PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Normal Distribution, Naturalistic Observation, Frequency Distribution

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: A.George Alder

Document Summary

Empirical method- set of rules and techniques for observation. People are difficult to study because: complex: the brain is very complex, variability: all people are different, reactivity: people a(cid:272)t differe(cid:374)tl(cid:455) o(cid:271)ser(cid:448)ed tha(cid:374) (cid:449)he(cid:374) the(cid:455) are(cid:374)"t. To observe- use all sense to learn about properties. Must define what we wish to measure and a way to detect it. Operational definition- description of properties in concrete, measurable terms. Observer bias (experimenter bias)- experiment sees results they expect to see instead of the true results: avoided by double- blind observation- true purpose kept from observer and participant. Descriptive statistics- brief summary to capture the essential information from the frequency distribution: describe central tendency, mean- average of all measurements, mode- the number that appears most often, median- the exact middle of the measurements. In a normal distribution all three have the same value, but in a skewed distribution they are different (either positive or negative skew).