Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

After writing the licensing exam to practice Psychology, Dr. Evans is sent the following information: Her grade on the exam was 550. The scores on the exam were normally distributed with a mean of 450 and a standard deviation of 100. How well did Dr. Evans do on the licensing exam?

Random sampling occurs when every member of a target population has an equal chance of being in a survey.

Suppose you are a sports psychologist who notices that athletes who perform poorly frequently report low levels of motivation. While it may be the case that low, motivation contributes to poor performance, it may also be the case that poor performance contributes to low motivation. What problem does this illustrate?

The placebo effect refers to

You develop a new theory that resolves several seemingly conflicting findings and theories, and explains the research results within a single broad framework. This best demonstrates which characteristic of a good theory? Your theory

In a study of aggression, Dr. Berkowitz had participants watch either violent or non-violent media after they had been frustrated by a colleague. They were then able to deliver electric shocks to the colleague as feedback for mistakes made on a memory test. Berkowitz recorded the intensity of shocks delivered. Results indicated that more intense shocks were given when participants watched the violent media. In this study, the independent variable is _____ and the dependent variable is ______.

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

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

Explain what representative sampling is and why survey researchers use it.

In a memory experiment, the subjects are asked to learn three lists of words. Each of the word lists is of equivalent difficulty. The first list contains university names, the second list is of dog breeds, and the third list contains kitchen appliances. After running 20 participants, the researchers notice that recall of university names, the first list that the participants learn, is much higher than recall for either of the other two lists. How can the researchers make sure that one list is actually easier to recall and not just a result of the way the test is set up?

Assume that you are a researcher conducting a survey. Which of the following steps would be most important if you wanted to ensure that the sample in your survey is representative?

A researcher wants to know how much time students in a dorm spend watching TV, but she has noticed that students tend to leave the TV room when she comes in to see who is watching. To get around this problem, she decides to observe wear-and-tear on the TV remote control as a measure of how much time students spend watching TV. Like many psychologists, this researcher is using a(n)

One of the main differences between theories and hypotheses, is that

An experimental group listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata, a control group listened to 10 minutes of relaxation to instructions, while the other control group listened to silence. The Mozart group performed much better on a subsequent test of spatial abilities than the two control groups. The results of this experiment are not valid because

Dr. Sandeep wants to study the spending habits in London residents. To study this, he hands out questionnaires about spending habits to all of the students in his introductory psychology class. Dr. Sandeep's data will be __________ because ________.

One of the problems with collecting data over the internet is

In an experiment assessing the effect of pain on anxiety, pain is the

Strayer and colleagues wanted to establish if there was a causal relationship between cell phone use while driving, traffic density, and increased risk of vehicular collision. They found evidence of an interaction because

While conducting a phone survey, the interviewer asks questions in such a way that it influences and affects the answers of the people she is interviewing. This example most clearly demonstrates which limitation of survey research?

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