Psychology Past Paper PDF 2021

The Science of Psychology 35 Psychological Professionals and Areas of Specialization (people working in the field of psychology have a variety of training experiences and different focuses) psychologist...

The Science of Psychology 35 Psychological Professionals and Areas of Specialization (people working in the field of psychology have a variety of training experiences and different focuses) psychologist psychiatrist psychiatric social worker has a doctorate degree (Ph.D., Psy.D., or Ed.D.) medical doctor has training in area and works with either humans or animals in a who specializes in of social work variety of settings based on the area of specialization diagnosis and treatment (M.S.W.) and often of psychological has a professional must be licensed to practice independently; typically disorders; can prescribe license to practice does not prescribe medications but can go through medication (L.C.S.W.) specialized training to do so in a few states and some parts of the military Practice Quiz How much do you remember? Pick the best answer. 1. Which of the following perspectives focuses on the biological bases 4. Which perspective would a researcher be taking if she were of universal mental characteristics? studying a client’s early childhood experiences and his resulting a. humanistic c. behavioral development of self? b. evolutionary d. psychodynamic a. psychodynamic c. behavioral 2. Which perspective offers the best explanation for schizophrenia? b. cognitive d. evolutionary a. behavioral c. biopsychological 5. Which of the following professionals in psychology has a doctoral b. psychodynamic d. humanistic degree that is not in medicine? 3. Juan’s dog comes running into the kitchen everytime he hears a a. psychiatrist c. psychiatric nurse crackling sound. Juan feels that this happens because the dog b. psychiatric social worker d. psychologist food he gives him also opens with a similar sound. Which perspec- 6. If Dr. Swasey is like most psychologists, where does she probably tive offers the best explaination for the behavior of Juan’s dog? work? a. psychodynamic a. business/nonprofit b. behavioral b. independent practice c. humanistic c. government/VA medical center d. cognitive d. university/college 1.5–1.10 Scientific Research Have you ever played the “airport game”? You sit at the airport (bus terminal, mall, or any other place where people come and go) and try to guess what people do for a living based only on their appearance. Although it’s a fun game, the guesses are rarely correct. People’s guesses also sometimes reveal the biases that they may have about certain phys- ical appearances: men with long hair are musicians, people wearing suits are executives, and so on. Psychology is about trying to determine facts, reducing uncertainty and bias, and promoting scientific thinking. You have hopefully noticed that there are questions designed to help you think a little differently scattered throughout this chapter. Some are actually labeled as “think- ing critically” while others appear as part of the captions for the pictures in the chapter. The ability to look carefully and with a critical eye at the information and statements to which we are exposed on a daily basis—in news sources, on the Internet, on the televi- sion, or even our phones—is an extremely important one. Let’s take a look at why and how critical thinking should be emphasized in every aspect of our lives. 36 ChaPTer 1 1.5 Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking 1.5 Recall the basic criteria for critical thinking that people can use in their everyday lives. The real world is full of opportunities for scientific, well-reasoned thinking. Think about all the commercials on television for miracle weight loss, hair restoration, or herbal reme- dies for arthritis, depression, and a whole host of physical and mental problems. Wouldn’t it be nice to know how many of these claims people should believe? Wouldn’t you like to know how to evaluate statements like these and possibly save yourself some time, effort, and money? That’s exactly the kind of “real-world” problem that critical thinking can help sort out. Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments (Beyer, 1995; McLaughlin & McGill, 2017). The word reasoned means that people’s judgments should be logical and well thought out. Critical thinking also includes the ability to ask and seek answers for critical questions at the right time (Browne & Keeley, 2009). An example of a critical ques- tion might be, “Is someone paying you to do this research/sell this product, and is this a conflict of interest?” or “Do you have any good evidence for the claims you are making, or are you just giving your opinion?” Critical thinking can also help us avoid false beliefs that may lead to poor decisions or even prove dangerous to our mental and physical health. While the word critical is often viewed as meaning “negative,” that is not the use of this term here. Instead, it’s more related to the word criteria,* as in thinking that meets certain high criteria or standards (Nosich, 2008). There are four basic criteria for criti- cal thinking that people should remember when faced with statements about the world around them (Browne & Keeley, 2009; Gill, 1991; Shore, 1990): 1. There are very few “truths” that do not need to be subjected to testing. Although people may accept religious beliefs and personal values on faith, everything else in life needs to have supporting evidence. Questions that can be investigated empiri- cally (i.e., verified by observations and gathering of evidence) should be examined using established scientific approaches. One shouldn’t accept anything at face value but should always ask, “How do you know that? What is the evidence? Can you be more specific in your terms?” For example, many people still believe that astrology, the study of the supposed influence of the stars and planets on the birth of an in- fant, can be used to make predictions about that infant’s personality and life events as he or she grows. But scientific investigations have shown us, time after time, that astrology is without any basis in truth or scientific fact (Dean & Kelly, 2000; Hines, 2003; Kelly, 1980; Narlikar, 2013; Wiseman, 2007). 2. All evidence is not equal in quality. One of the most important, often overlooked steps in critical thinking is evaluating how evidence is gathered before deciding that it provides good support for some idea. For example, there are poorly done experiments, incorrect assumptions based on the wrong kind of data gathering, studies that could not be repeated, and studies in which there were major design flaws. There are also studies that have been deliberately manipulated to produce the findings that the researcher (or whoever is paying the researcher) would prefer. For example, the results of a study on the effectiveness of a particular drug would be immediately suspect if the researcher is being paid by the company making the drug. As a critical thinker, you should be aware that the wilder the claim, the better critical thinking the evidence should be: For example, I have not yet seen any evidence that con- making reasoned judgments about claims. vinces me of alien visitations or abductions! *criteria: standards on which a judgment or decision may be based.  The Science of Psychology 37 3. Just because someone is considered to be an authority or to have a lot of expertise does not make everything that person claims automatically true. One should al- ways ask to see the evidence rather than just take some expert’s word for anything. How good is the evidence? Are there other alternative explanations? Is the alter- native explanation simpler? If there are two explanations for some phenomenon and both account for the phenomenon equally well, the simplest explanation is more often the best one—a rule of thumb known as the law of parsimony. For example, let’s look at crop circles, those geometric patterns of flattened crop stalks that have at times been discovered in farmers’ fields. Two possible explanations for crop circles exist: Either they are made by aliens in spaceships—as is the claim by many alleged experts—or they are made by human beings as a hoax.* Which explanation is sim- pler? Obviously, the hoax rationalization is the simplest, and it turned out to be cor- rect for the crop circles that appeared in England in the late 1970s and 1980s: David Bower and Doug Chorley, two British men, confessed to creating the crop circles as a prank, thought up in a barroom and meant to make fun of people who believe in alien visitations (Nickell, 1995; M. Ridley, 2002; Schnabel, 1994). 