PSY 360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Desirability Bias, Cultural Evolution, External Validity

• School: University of Arizona
• Department: Psychology Main
• Course: PSY 360
• Professor: Daniel Sullivan

Document Summary

Important concepts in moving from theory to research: Operational definitions: way in which we are actually measuring or observing our variables. Construct validity: whether the operational definition is meaningful or not, how well the variables are operationalized. Social desirability bias: participants do what society as a whole would want them to do. Demand characteristics: participants behave in a way that they think the researcher wants them to behave. External validity: how well the sample can be generalized to the population of interest. Inheritance of traits: variation in traits (through mutation and recombination, different rates of reproduction and survival. Humans and their behavior are products of biological and cultural evolution: cultural evolution very important to humans, less important to animals. Culture: allows for horizontal evolution (radical change in the course of one generation) i. e. due to technical advances. Domain-specific vs. domain-general adaptations: domain-specific: most animals. They evolve to be very successful in particular environmental niches: domain-general: humans.