PSYC 104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Assortative Mating, Soulmate, Dependent And Independent Variables
PSYC104 Lecture 1 Notes 4/2/18
- Experimental methodology
oAsking a question has 2 follow up questions: are lectures an effective way of teaching?
Dependent variable: what do you mean by effective? How do you measure
effectiveness? Retention of material? Self-reports? Enthusiasm?
Independent variable: what comparisons are you making? Lectures compared to
what? Self-studying? Seminars? Flipped classes?
- Studies of social psychology
oPicking names for children: choosing names for babies that start at the beginning of the
alphabet don’t do better than those that start at the end of the alphabet (unless they go
into economics)
Most people choose nice names for children. However, most don’t pay attention to
initials that can spell out good or bad things. Can pick out good initials and bad
initials and see how old the person was when they died to see if there’s a
correlation. There is a longevity difference: people with negative initials die younger
than people with positive initials. People with normal initials fall in the middle
More women tend to die with negative initials and less women tend to die with
positive initials because women can marry and change their names, causing a shift
from neutral to negative, or positive to negative, etc.
oTeaching children how to talk: almost everyone who talks says ‘um’ a lot
Went to lectures and tallied the amount of times professor said ‘um’
Could be differences in number of times said depending on the subject of lecture
Sciences: 1.4 times/min
Social sciences: 4/min
Humanities: 6/min (choosing from bigger set of words)
oWhy are people fascinated by made up stories? (TV shows, plays, novels, etc.)
Argument: driven by desire for suspense
Do spoilers spoil things? Turns out, it enhances things. However, hard to gather data
at individual level, because can’t compare you watching one thing spoiled vs.
watching the same thing not spoiled; only know aggregate level of spoilers are
enhancers
With mystery stories
With literary stories
With ironic twist stories
This data didn’t change anyone’s mind
Why are spoilers enhancers? Changes the way you watch things and more deeply
watch it instead of watching meaningless surface details
- Relationships
oPropinquity: you may have a soulmate, but you marry the person who is near you
Occurs with friendship too: tend to be friends with people that live near you
o(mere) exposure effect: do you like things more just from seeing it? Yes
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Studies of social psychology: picking names for children: choosing names for babies that start at the beginning of the alphabet don"t do better than those that start at the end of the alphabet (unless they go into economics) Most people choose nice names for children. However, most don"t pay attention to initials that can spell out good or bad things. Can pick out good initials and bad initials and see how old the person was when they died to see if there"s a correlation. There is a longevity difference: people with negative initials die younger than people with positive initials. People with normal initials fall in the middle. Went to lectures and tallied the amount of times professor said um". Could be differences in number of times said depending on the subject of lecture. Humanities: 6/min (choosing from bigger set of words: why are people fascinated by made up stories? (tv shows, plays, novels, etc. )
