Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Many people doubted Sigmund Freud and his psychodynamic theory.They wanted to know what evidence Freud was basing his conclusions on and wondered if there might be a better explanation for the causes of human behaviour.These people's doubts are most similar to which key scientific attitude?

The ethical guideline of informed consent specifically asserts that:

Which of the following statements regarding the differences between experimental and correlational research is true?

Imagine that someone has developed an absurd theory that asserts that every child with blond hair will be over 6 feet tall when they are adults.An adult friend of yours is blond but happens to only be 5'6".This example best demonstrates which of the following advantages of the case study method?

The Canadian Psychological Association's "Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists" does NOT require psychologists to:

In experimental research,one variable is manipulated by the experimenter.This is called the __________ variable.

Dr.Sussman conducts a study on the effect of various motivational factors on job performance.In her study,she does an excellent job of controlling extraneous factors and as a result,there is high confidence in the causal conclusions she draws.However,the participants in her study were from a select group of the population and,therefore,Dr.Sussman will be rather limited in terms of her ability to apply her results to other people and situations.Taken as a whole,this study would be said to have poor _____________________.

In experimental research,a(n)__________ provides a standard of behaviour to which the experimental group is compared.

Two research assistants trained to code the type of interactions observed between siblings,repeatedly disagree on how to code siblings' sarcastic comments toward one another.The resulting data may then be:

Canadian researchers Thompson,Schellenberg,and Husain conducted an experiment in which they assigned university students to either a group that listened to a Mozart Sonata (happy music)or a group that listened to an Albinoni Adagio (sad music).Thompson et al.concluded that what previous researchers had called the "Mozart effect" was really an artifact of the participants' arousal and positive mood.Thompson et al.were claiming that:

Sally has been suffering from depression and finally decides to seek help from a clinical psychologist.After a couple of months of therapy,Sally starts to recover from depression.However,her improvement really isn't due to the therapy she has received from her therapist,but instead is a product of Sally's expectation that psychotherapy is supposed to be effective and therefore she should be getting better.This example is best considered as an example of:

An unobtrusive measure assesses behaviour without participants being aware that they are being observed.

An important advantage of the method of naturalistic observation is that:

Sitting in class one day,Ben wonders aloud to his friend James,why the multiple-choice exams seem harder than essay exams.James,whose older sister is a college professor,tells him that research shows that it is easier to trick students with multiple-choice questions so they are in fact harder."Wow!" Ben thinks,"So that explains it." Ben would have been better off seeking another opinion,or at least asking James about the research he is talking about.If he had,Ben would be demonstrating a healthy scientific attitude of:

In survey research,a sample is defined as:

A researcher conducted a study relating the time parents spent with their children to their children's happiness.From a correlational analysis of the data,the researcher concluded that happier children are a result of parents spending more time with them.The possibility that the parents spent more time with their children in response to the fact that their children were happier is an example of:

Which of the following methods can be used to study rare phenomena in-depth?

Which of the following is a characteristic of a good theory?

Pre-existing documents that researchers use to gather information about people's overt behaviours are called __________.

It is difficult to draw causal inferences in correlational research because: