report the truth on what they did and found. 2.) are obligated to share credit fairly by including as co-authors of their reports the otherpeople who contributed to the work, all well as by mentioning in their reports the other scientists who have done related work. 3.) psychologists are obligated to share their data

refers to the fact that the natural correlation between 2 variables cannot be taken as evidence of a casual relationship between them because a 3rd variable might be causing them both. What this means is that if we want to know about the causal relationship between 2 variables, then observing a natural correlation between them can never tell us what we want to know.

3rd-variable problem

In 1974, the U.S. Congress created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. In 1979, the US Department of Health Education and welfare released what came to be known as the _____, which describes 3 basic principles that all research involving human participants must follow.

Belmont Report

Some people are so remarkable that they deserve close study, and the psychologists who study them and the psychologists who study them are using the ____, which is a procedure for gathering scientific info by studying a single individual.

Case Method

approximate location of the midpoint

Central Tendency

Generate an operational definition that has construct validity

Define the Property

The most common kind of graphic representation is called a _____, which is a graphic rep showing the number of times in which the measurement of a property takes on each of its possible values.

Frequency Distribution

When a _____ is normal, the mean, median, and mode all have the same value, but when it is positively or negatively skewed, these 3 measures of central tendency have quite different values. Pg: 44

Frequency Distribution

This astronomer was excommunicated and sentenced to prison for sticking to his empirical observations of the solar system rather than accepting the teachings of the Church.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

A good theory makes specific predictions about what we should observe in the world if the theory is true. That "should" statement is technically known as a ______, which is a falsifiable prediction made by a theory.

Hypothesis

The variable that is manipulated in an experiment is called the ______ bec its value is determined entirely by the experimenter and therefore does not depend on ---- or is "independent of" the participants. It creates at least 2 conditions.

Independent Variable

Participants may not take part in psychological study unless they have given _____, which is a verbal agreement to participate in a study made by adult who has been informed of all the risks that particpation may entail.

Informed Consent

Experimentation is a technique that allows us to establish the casual relationship between variables by taking three simple steps:

Manipulate, Measure, Compare

When you just did is called ______, which is a technique for determining the causal power of a variable by actively changing its value. Rather than measuring 2 variables, as we do when we observe correlations, experiments require that we ______ one variable- that is, actively change its value--and then measure the other.

Manipulation; manipulate

This philosopher has argued that all creatures capable of feeling pain have the same fundamental rights, and that treating non-humans differently from humans is a form of speciesism that is every bit as abhorrent as racism or sexism.

Peter Singer (1975)

is a technique for selecting participants that ensures that every member of a population has an equal chance of being included in the sample.

Random Sampling

The _____ is an estimate of how far, on average, the various measurements are from the center of the distribution.

Standard Deviation

Scientists generally refer to these "ideas about how something works" as ______, which are hypothetical explanation of natural phenomena.

Theories

_____ allow us to generate hypotheses about what can, must, or will happen under particular circumstances; and experiments are usually meant to create some of those circumstances, test the hypotheses, and thereby provide evidence for or against the theories that generated them.

Theories

_____ can never be proved wrong or right. Pg:34-35

Theories

From 1932 until 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the infamous _____ experiment, in which 399 African American men with syphilis were denied treatment so that researchers could observe the progression of the disease.

Tuskegee

People tend to think, feel, and act differently when they are not being ____.

