Psychology 2301 chapter 2

1. The belief that strange behavior is linked to the occurrence of a full moon is an example of a(n) ________.

2. Spurling et al. investigated the effects of two vocabulary learning strategies on word retention two weeks later. In this example, learning strategy is the ________ variable and word retention is the ________ variable.

3. A(n) ________ is a well-developed set of ideas that proposes an explanation for observed phenomena.

4. Which correlation coefficient best represents a moderate relationship showing fewer anxiety symptoms in people who report higher life satisfaction?

5. Krista and Tatiana Hogan are participants in a(n) ________ of conjoined twins who are joined at the head.

6. In a ________ study, both the researchers and the participants are unaware of the group assignments.

Lesley, a sociology major, believes that money is the key to happiness. Her friend Stephen, a psychology major, believes that good health is the key to happiness. How might the two friends resolve their disagreement?

Trephination is the ________.

Which of the following would be difficult to assess using empirical research?

10. Which of the following is not a characteristic of a good hypothesis?

11. ________ is a reduction in the number of research participants as some drop out of the study over time.

12. What is a limitation that affects the generalizability of research results?

13. Dr. Mattar is interested in knowing more about brain injury to the occipital cortex, and he studies patients individually in order to gain in-depth knowledge about their behaviors. These studies would best be described as ________.

14. Patwardhan et al. report data from a study where they hired experimental confederates to attend speed dating events, posing as daters, and carefully take notes on the behaviors of the daters. What type of research design did they use?

15. ________, an anthropologist, contributed to our understanding of chimpanzee behavior in the wild, using naturalistic observation.

16. ________ assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.

17. Green et al. used a ________ from their ________ of interest in order to make a ________.

18. In order to assess whether viewpoints on decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes change with age, four groups of participants, ages 20, 30, 40, and 50, are asked whether they support this issue. What is one flaw of this design?

19. ________ research studies the same groups of participants over time.

20. A group of preschool-age children are enrolled in a study that plans to follow them over time in order to assess behaviors and other characteristics that may predict later development of schizophrenia. This is an example of a(n) ________ design.

21. ________ research uses past records or data sets to investigate research questions or to look for patterns or relationships.

22. Which of the following would be the best example of a valid naturalistic observation study in driving behavior?

23. Which of the following research designs will allow cause-and-effect conclusions?

24. Stan and Jenny are in a psychology course that requires them to repeat an experiment that researchers have conducted in the past, in order to determine whether they produce the same results. This is called ________.

25. ________ means that there is a relationship between two or more variables.

26. The possible range for a correlation coefficient is ________.

27. A negative correlation means ________.

28. Which of the following represents a weak positive correlation?

29. Which of the following represents a strong negative correlation?

30. A ________ is a graphical view of the strength and direction of a correlation.

31. On a graph of a correlation coefficient, points falling near to a straight sloped line indicate ________.

32. Research shows that people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to get lung cancer than those who do not smoke. This research alone demonstrates that ________.

33. A(n) ________ is a variable that affects both variables of interest and may falsely give the impression of a cause-and-effect relationship.

34. Sandra strongly believes that attending daycare is detrimental to children's development so she decides to write her psychology term paper on this topic. She does a literature search and finds several sources supporting her opinion, but she finds that the majority of research indicates that children attending daycare experience healthy development. She writes a paper using the sources that find negative associations with daycare attendance. This is an example of ________.

35. A basic experiment involves a minimum of ________ participant group(s).

36. The ________ group does not get the experimental treatment.

37. A(n) ________ is a description of how the researchers will measure the variables of interest.

38. Researchers are conducting a study where they have concerns that the participant's beliefs and/or the experimenter's beliefs may skew the results. Therefore, they chose to conduct a ________ study.

39. Simply expecting something to happen can make it happen. This describes ________.

40. The ________ is controlled by the experimenter.

41. Devine et al. are interested in assessing whether active versus passive play causes a preference for sweet or salty foods in toddlers. They assign groups of children to either an active play, passive play, or no play group and record their food choices when presented with a variety of sweet and salty foods. In this study, ________ is the independent variable and ________ is the control group.

42. Harrison et al. are conducting a study assessing the ability of depressed versus non-depressed participants to remember negative emotions in a short story about a family whose car breaks down. They plan to ask participants to read the story and then make a list of the emotions expressed in the story. Before beginning the study, they make a list of negative emotions (e.g., sadness and anger) that they will record from the participants' responses. In this example, negative emotions are the ________.

43. Which of the following is not a potential problem associated with relying on college students as participants in psychological research?

44. In order to maximize the chances that experimental groups represent the population of interest, researchers should conduct ________ and ________.

45. A sample that ________ is most likely to yield generalizable results.

46. Drs. Goran and Lieberman are interested in assessing differences in pain threshold between men and women. They recruit male and female participants to a study that assesses tolerance for thermal pain. This is an example of a(n) ________ study.

47. A(n) ________ is conducted in order to determine whether there are meaningful differences between two groups in a study.

48. What is one task that a peer reviewer is not likely to participate in?

49. Peer reviewers ________.

50. Research describing a link between childhood vaccines and autism has been ________.

51. ________ refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result.

52. ________ refers to the ability of an instrument or tool to accurately measure what it is supposed to measure.

