0.1 The Scientific Attitude
Psychology is the ____________ of behavior and mental processes.
What is science?
Whether it's "common" or not, relying on this can lead us to inaccurate conclusions.
What is common sense?
Theories of human behavior lead to these testable predictions, which can be proven true or false via experimentation.
What are hypotheses?
When one trait or behavior tends to coincide with another, we say that the two do this.
What is correlate?
This type of data is gathered in numerical form.
What is quantitative data?
What is the y-axis?
When someone examines assumptions, appraises the source, discerns hidden biases, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions, they are practicing this important intellectual skill.
What is critical thinking?
This bias toward a belief in our own correctness, essentially thinking that we know more than we actually do, is a barrier to critical thinking.
What is overconfidence?
Neil Degrasse Tyson was a tough but fair __________ of the paper Terrence Howard shared with him.
What is a peer reviewer?
The participants who are not exposed to a treatment in an experiment. They serve as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the independent variable.
What is the control group?
The design of more enriching zoo enclosures is an example of this group benefitting from animal research.
What are non-human animals?
A cruder estimation of variation than standard deviation.
What is range?
Observation and this are fundamental to science's evidence-based approach.
What is experimentation or testing?
The statement, "Celebrities always die in groups of three," exemplifies this type of bias.
What is perceiving order in random events?
It's impossible for other researchers to replicate an experiment without these precise and measurable descriptions of procedures and concepts.
What are operational definitions?
The dependent variable in a study examining the effect of time spent in meditation on levels of anxiety.
What is anxiety? What are levels of anxiety?
The sort of deception that ends scientific careers.
What is fraud?
The percentage of cases that fall within two standard deviations on either side of a typical bell (or normal) curve's mean.
What is 95%?
Applying the scientific attitude requires the application of these three habits of mind.
What are curiosity, skepticism, and humility?
Saying that you knew all along that a couple would break up after it happens is an example of this.
What is hindsight bias?
If every person in the entire population has an equal chance of being included in the sample group, then we can say that the sample is this.
What is random?
The statistical phenomenon described by more ordinary happenings tending to follow extraordinary ones.
What is regression toward the mean?
Two ethical practices designed to protect human participants in experiments.
What are obtaining informed consent and providing a debrief?
Mean, median, and mode are three ways to summarize data neatly, otherwise known as these.
What are measures of central tendency?
An early motto of psychology that reminds us the behavior we observe must be predicted by the hypothesis (and if not, the hypothesis is inaccurate and must be changed).
What is, "The rat is always right"?
In actual random sequences, these occur more often than people expect.
What are patterns and/or streaks?
"Replication is ___________ ."
What is confirmation?
The correlation between people's height and the distance from their head to the ceiling is perfectly __________ .
What is negative?
Laboratory conditions in psychological research focus on revealing these, rather than exact or specific behaviors.
What are general or theoretical principles?
The lower the p-value, the greater confidence researchers have rejecting this.
What is the null hypothesis?