Introduction to research of psychology Prof - Douglas Elliffe HSB 657/302.

641
( new science centre)
D.elliffe@auckland.ac.nz
( In charge of the first 3 lectures)
Course coordinator: m.burstall@aucklandac.nz
Reasearch Methods
Textbook Chapter 2 ( not very important)
Sex difference lab in your lab manual
One page summary on canvas
How do we find the physical representation of the brain
Bwe sometimes remeber it well and sometimes dont remember it well
Where can we find it? Can we physically find it?
The name of the physical representation of that physical memory was
called the emgram
Researchers did an experiment with flatworms
Taught em something , and tried to find the emgram
Trained the flat worm to turn right, incentive by food
They trained until they reliably turned right
Tried to transfer the engram by having a bigger flatworm eat the
flatworm with the engram
The "naive" flatworm has eaten the memory
The flatworms that ate the enegram flatworm actually turned right
consistently
Since the original flatworm experiment, many replicates were done.
But none of them have been successful, only the first flatworm
experiment has worked
What was wrong? Was it
Well conducted but a fluke result, flatworms had to turn right or
left, so that means there might still be a probablitly of them
turning mostly right. one in a million is not zero. The role of
statistic is allowed for this possiblity

Flawed because it was badly conducted. Some other explanation.

Such as food traces on the right, light on the left hand side
( flatworms dont like light). Maybe flatworms are biased to turn
right?? (things that we want to buy for humans are usually on the
right)

Role of research design is to prevent this

Basics
Research - Process of asking questions about the world

Good research design is asking questions so we're sure the asnwer will
answer something
Not all research is good research ( it's not all legitamate, some research maybe
just by chance, or no longer true)

Particular ethical obligation for psych research

Subjects usually people. Not to waste their time.

Results of psych research are often applied, so we better get it right ( Ie:
clinical psych)
Learning jargons is all about efficiency ( specialised term for any feild)
Stroop Effect
The colour reading thingie
Reading has become so automatic that it's hard to inhibit it
When colour conflicts with the colour named, reaction time is slower
DV - Dependent variable

Measure of the behaviour we're interested in ( time to name

colours)

Goes on the y axiss of a graph of our results

IV - independent variable

Variable manipulated to seee if it affects the DV

Wether colour matches name

Goes on x axis of the graph

DV - Y axis
IV - X axis
( terms test - easiest question)
Terminology - They dont always mean what you already know what they mean
Psych term =/= English
Ie - Reliable in English means trustworthy like. Reliable in Psych
Validity - does the dv actually measure what we want it to
Does IQ measure int
()
Reliability

Will you get the same results if you measure the same variable again? Replication

Doesnt mean showing the same results, but the same accurate result
Measures are sometimes realiable but not valid
Eg: shoe size as a measure of IQ
They probably cant be valid if
Realiablity is important factor to validity
Population

All the socres events, etc

Eg heights of the entire Psych 109 class

Sample

A representive subgroup

Eg Pretty good idea of the avereage height of the class

Cus we cant measure the entire population , so samples are taken
Two ways that sampling can go wrong

Sampling error

Results repeated samples from the same population will always differ

Sampling bias
Sample misrepesents population in a systematic way
avoid by doing it randomly
1948 US oelection. Wether a republican will win or democrat will
win.

Lec 2
Recap:

Population, all the scores events, that we're interested in

Sample, a representative subgroup

Error

Sampling error ( minimized by bigger size) - Bigger sample size, lower

sampling error
Sampling bias ( misrepresening population in a systematic way) - Serious
sampling bias invalidates the research

Example
Population = Height of 109 class
DV = Average height
How samplinig error depends on sample size
Historical example of sampling bias

1948 US election - Phone polls predicted win to Thomas Dewey

( Republican), but Harry Truman ( Democrat) won. Why?

Not everyone had phones, and republicans were generally richer.

Therefore sampling bias is shown, rich people.
Using psych students as a sample, affect some questions, and not others.
Becareful of what we're generalising to. Think about what our sample is and
whether or not it will generate a bias.
Two general kinds of research designs
Observational design

Measures two DV and look for a relationship between them

Sometimes called correlational design, because a relationship between

variables is a correlation.

