Psychological Perspectives
A psychologist discovers that a teenager's anxiety increases when surrounded by peers who constantly discuss college admissions, suggesting influence from their social environment.
What is the sociocultural perspective?
A scientist randomly assigns participants to either a meditation group or a control group and measures their stress levels after 8 weeks.
What is an experiment?
A researcher tests whether background music (classical, pop, or silence) affects reading comprehension scores. In this study, music is this.
What is an independent variable?
Students' quiz scores improved by an average of this many points after using a new study app, with individual improvements of 2, 3, 3, 3, and 4 points. In this data set,3 is this.
What is mean, median, & mode?
After the football team wins the championship, a fan says "I knew we'd win all along!" despite expressing doubt before the game.
What is hindsight bias?
A researcher finds that a patient's depression symptoms improve after taking medication that increases serotonin levels in the brain.
What is the biological perspective?
A researcher examines whether there's a relationship between hours of social media use and self-esteem by collecting data from 500 teenagers.
What is correlation (or correlational research)?
In a study on aggression, researchers define it as "the number of times a child hits, pushes, or kicks others during recess."
What is an operational definition?
Two classes have the same average score of 75%, but Class A's scores range from 73-77% while Class B's range from 45-98%, showing different amounts of this.
What is standard deviation?
A teacher expects certain students to excel, gives them more attention, and those students end up performing better than their peers.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
A therapist notices that patients who believe they are "bad test-takers" perform worse on assessments, even when they know the material well.
What is the cognitive perspective?
A psychologist studies one patient with a rare phobia of buttons over several months, documenting triggers and responses in detail. This is the downside of such a study.
What is it does not prove cause/effect nor is it generalizable?
In a sleep deprivation study, researchers manipulate hours of sleep and then measure participants' reaction time on a driving simulator. In this study, reaction time is this.
What is the dependent variable?
A graph shows that students who study more hours tend to get higher grades, with points rising from left to right.
What is positive correlation?
Participants in a study about healthy eating habits may overreport their fruit consumption and underreport their junk food intake.
What is self-reporting bias?
A dog trainer discovers that giving treats immediately after a dog sits on command leads to more frequent sitting behavior.
What is the behavioral perspective?
Researchers want to study stress responses by unexpectedly sounding a loud alarm during a memory test without warning participants beforehand.
What is protection from harm?
Participants in a taste perception study rate the sweetness of different colored beverages using a scale of 1 to 10. The scale is both this and this.
What is the operational definition of the dependent variable?
After analyzing the data with a t-test, researchers found p < 0.05, meaning the results met this important criterion.
What is statistically significant?
A survey asks "How often do you engage in risky behaviors that conflict with your values?" when studying personal integrity.
What is introduce self-reporting bias?
A study comparing adopted children's IQ scores to both their biological and adoptive parents' scores examines this concept.
What is the interaction of "nature" and "nurture"?
A survey asks "Don't you agree that people who exercise regularly are happier?" when studying the exercise-mood relationship.
What is framing bias or a leading question?
Before starting a memory experiment, researchers explain the study to participants and have them sign forms; afterward, they explain the true purpose.
What are informed consent and debriefing?
A detailed examination of one person's recovery from traumatic brain injury over two years provides rich data but has these issues.
What is it cannot prove causation and is not generalizable?
Researchers believe that using dramatic, emotional wording in survey questions will make participants answer more truthfully.
What is framing bias or a leading question?