4. Critical thinking requires an open mind. Although it is good to be a little skeptical, people Watch Critical Thinking should not close their minds to things that are truly possible. At the same time, it’s good for Video people to have open minds but not so open that they are gullible** and apt to believe anything. Critical thinking requires a delicate balance be- tween skepticism and the willingness to consider possibilities—even possibilities that contradict pre- vious judgments or beliefs. For example, scientists have yet to find any convincing evidence that there was once life on Mars. That doesn’t mean that scientists totally dismiss the idea, just that there is no convincing evidence yet. I don’t believe that there are Martians on Mars, but if I were shown convincing evidence, I would have to be willing to change my thinking—as difficult as that might be. ThINKING CrITICaLLY 1.2 Why do you think some people (even very smart people) sometimes avoid thinking critically about issues such as politics, the existence of ESP, or the supernatural? 1.6 The Scientific Approach 1.6 Recall the five steps of the scientific approach. In psychology, researchers want to see only what is really there, not what their biases might lead them to see. They must apply all the principles of critical thinking, and this can be achieved best by using the scientific approach, an approach to research intending to reduce the likelihood of bias and error in the measurement of data. PSYCHOLOGY’S GOALS Every science has the common goal of learning how things work. The goals specifically aimed at uncovering the mysteries of human and animal scientific approach behavior are description, explanation, prediction, and control. The scientific approach is a system of gathering data so that bias and way to accomplish these goals of psychology. error in measurement are reduced. *hoax: something intended to fool people, a trick or lie. **gullible: easily fooled or cheated.  38 ChaPTer 1 Description: What Is Happening? The first step in understanding anything is to describe it. Description involves observing a behavior and noting everything about it: what is happening, where it happens, to whom it happens, and under what cir- cumstances it seems to happen. For example, a psychologist might wonder why so many computer scientists seem to be male. She makes further observations and notes that many “nontechies” stereotypically perceive the life and environment of a computer scientist as some- one who lives and breathes at the computer and surrounds himself with computer games, junk food, and science-fiction gadgets—characteristics that add up to a very masculine ambiance. That’s what seems to be happening. The psychologist’s observations are a starting place for the next goal: Why do females seem to avoid going into this environment? Explanation: Why Is It Happening? Based on her observations, the psychologist might try to come up with a tentative explanation, such as “women feel they do not belong in such stereotypically masculine surroundings.” In other words, she is trying to understand or find an explanation for the lower proportion of women in this field. Finding explanations for behavior is a very important step in the process of forming theories of behavior. A theory is a general explanation of a set of obser- vations or facts. The goal of description provides the observations, and the goal of explanation helps build the theory. The preceding example comes from a real experiment conducted by psychol- ogist Sapna Cheryan and colleagues (Cheryan et al., 2009). Professor Cheryan (who teaches psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle) set up four experiments with more than 250 female and male student participants who were not studying com- puter science. In the first experiment, students came into a small classroom that had one of two sets of objects: either Star Trek® posters, video-game boxes, and Coke™ cans, or nature posters, art, a dictionary, and coffee mugs (among other things). Told to ignore the objects because they were sharing the room with another class, the students spent several minutes in the classroom. While still sitting in the classroom, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their attitude toward computer science. While the attitudes of male students were not different between the two environments, Fancy/Alamy Stock Photo women exposed to the stereotypically masculine setup were less interested in com- puter science than those who were exposed to the nonstereotypical environment. The three other similar experiments yielded the same results. Later studies found that when women were exposed to role models who dressed and acted according to the computer science stereotyped image, those women showed decreased interest in computer sci- ence as a career as well as decreased expectation of success in that field (Cheryan et al., Is this an environment that you would want to work in? Some researchers have 2011; Cheryan et al., 2013). In two similar follow-up studies with high school students, wondered if your answer might be influ- the researchers found that providing adolescent girls with an educational environment enced by gender. that did not fit current computer science stereotypes seemed to increase their interest in computer science courses (Master et al., 2015). Prediction: When Will It Happen Again? Determining what will happen in the fu- ture is a prediction. In the original Cheryan et al., study, the prediction is clear: If we want more women to go into computer science, we must do something to change either the environment or the perception of the environment typically associated with this field. This is the purpose of the last of the four goals of psychology: chang- ing or modifying behavior. Control: How Can It Be Changed? The focus of control, or the modification of some behavior, is to change a behavior from an undesirable one (such as women theory avoiding a certain academic major) to a desirable one (such as more equality in a general explanation of a set of observa- career choices). Professor Cheryan suggests that changing the image of computer tions or facts. science may help increase the number of women choosing to go into this field.  The Science of Psychology 39 Not all psychological investigations will try to meet all four of these goals. In some cases, the main focus might be on description and prediction, as it would be for a personality theorist who wants to know what people are like (description) and what they might do in certain situations (prediction). Some psychologists are interested in both description and explanation, as is the case with experimental psychologists who design research to find explanations for observed (described) behavior. Therapists may be more interested in controlling or influencing behavior and mental processes, although the other three goals would be important in achiev- ing this objective. STEPS IN THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH The first step in any investigation is to have a question to investigate, right? So the first step in the scientific approach is this: 1. Perceiving the Question: You notice something interesting happening in your sur- roundings for which you would like to have an explanation. An example might be that you’ve noticed that your children seem to get a little more aggressive with each other after watching a particularly violent children’s cartoon program on Saturday morning. You wonder if the violence in the cartoon could be creating the aggressive behavior in your children. This step is derived from the goal of description: What is happening here? Once you have a question, you want an answer. The next logical step is to form a tentative* answer or explanation for the behavior you have seen. This tenta- Chris Butler/Age FotoStock/Alamy Stock Photo tive explanation is known as a hypothesis. 