PSY173 - Introduction to Psychological Research Methods PDF

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Introduction to Psychological Research MethodsChapter 1 Mind and Reality Atoms o Physically indivisible and indestructible particles o Infinite atoms and void o Mind is part of the universe, can only be made of atoms (eg: thinking, perception, feelings  movement of atoms) o Envisage (form a mental ...

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Introduction to Psychological Research Methods Chapter 1 -

Mind and Reality Atoms o Physically indivisible and indestructible particles o Infinite atoms and void o Mind is part of the universe, can only be made of atoms (eg: thinking, perception, feelings  movement of atoms) o Envisage (form a mental picture of something not known) where there is no purpose. Eg: atom moves according to laws of nature

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Reality as we know o Anaximander  discover new things about universe based on observation. Modern sciences based on empirical evidence (evidence from observation) o Democritus  + Leucippus  developed atomic theory of reality  Universe is made of atoms and void (empty spaces) o All visible macroscopic objects (stones, mountains, plants, animals, humans) are composed of atoms. o Atoms are physically indivisible and indestructible. o There is an infinite number of atoms. o The natural world is composed of two things: atoms and void. o Atoms always have been and will be in motion through the void. o When they collide, atoms repel one another, or they combine into c clusters. o Macroscopic objects are clusters of atoms. o Atoms are eternal, but the clusters are not. o There is no purpose in the universe; things happen by necessity. o The soul is composed of atoms. o Thought is motion of atoms and can cause motion. o Perception and thinking are physical processes. o Influences o These ideas were extremely influential in the development of science. For example:  Atoms moving in space: Galileo  Empty space as a container: Newton  Determinism: all modern science

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Aristotle o Geocentric systems  Earth is in the centre and all other celestial bodies revolve around earth  Celestial bodies are located in transparent spheres and that surrounds earth and move in circular trajectory  Four elements in core  water, earth, fire, air  Ptolemy  added epicycles  Original geocentric system cannot explain observed data  Eg: mars didn’t look like it revolve around earth in circular trajectory, but sometimes look as if it goes backwards.

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Souls 

Form of an organism  adds structure and dynamics of organism and make them the way they behave  Vegetative soul (plant and animals)  allow to grow and obtain nutrition from the environment  Sensitive Soul (animals)  allow to perceive environment, feel and move around said environment  Rational Souls (humans)  the mind, allows human to reason, understand mathematics and philosophy.

Mathematical Universe (Pythagoras: all things are numbers, universe sustained by harmony) o Plato  Reality vs appearance  world appears to us is NOT the real world  world appears to us is imperfect  copy of real world  We only see imperfect copies of the world  obtain knowledge using mind and reason, not senses  if thru senses we only perceive imperfect copies of reality as mind capture reality as it is. o

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 Better predict location of the planets Four Causes  Material: something exist because of matter  Formal: essence of things due to form they have  structure that make something to behave in a specific manner  Efficient: if object collide into another object, produces an effect  Final  more associated to his view of a purposeful universe  Things have an end, goal, to achieve something  Eg: return to the 4 elements  things that have earth essence tend to go earth  stones go to earth, water essence stay in water etc

Copernicus  Formulated a model of universe  place sun at centre of universe, not Earth  Heliocentric model of the world Kepler  Law of planetary motion  orbit of planet is an ellipse 

Anti-Aristotleian Atomism with no void Analytic geomertry o Galileo Galilei  Atoms in the world move freely and there’s no purpose in the world  Also started tradition of doing experiements & developed law of freefall  Did thought experiments o

Rene Descartes  Everything made of atoms  no void  Invented analytic geometry  leads to use of algebra much more than geometry

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Saw universe as mechanical  use math tool to explain the universe

Isaac Newton  Differ from causality  every effect of object over another object require direct contact of those objects  Presented laws of motion and law of universal gravitation  Came out with the mathematical system allowing predictions to be made for kepler’s law of planetary motion  Doubt: is math a natural description of how reality is or is it a tool to predict positions of planet to understand reality Mechanical Universe | diff from isaac newton  action at a distance o World is like a machine  Movement of one gear affects movement of another gear and so on  Some say first movement was by god, and no intervention since htem  Contradicts Aristotle’s idea on purposeful universe.  If universe is a universal machine, human body (including main / nervous system) is not an exception o

