PS381 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Debriefing, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Dependent And Independent Variables
Document Summary
Value of experiments: published experiments facilitate replication, well-designed, well-controlled experiments are highly powerful and convincing, therefore it"s important to understand their components. Why should you care about them: they enable us to discover things that we cannot using other methods, they effectively rule out alternative explanations, they help clinical psychologists know what treatments work and what treatments may be harmful. Cumulative haemorrhages break out all over the body in crippling succession. Ankles swell and discolour, severe pain nags at knee joints and hamstrings. Victims experience lassitude, shortness of breath, and emotional distress. Surgeon lind"s experiment: manipulated diets of six pairs of scurvy sufferers. For example: two drank daily mug of cider, two drank vinegar, two drank seawater, two drank juice of oranges and lemon, dramatic and unmistakable results. Crucial points about experiments: tremendous advantage to actively manipulating a variable and seeing what happens, experiments use the method of comparison.