2. Forming a Hypothesis: Based on your initial observations of what’s going on in your surroundings, you form an educated guess about the explanation for your ob- servations, putting it into the form of a statement that can be tested in some way. Testing hypotheses is the heart of any scientific investigation and is the primary way in which support for theories is generated. In fact, a good theory should lead to the formation of hypotheses (predictions based on the theory). It might be helpful to think of an “if–then” statement: If the world is round, then a person should be able to sail in a straight line around the world and come back to where he or she started. “If the world is round” is the theory part of this statement, a theory based on many The scientific approach can be used to de- observations and facts gathered by observers, like observing that when a ship sails termine if children who watch violence on toward the horizon, it seems to “disappear” from the bottom up, indicating a curva- television are more likely to be aggressive ture of the surface of the water. The “then” part of the statement is the hypothesis, than those who do not. a specific, testable prediction based on the theory. While it would be nice if all of our assumptions about what we observe are always correct, that isn’t what happens and isn’t necessarily what we want to happen—the scientific approach means you have to seek out information even though it might not agree with what you believed you would find. As odd as it might seem, hypotheses must be falsifiable: there must be a way not just to prove a hypothesis is true but also to prove a hypothesis is false. This is what being “testable” means: You have to be able to see if your hypothesis is true or false. In the example, the “then” part of the statement is testable because, as Christopher Columbus attempted to do, you actually can sail in a straight (more or less) line and see if your prediction comes true. Going back to the previous example, you might say, “If exposure to violence leads to increased aggression in children, then children who watch violent cartoons will become more aggressive.” The last part of that statement is the hypothesis to be tested. (Forming a hypothesis based on observations is related to the goals of description and explanation.) How do researchers go about testing the hypothesis? People have a tendency hypothesis to notice only things that agree with their view of the world, a kind of selective tentative explanation of a phenomenon perception called confirmation bias. See Learning Objective 7.4. For example, if a based on observations. *tentative: something that is not fully worked out or completed as yet. 40 ChaPTer 1 person is convinced that all men with long hair smoke cigarettes, that person will tend to notice only those long-haired men who are smoking and ignore all the long- haired men who don’t smoke. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the scien- tific approach is designed to overcome the tendency to look at only the information that confirms people’s biases by forcing them to actively seek out information that might contradict their biases (or hypotheses). So when you test your hypothesis, you are trying to determine if the factor you suspect has an effect and that the re- sults weren’t due to luck or chance. That’s why psychologists keep doing research over and over—to get more evidence that hypotheses are “supported” or “not sup- ported.” When you have a body of hypotheses that have been supported, you can build your theory around those observations. 3. Testing the Hypothesis: The approach you use to test your hypothesis will depend on exactly what kind of answer you think you might get. You could make more detailed observations or do a survey in which you ask questions of a large number of people, or you might design an experiment in which you would deliberately change one thing to see if it causes changes in the behavior you are observing. In the example, the best approach would probably be an experiment in which you select a group of children, show half of them a cartoon with violence and half of them a cartoon with no violence, and then find some way of measuring aggressive behavior in the two groups. What do you do with the results of your testing? Of course, testing the hy- pothesis is all about the goal of getting an explanation for behavior, which leads to the next step. 4. Drawing Conclusions: Once you know the results of your hypothesis testing, you will find that either your hypothesis was supported—which means that your exper- iment worked and that your measurements supported your initial observations—or that they weren’t supported, which means that you need to go back to square one and think of another possible explanation for what you have observed. (Could it be that Saturday mornings make children a little more aggressive? Or Saturday breakfasts?) The results of any form of hypothesis testing won’t be just the raw numbers or measurements. Any data that come from your testing procedure will be ana- lyzed with some kind of statistical method that helps to organize and refine the data. See Appendix A: Statistics in Psychology. Drawing conclusions can be re- lated to the goal of prediction: If your hypothesis is supported, you can make educated guesses about future, similar scenarios. 5. Report Your Results: You have come to some conclusion about your investigation’s success or failure, and you want to let other researchers know what you have found. Why tell anyone what happened if it failed? Just because one experiment or study did not find support for the hypothesis does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis is incorrect. Your study could have been poorly de- signed, or there might have been factors out of your control that interfered with the study. But other researchers are asking the same kinds of questions that you might have asked. They need to know what has already been found out about the answers to those questions so that they can continue investigating and adding more knowledge about the answers to those questions. Even if your own investigation didn’t go as planned, your report will tell other researchers what not to do in the future. So the final step in any scientific investigation replicate is reporting the results. in research, repeating a study or exper- At this point, you would want to write up exactly what you did, why you did it, how iment to see if the same results will be you did it, and what you found. If others can replicate your research (meaning, do exactly obtained in an effort to demonstrate the same study over again and get the same results), it gives much more support to your reliability of results. findings. A research study that cannot be replicated successfully is a poor quality of evidence,  The Science of Psychology 41 as discussed in the second criterion for critical thinking in the previous section. A study that can be replicated successfully allows others to predict behavior based on your findings and to use the results of those findings to modify or control behavior, the last goal in psychology. Replication of a study’s results is not always an easy task, and some evidence suggests ed- itors of peer-reviewed journals have tended to publish positive research results overall and not embrace direct replications of “old” knowledge (Nosek et al., 2012). Even when direct replication studies have been published, some results have not been as strong or did not reach the same level of statistical significance as the originals (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). While these and related concerns have been referred to as a replicability crisis in psy- chology, the field is responding to the challenge (Frankenhuis & Nettle, 2018; Washburn et al., 2018). There are focused and continued efforts of researchers to test and retest “what we think we know,” providing additional evidence for many areas and suggesting we still have much work to do in other areas of psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). This might be a good place to make a distinction between questions that can be scientifically or empirically studied and those that cannot. For example, “What is the meaning of life?” is not a question that can be studied using the scientific or empirical approach. Empirical questions are those that can be tested through direct observation or experience. For example, “Has life ever existed on Mars?” is a question that scientists are trying to an- Watch Research Methods swer through measurements, experimentation, soil samples, and other methods. Eventually they will be Video able to say with some degree of confidence that life could have existed or could not have existed. That is an empirical question, because it can be supported or disproved by gathering real evidence. The meaning of life, however, is a question of belief for each person. One does not need proof to believe, but scientists need proof (in the form of objectively gathered evidence) to know. Questions that involve beliefs and values are best left to philosophy and religion. In psychology, researchers try to find the