PSY 3171 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Blind Experiment, Internal Validity, Endophenotype

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3171
• Professor: Allison Jane Ouimet

Document Summary

Social learning theory states that we learn from watching others. The placebo effect is when people get better because they expect treatment to work. Hypothesis: any educated guess or statement to be tested by data. Dependent variable: the outcome variable you plan to measure: the thing you think is affected. Independent variable: the variable you think affects the outcome: can be manipulated or not. Question: do sex differences lead to depressive differences: must control for certain variables like ses, cultural differences, age, education, family history of depression, medical history, comorbidity, severity of symptoms. Often depression can develop out of another problem (comorbidity) The control ensures internal validity: it tests what it is supposed to test and any effect seen is simply due to sex: instead of controlling for those variables, we include them. Leads to external validity: how much we can generalize our findings to the general population: internal and external validity are always in a balance.