Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Hypotheses typically specify lawful relations between certain behaviours and their causes, and tend to be broader than theories.

An advantage of using operational definitions is that:

Which of the following would you use to determine a cause and effect relationship?

An operational definition defines a variable in terms of the specific procedures used to measure it.

An important advantage of the method of naturalistic observation is 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:

The problem in which we can't tell which of two variables causes the other (e.g., does A cause B or does B cause A) is called the third-variable problem.

Dr. Archer, who wants to study the effects of poverty on crime, selects a group of individuals, and collects information about each individual's annual income and criminal record (or lack thereof). Dr. Archer finds that income is negatively correlated with crime. On the basis of these findings we can conclude that

Dr. Jung argues that increases in temperature cause increases in aggression. To support his claim, he recorded the temperature each day and noted the number of reported assaults. More assaults were recorded on hotter days. His claim is inaccurate because

An in-depth study of an individual, a group, or an event is called a _.

Which of the following statements regarding correlation coefficients is false?

Professor Jones was just asked to stop conducting one of his experiments. The experiment involved deception and the department chair said that he had failed to live up to his ethical responsibility. Most likely, Professor Jones failed to include which of the Following in his study?

The internal validity of an experiment is lowered by experimenter expectancy effects because:

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?

Dr. Daily has come up with a new measure of aggression. It is a self-report scale and she has demonstrated that it is reliable. What do we know about this measure?

The research method that allows for examining cause and effect relations is:

A distinction between theories and hypotheses is that:

Shireen thinks that people learn better when they enjoy the course in which they are studying. In order to test her prediction, she must operationalize her variables. Which of the following best represents valid operational definitions of the variables contained within her prediction?

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

One of the primary techniques for reducing both the placebo effect and experimenter expectancy effects is random selection.