PSYB04 NOTES CHAPTER 1 UTSC

PSYB04 Research Methods in Psychology

Chapter 1: Psychology is a way of thinking

·      Some psychology students intend to be producers of research information while they study brain anatomy, observing behaviors, administrating personality questionnaires, or analyzing data. Others may want to be consumers of research information, reading the research so they can later apply it to their own work, relationships, hobbies, or personal growth.

·      Being a smart consumer is crucial to your career, knowing that the research is good valid and true.

·      Evidence-based-treatments: therapies that are supported by research.

·      Scientists act as empiricists in their work; systematically observe the world. Test theories through research and adapt theories based on the resulting data. Have an empirical approach both towards applied research that targets real world problems and basic research that is intended to contribute to the general body of knowledge. Once they found an effect, they plan further research to test why, when, and for whom an effect works. Then psychologists make their work public by submitting their results to journals for review and respond to the opinions of other psychologists.

·      Empiricism (empirical method/empirical research): involves using evidence from the senses (sight, hearing, touch) or from instruments that assist the senses (thermometers, timers, photographs, questionnaires, etc) as the basis for conclusions.

·      In the theory-data cycle, scientists collect data to test, change, or update their theories.

·      Cupboard theory of mother-infant attachment: babies are only with mothers because they are a source of food, or comfort as well. Harry Harlow (1958) his experiment with baby monkeys with 2 fake mothers proved that these babies were not attached to the mothers just for food, rather for comfort.

·      Theory: a set of statements that describes general principles about how variables relate to one another.

·      Hypothesis (prediction): a way of stating the specific outcome the researcher expects to observe if the theory is accurate.

·      Data: a set of observations.

·      Good theories are supports by data. Good theories are falsifiable. Good theories have parsimony.

·      Parsimony: All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.

·      Theories don’t prove anything; the word prove is rarely used in science, scientists will rather say that some data support or are consistent with a theory.

·      Applied research: done with a practical problem in mind, the researchers hope their findings will be directly applied to the solution of that problem in a particular real-world context. (Ex; is the new mathematics teachings working better in a school?)

·      Basic research: not intended to address a specific real-world problem, rather its goal is to enhance the general body of knowledge. (Ex; wanting to understand the structure of the visual system)

·      Translation research: use of lessons from basic research to develop and test applications to health care, psychotherapy, or other forms of treatment and intervention. Represents a dynamic bridge from basic to applied research.

Chapter 2: Sources of information: Why research is best and how to find it

·      A comparison group: enables us to compare what would happen both with and without the thing we are interested in

·      Basing conclusions on personal experience is problematic because life often does not offer a comparison experience. In contrast, basing conclusions on systematic data collection has the simple but tremendous advantage of providing a comparison group.

·      Confounds: in real-world situations there are several possible explanations for an outcome.

·      Research is better than experience. A single experience may distract us from the lessons of more rigorous research.

·      Probabilistic: findings are not expected to explain all cases all of the time.

·      Scientific conclusions are based on patterns that emerge only when researchers set up comparison groups and test many people.

·      Intuition can lead us to make less effective decisions. An example of cognitive biases in our thinking is when we accept a conclusion just because it “makes sense”.

·      Availability heuristic: things that pop up into our minds tend to guide our thinking.

·      Present/present bias: failure to look for absences, while it is easier to notice what is present.

·      Sometimes we draw the wrong conclusions simply because human cognition is imperfect. At other times, we do not want to challenge our preconceived ideas: We are motivated to think what we want to think.

·      Confirmatory hypothesis testing: selecting answers that will lead to a particular, expected answer.

·      Without scientific training, we are not very rigorous in gathering evidence to test our ideas.

·      Bias blind spot: belief that we are unlikely to fall prey to cognitive biases.

·      When we think intuitively rather than scientifically, we make mistakes.

·      Psychological scientists usually publish their research in three kinds of sources; articles in scholarly journals, stand-alone chapters in edited books, full-length scholarly books.

·      Journal articles can either be empirical journal articles: report, for the first time, the results of an (empirical) research study. Empirical articles contain details about the study’s method, the statistical tests used, and the numerical results of the study. Or review journal articles: provide a summary of all the published studies that have been done in one research area.

·      Meta-analysis: combines the results of many studies and gives a number that summarizes the magnitude, or the effect size, of a relationship.

·      Components of an Empirical Journal article: Abstract: The abstract is a concise summary of the article, about 120 words long. Introduction: The introduction is the first section of regular text, and the first paragraphs typically explain the topic of the study. Method: The Method section explains in detail how the researchers conducted their study. Results: The Results section describes the quantitative and, as relevant, qualitative results of the study, including the statistical tests the authors used to analyze the data. Discussion: The opening paragraph of the Discussion section generally summarizes the study’s research question and methods and indicates how well the data supported the hypotheses. References: The reference list contains a full bibliographic listing of all the sources the authors cited in writing their article, enabling interested readers to locate these studies.

·      Here’s some revolutionary advice: Don’t read every word of every article, from beginning to end. Instead, read with a purpose. In most cases, this means asking two questions as you read: (1) What is the argument? (2) What is the evidence to support the argument?