Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

All of the following were mentioned as questions to ask yourself in order to become a better critical thinker except

One of the important advantages of correlational research is that it

The primary reason for using deception in psychological research is that sometimes it is the only way to obtain

Let's say that the grades on this exam are normally distributed with a mean of 70 and a standard deviation of 10. Approximately what percentage of students will have a grade between 50 and 90 on this exam?

Dr. Davis is planning a study on the effect of rewards on the academic achievement of young children. For his study, Dr. Davis decides to use white, male children from an upper-class neighbourhood. Having taken an introductory psychology course, you can see that Dr. Davis is going to have some problems because he won't necessarily be able to apply his results to girls or to students of other demographics. This particular problem substantially weakens the ___________ of Dr. Davis' study

You have been asked to conduct a study for the Canadian government on attitudes toward assisted suicide. The government wants the study to reflect all the important characteristics of the population, i.e., Canadian citizens. Which of he following procedures should you use?

A researcher decides to collect some data to test the hypothesis that playing violent video games is related to violent behaviour. They ask a group of parents from a local elementary school to estimate two things over the last six months: how many hours per week of violent video games their children played, as well as the number of violent incidents they can recall their children being involved in. What kind of design is this?

If _____ is low, then what else would also be expected to be low?

Think of an example of an operational definition for academic performance using a: 1) self-report, 2) report by others, and 3) measure of overt behaviour. Explain a limitation of each type of measure using the same example

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

External validity is concerned with the degree to which we can generalize the results of a study to other people and settings.

When examining different methods for conducting research, which method is associated with confounding variables?

Canadian researchers Thompson, Schellenberg, and Husa in 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

Control groups are important in experiments because

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

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?

Correlation studies can help with

An educational psychologist wants to study the effectiveness of using the Internet as an instructional method for academic courses. She designs a study in which one group of students is assigned to take a course in a standard classroom with a live instructor. Another group of students is assigned to take the same course over the Internet. The psychologist then compares the course grades for students in each of the two groups. In this case, the instruction method (regular class vs. Internet class) would be considered the

Brain imaging technology is generally used to explore the following

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)