Chapter 1: Intro to Social Psychology Part 3: Mon. Aug 27, 2012

Experimental Methods: how are these used? About 3/4ths of Social Psych research. 2 distinguishing factors of true experiments: 1. Control & manipulation of variables 2. Random assignment to groups – How is this done? What is its benefit? Compare students taking online vs. classroom course. Can manipulate exactly what gets presented, present same information/content in both classes, use same instructor, same grading scale…could select equivalent students to be in the study to reduce variation in intelligence, grade differences.

Random assignment (RA)– into groups eliminate other possible explanations for results How is it different from random sampling (RS)…? Overview of results from RS and RA in our class:

In experiments, use IVs and DVs Independent variables (IV): what is manipulated Examples? Dependent variables (DV): observed to determine impact of IV Subject variables: cannot be manipulated

External validity – questions related to whether results will generalize Depends on: 1) Mundane realism – what is it? Example? 2) Experimental realism – what is it? Increased SAT scores - It has been proven time and time again that taking at least two years of Latin will increase verbal SAT scores on average by 100 points. This is even over students who take other foreign languages. Latin students do this year after year because they are constantly learning how to think analytically and critically.  The curriculum emphasizes learning the Latin words and prefixes which show up today in over sixty percent of the English that we speak daily!  To prove this, all of the words highlighted in the previous sentences are derived from Latin!

Ethics: Deception Types of deception: 1) False Purpose 2) False Feedback 3) Use of a confederate/actor Benefits of deception? Ethical concerns?

Ethics: Protecting Participants Need to reduce stress for the participant Cost/Benefit analysis – Institutional Review Board (IRB) approves studies Must obtain informed consent: