Exam 2: The Methods of Social Psychology

Dr. Samanta is interested in how personality changes over adolescence. She enrolls a sample of ten-year-olds and follows them through age seventeen. This kind of study is known as a(n) ________ study.

Random assignment is a crucial component of experiment design. Failing to use random assignment when placing participants into groups would have the strongest effect on the ________ of an experiment.

The social psychologist Carol Dweck found that people who believe that intelligence is a matter of hard work actually study harder in school and get better grades. She used this finding to design an academic success program targeted for minority junior high school students. What does this illustrate about the connection between basic and applied research?

Describe the necessary components of a true experiment.

Which of the following would be an example of random sampling in a survey study designed to learn more about the student body at a particular college?

A hypothesis ________ , while a theory ________.

A researcher measures the galvanic skin response (GSR), or degree of sweating, of people holding a clear plastic jar containing a spider. She compares the GSRs of people with spider phobias with the GSRs of people without spider phobias. In this experiment, the galvanic skin response functions as the

When random sampling is used, it means that

Why is random sampling so important to conducting research in social psychology? What are some of the potential pitfalls of not having a random sample?

Which of the following correlations indicates the weakest relationship between two variables?