Chapter 2 Study Guide

You should be able to define and understand all the terms in this chapter and identify the important contributions of the people mentioned in this chapter as well as answer the following questions:

1. What key scientific attitudes did Darley and Latané identify?

2. How does Darley and Latané’s research illustrate the basic steps of the scientific process?

3. What is a hypothesis? What is a theory? How does it differ from a hypothesis?

4. Explain the major drawback of hindsight understanding.

5. What approach to understanding do scientists prefer? Why?

6. Describe the characteristics of a good theory.

7. Why are operational definitions important?

8. Describe the most common types of measurement psychologists use to measure behavior, and a limitation of each. What is reliable measurement? What is unobtrusive measurement?

9. Identify the five ethical principles that make up the American Psychological Association’s Code of Ethics. Describe the primary ethical principles for conducting research with humans. Why does some research involve deception? What ethical principle does deception violate? What are the justifications for, and criticisms of, research using animals?

10. What is a case study? Identify its advantages and drawbacks. How can the findings of case studies mislead us in everyday life?

11. What is naturalistic observation, and what is its greatest advantage? What biases can occur when conducting naturalistic observation?

12. What are some advantages and disadvantages of survey research? Explain what random sampling is, and why survey researchers rely on it.

13. Identify the main goal of correlational research, and explain how it is achieved. Explain why the study conducted by Diener and Seligman is best considered a correlational study. Why are we unable to draw causal conclusions from correlational findings? Differentiate positive and negative correlations. How is a correlation coefficient interpreted? Explain how correlational research can be used to predict behavior.

14. Describe the logic of experimentation. What are independent and dependent variables? How are they related? Why are control groups important? How does random assignment in experiments differ from random sampling in surveys? Identify an alternative to random assignment in experiments. Identify the independent and dependent variables in Rosenzweig’s experiment. Why do researchers manipulate two independent variables in the same experiment?

15. What are the primary differences between the experimental and descriptive/correlational approaches?

16. Explain why the presence of confounding variables decreases the internal validity of experiments.

17. What are demand characteristics?

18. Explain how the placebo effect can cloud the interpretation of research results.

19. Why does the existence of experimenter expectancy effects lower the internal validity of experiments? How do researchers minimize experimenter expectancy effects?

20. How does external validity differ from internal validity?

21. Outline the scientific evidence supporting paranormal phenomena.

22. Describe how measures of central tendency and variability are calculated. Contrast descriptive and inferential statistics. What does the term statistically significant mean?

23. As a critical thinker, what questions should you ask when someone makes a claim or assertion?