53. An intelligence test yields the same results when administered on three separate occasions. However, the test's results are more strongly correlated with hours spent doing homework than they are with other standardized intelligence tests. This test has________ reliability and ________ validity.

54. ________ is the tendency to ignore evidence that disproves ideas or beliefs.

55. Many studies that cannot ethically be conducted as experiments with typical human participants ________.

56. Ethics need to be considered when ________ scientific research.

57. ________ (IRB) reviews research that is conducted using human participants.

58. Which of the following is not part of obtaining informed consent?

59. ________ are the most commonly used species for animal research.

60. The ________ reviews research conducted using animal subjects.

61. Simplicity of conducting the study is to ________ as ability to test large numbers of participants is to ________.

62. American researchers studying the effects of physical attractiveness on compliance wish to expand the cross-cultural generalizability of their findings to a Lebanese population. They travel to Lebanon and recruit local residents, whom the American researchers rate as attractive or unattractive, to act as experimental confederates. However, they are unable to replicate their research findings. What is a potential problem with this research?

63. Magali and Jean-Gabriel have been asked to design a study investigating happiness across the lifespan. They decide their study will involve going to the mall and asking people of a variety of ages if they are happy or unhappy. What is the most serious flaw of this design?

64. Which of the following statements is not a hypothesis?

65. An upper-level psychology class is conducting an experiment on racial prejudice that involves having participants rate the likeability of faces in a set of photos. However, they tell participants that the study is about the effects of aging on likeability. When participants are finished, they are thanked for their time and leave the experiment. In this example, the class forgot to ________ in order to resolve the ________ in the study.

66. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was ethically problematic because ________.

67. A ________ is least likely to be involved in the IRB decision regarding whether a study will be permitted.

68. ________ are subjects of psychological research.

69. ________ can be used to assess ________.

70. One hundred introductory psychology students are surveyed about their intended majors. The results indicate that more women than men intend to pursue a psychology major, whereas more men than women intend to pursue a history major. What do these results indicate?

71. The ________ variable measures effects of the independent variable.

72. A major advantage of case studies is ________.

73. ________ is/are often conducted with large numbers of participants and can even be conducted by phone, email, or mail.

74. A(n) ________ case study is conducted by gathering detailed information about participants who are psychological patients.

75. The only way to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables is to conduct a(n) ________.

76. The D.A.R.E. program is an example of ________.

77. The scientific process is ________, involving both inductive and deductive reasoning.

78. Scientific knowledge is advanced through a process known as ________.

79. Research on ________ subjects must always involve ________.

80. Which of the following is a scientific way of determining facts?

What are clear definitions of inductive and deductive reasoning?

What are three safeguards to ensure that animal research is conducted ethically?

83. There is a positive correlation between taking multivitamins and using recreational drugs. What does this mean, and what are three possible underlying relationships between the variables?

What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?

From a scientific perspective, what is the major criticism of Freud's theories?

What is one strength and one weakness of archival research?

Using an example, what is the difference between a population and a sample?

What is an example of a longitudinal research study?

What is the difference between a positive correlation and a negative correlation?

What is experimenter bias, and what is a strategy that experimenters can use to minimize this effect?

91. Jamila is in a study that aims to evaluate the effects of a new vitamin drink on energy levels. She is told that she will be in the group receiving the drink and is asked to rate her energy levels at different points throughout the day. She feels very energized by the drink and rates her energy levels high. At the end of the study, she is debriefed and told that the experiment involved deception. She was actually in the group that received only flavored water. What is this type of effect called, and how could it be prevented in a future experiment wishing to evaluate the vitamin drink?

A group of researchers are interested in determining if women are more likely than men to use their spouse's name in casual social conversations, and they are further interested to know if it makes a difference whether their conversation partner is male or female. They assign their sample of men and women to engage in conversations with either a male or female experimental confederate (a researcher acting like another participant). Researchers conclude that the gender of the conversation partner causes a difference in the number of times that men use their spouse's name. What type of research design is this, and what is a major criticism of the conclusion?

93. The textbook discusses the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as an example of research that would not be considered ethical by today's standards. If this study were proposed today, who would make the decision about whether it can proceed using federal funding, and who participates in this committee?

Patil et al. have conducted a survey of alcohol use in college students on three campuses in one city and have found widely varying results by campus. How could the researchers follow up on these results and get more detailed information about opinions regarding alcohol use on each campus.

What is the role of skepticism in scientific research?

What does empirical mean?

A telephone survey is conducted, asking 3,000 participants to anonymously report the number of hours that their children watch television for each week. What is one advantage and one disadvantage of this study design?

What is the only type of research design that can give cause-and-effect findings, and why is this type of design not used for all research questions?

What is the purpose of creating an operational definition?

What are four types of study designs used by psychologists?

What is a debriefing?

102. In a statistical analysis, what is the threshold for determining whether a result is significant, and what does the threshold mean?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of case studies?

Give an example of a researcher from another discipline who has conducted research relevant to psychology.

Ava and Ben are both observing the same participants and recording data to compare later. What type of reliability are they planning to assess, and why would they do so?

Research regarding the D.A.R.E. program, as discussed in the text, is an example of psychological research that can be used to help shape public policy. Why is it important to have empirical findings on this widely implemented and expensive program?