hindsight biasthe tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen itcritical thinkingthinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions, rather it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusionstheoryan explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behavior or eventshypothesisa testable prediction , often implied by a theoryoperational definitiona statement of the procedures used to define research variablesreplicationrepeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstancescase studyan observation technique in which one person is studied depth in the hope of revealing universal principlesnaturalistic observationobserving and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situationsurveya technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes of behavior of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the grouppopulationall the cases in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawnrandom samplea sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusioncorrelationa measure of the extent to which two factors vary together and thus of how well either factor predicts is the othercorrelation coefficienta statistical index of the relationship between two thingsscatterplota graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variablesexperimenta research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factorsexperimental groupin an experiment, the group that is exposed to the treatmentcontrol groupthe group that is not exposed to the treatmentrandom assignmentassigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groupsdouble-blind procedurean experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placeboplacebo effectexperimental results caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agentindependent variablethe experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studiedconfounding variablea factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experimentdependent variablethe outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variablemodethe most frequently occurring numbermeanaverage of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing them by the total numbermedianthe middle score in a distributionrangedifference between high and lowest scores in a distributionstandard deviationa computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean scorenormal curvea symmetrical, bell-shaped, curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean, or average, and fewer and fewer near the extremesstatistical significancea statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chanceculturethe enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and tradition shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the nextinformed consentan ethical principle that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participatedebriefingthe post experimental explanation of a study, including its purpose and any deceptions, to its participantsbiological perspectiveconcerned with the links between biology and behavior, includes psychologists working in neuroscience, behavior genetics, and evolutionary psychologyneurona nerve cell, the basic building block of the nervous systemdendritesa neuron’s bushy, branching extensions that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell bodyaxonthe neuron extension that passes messages through its branches to other neurons or to muscles or glandsmyelinsheath a fatty tissue layer segmentally encasing the axons of some neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed as neural impulses hop from one mode to the nextaction potentiala neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axonthresholdthe level of required to trigger a neural impulsesynapsethe junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuronneurotransmitterschemical messages that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons, when released by the sending neuron, neurotransmitters travel across the synapse and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron, thereby influencing whether that neuron will generate a neural impulsereuptakea neurotransmitter’s reabsorption by the sending neuronendorphinsnatural, opiatelike neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure01/27/2013hindsight bias-the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen itcritical thinking-thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions, rather it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions theory-an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behavior or events hypothesis-a testable prediction , often implied by a theory operational definition-a statement of the procedures used to define research variablesreplication-repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances case study-an observation technique in which one person is studied depth in the hope of revealing universal principles naturalistic observation-observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation survey-a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes of behavior of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group population-all the cases in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawn random sample-a sample that fairly represents a population