Psychological Perspectives
Identify the perspective:
A psychologist studies how rewards and punishments influence a student's behavior. Which perspective is this?
Behavioral
Researchers conduct a study in a laboratory where participants know they are being observed. What could this affect?
natural behavior
A researcher wants to know whether hours of sleep affect test scores. What is the IV? What is the DV?
Hours of sleep
A psychologist notices that a child receives praise every time they clean their room. The child begins cleaning their room more frequently.
Which psychological perspective best explains this behavior?
Behavioral
Identify the perspective: A psychologist examines how unconscious childhood experiences may influence an adult's relationships. Which perspective?
Psychodynamic
Researchers conduct an experiment using only 10 participants. Why might this be a problem?
A small sample may make the results less reliable and less generalizable to the larger population.
A researcher gives one group 0 mg of caffeine and another group 200 mg of caffeine, then measures their reaction time.
Identify the IV and DV.
IV = Amount of caffeine
DV = Reaction time
Dr. Patel wanted to investigate whether social media use affects teenagers' stress levels. She recruited 100 students from her school and asked them to complete a questionnaire about how many hours they spent on social media each day. The students also completed a stress questionnaire.
Dr. Patel found that students who reported spending more than four hours per day on social media also tended to report higher levels of stress.
Based on these findings, Dr. Patel concluded that spending too much time on social media causes teenagers to become stressed.
Before publishing her results, however, Dr. Patel noticed several problems with her study. She had not randomly assigned students to different levels of social media use because she had simply measured their existing behavior. She also realized that students who were already experiencing high levels of stress might have been more likely to use social media.
1. What two variables did Dr. Patel measure?
2. Which psychological perspective might be interested in investigating why stressed teenagers use social media more frequently? Explain your answer.
Variable 1: hours of social media use
Variable 2: stress level
Cognitive perspective — it could examine how teenagers' thoughts, interpretations, and beliefs influence their social media use and stress.
Identify the perspective: A psychologist studies how a person's thoughts and interpretations affect their emotions and behavior. Which perspective?
Cognitive
Before participating in a psychological study, participants should be told enough about the study to voluntarily agree to participate. What is this called?
Informed consent
A psychologist wants to determine whether the amount of exercise students get each week affects their stress levels.
What would the researcher manipulate, and what would they measure?
Manipulate = amount of exercise
Measure = stress levels
Dr. Chen wanted to study how people respond when they believe another person is experiencing an emergency. She recruited 60 college students and told them that they were participating in a study about communication. During the experiment, participants heard what sounded like another participant having difficulty breathing.
In reality, the person was an actor and there was no emergency. The researchers recorded whether participants attempted to get help.
After the experiment ended, the researchers immediately explained that the emergency had been staged and explained the true purpose of the study. Participants were given the opportunity to ask questions and were reminded that they could withdraw their data.
Questions:
Answers:
A psychologist focuses on how a person's genes, hormones, neurotransmitters, and brain structures influence behavior. Which perspective?
Biological
Researchers intentionally withhold some information about a study from participants, knowing it would affect their behavior. What ethical issue is this?
Deception
Researchers want to determine whether listening to music while studying affects students' test performance.
Students are randomly assigned to either study with music or without music. Their test scores are recorded.
What are the IV and DV?
IV = Music condition
DV = Test score
What is a case study?
A case study is an in-depth, detailed investigation of a single individual, group, event, or community.