 The other choices are intuition and common sense

 If you drop a bullet off of a 3-foot tall table and fire another bullet straight across an empty football field, which one will hit the ground first?

 How many murders are there in Michigan annually?  How many murders are there in Detroit annually?  613 and 377 respectively

 The earth is flat  The earth is the center of the universe  Bathing makes you more susceptible to illness

 When shown a picture of an “effect,” most people later claimed to remember being shown a picture of the “cause”

 “I knew it all along”  Makes research findings seem like common sense

 Most people tend to be overconfident in their abilities and guesses about the future

 “There is no reason for anyone to have a computer in their home.” ◦ Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Company, 1977

“Reagan doesn’t have that presidential look.” United Artists Executive when asked whether Reagan should be offered the starring role in The Best Man, 1964

 “A severe depression like that of is outside the range of probability.” ◦ Harvard Economic Society, Weekly Letter, November 16, 1929

 “Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.” ◦ Alex Lewyt, vacuum manufacturer, 1955

 People have a tendency to search for information that confirms their original idea  Ex: horoscopes  “Your vitality is low. It may be difficult to fight adversity, Scorpio. Try not to get discouraged. Instead, realize that this is part of the natural cycle. Awareness of your energy patterns is half the battle. Don't force yourself into feeling something you don't. It's important that you not overexert yourself or take on more responsibilities than you can handle.”

 Curiosity  Openness  Skepticism  Humility  Critical thinking

 1. Come up with a theory that seems to explain and predict phenomena  2. Theories lead to hypotheses – testable predictions  3. Come up with a way to test your hypothesis

 Uses clear operational definitions – defines variables concretely  Can be replicated with similar results  Is generalizable – the results hold true in multiple situtations

 Case studies  Surveys  Naturalistic Observation  All descriptive research gives us correlation at the most, NEVER causation

 In-depth observations, often over a long period of time  Study of one person or a small group of people (or animals)

 Identifying new questions for research  Studying rare phenomena  Give vivid, memorable illustrations  Psychobiographies  What are some drawbacks to using case studies?

 One-time, less-in-depth look at a lot of people  Asks questions in person or on paper

 Participants may be ignorant of issue  Answers are affected by gender/race of questioner  Word choice, grammatical structure, answer choices, and order of answers can all affect answers

 Are balanced – “Do you agree or disagree?”  Do not assume knowledge – ex: explain policy  Use everyday language  Use neutral language – avoid positive or negative connotations  Be specific

 Are you in favor of direct retaliatory measures against Franco’s piracy?  What’s wrong with this?

 Representative sampling allows us to get useful information about an entire population by asking only part of the population  Random sampling is the best way to get a representative sample  30 = minimum for sample sizes

 Takes place in natural setting (descriptive) or in laboratory  Advantages/disadvantages?

Can help predict events, but does not explain them Positive correlation means variables move together (same direction) Negative correlation means variables move in opposite directions

 Ranges from -1 to 1 (perfectly negative to perfectly positive)  The farther away from 0 in either direction, the stronger the correlation  Describes how often two events occur together

 Controlling the environment (changing something while keeping everything else constant) allows researchers to determine cause and effect  How do we keep everything else constant?

 Using a large sample and randomly assigning people means that their individual differences don’t matter as much  Participants can be assigned to control group (no change in environment) or experimental group (some change administered)

 Blind - participants don’t know whether they are control or experimental ◦ Important because of placebo effect  XHk XHk  Double blind- researchers don’t know whether they are working with experimental or control ◦ Why is this important?

 Independent variables can be varied independently of anything else  What researchers control  Ex: Patient was given a drug  Dependent variables depend on the independent variables  Results measured by experimenters  Ex: Patient’s condition improved

 Confounding variables could throw off the results of an experiment  Ex: one patient has a healthier diet than another  Random assignment controls for confounding variables

 What are the advantages and disadvantages of experimental research?

Central Tendency, Variation, and Significance

 Summarize data  Mode- most commonly occurring (French for “fashionable”)  Median – the middle number of a set (like the median of a highway is in the middle of the lanes)  Mean – average: sum of all scores/number of scores

Mean, median, and probably mode are very close to each other Ex: intelligence, height

Data is skewed when the mean and median are different because the mean is being pulled by an outlier, or a score that is very different from the median Ex: income Ex: Age in nursing homes when grandchildren go visit

 Tell us how consistent scores are  Range – difference between highest score and lowest score  Standard deviation – tells us how much scores vary around the mean

Player 1Player 2  Game 1 – 10 points  Game 2 – 50 points  Game 3 – 10 points  Game 4 – 30 points  Average = 25 points  Game points  Game 2 – 24 points  Game 3 – 22 points  Game 4 – 26 points  Average = 25 points Player 2 is more consistent and has a smaller standard deviation

 68% of scores fall within 1 standard deviation  95% of scores fall within 2 standard deviations  99.7% fall within 3 standard deviations  Anything outside 3 standard deviations is an outlier

 Representative samples  Smaller variation (standard deviation)  More cases included in the sample

 Needs a relatively large difference between reliable samples  Means that difference is probably not due to chance (<5% odds of being due to chance)  Is not the same as practical significance Statistically significant Not significant

 Cause the least possible harm  Treat humanely  Can harm with good reason

1. Get informed consent 2. Protect from harm and discomfort 3. Maintain confidentiality 4. Debrief afterwards