Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

John Darley's and Bibb Latané's statement,"IF an emergency occurs,THEN the greater the number of bystanders,the less likely any one bystander will be to intervene" is best considered an example of a(n):

Dr.White wants to look at the impact of failure on self-esteem.He designs an experiment where half of the participants are led to believe that they have failed on an ambiguous task,while the other half of the participants are told that they have succeeded.Dr.White then has the people in his study complete a questionnaire measuring self-esteem and he looks to see if there are any differences in self-esteem between the success and failure groups.In this example,self-esteem would be considered the:

A researcher is designing a study and is debating the potential use of deception.After discussing the issue with her colleagues,it is decided that there really is no alternative methodology that she could use to test her idea.Having said this,all of her colleagues agree that the cost of using deception in her study would strongly outweigh any positive benefits that would be gained from the study.Given this information,which of the following statements is true?

Deception is justified in psychological research:

The ability to study rare phenomenon is an advantage of the ________ method of research.

A researcher alters the number of hours of sleep people have,and then measures their ability to remember a list of words.In this example,memory performance is the ________ variable.

When presented with the findings of psychological research,it is not uncommon for people to comment that the results are trivial and obvious.This tendency illustrates one of the limitations of:

Self-report measures inform us about the behaviour of an individual,by asking for information from the people around him/her.

A child psychologist is working with a young child named Sally.In order to get more information,the psychologist interviews Sally's parents and asks them about Sally's childhood experiences.This would best be considered an example of which of the major ways of measuring behaviour?

External validity is concerned with how generalizable the results of a study are to other people and settings.

In experimental research,the researcher manipulates the independent variable and ______________ the dependent variable.

Which ethical principle does deception violate?

A researcher conducted an experiment assessing the effect of both alcohol and expectation on sexual arousal.How many independent variables are there in this experiment?

According to the ethical guidelines,deception is justified when there are no other alternatives and the potential benefits of a study outweigh the risks.

The use of deception in experimental research violates the ethical guideline of _________.

The process of repeating an experiment to determine whether the same results can be obtained is called:

Random ____________ is the primary technique used in experimental research to balance out differences between participants across various conditions of the experiment.

When a sample accurately reflects the important characteristics of the population from which it is drawn,it is said to be a(n)______________ sample.

Dr.Treadwell is designing a study to test the effectiveness of a new memory enhancement technique.He has two research assistants who will be carrying out the research for him and because he is curious,he tells one of the research assistants to expect the technique to significantly improve memory while he tells the other assistant to expect only a moderate improvement.Neither research assistant mentions their expectations to the participants.After the study has been completed,Dr.Treadwell notices that each research assistant obtained results consistent with what they had been led to expect.Participants who were studied by the first research assistant actually showed a significant improvement in memory while participants who were studied by the second research assistant only showed a moderate improvement.This result is most likely an example of:

Random assignment controls for important differences among individual participants by balancing them.This is in contrast to designs in which each participant is exposed to each condition or group in an experiment.This latter design controls the individual differences by ____________.