Question 1

Psychological theories should

Accepted Answer

Theories account for known facts; they are a set of concepts that explain something. Through the process of research, theories also suggest new ideas for relationships between causes and consequences.

Question 2

There is a joke among scientists about a researcher who tells others that he belongs to a secret scientific society, where no one but the researcher will ever know about the studies members are doing. This joke is humorous because it violates the principle of

Accepted Answer

The joke is humorous because it violates the principle of public verifiability, which is a cornerstone of the scientific method. Public verifiability means that scientific findings should be open to scrutiny, replication, and verification by other scientists. The idea of a secret society where no one knows about the studies contradicts this principle, making the joke funny to those who understand the importance of transparency in science.  This means that other researchers must have the opportunity to inspect, criticize, or disprove the data and the methods by which the data was collected and interpreted.

Question 3

A researcher believes that boys are more aggressive than girls. He goes to a playground to watch children play and finds support for his viewpoint. This researcher's data collection may be subject to

Accepted Answer

Observer bias occurs when researchers' expectations influence their interpretation of the data. In this case, the researcher's belief that boys are more aggressive could lead him to pay more attention to aggressive behaviors in boys than in girls, skewing the results.  Expectations and beliefs can have an effect on what we see and hear. The biases of the researcher acted like filters through which some things were noticed and made salient while others were ignored and made irrelevant. In this case, any aggressive behavior by boys was much more likely to be noticed than was aggressive behavior by girls.

Question 4

In the research study described by your authors where married couples were asked how sure they were about the future of their relationship, what was demonstrated?

Accepted Answer

The research study likely demonstrated that a person's perception of their partner's behavior is influenced by their own level of certainty about the relationship. This suggests that our beliefs and feelings about the relationship can shape how we interpret our partner's actions and behaviors.

Question 5

Imagine a situation in which a researcher is hired by a pharmaceutical company to test a new cancer drug. The researcher finds the drug to be effective, but other scientists cannot replicate the original findings. One possible explanation for the original results that should be considered is

Accepted Answer

Observer bias could explain why the original findings were positive when subsequent studies could not replicate the results. This bias occurs when researchers' expectations influence their interpretation of the data or their observations, potentially leading to skewed results that are not reproducible by others who do not share the same expectations.  The first researcher may have a commitment to a particular hypothesis because of prior experiences; without realizing it, he/she may influence the results of the current research by considering certain data relevant and discounting other data.

Question 6

When carrying out an experiment, the factor that the researcher manipulates is known as the ________ variable; the researcher measures the ________ variable.

Accepted Answer

The independent variable is the one that is manipulated or changed by the researcher, while the dependent variable is the one that is measured to see how it is affected by changes in the independent variable.

Question 7

Suppose you wanted to test the hypothesis that viewing pornographic material increases aggressive behavior. The dependent variable would be

Accepted Answer

The dependent variable is the outcome that researchers are interested in measuring or observing to see if it changes under different conditions. In this case, aggressive behavior is what is being measured to see if it increases after viewing pornographic material, making it the dependent variable.  The hypothesis is that the amount of aggressive behavior displayed will depend on the pornographic materials viewed (the cause). Aggression is the effect part of the cause-and-effect relationship.

Question 8

Which statement best captures the basic idea underlying the experimental method?

Accepted Answer

The experimental method involves manipulating an independent variable to observe its effect on a dependent variable, allowing researchers to infer cause-and-effect relationships.  The goal of this method is to make strong causal claims about the impact of one variable on the other.

Question 9

The results of a research study would be confounded if

Accepted Answer

Confounding occurs when an outside influence affects the dependent variable in addition to or instead of the independent variable, making it difficult to determine the true source of any effects observed.

Question 10

Imagine that you have been hired to assist in an experiment investigating the verbal abilities of boys and girls. In preparing for the experiment, you read a research study that found higher verbal abilities in girls than boys. If this information about gender leads you somehow to communicate to the girls in the experiment that they should do better than the boys, we say that the ________ effect is operating.

Accepted Answer

The expectancy effect is operating when the researcher's expectations influence the participants' behavior, in this case, potentially causing girls to perform better due to the communicated expectation.  Expectancy effects occur when a researcher or observer subtly communicates to the participants the behavior he or she expects to find, thereby producing the desired reaction (higher verbal abilities in girls than in boys). The experimenter's expectations (that girls will do better than boys) rather than the independent variable (gender) may actually have triggered the demonstration of higher ability levels in girls.

