Psychology Notes Big Picture Questions

Psychology Notes Big Picture Questions Chapter 1 1.1 How does our everyday thinking sometimes lead us to wrong conclusions? Hindsight bias, overconfidence, and tendency to perceive patterns in random events all can make us believe that something that is true in one particular situation is true in every situation. 1.2 How do the scientific attitude’s three main components relate to critical thinking? Curiosity, skepticism, and humility allow us to ask questions, question our preexisting beliefs, and be aware to the possibility of being incorrect and open to new ideas and perspectives. 1.3 How do theories advance psychological science? By explaining behaviors or events in an organized way that can be retested and revised with hypotheses and experiments. 1.4 How do psychologists use case studies, naturalistic observations, and surveys to observe behavior, and why is random sampling important? Psychologists use these methods to gather data. Case studies usually suggest directions for further study, naturalistic observation describes behavior but doesn’t explain it, and surveys looks at many cases with little depth. Random sampling is important because the experiment needs to accurately sample the population in question. 1.5 What does it mean when we say two things are correlated, and what are positive and negative correlation? That they vary together. Correlation can show how well either factor predicts the other. Positive correlation means that the two variables either increase or decrease together. Negative correlation means that as one variable increases the other decreases, and vice versa. 1.6 What is regression toward the mean? Returning back to one’s average behavior or performance level after either going above average or below average. 1.7 Why do correlations enable prediction but not cause-effect explanation? Because we cannot be sure that one leads to the other. There are three (or more possibilities): 1) Factor A leads to Factor B, 2) Factor B leads to Factor A, and 3) An unrelated factor could causes both Factor A and Factor B. 1.8 What are the characteristics of experimentation that make it possible to isolate cause and effect? The other factors and biases that could possibly influence a result are eliminated through an experiment and control group, random sampling and assigning, placebos, and double-blind procedures. Allows us to get an accurate cause and effect outcome. 1.9 Can laboratory experiments illuminate everyday life? Yes, by exploring general occurrences under controlled circumstances that help explain typical behavior. 1.10 Why do psychologists study animals, and what ethical guidelines safeguard human and animal research participants? How do human values influence psychology? Because humans are also animals, and their complexity makes it more difficult to study. Animals, instead, are more simplistic and therefore it is easier to find results without other variables getting in the way. Many don’t condone the use of animals in testing, but rules and regulations have been put into place to prevent too much emotional or physical harm on animals in testing. Typically, humans are not tested using pain or emotional stress or discomfort unless absolutely necessary to get the findings. There are boards that experimenters have to go through to do all experiments that judge if the experiment is morally correct or not. Human values influence psychology because previous biases or conceptions can affect what we choose to study and how we interpret the results from a study. 1.11 How do we describe data using three measures of central tendency, and what is the relative usefulness of the two measures of variation? The mean is the average of all the data, the mode is the data that occurs most frequently, and the median is the data that is directly in the middle of all the points. The two measures of variation are the range (biggest data minus smallest data) and standard deviation. Standard deviation gives us the most information regarding how far off from the mean the data is. The other measures can give misleading information if there are extreme scores in the data. 1.12 How do we know whether an observed difference can be generalized to other populations? We can say that an observed difference can be generalized to other populations if... 1) the samples are representative 2) the data is concentrated (less variable) 3) there are many cases producing the same result 4) if the data has statistical significance • meaning that there is a less than 5% change that the result happened by chance