Watched

If the values differ on ______, then we know that changes to the value of the independent variable caused changes to the value of the dependent variable.

average

Our _____ are colored by our preferences and prejudices, our ambitions and aversions, our hopes and needs and wants and dreams.

beliefs

A second way in which our _____ and _____ shape our view of the evidence is by influencing which evidence we consider in the first place.

beliefs and desires

Psychologists can either observe a correlation in the real world but be unsure about the ______ or firmly establish ______ in the lab but be unsure about whether it generalizes to the real world

causation; causation

Descriptions of central tendency are statements about the value of the measurements that tend to lie near the ____ or _____ of the frequency distribution. Descriptions of variability, on the other hand, are statements about the extent to which the measurements in a frequency _____ from one another.

center or midpoint; differ

The 2 most common kinds of descriptive stats are those that describe the ______ of a frequency distribution, and those that describe ____ in a frequency distribution.

central tendency; variability

Staticians have developed a way to estimate just how accurate predictions are likely to be by measuring the ____ and ____ of the correlation on which the predictions are based. A ____ correlation exists when two variables have a "more-is-more" relationship. A ____ correlation exists when 2 variables have a "more-is-less" relationship.

direction and strength; positive; negative

The tendency to ignore missing evidence can lead to _____.

erroneous conclusions

Everyday observations are often _____ and ____.

inconsistent and incomplete

an attribute of an experiment that allows it to establish causal relationships.

internal validity

When we say that an experiment is ______, we mean that everything inside the experiment is working exactly as it should in order for us to use its results to draw conclusions about the causal relationship between the IV and DV.

internally valid

The three most common descriptions of central tendency are: the _____ (the value of the most frequently observed measurement); the ____ (the average of all the measurements); and the _____ (the value that is in the middle, greater than or equal to half the measurements and less than or equal to half measurements). When these 3 measures have different values, then calculating just one of them can provide misleading pictures of date. Pgs: 43

mode; mean; median

Scientists typically make sense of their data by creating _____ or _____ representations.

pictures or graphic

People are less likely to be influenced by DC when they can't be identified as the authors of their actions, and psychologists often take advantage of this fact by allowing people to respond _____ and/or ____. They may also avoid DC by measuring behaviors that are not under a person's _______.

privately and/or anonymously; voluntary control

The best experimental evidence does not allow us to conclude that 2 variables are causually ____; rather, it alows us to conclude that 2 variables are likely to be causally ___. The more easily and more often that evidence is reproduced, the more confident we can be in the causal relationship between variables.

related; related

1st, research should show ___ for persons and their right to make decisions for and about themselves without undue influence or coercion. 2nd, research should be _____, which means that it should attempt to maximize benefits and reduce risks to the participant. 3rd, research should be ___, which means that it should distribute benefits and risks equally to participants without prejudice toward particular individuals or groups.

respect; beneficent; Just

Bacon argued that 2 natural human tendencies are the enemies of critical thinking:

to see what we expect or what we want to see; to ignore what we can't see

One of the best ways to find the ____ about the world is to seek out people who don't see the world your way and then listen carefully to what they have to say.

truth

Descriptions of variability yell us how much the measurements differ from each other, or roughly how _____ the distribution is.

Wide

The 1st rule of ______ is to doubt your own conclusions --- but that's hard to do when everyone tells you you're right! also to doubt your own conclusions.

critical thinking

A _____ happens when we detect something isn't really there, and a _____ happens when we fail to detect something that is.

fluke; flunk

Most psychologists studies involve _____ samples.

nonrandom

One of the best ways to avoid DC is to make sure that the people who are being watched are ______ of the true purpose of the observation. One way to avoid DC is to measure behaviors that people are _____ to control.

unaware; unable

Psychologists calculate every time they do an experiment, adn they generally do not accept the results of their experiments unless the calculation suggests that there is less than a ____ chance that those results would have occured if random assignment had failed. Such results are said to be ____, and psychologists typically indicate this by writing "p<.05", which simply means that the probability (p) that the result would have been observed if random assignment had failed less than _____.

5%; Statistically Significant 5%

is the extent to which the thing being measured adequately characterizes the property.

Construct Validity

When 2 variables are ______, you can use your knowledge of the value of one variable to predict the value of the other variable without having to measure it!

Correlated

The patterns of variation in these two columns are somewhat synchronized, and this synchrony is know as a _____, which occurs when variations in the value of one variable are sychronized w/ variations in the value of the other. When patterns of variation are synchronized, 2 variables are said to be correlated.

