Research in the Behavioral Sciences January 11 2016 Goals of Behavioral Research Enhance the understanding of behavior Two types of research o Basic Research o Applied Research Basic Research Attempts to answer fundamental questions about the nature of behavior Goal Better our understanding o Simply for our knowledge have a better understanding of that phenomenon o Learning cognition personality development social behavior these Conducted to address issues in which there are practical problems and are all basic questions Applied Research potential solutions Goal Find solutions to problems Ex IO Psychologists o Research how they can improve employee satisfaction what kind of people must be hired to achieve goals etc Program Evaluation o Used to determine if a new program is effective o Ex IO psychologist implicates a program in a corporate business and needs to make sure the program is effective Basic and Applied Research Neither is considered superior to another Think of them on a continuum Work in synergy applied researchers often use basic research to find their solutions and vice versa What is Science Science is defined by 1 Systematic Empiricism 2 Public Verification 3 Solvable Problems Psychology meets each of these criteria Systematic Empiricism Essentially systematic empiricism is a step by step evaluation Systematic Following a set of rules o Not random or schema driven Empiricism Practice of relying on observation o Not logic intuition dreams common sense etc So science is answering questions about the world based on rule based observation Public Verification We have to give our research out to the public in many ways by publishing findings presenting them etc Replication and continuous challenging of ideas Why would we replicate a study o Verification of results by getting closer to the truth Report findings to scientific community o Journals o Presentations System open to scrutiny and criticism of scientific community every finding is critiqued by several experts in the field o Makes science self correcting o Helps to ensure that a phenomenon is real Solvable Problems Only study answerable questions Based on our current knowledge and research techniques What is an unanswerable question o Are ghosts real o Do angels exist o Is there a God does He exist o What is the meaning of life 3 Goals of Behavioral Research 1 Describe Behavior 2 Predict Behavior Ex SAT and ACT Testing Ex Customer service surveys on the bottom of your receipt o Aims to predict future academic performance 3 Explain Behavior The real goal of behavioral scientists These 3 goals are aimed at establishing and refining theories Theories Theory A set of propositions that attempts to specify the interrelationships among a set of concepts A theory is the interrelationship among these concepts o Ex Tripartite Theory of Attitudes Cognitions Behaviors Feelings Emotions Scientific theories are usually supported with evidence Explanations and Predictions Post hoc explanations Explanations for observations made after the fact A priori predictions are preferred to post hoc explanations o A priori predictions predictions about what will happen Rely on intuition Why o Hindsight Bias Nearly everything makes sense after the fact Hypotheses theories We can NOT test theories you can only test hypotheses developed from Hypothesis A testable proposition that follows logically from a theory Deduction Developing specific ideas based on a more general idea o Stem from a theory a bigger idea Induction Developing ideas based on observations Hypotheses must be falsifiable there has to be a possibility that hypotheses can be found false Falsifiability Hypotheses are of little use unless it can be found false Popper 1959 Little Green Men o These men control everything in your brain but in an MRI they have the ability to disappear Behavioral Variability January 13 2016 Variability in Psychology Psychologists are interested in studying how and why behaviors thoughts and emotions vary o Across situations a Saturday Your behavior is much different in class vs when you go out on Our behavior varies depending on situations in our lives Pavlov experiment studied how behaviors in dogs changed when the bell was present vs not o Among individuals o Over time Willingness to answer questions in class for example Developmental psychology focuses on this Behaviors vary from infancy through adulthood How do relationships change over time Satisfaction change over time Why are people more aggressive than others Why does aggression vary among individuals o Parenting modeling their behavior o Biological factors Testosterone o Exposure to violent TV video games etc o Genetics in our DNA Why do partners become unhappy with their relationships Why does satisfaction vary over time Across individuals o Stressors o Life challenges o Communication o Disliking qualities about your partner over time o Loss of attraction o Children Describing Variability To understand variability we need statistics Conceptually o How much variability do we have o Example used in class hours slept last night o Range Difference between the lowest score and highest score Average of a set of scores o Mean o Variance Graphically o Histogram Charts scores by frequency Frequency on the y axis Hours slept on the x axis Calculating Variance The sum of the extent to which points deviate from the mean Step 1 Calculate the mean o Score 1 score 2 score n n Step 2 Subtract mean from each score o Deviation score Step 3 Square the deviation scores o Because some are negative and some are positive Step 4 You must divide by n 1 o The more people we have the bigger the total sum of squares we have o Variance S2 Statistical Notation S2 yi ybar 2 n 1 o yi each individual score o ybar mean Mean formula in stat notation o yi n o yi each individual score o n sample size how many How is mean useful for variance Gives us a standard to compare data o How much do we vary from this standard In class Example Use the following set of all self esteem scores provide both range and Scale variance January 20 2016 Highest self esteem 10 Lowest self esteem 1 1 7 3 4 6 5 5 7 6 6 Range 7 1 6 Variance Step by step 1 Find the mean 1 3 6 5 6 7 4 5 7 6 10 50 10 5 2 Subtract the mean from each individual score 1 5 4 7 5 2 3 5 2 4 5 1 3 Square all the numbers 16 4 1 1 4 Add all of these numbers together 0 4 4 1 1 0 32 4 Divide by n 1 n 10 n 1 9 32 9 3 56 Always round to 2 decimal places APA Style 6 5 1 5 5 0 5 5 0 7 5
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