Psych Notes DAY 3 PDF

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Psych 201 Day 3 Notes •

Single Blind Experiment: Research participation bias o Participants do not know if they are in the experimental or control group o Participants do not know if they are given the real drug or placebo o Participants are BLIND to the hypothesis o Change in behavior is due to drug, not expectations o Results can still be influenced by researcher bias

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Researcher bias can lead to o Self-fulfilling prophecy o Prediction prompting people to act --> makes prediction come true

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Double-Blind Experiment o Neither researcher not participants know who is in experimental vs. control group

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Data Collection Method of Psych o The first step is to determine the level of analysis a particular question is addressing → Biological, individual, social, cultural o Data collection methods must be appropriate for questions at a particular level of analysis → Observational → Self-report → Response performance → Animal research

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Observational Data o Observational techniques: systemic assessment and coding of overt behavior o Should the study be conducted in the lab or in a natural environment? o How should the data be collected? o Should the observer be visible? o Reactivity: presence of the observer alters the behavior of those being observed --> Hawthorne Effect

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Self-report Methods o Compared to observation, asking people about themselves is a more interactive way to collect data o Self-report methods:

→ Questionnaires or surveys (are used to gather data from a large amount of people in a short time → Interviews

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Self-report Bias o Problem with self-report data: → Difficult to discern an honest or true response o Socially desirable responding/faking good: person responds in a way that is socially acceptable → Can overcome by making things anonymous o Better-than-average-effect: people tend to describe themselves in positive ways that are not necessarily true

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Response Performance Measures the Processing of Information o Response performance: quantify perceptual or cognitive processes in response to a specific stimulus o Three major types: → Reaction time → Response accuracy → Stimulus judgements

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Body/Brain Activity Measured Directly o Psychophysiological assessment: researchers examine how bodily functions (physiology) change in association with behaviors or mental states → A polygraph measures physiological activity related to behaviors or mental states (ex: heart rate, perspiration rate, blood pressure)

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Psychophysiological Asessment: o Electrophysiology: data collection method that measures electrical activity in the brain o Electroencephalograph (EEG): a device that measures brain activity → Produces electroencephalograms: reflect all brain activity (they are too noisy or imprecise to isolate specific responses to stimuli o Event-related potential (ERP): by averaging across many trials, brain activity in response to a specific stimulus can be observed o Brain imaging → Positron emission tomography (PET): a computer-aided reconstruction of the brain’s metabolic activity by tracking a radioactive glucose → Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): produces a powerful magnetic field that the tissues in the brain respond to

→ Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): measures blood flow indirectly by assessing changes in the blood’s oxygen level

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Animal Research Provides Important Data o Many important research findings in psychology have been obtained by studying the behavior of nonhuman animals o Forces that control the behaviors of all animals exert their effects in similar ways → After all we are just another species of animals

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Four Basic Principles of Critical Thinking 1. Few truths transcend the need for empirical testing 2. Evidence varies in quality 3. Authority or claimed expertise does not automatically make an idea true 4. Critical thinking requires an open mind

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Types of Statistics in Psychology o Descriptive statistics: summarize numbers so they become more meaningful and easier to communicate to other people → Tells us what the distribution of scores looks like o Inferential statistics: used in decision making --> you take the results from your small sample and draw conclusions based on what you find

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Descriptive Statistics: Summary of the Data o In order to understand our distribution of scores for our sample, we need to know two important descriptive statistics → Central score: measure of central tendency → Spread of scores: measure of variability

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Mean o Add all the scores together for each group and divide by total number of scores o Sensitive to extremely high or low scores in a distribution can skew your distribution o Not always the best measure of central tendency

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Median o Arrange scores from highest to lowest and then select the score that falls in the middle → Half the values fall above median, half fall below it

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Mode o Most commonly occurring number o Easy to obtain but often unreliable o Main advantage: gives the score obtained by most people

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Measures of Variability: o Provide a single number that tells us how spread out the scores are → Range: gives you the highest number and lowest number; subtract → Standard deviation: index of how much a typical score differs from the mean of a group of scores

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Normal Distribution: o Normal curve: bell shaped curve, with a large number of scores in the middle and very few extremely high and low scores → Is predictable mathematical relationship between SD and a normal curve...