PSYO 252 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Internal Validity, Experiment, Attention Span
6 Jun 2018
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January 8th, 2018 – Social Psychology Research
• Power of context – o idea hat you’re apale of util you’re i that situatio
• Soial psyhology is the study of ho people’s thoughts, feeligs, ad ehaiours are iflueed
by their situation
o Studies generally manipulate the context of the situation
• Correlational Method
o Assessing strength of a relationship between variables
o Correlations range from -1.0 to +1.0
o Positive correlations: As X increases, Y increases (ie. Height & weight)
o Negative correlations: As X increases, Y decreases (ie. Stress & health)
▪ Attetio spa is dereasig used to e 60 illiseods that you ould’t
notice – o it’s do to 20 illiseods
• Take home message (ON THE FIRST MIDTERM)
o Correlation does NOT equal causation
o Always have directional problem & potential confounds to consider
▪ Note: often found in advertisement
• Confound
o Causes the 3rd variable problem
o Something that causes a relationship that is not accounted for
• True Experiments
o Types of Variables
▪ Independent Variables (IV): you manipulate IV
▪ Dependent Variables (DV): you measure DV
▪ Participant Variables (PV): variables that characterize pre-existing differences
among participants
• All the things you come in with – obsessed with the context
• The type of person you are & what you bring in – need to control for
this
o Examine cause & effect relationships
o Two Essential Characteristics (to have a true experiment)
▪ Control over all the experimental procedures (ie. Manipulate IV – impacting the
DV)
▪ Participants randomly assigned to different treatment conditions (the great
equalizer)
• This washes out participant variables!
• Random Assignments (aka, the Great Equalizer)
o Assigning participants to conditions in such a way that every participant has an equal
chance of being assigned to any condition
• Note: Random Assignment and Random Sampling are DIFFERENT (differ in validity)
• Random Sampling
o Random Sampling From Population:
▪ Choosing participants for your study in such a way that every member of the
population of interest has an equal chance of being selected into your study
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