Ch. 1 - Thinking Like a Scientist
This approach says psychological knowledge should come from systematic observations and evidence rather than simply intuition or opinion.
What is empiricism?
Your friend says, “Meditation worked for me, so I know it works.” One major problem is that their personal experience lacks this group needed to determine what would have happened without meditation.
What is a comparison group?
"Thirty percent of college students report getting fewer than six hours of sleep.” This is this type of claim.
What is a frequency claim?
This Belmont principle says participants should be free to decide whether they want to participate and that vulnerable populations deserve additional protection.
What is Respect for Persons?
A researcher predicts that students who sleep 8 hours will remember more words than students who sleep 4 hours. This specific, testable prediction is called this.
What is a hypothesis?
You feel better after playing a video game, but maybe the improvement came from distraction, exercise, or talking with friends. These alternative explanations are called these.
What are confounds?
A researcher defines “depression” as a participant’s score on the PHQ-9. The PHQ-9 score is this.
What is an operational definition?
Before most research involving human participants begins, this committee reviews the study's risks, benefits, consent procedures, and privacy protections.
What is an Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
Scientists repeat a previous study to determine whether its findings hold up.
What is replication?
After seeing several stories about plane crashes, someone becomes convinced flying is extremely dangerous because those examples easily come to mind.
What is the availability heuristic?
A study finds that students who exercise more tend to report less stress. Because neither variable was manipulated, the researchers can support this type of claim but not causation.
What is an association claim?
Researchers collect participants' names but promise to keep those identities private. The study is this; not anonymous.
What is confidential?
A theory claiming that an invisible force affects behavior—but that the force disappears whenever scientists try to measure it—fails this requirement of a good scientific theory.
What is falsifiability?
Someone believes social media causes depression, so they only notice studies supporting that belief and ignore studies that contradict it.
What is confirmation bias?
Researchers claim their anxiety questionnaire actually captures the psychological construct of anxiety. This validity asks whether their measure really measures what they say it does.
What is construct validity?
After misleading participants about a study's true purpose, researchers explain the deception and the actual purpose of the research.
What is debriefing?
A psychologist first studies how attention works, then uses those findings to develop a classroom intervention. The second step represents this type of research that bridges basic and applied research.
What is translational research?
Instead of examining one new study, this statistical technique combines the results of many studies addressing the same question to determine the overall pattern.
What is a meta-analysis?
Before saying X causes Y, researchers must demonstrate these three things: X and Y are related, X comes before Y, and alternative explanations have been ruled out.
What are covariance, temporal precedence, and internal validity?
A researcher completely invents participant responses that never existed. This form of research misconduct differs from falsification, which involves altering real data.
What is data fabrication?