Research Methods
Which research method gives you a value known as r?
Correlational methods; r is the correlation coefficient, or a number between -1 and 1 that describes how strongly and in what direction 2 variables are correlated
True or False: a person's self-schemas are largely informed by context.
True. Different situations and contexts can make different traits or beliefs about the self more salient.
Name one major open science solution that reduces false-positive findings by committing to an analysis plan before viewing data.
Pre-registration
When her coworker Pam goes through a breakup, Angela makes snide comments and insinuates that Pam's personality is unlikeable. However, when Angela goes through a breakup, she insists it was because of timing and incompatibility, not her own issues. What bias is she displaying?
Actor-observer bias
Nellie finds a dataset that shows an increase in annual car accidents coinciding with average annual temperatures in the US. She concludes that high temperatures cause car accidents. Is this a valid assumption to make?
No. This is an example of two variables that are positively correlated, but it does not imply a causal relationship since no variables were manipulated.
Give an example of a descriptive statistic.
Mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation
Fill in the blank: Individualistic cultures are more likely to engage in __________ self-construal.
Independent; making sense of the self by focusing on internal attributes: personal goals, preferences, traits, values, uniqueness
True or false: a project that attempted to replicate 100 findings from some of the top psychology journals found that more than half of replicated effects reached significance.
False; only about 36% did
Where do the elderly commonly fall on the Stereotype Content Model?
High warmth, low competence
In the famous bridge study, what was the mistake that many participants made when trying to attribute the reason for their arousal?
They misattributed their arousal to the presence of the woman, rather than the adrenaline of crossing a bridge, and were likelier to call the woman afterwards to express what they believed was romantic interest.
Archival data; data that already exists in the world and wasn't necessarily collected with psychological variables in mind
Fill in the blank: According to Self-Perception Theory, we infer our attitudes and traits by observing ______.
Our own behavior and actions (much as we infer others' attitudes and straits as external observers)
Define "publication bias"
The tendency for journals to accept papers reporting statistically significant effects more than papers reporting “no effect.”
What differentiates prejudice from discrimination?
Prejudice involves negative attitudes, while discrimination involves negative behaviors.
Give an example of an inferential statistic.
- t-tests
- ANOVA
- chi-square tests
- correlation coefficients
Kevin is running an experiment studying the effects of eating a nutritious meal on people's ability to solve a difficult logic puzzle. He assigns participants to either condition manually based on their IQ scores. His friend tells him that this is no longer an experiment. Why is this the case?
Kevin's study does not practice random assignment, so the groups are not comparable before the manipulation.
When Andy fails an important test, he believes he will be miserable forever. Which fallacy of self-perception is he displaying?
Poor emotional forecasting
Monica finds that when she runs her analyses, they keep coming up insignificant. She goes through her data and gets rid of data points selectively until her analyses start coming up significant. Which harmful practice is this an example of?
P-hacking
Define outgroup homogeneity.
The tendency to see members of outgroups as more similar to each other than we view members of our own in-group
Create an original example of someone making a fundamental attribution error.
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Creed asks his coworkers to participate in his independent research study by answering some questions about how they feel about the boss. He does not warn them before or after the study that all their responses will be shared with the boss afterwards. Name 2 ethical violations of this study.
- Informed consent
- Confidentiality of responses
- Debriefing
What differentiates the Dunning-Kruger effect from the better-than-average effect?
In the Dunning-Kruger effect, individuals with specifically lower ability tend to overestimate their ability; the better-than-average effect describes how people generally tend to think of themselves as above average
- Increases statistical power
- Enhances generalizability
- Reduces the influence of individual lab practices
According to Kelley's Covariation model, if someone's actions have high consensus (other people do the same thing) and high distinctiveness (the person does not behave similarly across different situations), what attribution is most likely?
Situational attribution
How does the Implicit Association Test work?
Participants must match a word/picture on the screen with one of two categories (indicated by pressing keys). The time difference it takes for them to do so can indicate implicit biases.