Exam 2: The Methods of Social Psychology

A social psychologist finds a relationship between socioeconomic status and relationship satisfaction in married couples. This study most likely describes which type of research method?

Random assignment is an important aspect of experiments because it

Compare and contrast external validity and internal validity.

In an experiment, the control condition

The function of an IRB is to review

An experiment that is set in the real world, and in which the participants themselves are usually unaware that they are participating in a research study, is usually described as a

Which of the following indicates the strongest relationship between variables?

Which of the following is the best example of observational research?

The independent variable in an experiment is

A person volunteered to participate in an experiment but was not told anything about what the experiment involved until after it was finished. The failure to inform this person about the experiment violates which ethical principle in research?

An institutional review board (IRB) has reviewed a study and determined that participating in the study will likely make the participants feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. Could the IRB allow the researchers to begin this study?

As they walked down the street, participants (unaware they were part of a study) were approached by a confederate posing as a panhandler (i.e., a person begging for money). The confederate asked the participant for either seventy-five cents or for whatever change he or she had handy. The researchers compared how much money participants gave across these two conditions. This is best characterized as which type of research design?

If an experiment produces reliable results, what does this mean?

Experiments are the best research method for finding causal relationships between variables because they incorporate ________ and ________ into their design.

What is the goal of correlational research? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of research?

A study shows that people who watch the local evening news believe the world is more dangerous than people who do not watch the evening news. On the basis of this study, a newspaper reporter concludes that watching the evening news causes people to believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is. This is a flawed conclusion because

Dr. Goldstein hopes to reveal that although some of the findings presented in her class may seem obvious, students would not have predicted them accurately. To do so, she asked her students to take a guess about the results of a study before describing the outcome. Many of the students' predictions were wrong. Dr. Goldstein is demonstrating what to her students?

Which of the following is the best example of a correlational research study?

Interviews and written questionnaires are forms of which type of research method?

Research in basic science aims to