PSYCH101 Quiz: Psych 101- Research methods

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Megan Mc Carthy

Document Summary

We often fall victim to biases, myths, and falsehoods. Tendency to believe, after learning an outcome that we would have forseen it. Documented biases affecting himan reasoning: hindsight bias, overconfidence, pattern perception, false memories, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, availability heuristic, belief perseverance, motivated reasoning, change blindness, the list goes on. The scientific method: selecting a research topic based upon a theory, background research, formulating hypotheses, form operational definitions, select a research method, collect our data, analyse our data, reporting the results. Theory: a set of explanatory statements intended to explain a large set of observations (why does this happen?) Hypothesis: specific statements of expectation derived from theory. States the relationship between two or more variables. Operational definition a statement of the procedures (operations) used to define our research variables. The problem: selling a boy an ice cream, or a murder magnet.