Experimental Psychology: Research Methods

• This course introduces students to basic principles of research in psychology
• It explains research design, teaches students how to design and execute experiments, analyze/interpret results, and write reports
• It provides alternative approaches to experimentation, complementing controlled laboratory experiments
• The course addresses issues and provides practical solutions in experimentation

Course Content:

• Experimental Psychology and the Scientific Method
• Basic Ethical Principles in Conducting Experimental Research
• Research Techniques
• Alternatives to Experimentation: Survey and Interview
• Alternatives to Experimentation: Correlational and Quasi-Experimental Designs
• Formulating the Hypothesis

Learning Outcomes:

• Develop an in-depth understanding of scientific methodology and tools for psychological studies
• Explain the importance of ethical principles in experimental research
• Learn to construct questionnaires as an alternative to experimentation
• Identify the value of factor analysis in alternatives to experimentation
• Learn to formulate and interpret hypotheses

Lesson 1: Experimental Psychology and the Scientific Method Topics:

• The Need for Scientific Methodology
• Characteristics of Modern Science
• The Objectives of Psychological Science
• Scientific Explanation in Psychological Science

Student Learning Outcomes:

• Define experimental psychology and understand the need for scientific methodology
• Recognize the characteristics of modern science
• Explore tools of psychological science and scientific explanation in psychology

The Power of Negative Thinking!:

• Friday the 13th is considered unlucky due to superstition
• A study in West Sussex, Great Britain, found that Friday the 13th appeared to be an unlucky day for drivers
• Researchers compared each Friday the 13th with each Friday the 6th since 1989
• There were more emergency room visits from automobile accidents (as many as 52% more) treated on Friday the 13th
• According to the researchers, the higher accident rate for Friday the 13th was probably caused by increased trepidation about the date: Anxiety caused reduced attention to driving, and more accidents occurred

Introduction:

• Psychology uses a scientific approach to understand behaviors based on scientific evidence
• Research involves specifying conditions, systematic observation, and accepting/rejecting explanations
• Research about psychological processes underlying behavior is psychological science

Terms:

• Science: Knowledge
• Methodology: Scientific techniques used to collect and evaluate psychological data
• Data: Facts and figures gathered in research studies

The Need for Scientific Methodology:

• People collect and use psychological data to understand and guide behavior
• Commonsense psychology shapes expectations, beliefs, and directs behavior

Non-Scientific Sources of Data:

• Friends, relatives, people in authority/admire, media reports, and books

Reasons to Believe Non-Scientific Sources:

• Popularity, attractiveness, high status, expertise, and confidence

Non-Scientific Inference:

• Data collected about others often comes in the form of assigned traits
• Commonsense psychologists are trait theorists
• There's a bias to overlook situational data in favor of data that substantiates trait explanations

The Characteristics of Modern Science:

• Predicting others by their traits can lead to overestimations of consistent behavior across situations
• Psychologists debate whether traits or situations are better predictors
• Both traits and situations predict behavior; traits predict long-term, situations predict momentary

The Scientific Mentality:

• Psychologists assume behavior follows a natural order and can be predicted
• Research psychologists believe causes for behavior can be discovered through research
• This belief is called determinism

Gathering Empirical Data:

• Empirical evidence comes from observation or experimentation
• Systematic data collection is preferable to commonsense data collection

Seeking General Principles:

• Scientists propose general principles (laws or theories) to explain observations
• Principles applicable to all situations are called laws
• Theories unify scientific facts into an organizing scheme

Good Thinking:

• Scientific method includes systematic, objective, and rational data collection/interpretation
• Scientists avoid private beliefs influencing conclusions
• Good thinking is open to new ideas and follows logic
• Parsimony (Occam's razor) advises simplicity and avoiding unnecessary assumptions

Self-Correction:

• Scientists accept uncertainty and revise information with new scientific evidence
• Experience favors a “weight-of-evidence" approach, increased confidence with more evidence

Publicizing Results:

• Modern science is public
• Scientists exchange information through professional groups/conferences
• Scientific papers in journals are growing

Replication:

• Being able to repeat procedures and obtain the same results objective is important
• Findings obtainable by only one researcher have limited scientific value

The Objectives of Psychological Science:

• Description: systematic, unbiased account of observed behavior characteristics with descriptive research (case studies and field studies)
• Prediction: capacity for knowing in advance when certain behaviors would be expected to occur using Research designs (correlational and quasi-experimental designs)
• Explanation: knowledge of conditions that reliably reproduce a behavior. to explain the behavior we have to use an experimental research design that systematically manipulates aspects of the setting with the intention of producing the specific behavior
• Control: application of learned behavior to effect change or improvement

Scientific Explanation in Psychological Science:

• Identifying Antecedent Conditions: Antecedents are the circumstances before an event or behavior.
• Comparing Treatment Conditions: Treatments are specific antecedent conditions in psychology experiments
• Treatments systematically & scientifically test explanations of behaviors.

The Psychology Experiment:

• A controlled procedure applies at least two treatment conditions to subjects
• Subjects' behaviors are measured/compared to test hypotheses about treatment effects
• At least two treatments are used to compare behavior under varied conditions
• Procedures in experiments are controlled to measure what is intended
• Characteristics of subjects in different treatments are controlled by random assignment
• The goal is for subjects receiving one treatment to be equivalent to those receiving another
• An experimental design where subjects receive only one treatment is a between-subject design
• An experimental design where all treatments might be ruled out is to present all treatments to each subject and measure the treatment after it is presented this experimental design is called within-subjects design

Establishing Cause and Effect:

• The greatest value is that, within the experiment, we can infer a cause-and-effect relationship
• If the XYZ set of antecedents always leads to a particular behavior, whereas other treatments do not, we can infer that XYZ causes the behavior.

Necessary versus Sufficient Conditions:

• Seek cause-and-effect relationships, identifying event conditions.
• Distinguish necessary and sufficient conditions.
• Cutting down on carbohydrates might be a sufficient condition to produce weight loss, but is it a necessary condition? No. We also could lose weight by increasing our activity level or cutting calories; thus, reducing carbohydrates is not a necessary condition.
• Run a snowmobile on fuel where Fuel is a necessary condition for running a snowmobile

Group Activity:

• Explore the different tools of psychological science.
• Divide the class into three groups.
• The first group will discuss the observation as a tool, the second group will discuss the measurement as a tool and the last group will discuss the experimentation
• Be ready to present their group work in our class discussion.