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Thomas Hobbs  Says brain was responsible of low-level mental processes  If universe is a machine, societies are machines  book leviathan

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Laplace’s Demon  thought experiment  Our mind is not powerful enough to understand world and see how one thing cause another  Use probabilities to make predictions about future  cannot establish the reality with certainty  If there was intellect (the Laplace Demon) that can observe the whole universe then he/she would be able to observe all cause and effects.  Even if humans can’t establish w precision the cause and effect, those things exist.  universe is deterministic

Mind and Matter o Mind-Body Dualism  cogito ergo sum  I think, therefore I am / I am conscious therefore I exist  We have an immaterial mind  one hand a material mechanistic universe within which human body and brain is located, therefore ALSO mechanical.  Reductionism/ eliminative materialism o Reductionism / eliminative materialism  Thomas Hobbs  Mind is matter  materialistic view in mind body issue  Julian de la Mettrie  idea of brain as mechanical machine and mind is nothing but what brain does  Patricia Churchland  reductionism/EM  mental concept can be reduced to concepts about brain structures and brain processes. o Immanuel Kant, Hermann van Helmholtz  mind isn’t mechanical, it constructs reality  knowledge of reality is limited

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perception of world is partly determined by innate schemas  knowledge structure / knowledge network we acquired over the years of living and learning + experience  Helmholtz further developed these ideas  study visual perception

Kant view of reality  human mind is active and generates a representation of reality | We possess an innate causality category in our brains. -

Scientific realism and instrumentalism o Einstein  Initiation of quantum mechanics  postulate existence of particles (photon)  Special theory of relativity | general theory of relativity  Conceptual elements of theories in physics (eg atoms), describes the world as it is  realism  goal of science to describe reality as it is. o Niels Bohr  All formula in quantum mechanics/physics are tools to make predictions  NOT describing reality as it is  Sees scientific knowledge as instrument to make predictions about world, but NOT describing how the world actually is (compared to scientific realism)  goal of science is to make predictions about the world o Nancy Cartwright  Some laws that let us understand how world works, but not universal laws.  They are constrained, depend on conditions and on specific part of universe or at specific time.  Model we have about reality is not how reality is, it’s just a model

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Mind and reality o Mind contains schemas, we perceive world filtered by those o Mind is not an empty slate that copies what’s out there (tabula rasa) o We can never know what reality as it is, only access to phenomenon perceived as it o Perception is construction based on knowledge strcture in mind  Colours that can’t be seem / sounds that can’t be heard  Reality out there that is independent of the mind  knowledge is limited.

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Study of the mind o Mind  strcture of organism allowing to think, feel, perceive, pay attention, make decisions, memorise etc. o Consciousness  main view is mind is different from consciousness, rise again as a subject matter to look into in the present o Behaviour  what organisms do  today we investigate in order to understand mind and behaviour

Week 1 ●

Which philosopher developed the atomic theory? - Democritus

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Which philosopher came out with the conception of souls? - Aristotle

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Which philosopher added the epicycles to Aristotle's Geocentric system? - Ptolemy

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Who formulated the Heliocentric model: putting the sun at the centre of the universe? Nicolaus Copernicus

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Who came out with the law of universal gravitation? - Isaac Newton

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Who said that the universe is a machine, societies are machines and he expressed that view in his book the Leviathan? - Thomas Hobbes

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What does the Laplace's demon infer? - The universe is deterministic

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Who came out with the phrase in latin "cogito ergo sum"? - Rene Descartes

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Which philosopher believes that the mind and perception does not work like a machine but it constructs our own reality influenced by our schemas? - Immanuel Kant

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Scientific realism? - The goal of science is to describe reality as it is

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Instrumentalism realism? - The goal of science is to make predictions

