PSYC 6 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Desirability Bias, Naturalistic Observation, Nonverbal Communication
Document Summary
If theories specify factors that lead to good and bad things, we can design ways to alter those factors to reduce the occurrence of bad outcomes and increase the occurrence of positive outcomes. Theory: an organized set of beliefs, knowledge, and assumptions that relate to understanding a phenomenon, general claims about how stuff happens and you test them in empirical settings and gain higher or lower confidence in those theories. Variable: any characteristic or attribute that varies (gender, income, empathy, satisfaction, stress) The approach used by psychologists to systematically acquire knowledge and understanding about behavior and other phenomena of interest. A lot of research uses surveys/questionnaires: investigate relations between variables difficult to observe and things that are unethical or unrealistic for true experiments. There"s a social desirability bias to look good to the person asking the questions. Wives/girlfriends report scv at higher rates than their husbands/boyfriends: only 12. 1% of men admit to domestic abuse when surveyed by psychologists.
