close corollary to determinism. a simply statement about the causal relation between two or more variables. they identify abstracts, hypothetical constructs that presumable tell us something about how the world operates.

have boundary conditions.

do not always apply.

a good theory states the condition under which the relations do and do not apply.

canon of science. we should be extremely frugal in developing (or choosing between) theories by steering away from unnecessary concepts. if we are faced with 2 competing theories that do an equally good job of handling a set of emperical observations, we should prefer the simpler (parsimonious) of the 2.

aka "Occam's Razor"

basic ways in which people decide what they believe.

authority- ask someone who would know

intuition- your gut feeling

observation- testing or measuring

logic- using formal principles of reasoning

law

the notion that the same behavior is often produced by many different causes.

human behavior has multiple determinants.

in response to method of induction, how do you know when you have made enough observations to be sure that your law is true? according to Hume, you never do!

always probabilistic

approaches to hypotheses testing

falsification

an approach to hypothesis testing in which reseachers attempt to gather evidence that invalidates or disconfirms a theory or hypothesis.

an inherent part of scientific investigation because a scientist has to explain their methods to other scientists and are harshly scrutinized

approach to hypothesis testing in which researchers try to identify the boundary conditions under which a theory or hypothesis is and is not true.

can lead to the integration of 2 apparently contradictory theories by specifying the conditions under which each of these theories is correct.

one drawback is that it is complicated.

one advantage is that it combines desirable features of both validation and falsification.

best road to uncovering laws.

goals of psychology reseacrh

describe behavior: what happens?

predict behavior: when does it happen?

explain behavior: why does it happen?

change behavior: what changes what?

personal interests (me-search)

observation: world war 2- how can people commit such atrocities

previous literature: social support and health relationships- why?

practical problems: how do we deal with racism and prejudice?

challenges existing theories

integrates existing theories

challenges people's intuition and expectation

results in a large effect from a small manipulation

speaks to issues of societal importance

existing theory=reinforcement theory claimed that individuals will be more likely to do something if they are rewarded for it in some way

Lepper tested theory with 3 condition: kids were told they will be given an award for playing, no award is mentioned, and no award is mentioned but is unexpectedly given.

kids return 2 weeks later and more kids played with markers that were given an unexpected reward or no reward.

reason why reinforcement theory failed challenge against new test.

enjoyable activies that have no external rewards lead person to have a self-perception that tells them, "I do this because I like it."

enjoyable activites that have external rewards attached to them ($) lead people to have a self -perception that tells them, "I do this because I am paid to."

original theory=what is the impact of performing in front of audience? people do better if they are performing in front of others (a bike race with spectators). people do worse if they are performing in front of others (memorizing a list of names).

resolution to these two competing theories: depends on if the behavior being performed is well-learned. (Zajonc, 1995).

for well-learned behaviors, having an audience aids performance

for newly-learned behaviors, having an audience hinders performance

will people obey authority at the expense of others? used milgram obedience experiment:

people expected that only 1 in 1,000 would shock the "students" to the maximum extent possbile. actual results were that 65% of the people shocked the "students" to the maximum extent.

Late Bloomers (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1966)

teachers were told that some of their students were late bloomers and would make intellectual gains by end of the year. the students were actually just randomly selected. by end of the year the non-bloomer's IQ did not increase and the bloomer's IQ did increase.

carefully documented observations of a specific group or person.

inductive technique to generate research ideas.

trying to account for puzzling or nonsensical observations.

inductive technique to generate research ideas

analyzing things that experts in a particular area do to achieve certain outcomes.

inductive technique for developing research ideas.

McGuire drew an analogy between biological resistance to disease and psychological resistance to persuasion. before you get sick you get a shot of the weakened version of the biological threat so your immune system learns to deal with it and becomes better able to defeand itself against a full blown attack. McGuire gave people practice defending themselves against weakened versions of persuasive arguements and when full blown attacks happened they were much more resistant to persuasion.

a deductive technique for developing research ideas.

researchers ask themselves basic questions about what organisms have to do to successfully master their environment.

deductive technique for developing research ideas

begin with a set of basic assumptions (or observations) and to derive one or more logical consequences from these basic principles.

deductive technique for developing research ideas

struggling to fit contradictory theories together into a more comprehensive theory, researchers often generate research ideas that would not have been generated alone.

deductive technique for developing research ideas

the goal of psychological research is to determine when or for whom a given psychological principle is true

deductive technique for developing research ideas

correlational method

two or more variables are measured and the strength of the relationship between them is assessed.

range (r) from -1.0 to 1.0

positive correlation- as X increases, Y increases

negative correlation- as X increares, Y decreases

the closer the correlation is to the extremes the stronger the relationship is.

predictor variable- (like i.v.)

criterion variable- (like d.v.)

tells you that 2 variables are related.

could mean that:

X-->Y

Y-->X

Z(confound/3rd variable)--> both X and Y

from this data alone you can't tell which of these possibilities is true but still usegul for seeing if 2 variables are related.

a design problem in which some additional variables (or nuisance variables) exist that may influence the dependent variable and that varies systematically along with the independent or predictor variables. a threat to internal validity.

we need to control for confound by having information about them so we can account for them during the experiment

assuming causality from correlation.

often involved in superstitions

correlation is not causation 

randomly assign participants to conditions of either experimental or control group.

then you manipulate independent variable

hold everything constant (randomly assign subjects to each experimental condition).

then measure dependent variable.

assigning subjects to the condition of your experiment in such a way that every subject has an equal chance of being assigned to any of the conditions of the study.

no feature of the study should have any effect on what condition the subject gets assigned to.

choosing research participants from a nonrepresentative sample by using imperfect (biased) sampling techniques.

threat to external validity

bias that occurs in research when a substantial portion of those invited to take part in the study refuse to do so. if those who agree to take part are different than those who refuse, it is similar to selection bias

a threat to external validity

the extent to which: a set a research findings provides compelling information about causality and a valid causal statement can be made about the effects of the independent variable on the dependent variable in your study.

are your results actually due to manipulation, or did something else cause them?

when internal validity is high we can confidently conclude that variations in the independent variable caused any observed changes in dependent variable.

