PSYC 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Participant Observation, Dependent And Independent Variables, Cognitive Dissonance
Document Summary
Hypothesis: testable predictions about the relationships that exist between events/behaviours/constructs. Theory: set of principals that explain and predict observed events. How do social psychologists test their ideas: participant observation. Social psychologists place themselves in real situation to understand social phenomena better. Pulls existing data, including records of any kind. Nba study; combines participant observation and archival methods: how long and how much they touched their teammates. Any form of physical contact: archival: number of shots and stats researched, teammates who touched each other more had more cohesion during games, surveys to observe. Allow us to measure attitudes, behaviours, or feelings that are difficult. But beware of generalizing from a non-random sample: correlational method, how much do two variable go together, correlation coefficient (r) ranges from -1. 0 to +1. 0, correlation does not prove causation. Independent variable: manipulated: experiments, random assignment: to different conditions, dependent variable: measured. Do violent videogames cause aggression: people who played mortal kombat punished the confederate more, replication.
