Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Often, psychological researchers will manipulate more than one variable in an experiment. The main reason for this is that:

To say that a study has high external validity means that

If a research study found that career motivation was higher among recent immigrants to Canada than long-standing Canadian residents, most people might readily offer several reasonable explanations for this finding. However, if a study found that career motivation was higher among long-standing Canadian residents than recent immigrants to Canada, most people might generate an equally convincing set of explanations. This example demonstrates the problems associated with:

Deception is justified in psychological research:

Experimental research contains three essential steps: manipulate one variable, measure whether this manipulation affects another variable, and:

Professor Smith has developed a theory that is rather straightforward compared to the complex theory of Professor Jones. Both theories generate a number of new hypotheses from other researchers. Even though both theories predict the same phenomena well, the preferred theory is _.

The tendency to respond in what is believed to be a socially appropriate manner rather than according to how a person actually thinks, feels, or behaves is called the , And it is most problematic with _.

In survey research, a sample is defined as:

The first step in the scientific process is to:

Professor Hoffman was interested in the effects of vitamin B12 deprivation on learning. One group is given vitamin B12 in a box labelled "Vitamin X." The comparison group is given a sugar pill in a plain white box. He finds that the vitamin group learns lists of words faster and concludes that B12 affects learning. What's wrong with this experiment?

The problem of participant placebo effects and experimenter expectancy effects are both minimized by:

You conduct a study that involves establishing a baseline, performing a treatment, and then conduct a follow-up. Most likely, what kind of study are you doing?

Random assignment is used to ensure that a sample is representative of the population from which it is drawn.

Dr. Ross is conducting an experiment in which the information being collected from the participants is highly sensitive. If anyone outside the study gained access to the information, it could be damaging for the participants in that they would be treated Differently by other people. This particular aspect of the study is most relevant to which ethical consideration?

A sample in a survey should accurately reflect the important characteristics of the population from which it is drawn. For example, if a certain population has 53% women and the sample has 53% women, then the sample is said to be a:

A social psychologist is interested in studying aggression in sports fans. He goes to various sporting events and keeps track of the number of aggressive acts that occur between fans using a well-defined coding system. This psychologist is using which of the following ways of measuring behaviour?

A major disadvantage of correlational research is that the correlation coefficient tells you the direction of a correlation (i.e., whether X and Y are negatively or positively correlated) but not how strongly the two variables are related.

A theory is best defined as:

Which of the following is/are TRUE of the normal distribution (bell-shaped curve)?

In a memory experiment, participants are asked to learn a list of words and then are tested on the list and the number of words they recall is recorded. In total, participants will be learning three word lists. Each of the word lists is of equivalent difficulty, the First list contains proper nouns, the second list contains breeds of dogs, and the third is a list of kitchen appliances. After working with 20 participants, the researchers notice that these participants are better at recalling the proper nouns, the first list of the three that they learn. How can the researchers be certain that proper nouns are actually easier to Recall and that they are not recalled better because they are the first words the participants learn?