Question 1

When you conduct your own research, what size p-value indicates that your research has been successful?

Accepted Answer

A small p-value, usually less than 0.05, indicates that the results are statistically significant and that the null hypothesis can be rejected. Therefore, it suggests that the research has been successful in finding a meaningful relationship or difference between variables.

Question 2

No matter how artificial an experimental situation may at first appear, if participants think, feel, or react the way that people in a real-life situation would react, the experiment has __________.

Accepted Answer

Psychological realism refers to the extent to which an experimental situation, although artificial, feels real to participants, thus eliciting genuine emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that they would display in a natural setting. High psychological realism is essential for experimental studies to avoid producing misleading or invalid results caused by participants' awareness of the study objectives or socially desirable responses, also known as demand characteristics. Internal validity, on the other hand, pertains to the degree to which an experimental design accurately measures the causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables. While internal validity is crucial for research findings, it does not directly address the issue of psychological realism. Therefore, Option A is the most suitable answer. Option C, low psychological realism, and Option D, low demand characteristics, are incorrect because they do not reflect the essential ingredient for conducting valid and insightful experimental research: realistic and authentic human reactions, thoughts, and feelings.

Question 3

A researcher is designing an experiment, and ensures that each participant is equally likely to be in one condition as another. He does not assign them based on any characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, or personality. This researcher is __________ participants.

Accepted Answer

The researcher is describing randomly assigning participants, where each participant has an equal chance of being placed in any of the conditions. Randomly selecting participants would refer to the process of selecting participants from a larger pool, and generalizing refers to the process of applying findings from a specific sample to a larger population. Meta-analysis is a statistical technique used to combine the results of multiple studies on a particular topic.

Question 4

Which of the following threatens the internal validity of an experiment?

Accepted Answer

Failing to assign participants randomly to conditions threatens the internal validity of an experiment because it increases the risk of systematic differences between the groups being compared. These systematic differences could confound the results and make it difficult to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable. The other options may also impact the validity of the experiment, but they do not directly threaten the internal validity.

Question 5

Wendy wants to study how easily people make friends. She assigns people to talk with a stranger for either five minutes or ten minutes, and assigns people who are more outgoing to the "five-minute" condition, and shy people to the "ten-minute" condition. Which of the following is the threat to the internal validity in this study?

Accepted Answer

Wendy did not use random assignment, which can lead to confounding variables and affect the internal validity of the study. Assigning outgoing people to one condition and shy people to another could also introduce a confounding variable, but this does not appear to be a listed option. The other options (A-C) do not accurately describe the threat to internal validity in this study.

Question 6

Dr. Kisnek makes sure that he builds into his studies a wide variety of people and situations. Dr. Kisnek is concerned with __________.

Accepted Answer

Dr. Kisnek's concern with building a wide variety of people and situations into his studies indicates that he is prioritizing external validity, the degree to which his findings can be generalized to real-world situations and populations.

Question 7

A drawback to using experiments is __________.

Accepted Answer

One of the drawbacks of using experiments is the need to ensure psychological realism to maintain external validity. This means that the context of the experiment must be as realistic as possible in order to generalize the results to real-life situations. If participants do not perceive the experiment as realistic, the results may not be applicable to real-world situations.

Question 8

The biggest problem with using random assignment and controlling extraneous variables in an experiment is that __________.

Accepted Answer

Random assignment and controlling extraneous variables can make the experimental situation quite artificial because these procedures often create an environment that does not naturally occur, potentially limiting the external validity or generalizability of the findings.

Question 9

Latané and Darley (1968) told participants that they were interested in the kind of problems that college students experience. This explanation to their participants was the __________.

Accepted Answer

The cover story is the explanation given to participants about the purpose of the study or the nature of the task in order to prevent demand characteristics and maintain the validity of the results.

Question 10

Shannon conducts an experiment to test her hypothesis that longer arguments cause couples to become angrier at each other. She randomly assigns couples to argue for either ten minutes or twenty minutes. After her assistant Ken runs the study, Ken tells Shannon that he allowed the couples who were really fighting hard to keep arguing longer than Shannon had originally stated. Shannon cringes, for she knows that the __________ of her study is very low.