an- swers to empirical questions. They can use a variety of research methods depending on the scientific question to be answered, as seen in the video Research Methods. Niels van Gijn/John Warburton-Lee Photography/Alamy Stock Photo 1.7 Descriptive Methods 1.7 Compare and contrast some of the methods used to describe behavior. There are a number of different ways to investigate the answers to research questions, and which one researchers use depends on the kind of question they want to answer. If they only want to gather information about what has happened or what is happening, they would select a method that gives them a detailed description. NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION Sometimes all a researcher needs to know is what is hap- pening to a group of animals or people. The best way to look at the behavior of animals or people is to watch them behave in their normal environment. That’s why animal re- searchers go to where the animals live and watch them eat, play, mate, and sleep in their own natural surroundings. With people, researchers might want to observe them in their workplaces, in their homes, or on playgrounds. For example, if someone wanted to know how adolescents behave with members of the opposite sex in a social setting, that re- This researcher is studying the searcher might go to the mall on a weekend night. behavior of a group of meerkats. What is the advantage of naturalistic observation? It allows researchers to get a re- Is this naturalistic observation? alistic picture of how behavior occurs because they are actually watching that behavior Why or why not?  42 ChaPTer 1 in its natural setting. In a more controlled, arranged environment, like a laboratory, Marmaduke St. John/Alamy Stock Photo they might get behavior that is contrived or artificial rather than genuine. Of course, precautions must be taken. An observer should have a checklist of well-defined and specific behavior to record, perhaps using their phone, tablet, or a special handheld computer to log each piece of data. In many cases, animals or people who know they are being watched will not behave normally—a process called the observer effect—so often the observer must remain hidden from view. When researching humans, remain- ing hidden is often a difficult thing to do. In the earlier example of the mall setting with the teenagers, a researcher might find that pretending to read a book is a good The researcher in the foreground is watch- disguise, especially if one wears glasses to hide the movement of the eyes. Using such a ing the children through a one-way mirror to get a description of their behavior. scenario, researchers would be able to observe what goes on between the teens without Observations such as these are just one them knowing that they were being watched. In other cases, researchers might use one- of many ways that psychologists have of way mirrors, or they might actually become participants in a group, a technique called investigating behavior. Why is it important participant observation. for the researcher to be behind a one-way Are there disadvantages to this method? Unfortunately, yes. One of the disadvan- mirror? tages of naturalistic observation is the possibility of observer bias. That happens when the person doing the observing has a particular opinion about what he or she expects to see. If that is the case, sometimes that person recognizes only those actions that support the preconceived expectation and ignores actions that contradict it. For example, if you think girls initiate flirting, you might not see the boys who initiate flirting. One way to avoid observer bias is to use blind observers: people who do not know what the research question is and, therefore, have no preconceived notions about what they “should” see. It’s also a good idea to have more than one observer so that the various observations can be compared. Another disadvantage is that each naturalistic setting is unique and unlike any other. Observations that are made at one time in one setting may not hold true for an- other time, even if the setting is similar, because the conditions are not going to be iden- tical time after time—researchers don’t have that kind of control over the natural world. For example, famed gorilla researcher Dian Fossey had to battle poachers who set traps for the animals in the area of her observations (Mowat, 1988). The presence and activities of the poachers affected the normal behavior of the gorillas she was trying to observe. LABORATORY OBSERVATION Sometimes observing behavior in animals or people is just not practical in a natural setting. For example, a researcher might want to observe the re- actions of infants to a mirror image of themselves and to record the reactions with a cam- era mounted behind a one-way mirror. That kind of equipment might be difficult to set up in a natural setting. In a laboratory observation, the researcher would bring the infant to the equipment, controlling the number of infants and their ages, as well as everything else that goes on in the laboratory. observer effect As mentioned previously, laboratory settings have the disadvantage of being an tendency of people or animals to behave artificial situation that might result in artificial behavior—both animals and people often differently from normal when they know react differently in the laboratory than they would in the real world. The main advantage they are being observed. of this method is the degree of control that it gives to the observer. Both naturalistic and laboratory observations can lead to the formation of hypoth- participant observation eses that can later be tested. a naturalistic observation in which the observer becomes a participant in the CASE STUDIES Another descriptive technique is called the case study, in which one group being observed. individual is studied in great detail. In a case study, researchers try to learn everything they can about that individual. For example, Sigmund Freud based his entire theory of observer bias psychoanalysis on case studies of his patients in which he gathered information about tendency of observers to see what they their childhoods and relationships with others from the very beginning of their lives to expect to see. the present. See Learning Objective 13.3. case study The advantage of the case study is the tremendous amount of detail it provides. It study of one individual in great detail. may also be the only way to get certain kinds of information. For example, one famous  The Science of Psychology 43 case study was the story of Phineas Gage, who, in an accident, had a large metal rod driven through his head and survived but experienced major personality and behavioral changes during the time immediately following the accident (Damasio et al., 1994; Ratiu et al., 2004; Van Horn et al., 2012). Researchers couldn’t study that with naturalistic obser- vation, and an experiment is out of the question. Imagine anyone responding to an ad in the newspaper that read: Wanted: 50 people willing to suffer nonfatal brain damage for scientific study of the brain. Will pay all medical expenses. You certainly wouldn’t get many volunteers. Case studies are good ways to study things that are rare. JACOPIN / BSIP/Alamy Stock Photo The disadvantage of the case study is that researchers can’t really apply the results to other similar people. In other words, they can’t assume that if another person had the same kind of experiences growing up, he or she would turn out just like the person in their case study. People are unique and have too many complicating factors in their lives to be that predictable (Think about the uniqueness of the case of Phineas Gage, for exam- ple). So what researchers find in one case won’t necessarily apply or generalize to others. Another weakness of this method is that case studies are a form of detailed observation and are vulnerable to bias on the part of the person conducting the case study, just as ob- Phineas Gage survived a steel tamping server bias can occur in naturalistic or laboratory observation. rod going through his head after some explosive powder went off unexpectedly. SURVEYS Sometimes what psychologists want to know about is pretty personal—like The steel tamping rod entered above the what people do in their sexual relationships, for example. (I’m pretty sure naturalistic left side of his mouth, passed through his observation of human sexual behavior could end in an arrest!) The only way to find out left frontal lobe, and exited through the top about very private (covert) behavior