Questions and Answers
What is the purpose of basic research?
Which of the following are goals of psychology?
Good scientific theories should be falsifiable.
True
What is a null hypothesis?
Signup and view all the answers
What is a type I error?
Signup and view all the answers
What does the p-value of 0.05 indicate?
Signup and view all the answers
What is induction in the context of scientific research?
Signup and view all the answers
The psychological science relies on the probability of seeing specific results and their ______ in additional studies.
Signup and view all the answers
Match the following research concepts with their definitions:
Signup and view all the answers
What is the primary goal of applied research?
Signup and view all the answers
What are the four main goals of psychology?
Signup and view all the answers
A good scientific theory must be falsifiable.
Signup and view all the answers
What does the null hypothesis (Ho) state?
Signup and view all the answers
Which of the following is considered a Type I error?
Signup and view all the answers
Match the following levels of analysis with their definitions:
Signup and view all the answers
The common p-value threshold for most psychological studies is _____
Signup and view all the answers
What is anecdotal evidence?
Signup and view all the answers
Induction involves drawing general conclusions from specific observations.
Signup and view all the answers
What is the measure of relatedness of two or more variables called?
Signup and view all the answers
Study Notes
Science of Psychology
- Basic research aims to advance core scientific knowledge, often through animal models and labs.
- Applied research focuses on solving practical, real-world problems.
Scientific Method
- Involves asking a question, forming a hypothesis, conducting research, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions.
Psychology’s Main Goals
- Description: Identifying and detailing what occurred.
- Explanation: Understanding why something happened by examining causes.
- Prediction: Anticipating when and under what conditions a phenomenon may reoccur.
- Change: Implementing methods to prevent undesirable outcomes or achieve positive goals.
Features of Scientific Theories
- Good theories must be falsifiable, allowing for hypotheses to be tested and potentially proven incorrect.
Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST)
- Null Hypothesis (Ho): States there is no relationship or difference.
- Alternative Hypothesis (Ha): Suggests there is a relationship or difference.
- Type I Error (False Positive): Occurs when a researcher incorrectly finds a relationship.
- Type II Error (False Negative): Happens when a researcher fails to identify a relationship that does exist.
Important Vocabulary
- Scientific: Utilizing scientific methods for data collection and analysis.
- Behavior: Observable actions or changes.
- Mental Processes: Non-observable phenomena, including thoughts and emotions, assessed through methods like MRI.
- Sample: A subset of a population being studied.
- Population: The entirety of what is being studied.
Additional Insights
- Accuracy: The alignment of theories with real-world observations.
- Consistency: The theory's agreement with other theories and its limited exceptions.
- Scope: The ability of a theory to explain a wide range of phenomena, beyond current data.
- Fruitfulness: The theory's capacity to inspire new, testable research questions.
- Common p-value thresholds are 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, used to evaluate statistical significance.
- Psychological science emphasizes the probability of observing specific results, requiring replication in studies.
- Thomas Kuhn argued that theories and data are influenced by subjective interpretations.
Levels of Analysis
- Social Cultural: Examines the impact of social and cultural contexts.
- Behavioral: Focuses on observable behaviors.
- Cognitive: Investigates mental processes like perception and memory.
- Biological: Analyzes physiological influences on behavior.
More Vocabulary
- Hypotheses: Testable, tentative explanations.
- Induction: Drawing general conclusions from specific instances.
- Pseudoscience: Claims that lack rigorous scientific support.
- Falsifiable: Being able to be tested and disproven.
- Probabilities: Measures of certainty regarding events.
- Inductive Reasoning: Inferring general rules from observations.
- Deductive Reasoning: Interpreting specific observations based on established premises.
- Anecdotal Evidence: Personal experiences cited as evidence, which may be biased.
- Correlation: A measure of the relatedness of variables.
- NHST: Assesses if alternative hypotheses yield results as extreme as observed under the null hypothesis's assumption.
- Distribution: Refers to the spread of values within a dataset.
- P-values: Indicate the likelihood of observing results under the null hypothesis; if low (e.g., 0.05), it leads to rejecting Ho (null hypothesis).
Science of Psychology
- Basic research aims to advance core scientific knowledge, often through animal models and labs.
- Applied research focuses on solving practical, real-world problems.
Scientific Method
- Involves asking a question, forming a hypothesis, conducting research, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions.
Psychology’s Main Goals
- Description: Identifying and detailing what occurred.
- Explanation: Understanding why something happened by examining causes.
- Prediction: Anticipating when and under what conditions a phenomenon may reoccur.
- Change: Implementing methods to prevent undesirable outcomes or achieve positive goals.
Features of Scientific Theories
- Good theories must be falsifiable, allowing for hypotheses to be tested and potentially proven incorrect.
Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST)
- Null Hypothesis (Ho): States there is no relationship or difference.
- Alternative Hypothesis (Ha): Suggests there is a relationship or difference.
- Type I Error (False Positive): Occurs when a researcher incorrectly finds a relationship.
- Type II Error (False Negative): Happens when a researcher fails to identify a relationship that does exist.
Important Vocabulary
- Scientific: Utilizing scientific methods for data collection and analysis.
- Behavior: Observable actions or changes.
- Mental Processes: Non-observable phenomena, including thoughts and emotions, assessed through methods like MRI.
- Sample: A subset of a population being studied.
- Population: The entirety of what is being studied.
Additional Insights
- Accuracy: The alignment of theories with real-world observations.
- Consistency: The theory's agreement with other theories and its limited exceptions.
- Scope: The ability of a theory to explain a wide range of phenomena, beyond current data.
- Fruitfulness: The theory's capacity to inspire new, testable research questions.
- Common p-value thresholds are 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, used to evaluate statistical significance.
- Psychological science emphasizes the probability of observing specific results, requiring replication in studies.
- Thomas Kuhn argued that theories and data are influenced by subjective interpretations.
Levels of Analysis
- Social Cultural: Examines the impact of social and cultural contexts.
- Behavioral: Focuses on observable behaviors.
- Cognitive: Investigates mental processes like perception and memory.
- Biological: Analyzes physiological influences on behavior.
More Vocabulary
- Hypotheses: Testable, tentative explanations.
- Induction: Drawing general conclusions from specific instances.
- Pseudoscience: Claims that lack rigorous scientific support.
- Falsifiable: Being able to be tested and disproven.
- Probabilities: Measures of certainty regarding events.
- Inductive Reasoning: Inferring general rules from observations.
- Deductive Reasoning: Interpreting specific observations based on established premises.
- Anecdotal Evidence: Personal experiences cited as evidence, which may be biased.
- Correlation: A measure of the relatedness of variables.
- NHST: Assesses if alternative hypotheses yield results as extreme as observed under the null hypothesis's assumption.
- Distribution: Refers to the spread of values within a dataset.
- P-values: Indicate the likelihood of observing results under the null hypothesis; if low (e.g., 0.05), it leads to rejecting Ho (null hypothesis).
Studying That Suits You
Use AI to generate personalized quizzes and flashcards to suit your learning preferences.
Description
Test your knowledge on the basics of psychology in this quiz covering the science of psychology, differences between basic and applied research, the scientific method, and the main goals of psychology. Ideal for students looking to solidify their understanding of the foundational concepts in psychology.