Correlation

is a mathematical measure of both the direction and strength of a correlation, and it is symbolized by the letter r. R has a ____ range. The value of r can range from ____ to ____, and numbers outside that range are meaningless. pg:47-48

Correlation Coefficient; limited; -1 to 1

_____ allows us to make educated guesses about measurements without having to do the hard work of measuring. The point of these do allow us to make predictions, but those predictions are not always accurate.

Correlations

If a participant is decieved in any way before or during a study, the psychologist must provide a ____, which is a verbal description of the true nature and purpose of a study

Debriefing

When human beings know they are being observed, they will often try to behave as they think the observer wants or expects them to. ____ are those aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think someone else wants or expects.

Demand Characteristics

The variable is measured in an experiment is called the _____ because its value does "depend on" the participants.

Dependent Variable

In psych, brief summary statements that capture the essential info from a frequency distribution are called _______.

Descriptive Statistics

design an instrument that has reliability and power

Detect the Property

This psychologists lied, cheated, and made up his data for decades before people became suspicious enough to investigate and that's mainly bec the discoveries he claimed to have made were not particularly important to begin with.

Diedrick Stapel

Today we use the word _____ to describe people's tendency to cling to their beliefs and assumptions and we use the word _____ to describe the belief that accurate knowledge can be acquired through observation.

Dogmatism; Empiricism

The _____ thought the best way to understand illness was to develop theories of the body's functions, and the _____ thought the best way to watch sick people and see what happened.

Dogmatists; Empiricists

To avoid observer bias, psychologists use a number of techniques, the most common of which is called the _______, which is a study in which neither the researcher nor the participant knows how the participants are expected to behave.

Double-Blind Study

In 1949, _______ noticed a correlation between the incidence of polio and the consumption of icecream. PG: 49

Dr. Benjamin Sandler

In 1877, this man invented a technique for taking photos in rapid succession. His photos showed that when horses gallop they go airborne.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)

is a set of rules and techniques for observation.

Empirical Method

______ can influence observations and influence reality.

Expectations

is a technique for establishing the causal relationship between variables.

Experimentation

is an attribute of an experiment in which variables have been operationally defined in a normal, typical, or realistic way.

External validity

If research is federally funded, the law requires that the ____ include at least one non-scientist and one person who is not affiliated w/ the institution.

IRB (Institutional Review Board)

Classical thinkers such as Eucid and Ptolemy believed that our eyes work by emitting rays that go out and "touch" the objects we see. But the Persian genius, _____, argued that if this theory is right, than when we open our eyes it should take longer to see something far away than something nearby.

Ibn al-Haytham (965-1039)

The most important rules that govern the conduct of psychological research:

Informed consent, Freedom from coercion, Protection from harm, Risk-benefit analysis, Deception, Debriefing, Confidentiality

When this physicist announced in 2001 that he produced a molecular-scale transistor, other physicists were deeply impressed ---- that is, until they tried to replicate his work and discovered that this dude had fabricated his data. He lost his job and his PhD, but the important point is that such frauds can't last long because scientist's conclusion is the next scientists research question.

Jan Hendrick Schon

In 1639, a pastor named ____ suggested that "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

John Clarke

When the range is small, the distribution has ____ variability than when the range is large.

Less

Pyscologists have developed 2 kinds of methods: ____, which allow them to determine what people do, and ____, which allow them to determine why people do it.

Methods of Observation; Methods of Explanation

The American Psychological Association's code specifically describes the special rights of nonhuman participants, and some of the more important ones are as follows:

Must be supervised by psychologists who are trained in research methods and experienced in the care of lab animals ( animals health, comfort,, and human treatment); minimize the discomfort, infection, illness, and pain of animals; May use a procedure that subjects an animal to pain, stress, or privation only when an alternative procedure is unavailable and when the procedure is justified by the value of the study; must perform surgery under anesthesia and minimize an animal's pain during and after surgery.

are the correlations we observe in the world around us; and although the mere observation of a synchronized pattern of variation tells us that 2 variables have a relationship, it cannot tell us what kind of relationship those variables have.