is to ask questions. of his skull. In the survey method, researchers will ask a series of questions about the topic they are studying. Surveys can be conducted in person in the form of interviews or on the phone, through the Internet, or with a written questionnaire. The questions used in interviews or on the phone can vary, but usually the questions in a survey are all the same for everyone answering the survey. In this way, researchers can ask lots of questions and survey literally hundreds of people. To gain a better understanding of what it is like to complete a survey, try your hand at the survey Participating in a Research Survey. Survey Participating in a Research Survey INTRODUCTION SURVEY RESULTS Interactive This survey asks you about your attitudes towards and experiences with a broad range of psychological principles and theories. Click Next to begin the survey Previous Next 44 ChaPTer 1 That is the big advantage of surveys: Aside from their ability to get at private informa- tion, researchers can also get a tremendous amount of data on a very large group of people. Of course, there are disadvantages. For one, researchers have to be very careful about the group of people they survey. If they want to find out what college freshmen think about politics, for example, they can’t really ask every single college freshman in the entire United States. But they can select a representative sample from that group. They could randomly* select a certain number of college freshmen from several different colleges across the United States, for exam- ple. Why randomly? Because the sample has to be representative of the population, which is the entire group in which the researcher is interested. If researchers selected only freshmen from Ivy League schools, for example, they would certainly get different opinions on politics than they might get from small community colleges. But if they take a lot of colleges and select their participants (people who are part of the study) randomly, they will be more certain of getting answers that a broad selection of college students would typically give. Getting a representative sample is not always easy (Banerjee & Chaudhury, 2010). Many researchers (even more so in the past than now) use people who are readily avail- able for their samples. Since many researchers work in educational settings, that means that they often use college students. College students aren’t really good representatives of the general population even if you sampled many different kinds of schools as in the previous example—they are mostly white and well educated (and, in the early days of psychology, nearly all men). The general population is not all of those things, obviously. Random sam- pling can be accomplished by assigning potential participants a number and then using an electronically generated table of random numbers to select the participants, for example. Another major disadvantage of the survey technique occurs because people aren’t always going to give researchers accurate answers. The fact is, people tend to misre- member things or distort the truth, and some may lie outright—even if the survey is an anonymous** questionnaire. Remembering is not a very accurate process sometimes, especially when people think that they might not come off sounding very desirable or socially appropriate. Some people deliberately give the answer they think is more socially correct rather than their true opinion so that no one gets offended in a process called cour- tesy bias. Researchers must take their survey results with a big grain of salt***—they may not be as accurate as they would like them to be. Both the wording of survey questions and the order in which they appear can af- fect the outcome. It is difficult to find a wording that will be understood in exactly the same way by all those who read the question. Questions can be worded in a way that the desired answer becomes obvious (often resulting in courtesy bias-type answers). For ex- ample, “Do you agree that the new procedures for registering for classes are too compli- cated?” is obviously looking for a confirmation, while “What is your opinion of the new procedures for registering for classes?” is much more open to differing responses. Even the order of questions in a survey matters: A question about how much should be spent on public safety might have a very different answer at the beginning of a survey than after a long list of questions about crimes and criminal activity. representative sample 1.8 Correlations: Finding Relationships randomly selected sample of participants 1.8 Explain how researchers use the correlational technique to study relation- from a larger population of participants. ships between two or more variables. population The methods discussed so far only provide descriptions of behavior. There are really only the entire group of people or animals in two methods that allow researchers to know more than just a description of what has which the researcher is interested. happened: correlations and experiments. Correlation is actually a statistical technique, a *randomly: in this sense, selected so that each member of the group has an equal chance of being chosen. **anonymous: not named or identified. ***grain of salt: a phrase meaning to be skeptical; to doubt the truth or accuracy of something.  The Science of Psychology 45 particular way of organizing numerical information so that it is easier to look for patterns in the information. This method will be discussed here rather than in the statistics appen- dix found at the back of this text because correlation, like the experiment, is about finding relationships. In fact, the data from the descriptive methods just discussed are often ana- lyzed using the correlational technique. A correlation is a measure of the relationship between two or more variables. A variable is anything that can change or vary—scores on a test, temperature in a room, gender, and so on. For example, researchers might be curious to know whether cigarette smoking is connected to life expectancy—the number of years a person can be expected to live. Obviously, the scientists can’t hang around people who smoke and wait to see when those people die. The only way (short of performing a very unethical and lengthy experiment) to find out if smoking behavior and life expectancy are related to each other is to use the medical records of people who have already died. (For privacy’s sake, the personal information such as names and social security numbers would be removed, with only the facts such as age, gender, weight, and so on avail- able to researchers.) Researchers would look for two facts from each record: the number of cigarettes the person smoked per day and the age of the person at death. Now the researcher has two sets of numbers for each person in the study that go into a mathematical formula (see Learning Objective A.6) to produce a number called the correlation coefficient. The correlation coefficient represents two things: the direction of the relationship and its strength. Direction? How can a mathematical relationship have a direction? Whenever researchers talk about two variables being related to each other, what they really mean is that knowing the value of one variable allows them to predict the value of the other variable. For example, if researchers found that smoking and life expec- tancy are indeed related, they should be able to predict how long someone might live if they know how many cigarettes a person smokes in a day. But which way does that pre- diction work? If a person smokes a lot of cigarettes, does that mean that he or she will live a longer life or a shorter one? Does life expectancy go up or down as smoking increases? That’s what is meant by the direction of the relationship. In terms of the correlation coefficient (represented by the small letter r), the number researchers get from the formula will either be a positive number or a negative number. If positive, the two variables increase in the same direction—as one goes up, the other goes up; as one decreases, the other also decreases. If negative, the two variables have an inverse* relationship—as one increases, the other decreases. If researchers find that the more cigarettes a person smoked, the younger that person was when he or she died, it would mean that the correlation between the two variables is negative. (As smoking goes up, life expectancy goes down—an inverse relationship.) The strength of the relationship between the variables will be determined by the actual number itself. That number will always range between +1.00 and -1.00. The reason that it cannot be greater than +1.00 or less than -1.00 has to do with the formula and an imaginary line on a graph around which the data points gather, a graph called a scatterplot (see Figure 1.4). If the relationship is a strong one, the number will correlation be closer to +1.00 or to -1.00. A correlation of +.89 for example, would be a very strong a measure of the relationship between positive correlation. That might represent the relationship between scores on the SAT and two variables. an IQ test, for example. A correlation of -.89 would be equally strong but negative. That correlation coefficient would be more like the correlation researchers would probably find between smoking a number that represents the strength cigarettes and the age at which a person dies. and direction of a relationship existing Notice that the closer the number is to zero, the weaker the relationship becomes. between two variables; number derived Researchers would probably find that the correlation coefficient for the relationship between from the formula for measuring a people’s weight and the number of freckles they have is pretty close to zero, for example. correlation. *inverse: opposite in order. 