PSYCH 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Random Assignment, Proxemics, Randomness

• School: Cornell University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH 1101
• Professor: David Pizarro

Document Summary

Experimentation: the gold standard of science: under conditions you tightly control, isolating variables in order to determine causality. Each person equal likelihood of being assigned to either group. Randomness can determine causality, no bias, etc. Middlemist, knowles, & matter (1977) [ethical concerns bathroom: personal space invasions in the lavatory: suggestive evidence for arousal , correlation: measuring two things. In order to be causal: change the number of people: the experiment. The mere presence of others has been shown to cause physiology arousal/stress: inhibits relaxation of the muscles involved in urination. Therefore, the presence of others should delay the onset of urination. Participants visiting three urinal bathroom randomly assigned to one of three conditions: confederate stood immediately adjacent to participant, confederate stood one urinal away from participant, participant is alone. Ethical uproar watched using a hidden lens: results. Directly adjacent= 8. 4: limits to experimentation. Not everything can be manipulated through random assignment. Even if possible, experiments can contain confounds.