9 5 Experimental Psychology A way of understanding and predicting human behavior in a scientific manner o Common sense falls through o Intuition often fails They don t have a good answer for why do you think so to check their conclusions o People JUST DON T KNOW Testing the socks example tend to choose the last item Science The art of finding good answers to why do you think so o Empirical investigation o Objectivity o Replicability o Conflicting results o Nuances and qualifiers It s hard Alcohol is bad for health BUT Wine could be good BUT o Only red wine o Contradictions in real life Smoking kills but not the people I know o Truth is stranger than fiction People s typical handshakes are revealing of their personality traits Research Designs The scientific approach is empirical Goals o Describe o Predict o Explaining Research designs o Descriptive o Correlational Provides a snapshot of thoughts feelings and behaviors at a given place and time Basically simple statistics Establishing a systematic relationship between two or more variables o Experimental Establishing a causal relationship between variables Systematically change in one or more factors independent variables to determine whether such changes determine changes in one or more other factors dependent variables Self control is resource dependent o H1 when resources are depleted self control capacity o Some research questions decreases What is the prevalence of aggressive behavior among elementary school children Descriptive Correlational Correlational Is there any relationship between playing video games and aggressive behavior among children Knowing the frequency with which children play video games what is the percentage of aggressive behavior we can predict Does playing video games frequently result in an increase in aggressive behavior among children Experimental research o TABLE FROM SLIDES Basic vs Applied Research Basic research underlying principles of behavior Applied research investigates issues that have implications and provide solutions for everyday life o They should inform each other Translational research NIH roadmap for medical research o Basic scientists provide clinicians with new tools for use in patients and for assessment of their impact clinical researchers make novel observations about the nature and progression of disease that often stimulate basic investigations
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