Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Dr. Samways is interested in the relationship between education level and annual income. He randomly selects 5000 Canadians and collects information about their highest completed education and last year's income. He then calculates a correlation coefficient, and finds that the correlation between education and income is + .78. On the basis of this correlation we can conclude that

A friend of yours is telling you about the results of a multimillion-dollar government-funded study she heard about on the news last night. She complains that she could have predicted the results of the study before it was done and that here is yet another instance of the government wasting the taxpayers' hard-earned money. Which of the following issues would have the most relevance to the potential accuracy of your friend's complaints? It is the ______________________.

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

As an alternative to random assignment, researchers will sometimes design experiments where each participant is exposed to all conditions or groups in an experiment. This second procedure controls for differences between individual participants by

According to ethical guidelines, deception is justified when there are no other alternatives and the study has potential significant benefits that outweigh the risks of deceiving participants.

In order to assess the effectiveness of a new province-wide seatbelt law, researchers collect data from the department of transportation regarding the number of traffic fatalities in the last year. This type of measurement of behaviour is called a(n)

List the five steps involved in the scientific process of gathering evidence. Discuss how each of these steps was applied in the research of John Darley and Bibb Latané.

A case study is considered to be which type of research method?

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

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 shocks delivered are

Explain how correlational research can be used to predict behaviour.

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?

Which of the following is NOT a good question to ask when critically evaluating presentations (e.g., ads, newspaper articles) about psychological information?

Which of the following research methods is MOST susceptible to threats to internal validity?

How does external validity differ from internal validity?

In an experiment, a group that is not exposed to the treatment or that receives a zero-level of the independent variable is called the ____.

Farhad wants to run an experiment for his senior psychology project and his supervisor has insisted that he minimize any threats to internal validity. What should he do?

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

The social desirability bias exists as a limitation of which of the ways of measuring behaviour?

One of the differences between experimental research and correlational research is that