Unit 2

Research Methods
-psychology is a science
Hindsight Bias
-The tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you knew it all along
Overconfidence
- we tend to think we know more than we do
The Banum Effect
-the tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterization a of themselves and take them to be aware

Applied v. Basic Research
Aplied- has clear, practical applications
Basic- explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended for immediate use

Hypothesis
- expresses a relationship b/t 2 variable
-variables- anything can vary among participants in a study

Independent Variable- what is being manipulated in the experiment
Dependent Variable- what is being measured in the experiment

Operational Definitions
-explain what you mean in your hypothesis
-how will the variables be measured in "real life" terms

Types of Research

• Descriptive- and research that observes and record
• Correlation
• Experiment

Descriptive Research 

• case study- a detailed picture of one of or a few subjects
• the survey- most common; measure correlation; use mail, internet, etc. 
• Naturalistic Observation- watch subjects in their natural environment

Random Sampling

• identify population you want to study
• the sample must be representative of the population you want to study
• false consensus effect- tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share out beliefs and behaviors

Hawthorne Effect

• Just the fact that you know you are in an experiment can cause change

Correlation Methods

• correlation expresses a relationship between two variables
• does not show causation
• correlation coefficient 
• a number that measures the strength of a relationship 
• the relationship gets weaker the closer you get to zero
• Types of correlation
• positive: the variables go in the SAME direction
• negative: the variable go in the OPPOSITE direction

Experimental Research

• explores cause and effect relationships
• experimental group- exposes participants to the treatment
• control group- comparison for evaluating  the effect

Blind study- subjects are unaware of assigned to experimental or control group

Double-blind study- neither the subjects nor experimenters know which group is control or experiimental

Inferential Statistics- are used to make an inference or drow a conclusion beyond the raw data

Standard Deviation

• how must scores vary around the mean
• high- scores are spread out
• low- score are close