9 9 13 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2 PSYC 100 Fall 2013 I CLICKER TIME Which level of analysis in psychology does the following statement represent At low doses cocaine can improve performance on visual attention tasks such as being faster at detecting certain stimuli on a computer screen A B C D Biological Individual Social Cultural LEARNING OBJECTIVES Distinguish between the types of studies in psychological research 1 9 9 13 DESCRIPTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES Naturalistic Observation Researchers watch people behave as they normally would Researcher is NOT a part of situation DESCRIPTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES Advantages Valuable in early stages of research Real world settings Disadvantages Errors in observation due to observer bias expectations Observer presence can change the behavior being witnessed OBSERVER BIAS 2 9 9 13 CORRELATIONAL STUDIES Examines how two variables are naturally related in the real world Researcher does not try to alter or assign causality Goal To allow us to make a guess about another variable based on what we know about one variable CORRELATIONAL STUDIES CORRELATIONS UNDERSTANDING CHECK As stress decreases blood pressure also decreases A Positive B Negative C Zero 3 9 9 13 CORRELATIONS UNDERSTANDING CHECK As the numbers of beers drank per week increases GPA decreases A Positive B Negative C Zero CORRELATION VS CAUSATION DIRECTIONALIT Y THIRD VARIABLE PROBLEM Another unmeasured variable may the actual cause of differences in the variables of interest Ice Cream Eating Violent Crime HEAT 4 9 9 13 CORRELATIONAL STUDIES Advantages Naturally occurring relationships May take place in real world settings Disadvantages Cannot tell causation No directionality An unidentified variable may be involved EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH Experimental Group Exposed to one manipulation of the independent variable Divide sample into 2 equal groups Experimenter manipulates the independent variable Measure Dependent Variable Control Group Exposed to another manipulation of the independent variable Measure Dependent Variable IN THE NEWS Selling On eBay Get Higher Bids With a Red Background Undergraduate research participants Ps shown an eBay ad for a Nintendo Wii Half were shown ad with red background half with blue background Randomly assigned into groups EVERYTHING ELSE about the two ads was the same Ps told that the current bid was 225 and asked to give their highest bid Bid jump calculated highest bid current bid Bagchi R Cheema A 2013 The effect of background color on willingness to pay The moderating role of selling mechanism Journal of Consumer Research 39 947 960 5 9 9 13 IN THE NEWS Effects MUST be due to background color because nothing else varied between the two conditions KEY FEATURES OF EXPERIMENTS Random Sampling Each member of the population an equal chance of being chosen Random Assignment Each research participants has an equal chance of being assigned to any condition i e the manipulations of the independent variable EXPERIMENTS Advantages Can demonstrate causal relationships Avoids the directionality problem Disadvantages Often conducted in an artificial setting 6
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