M Ashcraft OVERCONFIDENCE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUTE bias PSYCH 1101 CHAPTER 1 CRITICALLY THINKING WITH PSYCH SCIENCE HINDSIGHT BIAS o Hindsight bias the I knew it all along phenomenon Common sense describes what has happened not what will happen o Think that we know more than we know o Overestimate our ability because once know answer knew all along hindsight o Curiosity passion for exploration o Skepticism doubting and questioning What do you mean How do we know o Humility An awareness to your own vulnerability to error and an openness for new ideas and perspectives o Examines assumptions discerns hidden values evaluates evidence and CRITICAL THINKING SCIENTIFIC METHOD assesses conclusions o Theory explains through an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts results Needs to be testable in order to determine the correctness o Hypothesis a testable prediction derived fro ma theory Enable revise or rejects a theory Must be able to replicate experiment and achieve same results to support or refute theory o Operational definitions distinct definitions to define what is being tested I e hunger hours without eating THEORY Useful when 1 effectively organizes a range of self reports and observations 2 implies clear predictions that anyone can use to check the theory or derive practical applications o eventually research can lead to a revision of the initial theory RESEARCH OBSERVATIONS o Theories Hypothesis Research revise theory o The Case Study Examines 1 individual in depth to reveal underlying behavioral principles Helps generate fruitful ideas But to discern general truths need other research methods o The Survey A technique for ascertaining the self reported Asks people to report behavior or opinions Wording effects Random Sampling Provides an unbiased viewpoint Random sample in a target population Naturalistic Observation Subtle changes in wording or order can achieve different results Observing and recording behavior of animals in wild and recording self seating patterns in a multiacrial school lunch room Wide ranging Records snapshots of everyday life without influencing behavior CORRELATION M Ashcraft o When a trait or behavior accompanies another o Correlation Coefficient Explains how closely related the two variables are Sign direction of the relationship Magnitude strength of relationship o Scatter plots Each dot represents the scattered values of 2 variables By looking at the graph can assume a correlation pos neg none CORRECTION AND CAUSTION o Correlations help us predict but not assume as fact o No matter how strong relationship correlation cannot prove anything o Correlations are reversible variable causes result result causes variable Depression causes low self esteem low self esteem causes depression ILLUSIONARY CORRELATIONS o A perceived but nonexistent correlation Ex adoptive parents that later conceive Unlikely phone call followed by the actual call o Illusion of control That chance events are subject to personal control Illusionary correlation the perception of a relationship where no relationship actually exists Regression towards the mean the tendency for extremes of unusual scores or events to regress towards the average Experimentation is the way to discern illusionary relationships EXPERIMENTATION Researchers isolate cause and effect with experiment 1 manipulating the factors of interest 2 holding constant other factors Effects generated by manipulated variables isolate cause and effect relationships o Random Assignment Assigning participants to experimental breast fed and control formula fed conditions by random assignment minimizes pre existing differences between the two groups Control vs Experimental groups o Double Blind Procedure In evaluating drug therapies patients and experimenter s assistants should remain unaware of which patients had the real treatment and which patients had the placebo treatment Placebo Effect power of the mind to create an effect o Independent and Dependent Variables Independent variable control Factor influenced by the experimenter The effect of this variable is the focus of the study Ex breastfeeding effects on intelligence breastfeeding is the variable Dependent variable variable thing that is changing A factor that may change in response to an independent variable In psych this is a psych or mental process usually The intelligence is the outcome measure and therefore the dependent variable Comparison of Results Descriptive Method to observe and record behavior o Do case studies surveys naturalistics nothing is manipulated no control of variables M Ashcraft Correlational Method Experimental o To detect natural occurring relationships to assess how well one variable predicts another compute stat association sometimes among survey responses nothing is manipulated does not specify cause and effect o To explore cause and effect manipulate one or more effects use random assignment independent variables are manipulated sometimes not ethical to manipulate certain variables and may not create a feasible result MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY MEASURES OF VARIATION o Mode the most common result reoccurring score o Median the midpoint 50 percentile o Mean the average result o Helps in finding hoe similar or diverse the o Range the gap between the lowest and data is the highest score o Standard Dev how much the scores deviate from each other o Normal Curve the bell shaped distribution MAKING INFERENCES o A Statistical statement of how frequently an obtained result occurred by experimental manipulation or by chance o When is an observed difference reliable representative samples are better than biased samples less variable observations are more reliable than the variable ones more cases are better than the few cases o When is difference significant When sample averages are reliable and the difference between them is relatively large we say that the difference is a statistical difference It is probably due to chance variation Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the result occurs by chance less than 5
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