46 ChaPTer 1 Figure 1.4 Five Scatterplots Y Y Y X X X Perfect positive Modest positive No correlation correlation correlation Y Y X X Perfect negative Modest negative correlation correlation These scatterplots show direction and strength of correlation. It should be noted that perfect correla- tions, whether positive or negative, rarely occur in the real world. Go back to the cigarette thing—if we found that the correlation between cigarette smoking and life expectancy was high, does that mean that smoking causes your life expectancy to be shortened? Not exactly. The biggest error that people make concerning correlation is to assume that it means one variable is the cause of the other. Remember that correlation does not prove causation. Although adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for approximately 480,000 deaths each year in the United States alone, correlation by itself cannot be used to prove causation (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Just because two variables are related to each other, researchers cannot assume that one of them causes the other one to occur. They could both be related to some other variable that is the cause of both. For example, cigarette smoking and life expectancy could be linked only because people who smoke may be less likely to take care of their health by eating right and exercising, whereas people who don’t smoke may tend to eat healthier foods and exercise more than smokers do. To sum up, a correlation will tell researchers if there is a relationship between the variables, how strong the relationship is, and in what direction the relationship goes. If researchers know the value of one variable, they can predict the value of the other. If they know someone’s IQ score, for example, they can predict approximately what score that person should get on the SAT—not the exact score, just a reasonable estimate. Also, even though correlation does not prove causation, it can provide a starting point for examining causal relationships with another type of study, the experiment. 1.9 The Experiment 1.9 Identify the steps involved in designing an experiment. experiment The only method that will allow researchers to determine the cause of a behavior is the a deliberate manipulation of a variable to experiment. In an experiment, researchers deliberately manipulate (change in some see if corresponding changes in behav- purposeful way) the variable they think is causing some behavior while holding all the ior result, allowing the determination of other variables that might interfere with the experiment’s results constant and unchang- cause-and-effect relationships. ing. That way, if they get changes in behavior (an effect, in other words), they know that  The Science of Psychology 47 those changes must be due to the manipulated variable. For example, remember the discussion of the steps in the scientific approach. It talked about how to study the effects of watching violent cartoons on children’s aggressive behavior. The most log- ical way to study that particular relationship is by an experiment. SELECTION First, researchers might start by selecting the children they want to use in the experiment. The best way to do that is through random selection of a sample Clinton L/123RF of children from a “population” determined by the researchers—just as a sample would be selected for a survey. Ideally, researchers would decide on the age of child they wanted to study—say, children who are 3–4 years old. Then researchers would go to various day care centers and randomly select a certain number of children of that The act of pushing each other could be part of an age. Of course, that wouldn’t include the children who don’t go to a day care center. operationalization of aggressive behavior. Another way to get a sample in the age range might be to ask several pediatricians to send out letters to parents of children of that age and then randomly select the sample from those children whose parents responded positively. THE VARIABLES Another important step is to decide on the variable the researchers want to manipulate (which would be the one they think causes changes in behavior) and the variable they want to measure to see if there are any changes (this would be the ef- fect on behavior of the manipulation). Often deciding on the variables in the experiment comes before selection of the participants. In the example of aggression and children’s cartoons, the variable that researchers think causes changes in aggressive behavior is the violence in the cartoons. Researchers would want to manipulate that in some way, and in order to do that they have to de- cide the meaning of the term violent cartoon. They would have to find or create a cartoon that contains violence. Then they would show that cartoon to the participants and try to measure their aggressive behavior afterward. In measuring the aggressive behavior, the researchers would have to describe exactly what they mean by “aggressive behav- operationalization ior” so that it can be measured. This description is called operationalization because it specific description of a variable of inter- specifically names the operations (steps or procedures) that the experimenter must use est that allows it to be measured. to control or measure the variables in the experiment (Lilienfeld et al., 2015a). An opera- tionalization of aggressive behavior might be a checklist of very specific actions such as independent variable hitting, pushing, and so on that an observer can mark off as the children do the items on variable in an experiment that is manipu- the list. If the observers were just told to look for “aggressive behavior,” the researchers lated by the experimenter. would probably get half a dozen or more different interpretations of what aggressive dependent variable behavior is. variable in an experiment that represents The name for the variable that is manipulated in any experiment is the independent the measurable response or behavior of variable because it is independent of anything the participants do. The participants in the study the participants in the experiment. do not get to choose or vary the independent variable, and their behavior does not affect this variable at all. In Watch Experiments: Independent versus Dependent Variables the preceding example, the independent variable would Video be the presence or absence of violence in the cartoons. The response of the participants to the manipulation of the independent variable is a dependent relationship, so the response of the participants that is measured is known as the dependent variable. Their behavior, if the hypothesis is correct, should depend on whether or not they were exposed to the independent variable, and in the example, the dependent variable would be the measure of aggressive behavior in the children. The dependent vari- able is always the thing (response of participants or result of some action) that is measured to see just how the in- dependent variable may have affected it. Watch the video Experiments: Independent versus Dependent Variables to learn more about variables in experiments. 