PSYC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Naturalistic Observation, Random Assignment, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of San Diego
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 101
• Professor: Pearlberg Steven

Document Summary

Cover story - a lie told by experimenter in order to keep real experiment a secret (social and personality pysch) Base rate - what proportion of population is performing behavior. Unit of measurement in psych is always an individual. Experiment - ability to draw a causal conclusion. Observational designs - unobtrusive methods, natural manipulation: time: surveys, cross sectional , all in one shot, makes it cheaper, faster, gives info about age group differences, longitudinal - look to measure changes in individuals over time. Dependable, sturdy, credible: measure something multiple times and getting the same results. Important standard for determining trustworthiness: a reliability test is one we can trust to measure each person in approximately the same way every time it is used. Quasi - only one variable (random assignment or manipulated variable) Case study - looking at one or two people.