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Book Notes
Chapter 1
Barnum Descriptions: statements that are true of people in general, often perceived by
celestial bodies
Scientific properties—precision and accuracy in measurement
Philosophy
o Philosophy is the study of knowledge, behavior, and the nature of reality by
absolute certainty
o Empiricism—the idea that the best way to learn about the world is to make
observations
Physiology and the Physical Sciences
o Physiology—the study of the functions of and interrelations between different
research questions
o Experimental psychologists owe a great deal to the traditions and methods
Determinism
o The doctrine that the universe is orderly—that all events have meaningful,
systematic causes
o Base rate information is information about the proportion of things in a target
group membership and the likelihood of engaging in nice vs. nasty behaviors
Smaller groups tend to be less likeable
o Superstitious conditioning—the “false” conditioning that often occurs when an
the organism comes to associate an arbitrary response with the delivery of the
handling a set of empirical observations, we should prefer the simpler of the two
o Be extremely frugal in developing theories—steering away from unnecessary
concepts
Testability
o Assumption that scientific theories should be testable using research techniques
o Falsifiability—scientists should go a step beyond by actively seeking out tests
Intuition
Logic
Authority
Observation
There is no guarantee that one way of knowing will be superior to others across all
possible situations
Psychologists are in the business of seeking out laws that allow them to make precise
future events
A theory is a general statement about the relation between two or more variables
o Good theories share all the features of good science—should be logical and
another, so good theory testing will often take the form of determining each
theories
law
Hume’s problem of induction
o How do you know when you’ve made enough observations to be sure that your
law is true? According to Hume you never do—there is always possible that the
situational explanations
Miller’s findings in India disprove this theory
Method of deduction
o Deduction refers to reasoning from the general to the specific
o Occurs when a general statement (theory) is used to develop predictions
correct itself, we don’t need to worry about the fact that very few statements are
Positive test bias—tendency for people who are evaluating hypotheses to attempt to
from a person that are consistent with their initial expectancies of the person
o Once we get an idea in our heads, most of us tend to engage in hypothesis-
confirming behaviors that may falsely convince us the ideas are correct
Once we have been exposed to some tentative evidence in support of our
and qualification
Validation
approach
Some researchers have argued that psychology has been plagued by the worst form
cannot be replicated
Falsification
Qualification
identify the boundary conditions under which a theory or hypothesis is and isn’t
true
o Can lead to the integration of two contradictory theories by specifying the
results in qualification
o Researchers who appreciate the merits of more than one theory
correct
Experimental paradigm: the approach to research in which the researcher
specific observation
o Case studies—carefully documented observations of a specific group or person
o Trying to account for paradoxical incidents
Puzzling or nonsensical observations
Ex. Why people continue to gamble when the long-term effect is
outcomes
o B.F Skinner notes that serendipity (luck or good fortune) plays an important role
phenomena to shed light on the less well understood of the two phenomena
o Applying a functional or adaptive analysis to a particular research question
Researchers who adopt this strategy ask themselves basic questions about
uncomfortable
o Milgram’s controversial study—conducted extensive debriefing sessions
Setting the record straight in a deception study after the study is done
o Now there are committees whose job it is to review research methods
• Modern Internal Review Boards and Risk-Benefit Analyses
o The ethics of all psychological studies are examined under an umbrella principle
in their studies
At the least, subjects should get something back for participating
o All universities and other research institutes must maintain an internal review
board
They perform risk-benefit analyses to ensure all studies meet consensual
• Covariation
o For one variable to cause another, changes in one variable must correspond with
another
If an increase in testosterone does not correlate with an increase in
able to show that the changes in the first variable preceded the changes in the
second
o In a passive observational research design (cross-sectional, measuring a wide
experiment
Variable that is manipulated= IV, Variable that is measured=DV
o Key to eliminating confounds is random assignment
Works best when you have a large sample
Placing people in different conditions in an experiment on a totally
arbitrary basis
judgment questions
Fake lie detectors work best when you ask people what the
buy
Google Correlate—looking through people’s search history
A tool that can help in this method
• Archival Research
o Uses existing public records to test research hypotheses
• Ethnographies
o A narrative that describes a culture or a part of a culture
o Require a lot of behavioral coding
o Observes one small group
immigrant, etc.
• Socioeconomic Standing
o Predicts important attitudes and values
• Reverse confound—a confound that makes it harder than it would be otherwise to
observe an effect
different populations
• Situations
o The situation in which experiments are presented in can vary results (ex. casual
democratic” societies
WEIRD focuses on cultures, whereas OOPS focuses on individuals
o Is there a good way to maximize external validity while also minimizing threats to
internal validity?
Conduct true experiments that work hard to consider to OOPS heuristic
Studying two diverse populations
Capitalizing on a single, very diverse population
• Zajonc’s mere exposure effect—the finding that the more often people are exposed to
• False Consensus
o Brian Mullen—false consensus effect
Tendency for people to overestimate the percentage of others who share
medalist
finding
Then ask themselves if this is a real-world problem that can be
question
Focus is on important social problems
very high
• Keep it Simple
o Keeping your research design simple usually means any necessary statistical
Step 3: Permission
Step 6: Communication
Validity
external validity
o Construct Validity
The extent to which the IVs and DV truly represent the hypothetical
definitions
o Conceptual Validity
How well a specific research hypothesis maps onto the broader theory that
Reliability
upon an observation
The ratings of multiple judges are useful only if they are made by
assessed
Reliability, Validity, and the “More is Better” Rule
• The logic of the “more is better” rule applies very widely in psychological science
• Test-retest correlation: assessing temporal stability by taking a measurement on two
different occasions and correlating people’s scores at time 1 with their scores at time 2
• Most forms of reliability can be assessed statistically, most forms of validity require
logical analyses
Measurement Scales
• Nominal Scales
o Nominal (or categorical) scales involve meaningful, but non-numerical/categories
Ex. Gender
• Ordinal Scales
o Involve order or ranking
Ex. Birth order/ranking in a contest
o Not great at giving us absolute differences between subjects
• Interval Scales
o Measurement scales that make use of real numbers designating amounts to reflect
• 1. Ensuring that research participants are thinking about the same question that the