Lecture Chapter 2 Research Methods Chapter 1 cont Cognitive Personality Social Clinical School Health o Study how we perceive and process information o Experimental psychologist cognition learning o Study how our individual traits develop as we mature o Study how others impact our thoughts and behaviors o Work with people who have mental disorders o Different from counseling psychology o Assess and develop intervention programs o Psychological factors in health and illness Developmental o Study who and how people change over time o Most work with infants and children Biological behavioral neuroscience o Examine psychological bases of behavior o Most work in research settings Forensic I O Sports Chapter 2 o Personnel psychology o Real work applications o Psychological effect on performance sports o Assess diagnose and assist with rehabilitated treatment of prison inmates o Others conduct research on eyewitnesses or juries Facilitated communication didn t work Prefrontal lobotomy didn t work o Neural fibers connecting frontal lobes to thalamus were severed 2 Modes of thinking Heuristics mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that we use daily reduce cognitive energy required to solve problems but we oversimplify reality representatives heuristics o o o availability heuristics Principals of Research Design 1 perceive the question Lecture Chapter 2 Research Methods 2 form a hypothesis 3 test the hypothesis 4 draw conclusions 5 report your results clearly Descriptive Studies describe observations about behavior o naturalistic observations case studies surveys o generate testable hypotheses empirical naturalistic observation record behavior in naturally occurring situations o major advantage realistic picture of behavior high external validity o disadvantages observer effect participant observation observer bias blind observers low internal validity laboratory observation o advantages controls over environment subjects allows use of specialized equipment o disadvantages artificial situation may result in artificial behavior external validity case study study of one individual o advantages tremendous amount of detail patterns may be detected tested o disadvantages o famous studies cannot generalize or be replicated Phineas Gage Patient HM John Joan case Genie Self Reported Measures and Surveys Self reported measures or questionaries assess characteristics such as personality or mental illness o Surveys ask about a person s opinions o Pros Easy to administer Direct self assessment of a person s state o Cons Lecture Chapter 2 Research Methods Accuracy is skewed for certain groups narcissists Potential of dishonesty Response sets Positive impression management Malingering looking worse than actually are o Representative sample people tested are distributed in about the same manner as in the entire population random selective Evaluating Measures To trust results the measures must have o Reliability consistency of results o Validity actually measure what you say you re measuring A test must be reliable to be valid but a reliable test can still be completely invalid Disadvantage of Descriptive Studies Correlation equals causation Correlation a measure of relationship between two data points Variable anything that changes or varies Positive correlation variables related in same direction Negative correlation variables related in opposite direction Illusory correlation perception of a statistical association where none exists Experimental Designs Causations requires manipulation Experiments are carefully regulated procedures that allow us to identify cause effect relationships Experimental group subjects under study to determine effect of some factor Control group subjects that serve as a standard or baseline for comparison with experimental Confounds any difference between the experimental and control groups aside from independent Demand characteristics cues that participants pick up allowing them to guess at the researcher s hypotheses Independent variables manipulated Dependent measured Operational definition definition of a variable that allows it to be precisely measures and that is o Advantages allows determination of cause effect relationships hence prediction and group variables replicable control o Disadvantages Placebo effect Single blind study reduces placebo Experimental expectancy effect Double blind study Lecture Chapter 2 Research Methods Ethical Guidelines for Human Research Institutional Review Board IRB Informed consent Justification of deception o o o Debriefing of subjects afterwards Statistics Descriptive statistics describe the data Central tendency where the group tends to cluster o Mean average score in data set o Median middle score in data set o Mode most frequent score in data set Distributive curves o Normal bell shaped o Negative skew o Positive skew Variability sense of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are Range difference between the highest and lowest scores Standard deviation measure that takes into account how far each data point from the mean Inferential statistics allow us to determine whether we can generalize findings from our sample to population o Statistical significance only 5 chance that results are random to chance o Practical significance real world importance o People can misuse statistics to persuade and mislead Report unrepresentative measures Truncate axes of graphs Neglect base rate probabilities Evaluating psychological research Process of peer review helps to identify and connect flaws in research and research conclusions Look out for confounds placebos experimenter expectancy correlation vs causation etc Evaluating Psychology in the media Watch out for o Sharpening o Leveling o pseudo symmetry