PSYC 6 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Symbolic Racism, Relational Aggression, Operational Definition
Document Summary
Hypothesis: prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances. Theory: an organized set of beliefs, knowledge, and assumptions that relate to understanding a phenomenon. Variables: any characteristic/attribute on which people differ (gender, age, prejudice, income, empathy, satisfaction, stress) Variables vary broadly from concrete to abstract (put things that are abstract into measurable form) Observe some phenomenon that you have some interest or curiosity in (research) Formulate hypotheses and predictions derived from past theories. Idea of groupthink: groups themselves might be pressured by a very strong leader to behave a certain way. Not an empirical thing, more qualitative and quantitative. The process of translating abstract concepts into concrete, observable manifestations so they can be studied. Replication of results (does it compare to past experiments?) Failure is still good because you couldn"t find what you were looking for (identifies some sort of flaw in the experiment or at least provides some sort of data to future experiments)
