Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

As a critical thinker, what questions should you ask when someone makes a claim or an assertion?

Dr. Sussman conducts a study on the effect of various motivational factors on job performance. In her study, she does an excellent job of controlling extraneous factors and as a result, there is high confidence in the causal conclusions she draws. However, the participants in her study were from a select group of the population and, therefore, Dr. Sussman will be rather limited in terms of her ability to apply her results to other people and situations. Taken as a whole, this study would be said to have poor _____________________.

Self-report measures inform us about the behaviour of an individual, by asking for information from the people around him/her.

The ethical guideline of informed consent specifically asserts that

Dr. L. has reported that in a Canadian sample, people often take credit for all the good things that happen to them. She wonders if this will be case or people from China, so she decides to run a study there. Most likely Dr. L. is trying to increase

According to the ethical guidelines, deception is justified when there are no other alternatives and the potential benefits of a study outweigh the risks.

Which of the following was mentioned in the text as a characteristic of a good theory?

A researcher is examining the relation between two variables variable X and variable Y. If she is conducting a correlational study, the researcher ____________ variable X and ____________ variable Y.

As part of a class on animal behaviour, students are sent to a local park and are asked to watch and record the feeding behaviour of the crows there. These students are engaged in which method of research?

Dr. Pavio wants to examine the effects of antioxidants on memory. She includes a counterbalancing control group in the design. What type of study is this likely to be?

Gary's son Sam is learning to drive. Each night, Gary takes Sam out in the family car for driving lessons. Gary notices that Sam improves more in lessons in which Gary is extremely critical. In fact, the more critical Gary is, the more Sam improves. After Sam gets his driver's license, Gary's wife Chrissy tells him that every time Gary was critical of Sam, she took him out so he could improve before his next lesson with his father. What was the problem with Gary's initial interpretation of Sam's improvement?

You are trying to find out your friend's IQ. She won't tell you. But she did say that her Z-score on a standard Wechsler test (M = 100; SD = 15) was + 2.0. What's her IQ?

To test reliability we would

Which ethical principle does deception violate?

Sarah has just moved to a new city, where she works the night shift at the local hospital. On her way home from work, she walks through a park that has a high crime rate. Sarah reasons that she is safe, because there are always a lot of people around. According to the research conducted by Darley and Latané, Sarah is

Dr. Howard really wants her newly developed antianxiety medication to help people, but by smiling at the people who are getting the new drug and not at those who are getting the placebo, she is influencing her experimental subjects to respond differently than her control group subjects. In other words, she is contributing to

A psychologist specializes in a research area in which there is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of a particular treatment. In order to gain more information, this psychologist reviews approximately 50 studies that have utilized this particular treatment, and using this information, the psychologist finds that the vast majority of the studies found the treatment to be effective. This psychologist has just completed what is best described as a(n)

A researcher is interested in studying what factors influence interpersonal attraction. In a study designed to explore this variable, the researcher uses a very attractive person for an assistant. Interpersonal attraction is then assessed by whether the people participating in the study call up the attractive assistant to ask the person on a date. In this example, the means used to assess interpersonal attraction would be considered a(n)

Sitting in class one day, Ben wonders aloud to his friend James, why the multiple-choice exams seem harder than essay exams. James, whose older sister is a college professor, tells him that research shows that it is easier to trick students with multiple-choice questions so they are in fact harder. "Wow!" Ben thinks, "So that explains it." Ben would have been better off seeking another opinion, or at least asking James about the research he is talking about. If he had, Ben would be demonstrating a healthy scientific attitude of

A researcher is interested in the effects of a vegetarian diet on memory. One group eats a strict vegetarian diet for three months, a second group eats a strict vegan diet for three months, while a third group eats anything they want for three months. After three months, all participants are given a memory test. The first 20 people who participated were assigned to the vegetarian group, the next 20 to the vegan group, and the final 20 to the eat anything group. What's wrong with this experiment?