Bias & Belief Blunders
Tendency to only search for or notice information that supports what we already believe
What is confirmation bias?
The variable that is manipulated in an experiment.
What is the independent variable?
The average of a set of numbers.
What is the mean?
A graph showing bars of frequencies.
What is a histogram?
A committee that reviews all human psychological research for ethics.
What is an Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
After an event, the tendency to think “I knew it all along.”
What is hindsight bias?
Assigning participants to groups by chance to avoid bias.
What is random assignment?
The middle score in a ranked distribution.
What is the median?
A graph used to show correlation between two variables.
What is a scatterplot?
Ethical principle where participants are told about the study and agree to join.
What is informed consent?
Overestimating how accurate our knowledge or predictions are.
What is overconfidence?
The group that receives the treatment in an experiment.
What is the experimental group?
A number that measures how spread out data is from the mean.
What is standard deviation?
A data graph shaped like a bell curve.
What is a normal distribution?
Ethical standard requiring participants' data not be linked to their identity.
What is confidentiality?
People may answer surveys dishonestly to look good to others.
What is social desirability bias?
A detailed, in-depth study of one individual or group.
What is a case study?
This occurs when extreme scores move closer to the average with more trials.
What is regression toward the mean?
A distribution with two peaks.
What is a bimodal distribution?
Standard requiring that participants be told the truth about any deception afterward.
What is debriefing?
A self-report measure where people may not remember or report truthfully.
What is self-report bias?
A possible variable that affects both the independent and dependent variable, making it hard to determine cause.
What is a confounding variable or third variable problem?
This tells us how likely it is that results occurred by chance.
What is statistical significance?
In a negatively skewed distribution, the mean is skewed in this direction.
What is lower than the median?
Research on animals must meet standards for humane treatment and housing set by this group.
What is the APA or IACUC?