Chapter 2 Causality 1) Aristotle’s 4 causes (Chapter 1)

2) Rene Descartes a. Efficient cause of Aristotle interpreted as MECHANICAL cause (others less impt) b. God as General Cause  God Generated matter / set things in motion in universe c. Specific Causes i. Mechanical and automatic motion of matter ii. Causes and effect are in contact with one another  like machine moving its parts (aka deterministic) 3) Thomas Hobbes a. Causation isa motion, requires contact of material objects (deterministic) b. NO action at a distance c. Everything happens by necessity 4) Baruch Spinoza a. From a cause an effect necessarily follows (deterministic) b. If a determinate cause does not occur it is impossible an effect would follow (counterfactual) 5) Gottfried Leibniz a. Against the materialistic view of causation of Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza b. Principle of sufficient reason: “ There is nothing without a reason or no effect without a cause” c. Souls have final causes, aspirations and goals. Bodies act according to efficient causes 6) John Locke a. Causality is not a lawful necessary connection. b. Things have powers (capacities) and use their powers in specific circumstances (not deterministic) c. More interested in what we can know rather than how reality is 7) Isaac Newton a. No universal causation b. Any movement according to first law of motion is uncaused event c. First Law: Every object will remain at rest/uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force d. Causes are forces that compel bodies to move in a different way than they would have done without them e. Causation and natural laws of motion are different things i. Causes are forces / constraints that compel moving bodies to behave differently than they would have done without them, thus Caused = constrained/compelled ii. “free motion” refer to unconstrained motions. Thus every body that continues in state of rest/ uniform behaviour in straight line is uncaused / free. iii. Any movement happened according to first law of motion is uncaused event

Causality in the mind 8) David Hume a. Contiguity in space and time of cause and effect b. Cause occurs before effect  Necessary connection of cause and effect c. Observe events  causal link between them is a mental habit d. Causality does not occur in reality i. Mental construction due to repeated and constant conjunction between event regarded as “cause” and “effect” ii. Causality is a learned concept in our mind iii. Induction does not guarantee certain knowledge iv. Induction: based on observation of specific things we generate a general law e. Does not propose to abandon induction, but to give up the goal of achieving certain necessary knowledge 9) Immanuel Kant a. Agrees like Hume (causality in the mind) b. BUT says causality is innate apriori category (schema), allows us to perceive events happening one after another  innate causality category in brain

Causality Counterfactual and interventions 10) John Stuart Mill Model

11) Necessary vs Sufficient Condition a. Causality is not just one event causing another event  combination of events / conditions needed to consider. b. Determine if it is necessary and whether conditions are sufficient to cause an effect c. Use imagination to think of possibilities 12) David Kellogg Lewis a. Lewis proposed to remove first part of Hume’s definition b. Counterfactual is what needs to be considered to establish causation c. Imagination of “possible worlds” in which the event considered causes does not occur 13) Judea Pearl  Ladder of Causation a. Combines ideas from computer science (Bayesian networks), counterfactual views on causality and Donald Rubin’s potential outcomes framework in statistics. Observation: Detection of patterns in the environment Actions: Producing an intervention in the environment to observe the effects (Causation) Imagination: Considering counterfactuals in model to make casual inferences without intervention (causality by modelling)

Causal Casual Models 1) Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs)

In a DAG, variable A affect Variable C and variable b also affects variable c  C is a collider DAGs have two components: nodes (which represent variables) and edges (which represent causal relationships). The edges are directed. That means they are arrows, which indicates that one variable causes the other variable. DAGs do not allow non-directed arrows. | DAGs do not allow bi-directional direct or indirect paths: For example: If A causes B, B cannot cause A (direct path). If A causes B and B causes C, C cannot cause A (indirect path).

There are some interesting DAG structures, which are important to understand when we want to design experiments to determine causal relationships or their strength.

