PSYB10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Hindsight Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, Balance Theory
Chapter 2: The Methods of Social Psychology
• Hindsight bias is people’s tedey to e oerofidet aout hether they ould hae
predicted a given outcome
• Thought experiment is when you think about how you would test a given idea which
would lead you to new hypotheses that, on reflection, may seem preferable to your
iitial speulatio i the eet that you a’t odut a study to test a partiular
proposition
• Hypothesis is a prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances
• A theory is a body of related propositions intended to describe some aspect of the
world
• Balance theory is the theory that people like their thoughts to be consistent with one
another, and will do substantial mental work to achieve such cognitive consistency
• Participant observation involves observing some phenomenon at a close range
• Archives contains lots of information
• Surveys can be conducted using either interviews or written questionnaires -- it’s siply
asking people questions
• Random sampling is when the people in the survey are a random sample of the
population as a whole -- give everyone an equal chance of being chosen
o Proportions of given types of people in the population as a whole
• Convenience sampling is not random, it may be biased in some way in that it may
include too many of one type of person and too little of another
o Proportions that are severely skewed away from actual proportions as a whole
Correlational Research
• Correlational research is research that does not involve random assignment to different
situations, or conditions, and that psychologists conduct to determine whether there is
a relationship between the variables
• Experimental research in social psychology is research that randomly assigns people to
different conditions, or situations, and that enables researchers to make strong
inferences about how these different conditions affect behaviour
• Correlation does not establish causation
• Third variable is a variable that exerts a causal influence on both variable 1 and variable
2
• Self-selection is a problem that arises when the participant, rather than the researcher,
selects his or her level on each variable, bringing with this value of unknown other
properties that make causal interpretation of a relationship difficult
Experimental Research
• Independent variable is the variable that is manipulated; it is hypothesized to be the
cause of a particular outcome
• Dependent variable is the variable that is measured (as opposed to manipulated); it is
hypothesized to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable
o Can be measured by verbal reports, behaviour, physiological measures, neural
measures
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