Key Terms
Control of investigator effects
Validity
Participants
Lucky Dip!
100
Provides rich record of human experience, but it is hard to generalise from.
Describe what a case study is.
100
features of an experiment that a participant unconsciously responds to when searching for clues about how to behave. These may act as a confounding variable.
What are demand characteristics?
100
the ability to generalise to the real world.
What is external validity?
100
the group of people whom the sample is drawn.
What is a population in relation to participants?
100
variables
What do psychologists investigate?
200
some event that is directly manipulated by an experimenter in order to test its effect on another variable.
What is an independant variable (IV)
200
Deception to prevent the participant knowing the experimental aim.
What is a single blind?
200
an experiement is internally valid if the observed effect can be attributed to the experimental manipulation rather than to some other factor.
What is internal validity?
200
Every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected.
What is random sampling?
200
This is when the participant can leave the experiment at any point they wish to.
What is the right to withdraw?
300
an experiment carried out in the controlled setting of a laboratory, and which enables the experimenter to draw conclusions about the causal relationship between the IV and the DV
What is a Laboratory experiment
300
Lab experients can lack ecological validity, this can be reduced by using a different type of experiment such as a field experiment to reduce the artificial nature of lab experiments.
What is the problem with laboratory experiments and what can we do to minimize the effects of the investigator.
300
The aim of a psychological study is to provide information about how people behave in 'real life'. If an experiment lacks realism it cannot be representative to wider context.
What is realism? Why is it important in experiments?
300
The findings of any particular study should apply to the whole population.
What is generalisation?
300
The BPS creates these guidelines to ensure that all ethical issues are dealt with correctly.
What are ethical guidelines?
400
This states which set of scores will be better/faster, positvely/negatively correlated.
What is a directional hypothesis?
400
Some participants show demand characteristics - these can be reduced by decieving the participants of the true intentions. The single blind method could also be used - so the participants don't know which condition they are in - for example - if they had a real pill or a placebo.
What do some participants show when in an experiment and how can these be reduced?
400
A study can be very real but still lack generalisability. This may be because the participants are all typical of a particular characteristics EG all American students.
What is generalisability - what does it mean?
400
Selecting peope who are most easily available.
What is opportunity sampling?
400
This is a way of making something testable. By stating what it is to be measured we can begin to test the IV and DV in a systematic way.
What is operationalisation?
500
A statement of no difference of no relationship.
What is a null hypothesis?
500
Zimbardo interfered with his experiment to the extent that he almost became a fellow participant. He took part in the experiment as lead guardsmen.
Give an example of when an experimenter confused the participants and was more than just the experimenter.
500
The participants do not see that the experiment is real or important so they may not consider their decisions as important.
What is realism? What is the problem with many lab experiments.
500
The desire to appear favourably.
What is social desirability bias?
500
This is when a participant may react differently to a task/ situation because of the sequence of tasks carried out. This may happen particularly in a repeated measures design.
What are order effects?