1. Chains: A causes B and B causes C. (B fully or partially mediates the effect of A on C) 2. Common cause or fork: A causes B and A causes C (A is the common cause of B and C) 3. Common effect or collider: A causes C and B causes C (C is the common effect of A and B, and it is a collider) These simple structures help us understand two issues that are essential to the design of research: 1. Mediation 2. Confounding 3. Selection bias

Week 2 ●

Spinoza said that if a determinate cause does not occur it is impossible that an effect would follow. What kind of thinking is this? - Counterfactual

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According to Newton’s first law of motion: Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This means that any movement according to the first law of motion is a(n) _____ event. – Uncaused

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_____ ascribe to the view that causality does not occur in reality, it is a learned concept in our minds. - David Hume

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_____ ascribe to the view that causality is an innate apriori (schema) category. - Immanuel Kant

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The necessary and sufficient conditions in Mill’s model posits that if condition A+C is always followed by effect B, what can we conclude with certainty? - A+C is a sufficient condition for B to occur.

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The necessary and sufficient conditions in Mill’s model posits that if condition A is followed by B, and when A is absent, B does not occur. What can we conclude with certainty? - A is a necessary condition for B to occur.

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The counterfactual perspective posits that causation can be established if event A occurs, and event B occurs immediately afterwards and also _____________________. - When event B would not occur if A had not occurred.

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Who is the interventionist that posits that if variable A is the cause of variable B, an intervention would bring about a change in variable B. - Judea Pearl

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In a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), which of the following representation is present between variables X and Y? - A path from variable X to variable Y, with no path from variable Y to variable X.

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We can say that X causes Y if the following is true: (A) If we made an intervention on X a change on Y would occur, and (B) That change would not have occurred had we not intervened in X. Is (A) or (B) the counterfactual thinking? - B is the counterfactual thinking.

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A researcher is investigating the effect of variable A on B. In which of the following cases variable C is a confounding variable? ○ C affects A but does not affect B. ○ C is affected by B but not by A. ○ C is affected by A but not by B.

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C affects both A and B.

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In a DAG, variable A affects variable B, and variable C affects variable A and B. What is variable C called? ○ A collider. ○ A fork. ○ A chain. ○ A confounding variable.

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In a DAG, variable A affects variable B, and variable C is the common effect of both variable A and B. What is variable C called? ○ A collider. ○ A fork. ○ A chain. ○ A confounding variable.

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Variable A is the cause of variable B, and in turn variable B is the cause of variable C. Which of the following types of causal models with those three variables would you use? ○ Fork ○ Collider ○ Chain ○ Common cause ○ Common effect

Chapter 3: Scientific Knowledge Inductive empiricism vs deductive rationalism 1) Francis Bacon  Novum Organum a. “Mind is an obstacle for knowledge” b. Against speculation  Overall Inductive  acquire knowledge through senses.

c. Method mitigates the idols (biases) of the mind i. Tribe  biasedness humans (species) have ii. Cave  individual experience / education one receives to view nature iii. Theatre  philosophers ideologies iv. Marketplace  ideas gained via communication d. Method i. Collect all relevant data without presuppositions ii. Analyse data to detect correlations iii. Extended experimentations to test possible correlations/formations of hypotheses  further test, make hypothesis iv. If confirmed  elevate hypotheses to laws of nature 2) Rene Descartes  Discourse on Method a. Only way to obtain certain knowledge is through the mind, NOT senses b. Mathematical axiom allow to deduce knowledge with certainty  can generate knowledge | Deductive reasoning c. Rational (axiomatic analysis) i. Accept as true only wwhat presents with clarity ii. Divide the problem iii. Find the solution of the problems from simple to difficult iv. Test the general solution with persistence 3) Isaac Newton  Principia Mathematica a. Also Rational (Axiomatic) Analysis b. Knowledge requires deduction c. Theory must have premises that are known to be true or assumed to be true d. Abstraction and simple models of a problem to its simplest form (Mass as a single point revolving around an abstract centre of force) 4) Logic: Arguments a. Argument  1 conclusion (what we argue for) + premise (reason we give as a justification of conclusion) b. Syllogism  2 Premises + 1 Conclusion c. Evaluated in terms of Validity and Well-groundedness i. Sound argument  BOTH valid AND well grounded ii. N...