9 26 13 PSY 280 notes in science if it can t be measured then it doesn t exist observation is controlled and systematic used to see if x causes y thinking like a researcher skepticism regarding claims that talk about the cause of behavior and mental processes do this by looking for evidence across many studies people who watch certain TV are more satisfied as if they had more friends Evolution adaptation Kanazawa 2002 People who looked at his study realized he was measuring life satisfaction instead and his found associations disappeared science occurs in at least 3 contexts take into account 1 historical what was going on in time ideas of the age cohort effect basically people in the same generation are influenced affected by the same things 2 sociocultural ideas and values of society ethnocentrism what we think is important to look at and study might not be as important to others 3 moral ethical behavior in search of truth research questions what should I study how do I develop a hypothesis to test in my research is my research question a good one scientific method experiments empirical requires systematic controlled observation Clever Hans the horse that could count we gain more control when we use experimentation manipulate one of more factors and observe these manipulations on behaviors independent variable IV the controlled variable dependent variable DV measure of behaviors used to assess the effect of the independent variable operational definition explains concept solely in terms of observable procedures used to produce and measure that construct basically making up a definition that makes something true and when any person looks at the same thing you are they ll get the exact same number answer construct concept or idea intelligence depression memory aggression example what does being scared constitute so then you make an operational definition for it measurement we use instruments for both physical and psychological measurement in psych reliability consistency measuring in the same way every single time validity measures what it claims to measure like how Kanazawa was measuring life satisfaction instead of what he claimed to be studying he wasn t valid in his correlation two most important things about measurement scientific hypothesis is like a tentative explanation conduct experiments to test our hypothesis must be TESTABLE concepts must be clearly defined and measures example Freud and his stages can t really be tested cannot be circular example a kid has ADD because he s distracted in class or he s distracted in class because he has ADD can only be appealed by ideas that are real not external forces example It was the devils that got into her head and made her kill someone goals of the scientific method 1 description general laws applying to diverse populations DSM 5 qualitative meaning based example 10 people describe their hallucinations in narratives and a person generalizes all of the narratives to an entire population quantitative number based numeric 2 prediction correlation when scores on one variable can be used to predict another don t need to know why 3 explanation understand phenomena and identify causes plausible alternatives too 4 application apply to improve people s lives in practice identify who is at risk find treatment