Conducting Psychology Research In the Real World PDF

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Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 11-textbook notes

Conducting Psychology Research In the Real World Learning Objectives 1. Identify limitations of the traditional laboratory experiment 2. Explain ways in which daily research can further psychological science 3. Know what methods exist for conducting psychological research in the real world

Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 12-textbook notes

Introduction laboratory experiment is traditionally considered the “gold standard” in psychology research because only laboratory experiments can clearly separate cause from effect and therefore establish casualty It accumulates a lot of knowledge on what can happen under carefully isolated and controlled circumstances, but it has little to say about what actually does happen under the circumstances that people actually encounter in their daily lives “Experimentation in the laboratory occurs, society speaking, on an island quite isolated from the life of society” ~Lewin, 1944

Rationale for Conducting Psychology Research in the Real World An important challenge researchers face when designing a study is to find the balance between ensuring Internal Validity (the degree to which a study allows unambiguous causal inferences) and external validity (the degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings and samples other than the ones being studied) Tend to be difficult to achieve at the same time, in one study Creating a controlled setting in which all potentially influential factors are controlled, is bound to create and environment that is quite different from what people naturally encounter Because of the incompatibility of the 2 types, one is often prioritized over the other and psychology has traditionally emphasized internal over external validity Field studies allow for the test of how psychological variables and processes of interest “behave” under real world circumstances They can also facilitate “downstream” operationalizations of construct that measure life outcomes of interest directly rather than indirectly The goal for researchers must be to complement traditional laboratory experiments with less controlled studies under real world circumstances Ecological validity: the degree to which an effect has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life

Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 13-textbook notes

An Overview of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life Capturing “life as lived” has been a goal for some researchers for a long time Researchers have over the decades, developed a broad toolbox for measuring experiences, behavior and physiology directly in participants daily life

Studying Daily Experiences A few groups of researchers moved away from highly controlled laboratory studies because of skepticism and developed a new st of methods commonly known as the experience sampling method, ecological momentary assessment or the diary method The basic idea behind all of them is to collect in the moment (or close the moment) self report data directly from people as they go about their daily lives Typically accomplished by asking participants repeatedly over a period of time to report on their current thoughts and feelings Questionnaires often ask about their location, social environment, activity and experiences Can get a snapshot of what was going on in participants lives at the time at which they were asked to report Are now the gold standard for studying daily life These approaches have allowed researchers to do research that is more externally valid or more generalizable to real life, than traditional laboratory experiment Day Reconstruction method (DRM): developed to obtain information about a person's daily experiences without going through the burden of collecting momentary experience sampling data Participants in this type of study report their experiences of a given day retrospectively after engaging in a systematic, experiment reconstruction of the day on the following day This approach has shed light on what situations lead to moments of positive and negative mood throughout the course of a normal day

Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 14-textbook notes

Studying Daily Behavior Electronically activated recorder (EAR): is when participants carry a recorder on them as they go about their days and return it at the end of the study. The recorder provides researchers with a series of sounds bits that together amount to an acoustic diary of participants days as they naturally unfold and that consists a representative sample of their daily activities and social encounters Researchers have used time lapse photography to study the flow of people and the use of space in urban places Observed people's personal (eg dorm rooms) and profession (eg offices) spaces to understand how personality is expressed and detected in everyday environments Have systematically collected and analyzed people garbage to measure what people actually consume rather than what they say they consume

Studying Daily Psychology Researchers are also interested in how our beliefs respond to the fluentnating demands of our lives Researchers have only found limited correspondence between how people respond physiologically to a standardized laboratory stressor and how they respond to stressful experiences in their lives Ambulatory physiological monitoring is monitoring physiological reactions as people go about their daily lives Electrocardiogram (ECG), blood pressure, electrodermal activity (or sweat response), body temperature and even the electroencephalogram (EEG) measures the biological signals can now be measured in daily life Researchers can use ambulatory physiological monitoring to study how the little amd seemingly trivial/inconsequential experiences in our lives leave objective, measurable traces in our bodily systems

Studying Online Behavior Researchers are beginning to think of virtual behavior as being as serious as “actual” behavior and to seek to make it legitimate target of their investigations A good way to study virtual social behavior is to study virtual language behavior

Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 15-textbook notes

Researchers can download peoples often public verbal expressions and communications and analyze them using modern text analysis programs Most research looks at psychological correlates of online behavior such as personality traits and the quality of one's social life

“Smartphone Psychology”? “The question isn't whether smartphones will revolutionize psychology but how when and where the revolution will happen”`Miller

Conclusion The dynamic of give and take between laboratory and field research is referred as “full cycle psychology” Going full cycle means that “researchers use naturalistic observations to determine an effects presence in the real world, theory to determine what processes underlie the effort, experimentation to verify the effect and its underlying processes and a return to the natural environment to corroborate the experimental findings

Psyc 100 Chapter 3 Page 16-textbook notes

Vocabulary Ambulatory Assessment: an overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behavior, physiology, experience and environments of humans in naturalistic settings Ecological Validity: the degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life Externally Validity: the degree to which a finding generalizes from the specific sample and context of a study to some larger population and broader settings Internal Validity: the degree to which a cause-effect relationship between 2 variables has been unambiguously established White Coat Hypertension: a phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital/doctors office but not in their everyday lives...