Accepted Answer

The internal validity of the study is compromised because Ken did not follow Shannon's instructions, which may have affected the results of the study. The other options are not relevant to this specific issue.

Question 11

Recall that Latané and Darley (1968) studied bystander intervention by having participants overhear a seizure while they were speaking on headphones with another discussant. Assuming that the participants believed that the seizure was real and felt anxious and confused about whether and how to help when they heard the seizure, Latané and Darley's (1968) experiment was __________.

Accepted Answer

The experiment was high in psychological realism as it created an authentic environment that stimulated the actual experience of witnessing an emergency situation.

Question 12

A cover story is __________.

Accepted Answer

A cover story is a "false" or fabricated description of the purposes of a study that is presented to participants in order to prevent demand characteristics and other forms of bias.

Question 13

Internal validity is to __________ as external validity is to __________.

Accepted Answer

Internal validity refers to the extent to which a study can establish causal relationships between variables, while external validity refers to the extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other populations, settings, and situations beyond the study. Therefore, choice A correctly pairs causality with internal validity and generalizability with external validity.

Question 14

Participants in a classic experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram (1963) found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being asked to administer increasingly strong shocks to a learner every time he made a mistake. Videotapes of the participants showed them laughing hysterically, chain-smoking, sweating, and fidgeting nervously. Based on these videotapes, it could be inferred that Milgram's experiment was high on __________.

Accepted Answer

The participant behaviors described suggest that the experiment was high on psychological realism, meaning that the situation created by the experiment was similar to real-life situations and elicited genuine psychological reactions from participants. The other options (internal validity, reliability, and experimental control) do not seem to be supported by the information provided.

Question 15

An experimenter finds out that the p-value in his study is 3 in 100. What does this mean?

Accepted Answer

A p-value of 3 in 100 means that there is a 3 percent chance of obtaining the observed results by chance alone, assuming that the null hypothesis is true. It does not provide information about the validity of the study or the truth of the hypothesis.

Question 16

Jane analyzed the results of her study and found that the probability of getting such findings by chance was less than 1 in 100. Jane can say that her results are statistically __________.

Accepted Answer

If the probability of getting the findings by chance is less than 1 in 100 (or p-value < 0.01), then the results are considered statistically significant. This means that the findings are unlikely to have occurred by chance and are likely to be meaningful.

Question 17

It is important to know the probability level for a given set of experimental findings because p-values __________.

Accepted Answer

P-values inform experimenters whether their results might have happened by chance. A p-value is a statistical measure that helps researchers determine the likelihood of their hypothesis being true. It represents the probability of observing a result as extreme as, or more extreme than, the one they obtained if the null hypothesis (i.e., no relationship between variables) is actually true. A p-value of less than .05 (or .01) indicates that the observed result is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone and provides evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis.

Question 18

Experimenters who value external validity primarily want their findings to generalize across __________ and __________.

Accepted Answer

External validity is the extent to which findings can be generalized beyond the specific sample and setting of the study. Therefore, experimenters who value external validity would want their findings to apply to different people (across individuals) and situations (across contexts).

Question 19

The __________ is a number that expresses the likelihood that a given experimental finding would have occurred by chance alone.

Accepted Answer

The probability level, also known as the p-value, is a statistical measure that expresses the likelihood that the observed results of an experiment could have occurred by chance alone. A lower probability level indicates a higher degree of confidence that the observed results are due to the experimental treatment or intervention.

Question 20

__________ and __________ are the hallmarks of the experimental method, which set it apart from the observational and correlational methods.

Accepted Answer

Control over extraneous variables allows the researcher to isolate the specific variable being tested, which is not possible in observational or correlational methods. Random assignment ensures that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any group, which increases the likelihood that any observed differences are due to the manipulated variable rather than pre-existing differences between groups. Representative sampling and probability levels are important in research design but are not unique to the experimental method. Correlation coefficients and dependent variables are relevant to correlational research but not necessarily to experimental research.

Quiz 2: Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research