No IV, cus nothing is manipulated

Self esteem related to intelligence?

Often only choice for ethical or practical reasons

Eg: Discovery of Broca's area for speech in the brain.

Eg: Gender difference lab ( sex is not a independant variable )

Weakness
Just cause two DV's are related, we cant conclude that one affects the other.
Eg: Suppose we find that watching violent films and aggressive behaviour are
correlated
Maybe watching films makes you aggressive

A causes B?
But maybe naturally aggressive people like watching violent films
We are not entiled about whic hcauses which

Or maybe both of these are caused by another variable

C caused both A and B
This is called the Third Variable Problem
Correlation does not imply causation
Experimental Design
Manipulates IV and look to see effect on DV

Can imply causation

Eg., is self esteem related to results of a fake IQ test? ( And measure self esteem
through that)
Experimental designs are more powerful than observational, so we should use
them when its ethical and practical to do so. There will always be unethical
issues when experiments are conducted.
Sex is not an independant variable
The fundemental Principle of research design
We want to eliminate all explanations of our results except one. If we conduct an
experiment, and see a changein behaviour ( Our Dv) we want to be sure that it
was caused by our IV.
Alternative explanation of the results are called counfounds or counnfounding
variable.

General Approaches to eliminating Counfounds

Hold the counfounding variable constant

Especially good for environmental or external counfounds.

Aka Standardization
Drunk people and non drunk standardised memory test

Ways of saying the words have to be the same

Randomize the confound

Especially good for subject based or internal confounds.

What possible confounds were there
Have they been controlled?
IF the researchers had not done that, dont trust the research
Within Subject- Designs

Each subject is exposed to all levels of the IV ( all experimental conditions)

Each subject tries to learn a list of words in both "sober"and "drunk"

conditons

Drunk memory test example ( good memory people will have great
memory sober, and good memory drunk. Vice versa.

But there could be environmental confounds - such as

Recetncy effect, promising effect

Confound - Memorability of words ( everybody remembered the word money)
Note the risk of an order effect: People maybe strugglign to remember the first
word when giving them them second.
Between group - design
Each person is only exposed to one level of the IV
Eg: seperate groups of subject in Sober and drunk conditions
There is a difference if the average behavijour of the two groups is different.
Good for controlling environmental confounds
But could be subject confounds - maybe the people in sober condition had better
memories anyway.
The best of both designs
Matched pairs design.

Gives a pretest on memory ability before the experiment.

Find pair of subjects with similar memory ability

Randomly allocate one member of each pair to each condition

This keeps environmental confounds constant and keeps subjet confounds
constant too
This is a very good design, but quite labour intensive, so it isnt used as often as
it should be.
Lec 3
Data that shows something that generalize to the population or sampling error?
The meathod to answer it is called inferential statistics
Flatworm experiement
Training one flatworm to turn right, and feed that flatworm to a new flatworm
On the first trail, it turns right. Should I be convinced?
But if i give it 100 trials, and it turns right everytime...
The strength of the evidence dependso n how likely that we might have got the
same result just by chance
The criterion probablity, called a significance level ( Significance means only in
statistic in psych, dont use it to mean something else) It has to be less than 0.05,
5%, 1/20
If the probablitiy of our data occuring is less that 5% we'll believe it is real.
1st turn - Probability 1/2
2nd turn - Probability 1/4
3rd turn - Probability 1/8
4th turn - Proability 1/16
5th turn - Probability 1/32
p = 1/n Let p be proabability

H0 The null hypothesis

There is no real effect, results obtained by chance or sampling error

H1 Alternative hypothesis

There is a real effect, results not obtaine just by chance of sampling error
Probability is lower that sig level, reject the null hypothesis and conclude that
there is a real effect.
Measuring location = by measuring the mean
Measuring variability or spread =
Subtract the mean from each score, square the differences, add them up, divide
by n-1
And take the square root
(Score - mean)2 then square root the final number
We see if the two samples are from the same population by seeing where and
how much they overlap
The closer their means are and the more ground they share(?)
More variability means less likely to be significant
SPSS - The statistic programme thing
(T will be asked about in the test)
Good statistics cant make up for bad research design