3 requirements must be met to establish firmly that one thing causes another:

covariation- changes in one variation must corresponde with changes in another.

temporal sequence- the change in the 1st variable must precede the changes in 2nd.

eliminating confounds

the extent to which a set of research findings provides an accurate description of what typically happens in the real world.

when a study is high in external validity, or generalizability, we can conclude that the findings will apply to other people, situations, etc.

can you generalize your findiings to other samples?

extent to which the independent and dependent variables in a study truly represent the abstract, hypothetical variables of interest to researcher.

direct reflection of the quality of a research's operational definitions. to a degree the operational defintions do a good job of converting the abstract to the observable.

refers to how well a specific research hypothesis maps onto the broader theory that is was designed to test.

has to do with if the researcher should have been interested that specific hypothetical construct in the first place.

consistency, repeatability, or dependability of a measure of observation.

it is necessary but not a sufficient condition for validity.

when human judges make some kind of psychological ratings.

interrater reliability.

refers to the degree to which different trained judges independently agree upon an observation or judgement.

the reliability of most measures is likely to increase as we increase the number of observer, observations, or occasions that go into the measure.

all forms of reliability can be readily quantified using statistics.

categorical.

involve meaningful but potentially arbitrary and nonnumerical names or categories.

example- a person's sex

have clear numerical properties that involve order or ranking.

mutually exclusive and exhaustive labels.

they are not sensitive to the absolute value of things.

example- birth order

information about absolute differences between stimuli.

make use of real numbers designating amounts to reflect relative differences in magnitude.

correspond to a specific amount of the construct being measured.

error caused by extraneous variables whose average influence on the outcome of an experiment is the same in all conditions.

variables you don't control for that effect everyone in the same way.

doesnt affect the internal validity of results.

can hide the effect of the independent variable.

keep random error as small as possible

error caused by extraneous variables that tend to influence all scores in one condition and to have no effect, or a different effect, on scores in other conditions.

can distort the effect of independent variable.

threats internal validity.

goal is to eliminate systematic error.

all threats to validity are types of systematic error, NOT random error.

8 threats to internal validity fall under these 3 topics: people change, process of studying people change, and variables that accompany an experimental manipulation change people

1 threat to external validity: experimental morality: homogeneous attribution: when different types of people drop out of your study vs.stay in your study.

history

type of internal threat to validity under topic of "people change".

specific events that happen during the course of study can affect the variable being measured.

ex: measure baseline fear of swimming--> show them Jaws--> measure fear of swimming again.

threat to internal validity under topic of "people change".

changes that happen within a person due to time passing can affect the variable being measured.

ex: measure baseline coping skills--> stress reduction class--> measure coping skills again.

threat to internal validity under the topic of "people change".

the tendency for people who receive high or low scores on a particular measure to score closer to the mean on subsequent testing.

threat to internal validity under the topic "the process of studying people changes people".

people tend to do better on a test the second time they take it.

example: even people who did not take a Princeton Review course tend to do better on their SATs the 2nd time. what to do: have a control group, don't give a pretest, use a different type of test the 2nd time.

threat to internal validity under the topic "process of studying people changes people" 

when different amount of people or different types of people drop out of the two conditions of your experiment.

example: if all the heavy smokers drop out of the intervention group (but not the control group) of your "quit smoking" study, it will look like the intervention worked, even if it didn't. what to do: minimize drop-outs, compare the drop-outs from the 2 groups

threat to internal validity under the topic "process of studying people changes people".

participants try to behave in ways that are consistent with- or the opposite of- the researcher's hypothesis.

subject expectancies: subjects act in ways that are consistent with research's hypothesis (demand characteristics); person is told they were given alcohol and then acts drunk.

subject reactance: subject acts in ways that are not consistent with researcher's hypothesis.

ways to minimize these threats: give a false hypothesis, convince participant he/ she is an experimenter, keep participant unaware he/she is in a study, use behavioral measures instead of questionnaires, and have a non-obvious hypothesis

threat to internal validity under the topic "variables that accompany the manipulation can change people".

experimenters' expectancies can affect either how they act with participants or what they observe.

example: if experimenter thinks the subject has been given alcohol, experimenter would be more likely to to notice if subject slurs their speech. what to do: keep experimenter blind to the hypothesis, keep experimenter blind to what condition the participant is in, have 2 experimenter's that are partly blind, and have all instructions on tape or computer

threat to internal validity under the topic "variables that accompany the manipulation can change people".

some additional variable (that you don't care about) varies systematically along with the thing you manipulated; alternative explanation.

example: in the "severity of inititation" study, severity of initiation was confounded with how fun or arousing the initiation was. what to do: do a different study to rule out confounds, do a true experiment, measure variables that may be confounds.

threat to external validity

when a particular type of person drops out of your study, regardless of which condition they are in.

example: if all heavy people dropped out og a diet study then you can't generalize your results to heavy people. what to do: minimize drop outs, compare dropout people to people who remain in study

increase external validity

create studies high in mundane realism: real world realism, studies that look like the real world.

create studies high in experimental realism: psychological realism are studies that are psychologically meaningful to the subject or feel like the real world.

a research design in which someone tests a claim about a variable by exposing people to the variable of interest and noting that these people feel, think, or behave as expected.

individual differences provide a good alternate explanation for the findings of this research design.