PSY BEH 104S Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: External Validity, Random Assignment, The Literary Digest

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Psychology and Social Behavior
• Course: PSY BEH 104S
• Professor: Paul Piff

Document Summary

Often allows for predictions about relationships between variables. Ex: when we measure x and y, we see x go higher when y goes higher. I believe low self-esteem causes higher levels of depression. I find in my study that people who have lower self-esteem are more depressed. This is a negative correlation; self-esteem goes down and depression goes up. Low self-esteem could cause depression, or vice versa, or some event or biological predisposition could be causing the depression and the self- esteem. Study that showed a positive correlation between living longer and going to church. This basically means that there is some sort of correlation between the variable, not that it is causation. Community/social support, maybe less likely to engage in risky behaviors, maybe free vaccinations at church . Whereas observational research is designed to systematically describe behavior, correlational research is designed to assess relations between variables. Ex: positive correlations between alcohol consumption and smoking +1.