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Chapter 2
Psychology 101
b. Skepticism
i. Don’t believe it because it is thought to be true
ii.Treating conclusions both old and new with caution
iii.Openness to new ideas and evidence
3. Test:
a. Psychological Test:
i. Procedures for measuring and evaluating personality traits,
emotional states, aptitudes, interest, abilities, and values.
”sometimes called assessment instruments”
ii.Objective test:
a. Measure beliefs, feelings, or behaviors that people are
aware of, “also called inventories”
iii.Projective test:
a. Designed to tap into unconscious feelings or motives.
iv.Standardized test:
a. Standardized procedures for giving and scoring a test.
v.Norms:
a. Is the scoring of a test to a large group of people to
establish standards of performance.
vi.Reliability:
a. It produces the same test results from one time and place
to the next or one scorer to another.
vii.Test Retest:
a. Giving the test two times to see if the test is reliable.
viii.Alternate-forms reliability:
a. -Is giving different versions of the test to the same group
on two -different occasions to prevent familiarity.
ix.Validity:
a. Is the ability of a test to measure what it is designed to
measure.
x.Content validity:
a. Are items that broadly represent the trait in question.
xi.Criterion validity:
a. The ability to predict independent measures or criteria of
the trait.
b. Surveys:
a. Questionnaires and interviews asking people directly
about their experience, attitudes, or opinions.
ii.Volunteer bias;
a. Volunteers opinions and may be different from those that
did not volunteer.
4. Coo relational Studies:
a. Looking for relationships
ii.Study that looks for a consistent relationship between two or
more phenomena and if they are related and if so how strongly?
iii.Measuring Correlations
a. Coloration is often used as a synonym for relationship
b. Correlation measures the strength of a relationship
between two things. Things may be anything that can be
recorded or tallied, is also called a variable, because they
can vary.
a. Variable are anything that can be measured, rated,
or scored.
c. Positive correlations
a. High values of one variable are associated with the
high values of the other and that low values of the
variable are associated with the other.
d. Negative correlation:
a. Means that more of one thing means less of the
other.
e. No correlation:
a. No relationship between the variables.
f. Coefficient of correlation;
a. Measure of correlation that ranges in value for a
perfect positive coefficient of +100, and perfect
negative correlation of -100
iv.Cautions about correlations;
a. When two variables are associated on variable may or
may not be causing the other
a. A correlation does not establish causes
5. Experiments: Hunting for causes
a. Experiment;
i. Lets the researcher control or manipulate the situation being
studied to discover its effect on another
ii.Allows the experimenter to draw conclusion about draw and
effect
b. Experiment variables
i. Independent variables
a. Outcome of study depends on reaction of subjects
ii.Dependent variables
a. The behavior the researcher is trying to predict
b. Very experiment has at least one independent and on
dependent variable
c. Experimental and control conditions
i. They are treated the same as the independent group except for
the are not manipulated or given the same treatment
ii.Random assignments
a. Procedure for assigning to experimental and control
groups so individuals have the same probability as any
other to be assigned to a given group
b. Placebo
a. Fake treatment
d. Experimenter effects
i. Single blind study:
a. Subjects don’t know if there in a control or in a
experimental group
ii.Double-blind study
a. Neither experimenter or subjects know which group the
subjects are in
e. Advantages and limitations of experiment:
i. College students may not represent the larger population
ii.Researchers determine the questions asked and which behaviors
are recorded.
iii.Field Research:
-Experimental research conducted in a natural setting outside a
libratory.