PSY 370 1st Edition Lecture 1Outline of Last Lecture I. Course overviewOutline of Current Lecture II. Doing Social psychology III. Goals of Psychological Science Current LectureDoing Social PsychologyI. How do scientists approach their work? a. They avoid Hindsight bias: the tendency to believe we “knew all along” II. The let research tell the findings! But research is probabilistic. a. It has a P value (P=person). They must put personal bias aside. III. Evidence is BASE not OPINION! ** a. Song to remember is “all about that base” Goals of Psychological Science I. To describe. a. When describing they need to do descriptive research. i. Descriptive research usually has only one variable at a time. It measures what is the average amount of X in a given population. b. It is important to know that with just one variable the researcher can’t predict anything. c. It is also important to know that with one variable the researcher can’t explain anything either. i. However, it makes a good starting point for research These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.II. To predict.a. When trying to predict researchers do correlational research. i. This type of research they look for associations between 2 variables as they occur naturally. b. It is important to know that this research doesn’t explain either. c. While it doesn’t explain but if offers more questions than answers. d. It advantages of correlation studies i. It is important for assessing variables that would be unethical or impractical to manipulate experimentally. 1. Like an experiment to test and see in teenage pregnancy and high school dropout ratesare linked. But it would be unethical to control teenagers and pregnancy. III. To explain (cause) a. How do you establish cause? i. 1. Cause and effect must co-vary 2. Cause must precede effect in time 3. Must be able to rule out alterative explanations for the observed relationship between cause and effect. b. Two main problems associated with non-experimental correlational studiesi. Reverse- causality problem (aka problem of directionality) 1. So A could cause B and B could cause A. a. For example violent video games and aggressive behavior. A is video games and B is behavior. So violent games could cause the aggressive behavior or having aggressive behavior could cause the person to want to play violent games. ii. 3rd variable problem 1. This is that there could be another variable in the mix to get the outcome. a. So take the games and behavior example form before. There would be a C added to the mix. So a person could play violent games and have aggressive behavior but what is the person’s parents had just gotten a divorce? The divorce could cause the aggressive behavior thus making the divorce variable C.***CORREIATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!!!***VI. Mainly to find cause they do experiments i. True experiments includes an independent variable= IV and a dependent variable=DViii. An IV is what the research is in control of. The factor that experimenter thinks will affect another factor1. Manipulated variable 2. **every experiments needs to have at least 2 levels (an IV and DV)iv. A DV is what is measured. (outcome) 1. Common types of measurements are behavior, self-report, and physiological/technology. a. For example, an experiment to see if eating Oreo’s makes students better at tests. You would give half the class an Oreo before a test and the other nothing. Then wait and see who did better on the test. The IV would be the Oreo’s because that is what is supposed to change the outcome. And the test scores would be the DV because that is what is being measured. v. Random assignment is important because it makes sure that no one group is all the same. 1. This prevent having all shy people in a room and all outgoing in another, for example. This helps control the personality