PSYB01H3 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Facial Action Coding System, Ad Hoc Hypothesis, Pseudoscience
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CHAPTER 1 – UNCOMMON SENSE
–Psychology: scientific study of people, the mind, and behaviour; focus attention on questions
about how we feel, think, behave, believe, and interact
–Schswartz: maximization scale; set of 13 statements, 1 disagree completely, 7 agree comp.
○Maximizers got better jobs but were less satisfied – doing better but feeling worse
–Scientific method: absolute rules of research reflecting procedures and techniques for
conducting and evaluating psychological research
○Rules, procedures, and techniques form a unified conceptual framework – formal way of
thinking about a problem, idea, or question
–Empiricism: knowledge is gained through experience, observation, and experiment
–Is: can be answered by facts or empirical data; independent of social, cultural, political, and
religious preference
–Ought: call upon cultural values and ethical considerations; cannot be answered solely on
basis of scientific evidence
–Theory: coherent set of propositions that are used as principles to describe, understand, and
explain psychological or behavioural phenomena
–Testable hypothesis: famed statement
○Priori: exists before experimentation or observation; constitute key feature of scientific
method.
○Post hoc: hypotheses formulated after data are collected and analyzed; pose serious
problems for scientific method; increase likelihood of error and bias
–Variable: characteristic that can take on diff values or can vary across participants
–Sample bias: some members of population are less likely than others to be included in study
– Stats are computed on the sample and are assumed to provide estimates of the population
–Probability: all stats are based on logic of probability
–Reliability: consistency in replication
–Validity: extent to which study provides true measure of what’s meant to investigate
–Control variable: rule out confounds; i.e. personality test to rule out perfectionism of
maximizers. Unchanged throughout the experiment
– Observation & thinking -> formulate question -> hypothesis -> conduct study -> accept/reject
-> reinterpret hypothesis
Methods and tools of research
–True experiments: controlled investigation in which one or more variables are manipulated
○True experiment restricted to those IV such as placebo and experimental drug that can be
randomly assigned
○Independent variable: researchers systematically manipulate
○Dependent variable: examined and measured
–Quasiexperiment: quasi – as if; examine effects of independent variable that cannot be
directly manipulated or randomly assigned on dependent variable (i.e. gender, age, history)
○Studies participants who have been exposed to specified events or those who have
specific characteristics
Control as many variables as possible so the interpretation of relationship between IV
and DV is not confounded
–Descriptive research: focus on distribution of variables, quantitative association of variables
○Correlation: stat that provide index of how closely related 2 variables are
○Advantage: DS is always for quantitative comparison that can’t be directly manipulated
○Disadvantage: Cannot determine causality
–Naturalistic observation: type of DS used to collect behavioural data in natural environment
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○Disadvantage: lack of control of variables that could influence behaviour in natural
environment
–Survey: set of questions; limited by what people are capable of reporting accurately
–Performance based measures: test performance is scored and compared to stat average
derived from normative or standardization sample taken from wider population
○Psychometric: intelligence, personality traits, aptitude
Advantage: rests largely on extensive reliability and validity studies that are
performed in development and construction of an instrument
Disadvantage: psychometric measures often culturally biased
○Wechsler: measure variety of cognitive abilities such as vocab, mental arithmetic, spatial
reasoning, construct designs, summarized in IQ
–Single subject design (small-n design): evaluate efficiency of particular intervention on one
or few cases
○Advantage: Improve ability and monitor effectiveness
○Disadvantage: uncertainty whether findings from one case is applicable to others
–Qualitative research: participant observation, intensive interview, focus group; used to
study/understand phenomena in terms of meanings people attach to them
○Especially suited for exploring research questions
○Advantage: preserving complexities and diversities of human behaviour
Culture
–Culture: rich and intricate melding of shared meanings, communal practices and rituals and
collective discourses and beliefs about human life that prevails in a given group or society
–Memes: cultural “gene”; group ways of life spread from one mind to another, like genes
– Culture is important because it generates psychological differences among people
–Cultural psychology: studies how culture shapes our thinking and vice versa
–Cross cultural psychology: universality of psychological processes across diff cultures
Science vs. pseudoscience
–Epistemology: way of knowing that is exclusively reliant upon objective, empirical
investigation
○Transparent: techniques of ^ must be transparent so methods, procedures, and analyses
can be reproduced
○Allows for peer review, open to
–Pseudoscience: beliefs that are dubious but fascinating claims that are touted as
“scientifically proven” and bolstered by public testimonials of believers who have
experienced firsthand; i.e. horoscopes
–Phrenology: defunct field of study; bumps and fissures of skull determined character and
personality of a person; psych attributes could be assessed
–Lilienfeld’s 10 commandments of distinguishing science from pseudoscience
1. Tendency to invoke ad hoc hypotheses, which can be thought of as loopholes, as means
of immunizing claim from falsification
2. Absence of self-correction and accompanying intellectual stagnation
3. Emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation
4. Tendency to place burden of proof on skeptics, not proponents, of claims
5. Excessive reliance on anecdotal and testimonial evidence to substantiate claims
6. Evasion of scrutiny afforded by peer review
7. Absence of “connectivity” – failure to build on existing scientific knowledge
8. Use of impressive-sounding jargon whose primary propose is to lend claims as facade of
scientific respectability
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9. Absence of boundary conditions – failure to specify settings under which claims do not
hold
Cognitive illusions
– Occur when our thinking deceives us
–Heuristic biases: our minds naturally favour subjective impressions and personal anecdotes
over facts
○False positives are usually harmless whereas false negatives may take you out
– Human mind is probability blind (see below)
–Confirmatory bias: natural tendency of human mind to actively seek out and assign more
weight to any kind of evidence that favours existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis
–Doctrine of falsification: scientists should aim to falsify their theories rather than confirm
them
–Self correcting: info accumulates with new advances and discoveries
○Pseudoscience is stagnant and show little or no progress in accumulation of knowledge
–Dualism: mind is nonphysical substance that’s fundamentally different from physical brain
CHAPTER 2 – FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCH RESEARCH
–Experimental: researcher able to exercise control over variables that are assumed to be the
causal agents producing predicted effect
–Nonexperimental: actions and events carefully measured and catalogued, but IV cannot be
directly manipulated
–Paul Ekman: facial expressions are universal, not culturally/socially learned
○FACS facial action coding system
○Found emotion is not conscious or cognitive process
○Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, contempt
– Principal objective of research is to provide scientific understanding of topic of investigation
–Goals of science: description, explanation, causality
–Conceptual definition: provides meaning of abstract term; semantic or linguistic meaning
–Operational definition: indicates how concept is coded, measured, or quantified
– Important aspect of scientific description and explanation establish predictive relationship
–Explanation: prediction itself doesn't necessarily imply causation
○Reason why we have explanation is because we really want to determine causality and
predictor doesn't necessarily mean causality
e.g. hair color and shoe size in violence person doesn't mean can predict violence
That’s why explanation help establish predictive relations. If you can understand
why, then you can explain and predict it. THUS, determination of causality is
hallmark of explanations
–Causality: requires 3 kinds of evidence
○Temporal precedence: cause precedes effect
○Covariation: when cause is present, effect occurs; when cause absent, effect doesn’t
○Alternative explanation: nothing rather than cause is responsible for effect
○Confounds = third variables
–Logic of experimentation
○Goal is to eliminate all other possible “causes”
○An ideal experiment eliminates all possible confounds
○Realistically, a single study can rarely rule out all potential alternative explanations
○Conceptual replications are necessary to sequentially eliminate other possibilities
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