PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Dependent And Independent Variables, Random Assignment, Statistical Hypothesis Testing

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jordan Poppenk

Document Summary

Behaviour - any action that can be observed, recorded, and measured. Mental process - things like thought, memory and attention (not strictly observable in themselves) Theory: is an idea or an conceptual model that is designed to explain existing facts and make predictions about new facts that might be discovered. 1. hypothesis is a testable prediction about processes that can be observed and measured. A experiment must be verifiable, someone else should be able to preform the s ame experiment and get the same result if the result is not due to chance. In addition to being reliable, studies must also be objective, uninfluenced by emotions or personal points of view: design a study. Subject-expectancy - knowledge of being in an experiment can influence a subject"s performance. Observer-expectancy effect - the observers expectations affect the way they measure and treat the subject. Random selection - helps to make sure that the experiment"s results are valid.