PSYC 2000 Chapter : Ch 1 Part 2 Study Guide
Document Summary
What are the 4 goals of the psychologist: describe, explain, predict, control, descriptive method, natural environment. Naturalistic observation- watching humans or animals behave in normal environment. *each naturalistic setting is unique, and observations may not hold. Advantages: control over the experiment, allows use of specialized equipment. Disadvantages: artificial situation that may result in artificial behavior. Case study- study of one individual in great detail (tend to study accidents and their effect on the victim. ) Advantages: data from large numbers of people, study covert behaviors. Disadvantages: researchers have to ensure representative sample. If not, the results are not meaningful: people are not always accurate. Correlations- a measure of the relationship between two variables. No correlation = 0. 0 perfect correlation = -1. 00 or +1. 00. Examples: the sign (+ or -)indicates correlation. *correlation does not equal causation (ice cream & drowning) Experiments = a deliberate manipulation of a variable to see whether corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing the determination of cause-and-effect relationships.
