Lecture 4 - Methods

Question 1

why is studying humans hard?

Answer 1

human behaviour is mulitply determined w/ many ingredients (characteristics of upbringing/pesonaility/physical capabilities, etc.)
doing the exact same thing will not get your the exact same outcome like baking a bread

Question 2

what is an example of a question that’s hard to answer

Answer 2

whether a person will go back into a fire to save a cat
does

Question 3

what is experimenter bias?

Answer 3

experimenter has an effect on the study

Question 4

why should we care about methods?

Answer 4

a lot of science everywhere - results all over the news - relevant to us humans: working out, food, sleep, sex, studying, dieting, medicine
must be able to evaluate source (and consider methods) before following advice

scientific part is solved - vaccines are being developed quickly
need to convince people - scientific literacy

Question 5

what is the ultimate goal of the science?

Answer 5

understand why things happen to predict AND change the future

what to know to what extent X CAUSES Y - want causality not just correlation, must develop evidence for it slowly across many studies

Question 6

what is empiricism

Answer 6

watching

Question 7

what are the 3 ways of XX? which one has dominated in psychology?

Answer 7

1. correlation
2. quasi-experiment
3. experiment

experiment

Question 8

what kind of result does observation lead to?

Answer 8

correlational studies - record/measures of different variables to see if they covary (follow same trends)
w/ Pearson’s coefficient: 1 is entirely correlated, 0 is not correlated at all (unrelated)

Question 9

who invented random sampling and random assignment to condition?

Answer 9

Fisher

Question 10

how do we define an experiment? what does it enable?

Answer 10

MANIPULATION - only one element/variable of a condition is different
if outcome is different across conditions, will have SOME certainty that manipulation caused that difference. can make a CAUSAL CLAIM

Question 11

what’s an example of an experiment?

Answer 11

ERN (Error Rooted Negativity) - get a tick if made an error
neurons of boneXX measured by electrodes

spider-phobics doing a task and had spider Loreta come up to their phase

independent variable: presence of spider
conditions: within-study design (get both conditions within same trial - best control is within ourselves)
dependent variable: ERN activation

Question 12

when should we observe vs experiment?

Answer 12

can’t manipulate everything - in those cases, observe (use correlational data) or quasi-experiment.
ex. age, race tidal waves / earthquakes

Question 13

can correlational data or quasi-experiments generate causal evidence?

Answer 13

yes, but will be weaker and needs to be paired with other evidence

Question 14

how can we conclude that a manipulation caused differences?

Answer 14

by generalising results

ensure sample is random - random sampling

Question 15

what is the benefit and limitation of random sampling

Answer 15

maximize odds that our results generalise (and we don’t have a cohort effect)

can’t randomly sample from everyone on the planet. end up being convenience samples

Question 16

what sample of people does most research come from?

Answer 16

WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. represents 12% of worldwide population

mostly on psychology undergraduates + rats

Question 17

what is important to look at when reading news/claims?

Answer 17

who is the sample made up of
how far should the claim go

Question 18

is it possible to study volunteers?

Answer 18

yes - all studies (since ethic board created) uses volunteers

Question 19

what is snowball sampling?

Answer 19

sample is not random since communities are similar - not representative

Question 20

what is random assignment

Answer 20

randomise which condition a participant is assigned, such that the random noise is cancelled out (characteristics are evened out (non-systematic) enough

Question 21

what is the important when comparing different conditions (ex. snakes vs spiders causing fear)?

Answer 21

also need a control group (good study will have multiple - example placebo group)

provides interpretability for direction of comparison

Question 22

what is the control group important for?

Answer 22

determining direction of effect
AND
if effect is actually different from the baseline

Question 23

what are the types of blinding?

Answer 23

1. single-blind - participants don’t know what condition participants are in (have placebo)
2. double-blind - participants AND researchers don’t know what condition participants are in

Question 24

why is blinding useful?

Answer 24

single-blind: participants may want to help out with (or work against) research - no direction so if everyone does it, cancels out

double-blinding: prevent experimenter bias

Question 25

what's a double-blinding example?

Answer 25

social priming behaviour (words associated with eachother ex. "Peanut butter" & "Jelly" study: trying to subtly prime smth and observe change in behaviour. show words to participants, one with no category and one related to elderliness (Florida, bingo, etc). then observed how long it took them to walk slower. - dependent variable is behaviour not attidude (more valued as scientist). replication attempt w/ single-blinded found same result. w/ double-blinded found no result single-blind - one recording time is the same as the person giving the words - is confound since influenced results (could have stopped time sooner for the one with no category)

Question 26

what points should be considered when evaluating claims?

Answer 26

1. based on data 2. motives (questionable) of researchers 3. how many participants 4. who are the participants 5. do other experts respect the claim