Exam 2: Thinking Critically With Psychological Science

Mark meets briefly with applicants for positions in his company and relies on his immediate gut-level first impressions in deciding whether to offer them a job.Mark's employment decisions are most clearly guided by

A random sample of a large group of people is one in which

Replication of a research study is most likely to be facilitated by

Formulating testable predictions before conducting research is most directly useful for restraining a thinking error

The whole group from which samples may be drawn is called a(n)

To minimize any differences between participants who are in the control and experimental groups,psychologists make use of

The table below lists the scores of eight students on a test to measure anxiety,as well as the typical number of cigarettes each person smokes daily. Scores on the anxiety test can range anywhere from a low of 0 (indicating very low anxiety)to a high of 30 (indicating very high anxiety). Construct a scatterplot to represent the correlation between smoking and anxiety.Describe the direction of the correlation and give two possible explanations for it.

One of your professors has used observational evidence to justify a cause-effect conclusion.Questioning the validity of drawing this conclusion from the evidence best illustrates

Which of the following correlations expresses the strongest degree of relationship between two variables?

Researchers control factors that might influence a dependent variable by means of

Speaking at Verbatim University's graduation ceremony,Professor Robson compared college and university graduates with adults who are less educated.She correctly noted that people with higher-education degrees pay more taxes,vote more frequently,engage in more volunteer activities in their communities,and are less likely to go to jail than less-educated adults.The professor concluded that colleges and universities obviously do great things for society.How might you reasonably challenge the way the professor reached her conclusion?

Which procedure helps to ensure that the participants in a survey are representative of a larger population?

For which of the following distributions of scores would the median most clearly be a more appropriate measure of central tendency than the mean?

Which of the following is most useful for helping survey researchers avoid false generalizations?

Hindsight bias leads people to perceive psychological research outcomes as

Which of the following is a statistical measure of both the direction and the strength of a relationship between two variables?

The maximum height of a normal curve corresponds to the ________ of a normal distribution.

To study the effects of noise on worker productivity,researchers have one group of people work in a noisy room and a second group work in a quiet room.To be sure that any differences in the productivity of the two groups actually result from the different noise levels,the researcher should use

A random sample of females was observed to exhibit a lower average level of self-esteem than a random sample of males.To assess the likelihood that this observed difference reflects a real difference in the average self-esteem of the total population of males and females,you should

The ________ can be a particularly misleading indication of what is average for a ________ distribution of scores.