Unit 1 Practice Questions

random assignment is used to ...

reduce the effects of confounding variables in experiments

the _____ statistical approach is concerned with forming conclusions about the effect of the independent variable on variations in the dependent variable

descriptive

which of the following is the strongest correlation and why?: -.90, -.23, .40, .67, .72

-.90, because (it deviates from 0 the most?)

A person displays a set of rare behaviors that psychologists had not known about previously, because nobody had ever shown them before. The best strategy to investigate the nature of those behaviors is ...

a case study

what is the dependent variable? Dr. Patel is conducting a study to test a hair-growth shampoo she is developing. She instructs fifty participants to use the hair-growth shampoo once daily for a month and another fifty to use a regular shampoo once a day for a month. Dr. Patel measures the participants' hair length at the beginning and the end of the thirty days.

change in hair length

testing first, third, and fifth graders at the beginning of the school year indicates _____ research design

cross-sectional

in experimental psychology, a significant difference refers to a ...

different not likely due to chance

the placebo effect can be brought about by the individual's _____

expectations

what is the dependent variable?: A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group.

incidence of aggressive behavior

longitudinal is the type of research where children are tested ...

periodically at different points in their development

ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association help ensure that human participants in psychological research are ...

protected from physical and psychological harm

in order to yield information that is generalizable to the population from which it was drawn, a sample must be ...

representative of the population

what is an example of the effect of the social desirability bias? how?

respondents to surveys and questionnaires often report that they are healthier, happier, and less prejudiced than would be expected based on the results of other types of research because social desirability bias is research subjects' tendency to choose responses they believe are more socially desirable rather than what is simply true to them (answering the questions to make their life seem better than they actually feel it is)

Students from a journalism class ask only their friends to participate in a school newspaper survey and neglect to ask the rest of the student body. The journalism students' data may not be generalizable due to ...

sampling bias

an evolutionary psychologist would explain that humans desire social interaction, social acceptance, and social affiliation, due to a need for _____

survival

What is the dependent variable?: In an experiment designed to determine whether watching violent scenes on television increases the frequency of aggressive behavior in children, one group of subjects saw a nonviolent cartoon and another group saw a violent cartoon. In the play period that followed the viewing of the cartoons, researchers observed the two groups of children together and counted instances of aggressive behavior.

the amount of aggressive behavior exhibited by the children

give an example of the subjects in a cross-sectional study

the same subjects are tested at two, four, and six years old

why might the results of a correlational study involving student volunteers in a psychology laboratory might not apply to the general population?

the sample is not randomly chosen and therefore may not be a representative sample (sampling bias)

why are operational definitions are used?

they enable researchers to replicate studies by precisely describing the variables and how they are used