Ch 2 Psychology as a Science PDF Notes

Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: What is science? two essential beliefs of science: the universe operates according to certain natural laws these laws are discovereable and testable. Scientific method:...

Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: What is science? two essential beliefs of science: the universe operates according to certain natural laws these laws are discovereable and testable. Scientific method: Step 1 - Ask a question: identify questions of interest and consult literature Very straight forward, figure out a question you want to test. Step 2 - Form a hypothesis: develop a testable hypothesis (must be operationally defined) Theory: a set of statements that describes general principles about how variables relate to one another. Example: Theory of Classical Conditioning; Theory: Classical Conditioning describes how certain types of learning involve associating one stimulus with another. It's built on the principle that two variables, a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus, can be paired together to create a response. Variables: In classical conditioning, the key variables include a neutral stimulus (like a bell), an unconditioned stimulus (like food), and the response (like salivation in dogs). How they relate: The theory explains that when the neutral stimulus (bell) is consistently paired with the unconditioned stimulus (food), the neutral stimulus by itself eventually elicits the response (salivation) without the unconditioned stimulus being present. This is called a conditioned response. Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 1  Hypothesis: a prediction that is stated in terms of the study design, and is derived by the theory being tested. Data: the observations that are collected. Hypothesis testing: testing a statement or claim about a population using a sample and looking at difference between the control and experimental groups. Null hypothesis: claim that the effect being studied does not exist. there is no difference between the average performance of individuals in one group compared to others. Alternative hypothesis: alternative hypothesis is the same as your research hypothesis. In other words, it's the claim that you expect or hope will be true. The alternative hypothesis is the complement to the null hypothesis there is a difference between the average performance of individuals in one group compared to the other. Variable: any characteristic, number, or quantity that can be measured or counted. It is the condition, event, or situation being studied. Types of variables: Quantitive: Naturally have numbers assigned, vary in the amount or degrees, yet not the kind. Ex: age, height, temperature, etc. Qualitative: Numbers are not naturally assigned, very in kind, yet not in the degree or amount. Ex: model of car, ice cream flavour, colour, etc. Independent variable (IV): the variable that you manipulate. Dependent variable (DV): the variable that you measure (or the variable that is changed by the IV). Conceptual definition: Bullying is when one person is being mean to another person. vs. Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 2  through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. It can involve an individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening. Operational definition: How might be measure bullying? Observations of the number of times a person calls another person a name. Self-report surveys on experience of bullying, including reporting frequency on a five point scale (almost never to almost always) Self-report surveys of individual behaviours and actions (almost never to almost always) Conceptual definition vs. Operational definition: A conceptual definition describes what something is, while an operational definition describes how to measure it. Step 3 - Prepare for testing: select a research method, choose participants, and collect data Choose a specific group of participants Population: the entire group that is of interest to researchers. Ex: all first year kinesiology students at the university of waterloo. Sample: a portion of the population that is selected for the study - they must represent the population. Ex: students who sign up for the particular study. Types of research: Descriptive: case studies, naturalistic, observation, surveys. Purpose: observe, collect, record data (meets the descriptive goal of psychology) Experimental: manipulation and control of variables Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 3  Purpose: identify cause and effect (meets the explanation goal of psychology) Step 4 - Analyze data: analyze the data and accept or reject the hypothesis Descriptive statistics: a means of describing features of a data set by generating summaries about data samples. Example: Descriptive statistics are numbers that summarize and describe the main features of a set of data. They provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures, such as averages, medians, and standard deviations, to help you understand the basic characteristics of the data. Mean: the average of the numbers Median: the middle number of a sequence Mode: the number that occurs most often On a perfect normal distribution, all three measures of central tendency are located at the same score. Standard deviation: the approximate average deviation around the mean. The variation or how spread out or bunched up the scores are. Scatter diagram: AKA scatter plot. Linear relationships: correlation coefficients examine the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables; how they covary or vary together. Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 4  Non-linear relationships: in a nonlinear relationship, as the x scored change, the y scored do not tend to only increase or only decrease: at some point, the Y scored alter their direction of change. Inferential statistics: Allows you to make predictions (”inferences”) from data. Take data from samples and make generalizations about a population. Assessing difference: We can also use tests that allow us to compare the means of groups to see if the differences are statistically significant (meaningful). P-value/probability statistic: Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 5  A number describing how likely it is that your data would have occurred by random chance. A p-value less than 0.00 (typically = or under) is statistically significant. p-value tells us how sure we can be that one thing is related to another or how sure we can be that two groups are different (the results are from group differences, not just random chance). Step 5 - Scientific review: seek scientific review, publish, and replicate the study No notes Step 6 - Theorize: build a theory. For research involving humans to be ethical, it is necessary that human participants in research understand those risks and freely choose to participate in the research. Ch 2 - Psychology as a Science: 6