PSYC Chapter 2.docx

Research Methods Definitions Prefrontal lobotomy surgical procedure that severed fibers connecting the front lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus Treatment for schizophrenia Heuristic used in intuitive thinking Mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us streamline our thinking and...

Research Methods Definitions Prefrontal lobotomy surgical procedure that severed fibers connecting the front lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus Treatment for schizophrenia Heuristic used in intuitive thinking Mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us streamline our thinking and make sense of our world Random Selection procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate Reliability consistency of measurement Validity extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure Case study research design that examines one person or a small group of people in depth, often over an extended period of time Existence proofs demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can occur Self- report Measures Response sets tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items Malingering tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed with the aim of achieving a goal Halo effect tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to “spill over” to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics Horns effect ratings of a negative trait spill over to influence the ratings of other negative traits Correlation design research design that examine the extent to which two variable are associated Allow us to generate predictions about the future Positive as the value of one variable changes the other variable goes in the same direction Zero correlations do not go together at all Negative if one variable changes the other variable will go the opposite way -1.0 is a perfect negative correlation +1.0 is a perfect positive correlation Naturalistic observations allow us to describe the state of the psychological world Illusory correlation Perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists Central tendency measure of the “central” scores in a dataset, or where the group tends to cluster Mean Is the average Median Middle score in dataset Mode The most frequent occurring score in dataset Variability measure of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are Range Difference between the highest and lowest scores Standard deviation measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean Meta-analysis helps researchers interpret large bodies of psychological literature