Natural Correlations

One way that psychologists avoid demand characteristics is by observing people without their knowledge. ______ is a technique for gathering info by unobtrusively observing people in their natural environments.

Naturalistic Observation

______ isn't always practical. Some events just don't occur naturally.

Naturalistic Observation

We have 100 billion interconnected ___ that constitute the human brain.

Neurons

is a mathematical defined distribution in which the frequency of measurements is highest in the middle and decreases symmetrically in both directions. This is often called "____" or Gaussian distribution. Page: 41-42

Normal Distribution

After World War II ended, the international community developed the _____ of 1947 and then the _____ in 1964, which spelled out rules for the ethnical treatment of the people. who participate in experiments.

Nuremberg Code; Decleration of Helsinki

is the tendency for observers' expectations to influence both what they believe they observed and what they actually observed.

Observer Bias

To measure a person's level of happiness, we would start by generating an ______, which is a description of a property in measurable terms.

Operational Definition

Psychologists rarely measure the properties of an entire ______, which is a complete collection of people. Rather, they tend to measure the properties of a ______, which is a partial collection of people drawn from a population.

Population; Sample

The 2 key features of a good detector are ____, which refers to a detector's ability to detect differences or changes in the magnitude of a property, and _____, which refers to a detector's ability to detect the absence of differences or changes in the magnitude of a property.

Power; Reliability

ensures that participants in the 2 conditions are, on average, equal in terms of all possible 3 variables.

Random assignment

is a procedure that assigns participants to a condition by chance

Random assignment

The simplest measure of variability is the _____, which is the value of the largest measurements in a frequency distribution minus the value of the smallest measurement.

Range

When we randome sample participants from a population, the same is said to be _____ of the population.

Representative

Empiricism is the backbone of the _____, which is a procedure for using empirical evidence to establish facts.

Scientific Method

The _____ produces empirical evidence.

Scientific Method

is a problem that occurs when anything about a participant determines the participants condition.

Self-selection

In 1620, ____ published a book called Novum Organum, in which described the "Baconian Method", the scientific method, but underestimaded its occupational hazards. While conducting experiments to determine the effect of low temps on the preservation of meat, he caught pneumonia and died.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

is a statistic that describes how each of the measurements in a frequency distributions differs from the mean.

Standard Deviation

Although frequency distributions showing data from the real world are rarely _______ they are often very close, especially when the amount of data used to construct them is quite large.

Symmetrical

occurs when researchers conclude that there is a causal relationship between 2 variables when in fact there is not. Also known as a false positive.

Type I error

If psychologists designed their experiments to avoid all _____, they would never be fooled by flukes and the replication rate would be very high, but a lot of their studies would be flunks that failed to discover real and important facts about human behavior.

Type I errors

occurs when researchers conclude that there is not a casual relationship between two variables when in fact there is. Also known as a false negative.

Type II error

If psychologists designed their experiments to avoid all _____, they would rarely miss discovering a real and important fact about human behavior, but a sizeable chunk of those "facts" would turn out to be flukes and the replication rate would be very low.

Type II errors

are properties that can take on different values.

Variables

There are 3 possible causes of _______, so if we can eliminate 2 of them, then the one that remains must be the real one. If we know that X did not cause Y, and if we know that Z did not cause X and Y, then we know that Y must have caused X. They do this by using a pair of techniques called ____ and ____.

correlation; manipulation and random assignment

The second rule of ___ is to consider what you don't see.

critcial thinking

First, we must ____ the property we want to measure, and second, we must find a way to ____ it.

define; detect

If research assistants don't have ____, then their ____ cannot influence their observations or their participants' behavior. That's why psychologists typically make sure that the people who are making the observations ins a study are as "blind" to the hypothesis as are the people who are being observed.

expectations; expectations