Exam 2: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science

To study the potential effects of social interaction on problem solving,some research participants were instructed to solve problems by working together;other participants were told to solve problems by working alone.Those who worked alone were assigned to the ________ group.

Random sampling is to ________ as random assignment is to ________.

A researcher would be most likely to discover a negative correlation between

Professor Delano suggests that because people are especially attracted to those who are good-looking,handsome men will be more successful than average-looking men in getting a job.The professor's prediction regarding employment success is an example of

A theory is an explanation using an integrated set of principles that ________ observations and ________ behaviors or events.

Professor X is studying the effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual thoughts.She assigns students to one of two conditions.In the first condition,participants are exposed to explicit sexual content and then given a word-completion task,which involves filling in the letter missing from each word.Based on the letter added,the word could be of a sexual nature or not.For instance,b_d could be completed as "bed," indicating sexual thought,or as "bad," which has no sexual connotation.In the second condition,participants are not exposed to explicit sexual content but are assigned the same word-completion task.What is the independent variable?

The dependent variable in an experiment is the factor

A correlation of +0.70 between children's physical height and their popularity among their peers indicates that

In a test of the effects of sleep deprivation on problem-solving skills,research participants are allowed to sleep either 4 or 8 hours on each of three consecutive nights.This research is an example of

Hindsight bias often leads us to place too much faith in

Several weeks after a political election,voters often exaggerate their ability to have predicted the election outcome.This best illustrates

Psychologists study animals because

The experiment is a research method in which

Gamblers often throw dice gently for low numbers and hard for high numbers.This most directly illustrates

Which research method assesses how well one variable predicts another without demonstrating a cause-effect relationship between the variables?

Why is the finding that "increased parental support for college results in lower grades" is problematic?

Researchers make no effort to manipulate or control factors when they engage in

To assess the impact of test difficulty on persistence of effort,researchers plan to give one group of children relatively easy tests and another group more difficult tests.To reduce the chance that the children in one group are more intelligent than those in the other group,the researchers should make use of

Experiments enable researchers to isolate the effects of one or more factors by

Participants in an experiment are said to be blind if they are uninformed about