48 ChaPTer 1 THE GROUPS If researchers do all of this and find that the children’s behavior is aggressive, can they say that the aggressive behavior was caused by the violence in the cartoon? No, what has been described so far is not enough. The researchers may find that the children who watch the violent cartoon are aggressive, but how would they know if their aggressive behavior was caused by the cartoon or was just the natural aggression level of those particular children or the result of the particular time of day they were observed? Those sorts of confounding variables (variables that interfere with each other and their possi- ble effects on some other variable of interest) are the kind researchers have to control for in some way. For example, if most children in this experiment just happened to be from a fairly aggressive family background, any effects the violent cartoon in the experiment might have had on the children’s behavior could be confused (confounded) with the possible effects of the family background. The researchers wouldn’t know if the children were being aggres- sive because they watched the cartoon or because they liked to play aggressively anyway. The best way to control for confounding variables is to have two groups of partici- pants: those who watch the violent cartoon and those who watch a nonviolent cartoon for the same length of time. Then the researchers would measure the aggressive behavior in both groups. If the aggressive behavior is significantly greater in the group that watched experimental group the violent cartoon (statistically speaking), then researchers can say that in this experi- participants in an experiment who are ment, violent cartoon watching caused greater aggressive behavior. subjected to the independent variable. The group that is exposed to the independent variable (the violent cartoon in the example) is called the experimental group, because it is the group that receives the ex- control group perimental manipulation. The other group that gets either no treatment or some kind of participants in an experiment who are not treatment that should have no effect (like the group that watches the nonviolent cartoon subjected to the independent variable and in the example) is called the control group because it is used to control for the possibility who may receive a placebo treatment. that other factors might be causing the effect that is being examined. If researchers were random assignment to find that both the group that watched the violent cartoon and the group that watched process of assigning participants to the the nonviolent cartoon were equally aggressive, they would have to assume that the vio- experimental or control groups randomly, lent content did not influence their behavior at all. so that each participant has an equal Many experiments involve more than just two groups. A researcher who wants chance of being in either group. to determine the effect of different levels of a particular independent variable (such as different dosages of a drug) would need multiple ex- perimental groups. Other studies have multiple inde- Watch Experiments: Experimental Group versus Control Group pendent variables, such as a study looking at how age, gender, and exposure to video-game playing affect Video scores on a test of memory. If you also tested anxi- ety levels in that last example, you’d have more than one dependent variable as well. (Is your head hurting yet? Sorry about that.) Watch the video Experiments: Experimental Group versus Control Group to learn more about the function of groups in experiments. THE IMPORTANCE OF RANDOMIZATION As men- tioned previously, random selection is the best way to choose the participants for any study. Participants must then be assigned to either the experimen- tal group or the control group. Not surprisingly, random assignment of participants to one or the other condition is the best way to ensure control  The Science of Psychology 49 over other interfering, or extraneous, variables. Random assignment means that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each condition. If researchers simply looked at the children and put all of the children from one day care center or one pediatrician’s recommendations into the experimental group and the same for the control group, they would run the risk of biasing their research. Some day care centers may have more naturally aggressive children, for example, or some pediatricians may have a particular client base in which the children are very passive. So researchers want to take the entire participant group and assign each person randomly to one or the other of the groups in the study. Sometimes this is as simple as picking names out of a hat. 1.10 Experimental Hazards and Controlling for Effects 1.10 Recall two common sources of problems in an experiment and some ways to control for these effects. There are a few other problems that might arise in any experiment, even with the use of control groups and random assignment. These problems are especially likely when studying people instead of animals, because people are often influenced by their own thoughts or biases about what’s going on in an experiment. THE PLACEBO EFFECT AND THE EXPERIMENTER EFFECT For example, say there is a new drug that is supposed to improve memory in people who are in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (a form of mental deterioration that occurs in some people as they grow old). See Learning Objective 6.13. Researchers would want to test the drug to see if it really is effective in helping improve memory, so they would get a sample of people who are in the early stages of the disease, divide them into two groups, give one group the drug, and then test for improvement. They would probably have to do a test of memory both before and after the administration of the drug to be able to measure improvement. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The group that gets the drug would be the experimental group, and the one that doesn’t is the control group, right? Right, and getting or not getting the drug is the independent variable, Fotokostic/Shutterstock whereas the measure of memory improvement is the dependent variable. But there’s still a problem with doing it this way. What if the researchers do find that the drug group had greater memory improvement than the group that received nothing? Can they really say that the drug itself caused the improve- ment? Or is it possible that the participants who received the drug knew that This woman suffers from chronic pain. If she were given they were supposed to improve in memory and, therefore, made a major ef- a new pain-killing drug, the researcher could not be fort to do so? The improvement may have had more to do with participants’ certain that any improvement in her pain was caused belief in the drug than the drug itself, a phenomenon known as the placebo by the drug rather than by the woman’s belief that the effect: The expectations and biases of the participants in a study can influence drug would work. The expectations of any person in an their behavior. In medical research, the control group is often given a harmless experimental study can affect the outcome of the study, substitute for the real drug, such as a sugar pill or an injection of salt water, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect. and this substitute (which has no medical effect) is called the placebo. If there is a placebo effect, the control group will show changes in the dependent variable even though the placebo effect participants in that group received only a placebo. the phenomenon in which the expecta- Another way that expectations about the outcome of the experiment can influ- tions of the participants in a study can ence the results, even when the participants are animals rather than people, is called the influence their behavior. 