NU PSYC 1101 - CHAPTER 1: CRITICALLY THINKING WITH PSYCH SCIENCE

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M. Ashcraft PSYCH: 1101 CHAPTER 1: CRITICALLY THINKING WITH PSYCH SCIENCEHINDSIGHT BIASo Hindsight bias: the “I knew it all along” phenomenon Common sense describes what has happened not what will happenOVERCONFIDENCEo Think that we know more than we knowo Overestimate our ability because once know answer knew all along: hindsight biasSCIENTIFIC ATTITUTE 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 perspectivesCRITICAL THINKING o Examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusionsSCIENTIFIC METHODo Theory: explains through an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts results Needs to be testable in order to determine the correctnesso 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 theoryo Operational definitions: distinct definitions to define what is being tested I.e. “hunger” hours without eatingTHEORYUseful when:1. effectively organizes a range of self reports and observations2. 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 OBSERVATIONSo 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 methodso The Survey A technique for ascertaining the self reported  Asks people to report behavior or opinions  Wording effects- Subtle changes in wording or order can achieve different results Random Sampling- Provides an unbiased viewpoint- Random sample in a target populationNaturalistic Observation- 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 CORRELATIONM. Ashcraft o When a trait or behavior accompanies anothero Correlation Coefficient Explains how closely related the two variables are Sign(+/-): direction of the relationship Magnitude: strength of relationshipo Scatter plots Each dot represents the scattered values of 2 variables By looking at the graph can assume a correlation: pos, neg, noneCORRECTION AND CAUSTIONo Correlations help us predict, but not assume as facto No matter how strong relationship, correlation cannot prove anythingo Correlations are reversible, variable causes result, result causes variable Depression causes low self esteem, low self esteem causes depressionILLUSIONARY CORRELATIONSo A perceived, but nonexistent correlation Ex: adoptive parents that later conceive Unlikely phone call followed by the actual callo 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 relationshipsEXPERIMENTATIONResearchers isolate cause and effect with experiment 1. manipulating the factors of interest2. holding constant other factors Effects generated by manipulated variables isolate cause and effect relationshipso 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 groupso 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 variableis 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 behavioro Do case studies, surveys, naturalistics, nothing is manipulated, no control of variablesM. Ashcraft - Correlational Methodo To detect natural occurring relationships, to assess how well one variable predicts another, compute stat association, sometimes among survey responses, nothingis manipulated, does not specify cause and effect- Experimentalo 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 resultMEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY o Mode: the most common result, reoccurringscoreo Median: the midpoint, 50 percentileo Mean: the average result MEASURES OF VARIATIONo Helps in finding hoe similar or diverse thedata iso Range: the gap between the lowest andthe highest scoreo Standard Dev: how much the scores deviate from each other o Normal Curve: the bell shaped distribution MAKING INFERENCESo A Statistical statement of how frequently an obtained result occurred by experimental manipulation or by chanceo 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 caseso 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 isprobably due to chance variation. - Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the result occurs by chance less than


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NU PSYC 1101 - CHAPTER 1: CRITICALLY THINKING WITH PSYCH SCIENCE

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