PSY-200 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Confounding, Statistical Inference, Blind Experiment
16 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Psychology is social science: which studies humans, both as individuals and as groups. What we believe and what the world is actually like are two different things. Attitudes of science: questions authority, doubt, intellectual honesty. Scientific method consists of five basic processes: observe, predict, test, interpret, and communicate. Observation and prediction: researchers develop expectations about an observed phenomenon. Theories must be tied to real evidence. Use mathematics to interpret results to determine if they are significant. Most pervasive pseudoscience is astrology: uses positions of sun, moon, and planets to explain individual"s personality traits and predict the future. Design chosen for study depends on question being asked. Naturalistic observation kind of descriptive method (no influences, real behavior rather than controlled setting) Interviewing and survey answers usually on rating scale. To do meta-analysis researcher convert findings of each study into a standardized statistic known as effect size. Correlation: how is x related to y.
