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PSYC300 Exam 1 Study Guide Why Study Psychology? • Behavioral research is used to study human problems and provide solutions to them. Its goal is to discover how people feel, perceive their world, think, change over time, learn, make decisions, and interact with others. • People show a resistance to science because it is unnatural and unintuitive and it often contradicts common sense. - Worry over concept of free will/free choice. • Empirical – a systematic collection and analysis of data. • Data – information collected through formal observation or measurement. • It is important to understand the scientific method. - The scientific method is the only reliable method. However, it does not provide us with the ultimate truth. - We minimize the likelihood of being wrong by conducting good research. Chapter 1 – Introduction to Research Understanding Behavior in a Scientific Manner • Common sense, religion and intuition as sources of knowledge. - We can predict a person’s actions by knowing his or her personality traits. - Trust your feelings; they never lie. We cannot be wrong about what we are feeling. - People trust in astrology even though there is no evidence for it. - These kinds of methods don’t check their conclusions and they do not have a good answer for “why do you think so?” They also can be misleading. - Hindsight bias – the tendency to think that we could have predicted something that we probably could not have predicted. • Science is when we test our ideas against the outside world. - Who? How? What? Why? - Contains empirical investigation, objectivity, and replicability. - Procedures must be objective – free from the personal bias or emotions of the scientist. - Search for a good answer that can be backed up by data. - There is skepticism with science because there are contradicting results, contradiction with real life results, and nuances and qualifiers (the answers are never simple). • Scientific method – the set of assumptions, rules and procedures use to conduct research.• Values – personal statements or opinions that cannot be tested empirically. There is no way to disprove it. • Facts – objective statements supported empirically. - May contribute to the formation of values. - Studies the what and how. - Interpretations of empirical data and takes measurements. • Applied research and basic research should inform each other. Basic research provides underlying issues that can be used to solve specific problems and applied research gives ideas for the kinds of topics that basic research can study. • Basic research – attempts to answer a fundamental question. It is the underling principles of behavior. There is no particular reason for studying such things except to acquire better knowledge of how these processes occur. Ex: What are the variables or causes of certain behavior? How do nerves conduct impulses? • Applied research – investigates issues that have implications and provide solutions for everyday life. Ex: What types of advertising will reduce drug abuse? What kind of therapy is most efficient for depression? • Gains of Doing Research Properly - Helps you learn how to evaluate research reports. - Makes the research process faster/easier. - Makes you think critically about research. • Research design – the specific method a researcher uses to collect, analyze and interpret data. - Descriptive – provides a snapshot of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at a given place and time. What is the nature of the phenomenon? There is no hypothesis. The data is qualitative or quantitative. A disadvantage is that it can’t tell is how concerns developed or what impact they have. Ex: surveys, interviews, naturalistic observation. - Correlational – establishing a systematic relationship between two or more variables. From knowing X, can we predict Y? In what percentage? Cannot be used to make inferences about causation, only predictions. Uses r to indicate the strength of the relationship (-1 to 1). - Experimental – establishing a casual relationship between variables. There is a change in one or more factors (independent variables) to determine whether such changes determine changes in one or more other factors (dependent variables). Is variable X a cause of variable Y? An advantage is that it helps us make informed decisions. A disadvantage is that many important individuals can’t be manipulated.• Qualitative research – focused on observing and describing events as they occur, with the goal of capturing everyday behavior that might have been missed if other methods had been used. Ex: descriptive narrations or audio recordings. • Quantitative research – uses more formal measures of behavior like questionnaires, which are designed to be subjected to statistical analysis. • Converging operations – using more than one research design to study a single research topic. • Predictor variable – doesn’t show causation, used for correlational research. • Independent variable – does show causation, used for experimental research. The variable can be manipulated. Chapter 2 – Developing the Research Hypothesis • Scientists get ideas for research by: - Looking at existing research. - Explaining conflicting findings in research areas. - Concerns about real-life problems. - Intuition or hunches from observations. • Inductive reasoning – moving from specific facts to general conclusions. • Deductive reasoning – moving from general to particular. • Literature Search – when you look for research articles and books that contain reports of previous research. - Helps prevent duplication and avoid problem’s other people may have had. - Can provide you with valuable information about your variables. - You look for sources on a database. Begin at a broad, general level and then progress towards specific levels. Use the newest and most available information and progress backward toward previous research. • A research hypothesis must be testable, falsifiable, and be about a specific relationship. - Falsifiable – there must be some possible set of data that could disconfirm the predictions. The variables can be measured and the relationship between them can be proved false. • Laws – very general principles that apply to all situations. Their validity has already been established. Ex: Newton’s laws. •


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UMD PSYC 300 - Exam 1

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