Question 11

In Robert Rosenthal's study of the effects of expectations, some students were led to believe that the rats they were training were maze-bright and other students were told their rats were maze-dull, although the rats were actually all the same. What did Rosenthal find in the study?

Accepted Answer

Rosenthal found that the rats labeled as "bright" performed better because the students' expectations influenced how they interacted with and trained the rats, demonstrating the power of expectations on outcomes.

Question 12

A psychologist is doing research for a pharmaceutical company. The drugs he is testing are numbered so that he does not know what they are, nor does he know which participants are receiving which drugs. Participants are also unaware of differences in treatments. The control that is being used in this study is called a

Accepted Answer

This is a double-blind control, where neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving the actual treatment and who is receiving a placebo, eliminating bias from both sides.  In this case, bias can be eliminated to the fullest extent possible by not allowing the experimenter or the participants to know who is receiving which treatment.

Question 13

Research designs often include a control condition

Accepted Answer

A control condition is used as a baseline to compare against the experimental condition, allowing researchers to determine the effect of the independent variable.  Because control participants do not experience the experimental manipulations, they provide a baseline to assess the effects of those manipulations.

Question 14

To save time, you assign the first fifty people who sign up to participate in your study to the experimental condition and the next fifty to the control condition. The interpretations you could draw from the study will be severely limited because

Accepted Answer

The lack of random assignment to conditions can introduce selection bias, meaning the two groups might differ in significant ways other than the experimental manipulation. This undermines the ability to attribute differences in outcomes to the experimental condition, severely limiting the validity of the study's conclusions.  Random assignment helps ensure that variables other than the independent variable are distributed evenly across groups; it helps eliminate confounding variables.

Question 15

Random assignment of participants to the experimental and control groups increases the likelihood that

Accepted Answer

Random assignment of participants to experimental and control groups is a fundamental aspect of experimental design that helps ensure that the two groups are as similar as possible at the start of the experiment. This similarity allows researchers to more confidently attribute any differences in outcomes to the effects of the independent variable, rather than to preexisting differences between the groups.  It helps eliminate confounding variables related to individual differences among the research participants. Each group is likely to be similar because each participant has the same chance of being assigned to either group. For instance, using random assignment makes it unlikely that the groups will be divided so that one has all males and the other has all females; the groups are likely to be a mixture of males and females.

Question 16

Since we normally cannot have access to the full population of interest, researchers are faced with taking a representative sample of the population. Which of the following is NOT true of a representative sample?

Accepted Answer

A representative sample should mirror the characteristics of the population it aims to represent. If the target population is of one race, including members of different racial groups would not make the sample more representative of that population.  A representative sample closely matches the characteristics of the group being studied.

Question 17

A classmate has missed class again and is copying your notes. Unfortunately, she can't figure out which research design uses each participant as his or her own control. Which should you tell her?

Accepted Answer

Within-subjects design uses each participant as his or her own control by comparing the participant's performance or responses in different conditions or at different times. This design allows for the control of individual differences because the same individuals participate in all conditions.  This research design allows researchers to study the behavior of each participant in the study before getting the treatment and after.

Question 18

Imagine that you have volunteered to participate in an experiment. First, you are asked to rate how angry a person appears in a photograph. Then you are asked to think of angry thoughts and to rate the same photograph again. Because you are serving as your own control, psychologists would refer to this as a ________ design.

Accepted Answer

This is a within-subjects design because the same participants are used in both conditions (before and after thinking angry thoughts), allowing for direct comparison of their responses to the same stimulus under different internal conditions.  Each individual participant's reaction before thinking angry thoughts can be compared with his/her behaviors after thinking angry thoughts. Strong conclusions can then be drawn about the effect of angry thoughts on perception of anger.

Question 19

Imagine that your instructor asks you to determine whether there is a relationship between musical ability and mathematical ability. The type of design best suited to this task would be a(n)

Accepted Answer

A correlational study is best suited for determining whether there is a relationship between two variables, in this case, musical ability and mathematical ability, without attempting to manipulate the variables or establish a cause-and-effect relationship.  Psychologists use correlational methods to compute the correlation coefficient when they want to determine the degree to which two attributes such as this are related to one another.

Question 20

Given the following correlation coefficients, select the weakest correlation.

Accepted Answer

The correlation coefficient measures the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables. It ranges from -1 to 1, where values closer to -1 or 1 indicate a strong relationship, and values closer to 0 indicate a weak relationship. Among the given options, -0.06 is closest to 0, indicating the weakest correlation.

Quiz 2: Research Methods in Psychology