Week 2 Readings Flashcards
What is meant by a cause-and-effect conclusion?
Cause and effect is the relationship between two events or situations where the cause is directly responsible for creating the effect.
What is the distribution of a variable?
The pattern of variation
What is a p-value?
The p-value tells you how often a random process would give a result at least as extreme as what was found in the actual study, assuming there was nothing other than random chance at play.
The p-value tells you how likely it is that the result you got happened just by random luck.
We often compare the p-value to some cut-off value (called the level of significance, typically around 0.05). If the p-value is smaller than that cut-off value, then we reject the hypothesis that only random chance was at play here
(P is low REJECT THE HO)
What is random sampling?
In its simplest form, random sampling involves numbering every member of the population and then using a computer to randomly select the subset to be surveyed.
Most polls don’t operate exactly like this, but they do use probability-based sampling methods to select individuals from nationally representative panels.
What is the margin of error?
The expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for 95% confidence level.
Non-random samples are often suspect to bias, what would this cause to happen in our results?
This means that the sampling method would systematically over-represent some segments of the population and under-represent others.
Validity
The degree to which a measure is assessing what it is intended to measure.
Statistical significance
A result is statistically significant if it is unlikely to arise by chance alone.
Reliability
The consistency of a measure.
What is one downside of the laboratory experiment in terms of psychological science?
It carefully controls conditions and their effects, which can yield findings that are out of touch with reality and have limited use when trying to understand real-world behavior
It’s important to conduct research outside the psychology laboratory, within participants’ natural, everyday environments, and reviews existing methodologies for studying daily life
What is a key challenge researchers face when designing a study?
Researchers must balance Internal Validity (making sure the study clearly shows cause and effect) and External Validity (making sure the results can be applied to other settings and larger groups).
Why are internal and external validity difficult to achieve at the same time?
Controlling all factors in a study (for Internal Validity) often creates an artificial setting, making it different from real-world situations. If an experiment is too far from real life, it may limit how useful or generalizable the findings are (External Validity).
This means usually one type of validity is prioritized over another.
What is ecological validity?
Ecological validity refers to how much an effect observed in a study applies to everyday life conditions.
What is the Experience-Sampling Method?
A method where participants report their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at different moments throughout the day.
What is Ecological Momentary Assessment?
A method that repeatedly samples participants’ real-world experiences, behaviors, and physiology in real time.
What is the Diary Method?
A method where participants fill out a questionnaire at the end of the day about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from that day.
What is the usefulness of the Ecological Momentary Assessment, and the Experience-Sampling Method?
these approaches have allowed researchers to do research that is more externally valid, or more generalizable to real life, than the traditional laboratory experiment.
What is the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)?
A method where participants look back on the previous day, break it into episodes, and report their experiences and feelings for each part of the day. This helps researchers understand what situations lead to positive or negative moods.
How is everyday behavior studied in the lab versus the real world?
In the lab, behavior is studied through direct observation (e.g., video recordings). In the real world, this is much harder, as capturing every detail of a person’s actions and interactions would require an incredibly detailed “detective’s report” of their entire life.
What is the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)?
The EAR is a method where participants carry an audio recorder (or use an app) that periodically records brief snippets of ambient sounds throughout their day. These sound bites give researchers a natural sample of the participants’ daily activities, social interactions, and emotions.
What is ambulatory physiological monitoring?
monitoring physiological reactions as people go about their daily lives
What is Ambulatory Assessment?
Ambulatory Assessment refers to methods used to study behavior, physiology, experiences, and environments of people in their everyday, natural settings.
What is Linguistic Analysis?
A method that uses word frequency counts to automatically extract grammatical and psychological information from a text.
Why is Psychology important for addressing climate change?
Psychology helps in understanding how people respond to and make decisions about climate change. It informs policies on conservation, energy efficiency, and sustainable living by studying how natural and built environments affect health and behavior, and how behavior impacts the environment.
