PSYC FEBRUARY 17 2015 CHAPTER 1 THINKING CRITICALLY WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Need for Psychological Science The grandmother test pieces of info that get passed through tradition that seem like they make sense but we do not know if they are true or not o Birds of a feather flock together vs opposites attract Potential problems relying on intuition and common sense o Hindsight bias the feeling that after you learn about the outcome of an event you predict that you knew that outcome all along Problem looking backwards looking to explain behavior that has already happened We want to make predictions going forward instead o Overconfidence rating yourself higher on a scale of what you have o Perception of patterns in random events we look to impose structure Hindsight Bias Example Higher vs lower amounts of sleep lead to greater academic achievement Overconfidence we think we know more than we do Danger when studying for an exam under this assumption When shown that they aren t accurate participants explain away the results Perceiving Order in Random Events We want to see structure in things Completely random things Asking Answering Psychological Questions The Scientific Method used to protect us from hindsight bias overconfidence and perceiving order o Theory an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events o Hypotheses testable predictions Allow us to show support for revise or reject a theory Be careful of confirmation bias o Operational definitions a statement of the procedures used to define research variables o Replicate and expand Observing and Describing Behavior Case Study an in depth study of one individual conducted in hopes of revealing universal principles about population as a whole o Advantage sometimes prohibited by ethics practicality Survey method of obtaining self report data from a particular group o Population all the cases in a group being studied from which samples may be drawn o Random sample a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion Naturalistic Observation observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation o Overt observation when the people know that they are being watched aware that there is an observer Reactivity people behave differently when they know they re being watched o Covert observation the people don t know that they re being o Participant observer embed yourself within the group you are o Non participant observer not interacting with the group you are Correlation measure of the extent to which two factors vary together watched studying studying o Direction Positive correlation when one variable increases so does the other when you have a low score on the variable there is also a low score on the second variable same with high score Negative correlation when one variable increases the other decreases o Strength the closer the absolute value of the correlation is to 1 the stronger the relationship 3 and 7 7 is stronger correlation Correlation does not equal causation
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