50 ChaPTer 1 experimenter effect. It has to do with the expectations of the experimenter, not the partic- ipants. As discussed earlier in the section about naturalistic observations, sometimes ob- servers are biased—they see what they expect to see. Observer bias can also happen in an experiment. When the researcher is measuring the dependent variable, it’s possible that he or she could give the participants clues about how they are supposed to respond—through the use of body language, tone of voice, or even eye contact. Although not deliberate, it does happen. It could go something like this in the memory drug example mentioned ear- lier: You, the Alzheimer’s patient, are in the experimenter’s office to take your second mem- ory test after trying the drug. The experimenter seems to pay a lot of attention to you and to every answer that you give in the test, so you get the feeling that you are supposed to have improved a lot. So you try harder, and any improvement you show may be caused only by your own increased effort, not by the drug. That’s an example of the experimenter effect in action: The behavior of the experimenter caused the participant to change his or her response pattern. SINGLE-BLIND AND DOUBLE-BLIND STUDIES There are ways to control these effects. The classic way to avoid the placebo effect is to give the control group an actual placebo—some kind of treatment that doesn’t affect behavior at all. In the drug experiment, the placebo would have to be some kind of sugar pill or saline (salt) solution that looks like and is administered just like the actual drug. The participants in both the experimental and the control groups would not know whether they got the real drug or the placebo. That way, if their expectations have any effect at all on the outcome of the experiment, the experimenter will be able to tell by looking at the results for the control group and comparing them to the experimental group. Even if the control group improves a little, the drug group should im- prove significantly more if the drug is working. This is called a single-blind study because the participants are “blind” to the treatment they receive. experimenter effect For a long time, that was the only type of experiment researchers carried out in psy- chology. But researchers found that when teachers were told that some students had a tendency of the experimenter’s expectations for a study to unintentionally high potential for success and others a low potential, the students showed significant gains influence the results of the study. or decreases in their performance on standardized tests depending on which “potential” they were supposed to have (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Actually, the students had been single-blind study selected randomly and were randomly assigned to one of the two groups, “high” or “low.” study in which the participants do not Their performances on the tests were affected by the attitudes of the teachers concerning know if they are in the experimental or their potential. This study and similar ones after it highlighted the need for the experi- the control group. menter to be “blind” as well as the participants in research. So in a double-blind study, double-blind study neither the participants nor the person or persons measuring the dependent variable know study in which neither the experimenter nor who got what. That’s why every element in a double-blind experiment gets coded in some the participants know if the participants are way, so that only after all the measurements have been taken can anyone determine who in the experimental or the control group. was in the experimental group and who was in the control group. Concept Map L.O. 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10 Interactive there are very few “truths” evidence is not optional that do not need to be subject to testing all evidence is not equal evidence should be evaluated for in quality quality, potential biases, and applicability Critical Thinking (involves making reasoned the claims of those who experience and expertise are judgements; has four basic are considered authorities important but are not sufficient criteria) are not automatically true critical thinking requires critical thinking is a balancing act an open mind between openness to possibilities and somewhat skeptical acceptance  The Science of Psychology 51 psychology has four describe primary goals explain predict control perceiving the question about some empirical event for which you would like an explanation; can be derived from the goal of description: What is happening here? forming a hypothesis, a tentative explanation about an event steps in the scientific approach testing the hypothesis by collecting data, analyzing results drawing conclusions about investigation's success or failure to explain event reporting your results; share exactly what, why, and how you did it, which provides means for replication Scientific Research (psychology uses the scientific approach to try to determine facts and reduce uncertainty) can lead to formation of naturalistic observation: observe people or animals in natural environment hypotheses laboratory observation: observe people or animals in laboratory setting that can later descriptive data be tested collection methods case studies: individual is studied in greater detail, researchers try to learn everything they can about the individual surveys: ask questions about topic researchers are studying via telephone, Internet, or a questionnaire is a measure of relationship between two or more variables (anything that can change or vary) Correlation produces a value called the correlation coefficient that represents both direction and strength of relationship does not prove causation—variables can be related but you cannot assume that one of them causes the other to occur selection: researchers often aim to identify participants through random selection of a sample from the population of interest independent variable is the variable that is manipulated, it is independent of anything participants do the process of operationalization specifically names the steps or procedures dependent variable is the measure used to control or measure the variables in used to evaluate the manipulation the experiment of the independent variable experimental: gets the random assignment to independent variable or conditions is the best way groups experimental manipulation to assure control over extraneous variables or control: receives no confounding variables, The Experiment treatment or treatment that should not have an effect variables that interfere with each other and/or on (the only research method the variable of interest that will allow researchers to determine the cause placebo effect: beliefs or of a behavior by expectations about a study deliberately manipulating hazards can influence their behavior can be controlled through some variable and single-blind (participant “blind” measuring changes to treatment/condition) and experimenter effect: double-blind studies where both in the variable of interest) experimenter’s biases the participants and the experi- can affect or influence menter measuring the dependent participants’ behavior variable do not know the treatment/condition associated with the data 52 ChaPTer 1 Practice Quiz How much do you remember? Pick the best answer. 1. Nadine developed a strong belief in palmistry after she visited a 4. Jim is a research assistant who researches about the behavior of rhe- palmist who informed her of the science behind palmistry and sus monkeys in their natural environment. He is a believer of the fact showed her satisfactory reviews of some customers. She was that altruism is present in all species. When observing the monkeys, impressed by the accuracy of his readings as had been pointed he notices altruistic behavior among them. Jim might be a victim of out by other customers in their reviews. She was excited to a. observer bias. gather information about her fate from the linings of her hands, b. observer effect. and paid a handsome sum to the palmist to read her palms. c. random bias. Which criterion of critical thinking is most clearly being violated by d. experimental bias. Nadine? 5. In an experiment to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on com- a. Not all evidence is equal in quality pletion of a puzzle, one group is allowed to sleep 8 hours while another b. Expertise doesn’t always guarantee truth group is made to stay awake. In this experiment, the control group is c. Keeping an open mind a. the group that remains awake. d. Very few truths need not be subjected to testing b. the group that gets to sleep. 2. Abu is a farmer whose crop yield is not consistent. He believes that c. the puzzle. his crops don’t do well in the season of locusts, which are insects d. the difference in time for each group to complete the puzzle. that eat and destroy crops. His goal is clearly an example of 6. In a __________ study, the participants do not know if they are part a. description. c. explanation. of the control group or the experimental group. Only the experi- b. prediction. d. control. menter knows who is in each group. 3. Which of the following would indicate the weakest relationship and a. triple-blind thus be close to complete randomness? b. placebo a. -0.98 c. -0.89 c. double-blind b. +1.04 d. +0.01 d. single-blind APA Goal 2: Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking