The Milgram Experiment
an investigation of how far people would go to obey an instruction provided by an authority figure
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| The Milgram Experiment | an investigation of how far people would go to obey an instruction provided by an authority figure |
| The Scientific Method | describes the cycle researchers use to methodologically answer questions |
| Identify question/problem, gather information and establish a theory, develop a hypothesis, design and conduct an experiment, analyze data and draw conclusion, refine and repeat | what is the scientific method steps? |
| the tuskegee syphillis study | a study which led to developing a consensus of guidelines for the treatment of all research participants due to how misleading patients in this study led to preventable deaths |
| the hawthorne effect | when participants alter their behavior due to their awareness of being observed |
| respect for persons | value that all people deserve to have their autonomy--their right to self-govern--respected. informed consent, consider vulnerable populations, decisional impairment (lack of understanding rights and risks), and situational vulnerability (outside pressure). Plus, if deception is necessary it should pose minimal risk |
| beneficence or concern for welfare | do good for participants and society, weight the benefit of knowledge gained from costs, and avoid breaches of confidentiality |
| justice | strives to establish "equality" in the research process, with the exception of an inclusion criteria for the study or exclusion criteria, and eligibility criteria, which all ensures that the participants are addressing the research question |
| Institutional Review Board | a committee of independent individuals who review and assess if the research project will be carried out in a manner consistent with the general ethical principles |
| fidelity and responsibility (APA) | establish relationships of trust with those they work with |
| integrity (APA) | psychologists promote the pursuit of truth and accuracy and do not engage in fraud |
| integrity with relationships (CPA) | psychologists are committed to openness and accuracy and minimal bias in their relationships with individuals and society |
| descriptive methods | identifying "what is" without necessarily understanding "why it is" |
| naturalistic observation (field research) | the observation of behavior as it happens in a natural environment, without any manipulation or control of conditions |
| interrater reliability | when all of the researchers agree on the differences in the study |
| operational definition | created when designing a study and it is how researchers decide to measure (operationalize) a variable |
| construct validity | concerns about the quality of a study's operationalization of a variable challenge its _____ |
| participant observation | a research method in which the researcher becomes a part of the group under investigation |
| case study | an in-depth analysis of a unique circumstance or individual |
| surveys | an efficient way to collect information and capture people's opinions, attitudes, or experiences |
| sampling error | occurs when the sample differs meaningfully from the population |
| random sampling | most effective way to achieve a representative sample |
| question order bias | answering one question first influences the answer to a later question |
| response bias | the tendency for people to answer questions in a way they feel they are expected to answer, or in systemic ways that are otherwise inaccurate |
| acquiescent response bias | refers to a tendency for participants to indiscriminately "agree" with most, if not all, items on a survey regardless of their actual opinion |
| socially desirable bias | a systematic approach to answering questions where the bias is not indiscriminate; instead, participants respond in specific ways that they believe would be acceptable by others |
| illusory superiority | the tendency to describe our own behavior is called |
| volunteer bias | those who volunteer may have differed systematically from those who refused; thus participants may have disproportionately represented individuals already comfortable discussing taboo topics |
| correlational research | after collecting data, researchers usually verify between variables, showing how closely two variables are related |
| scatterplot | common way to display a correlation |
| positively correlated | when one variable increases so does the other, when one decreases so does the other |
| negatively correlated | when an increase in one variable is accompanied by a decrease in another |
| zero correlation | there is no apparent relationship between variables |
| correlation coefficient | quantifies the strength of a correlation by how closely the two variables are related. the closer the value is to 1.0 regardless of (+,-), the stronger it is. |
| causality | that one variable directly affects another |
| experimental control | researchers conducting an experiment exert some degree of control over the environment to determine if their manipulation causes any changes to participant's responses and actions |
| manipulated independent variables | the aspects of the environment that are manipulated |
| experimental group | receives the treatment of interest |
| comparison group | identical to the experimental group but receives a "known" or "standard" treatment |
| control group | if the comparison group represents a lack of treatment entirely |
| measured independent variables | aspects of the environment that are not manipulated by the researchers but are also not influenced by other aspects of the study |
| constant | when everyone in the study is the same along a certain dimension, and that dimension has only one level |
| confounding variables | extraneous factors that can influence both the independent and dependent variables in a study, potentially leading to misleading conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships. |
| internal validity | success at eliminating other possible explanations that might explain an observed relationship, has a HIGH degree of _____ |
| dependent variable | outcome measure, the variable the experimenter counts or measures, and generally believes is affected by one or more of the independent variables |
| consistency with prior research or theory, should be as simple as possible, specific, testable, falsifiable | experimental hypothesis characteristics are this: |
| random assignment | ensures that there is no systematic bias when assigning participants to levels of the manipulated independent variable |
| external validity | how generalizable the study findings are |
| construct validity | how the evidence itself was collected, how well-designed, and how well the study operationalizes any measures or manipulated variables |
| ecological validity | lab vs. real world in the experiment and how it applies differently |
| a stratified sample | used when a population has identifiable subgroups |
| internal validity | how well a study rules out alternative explanations for an observed relationship |
| temporal order | variables thought to be causes must come before variable thought to be effects |
| an established correlation between the variables of interest | if they seem to correlate as long as there is a non-zero r-value or d-value that describe the relationship between the two variables, this prerequisite is met |
| third variables | must be eliminated as alternative explanations. threats are met by holding constants and randomly assigning participants |
| statistical validity | interrogate the aspect of a claim's evidence, whether the researchers have conducted statistical analyses correctly, and measuring central tendencies |
| mean | the average: used most commonly but outliers can distort it |
| median | middle number |
| mode | most useful for categorical data, such as car color- most common one |
| standard deviation | average distance of each score from the mean. if the scores are spread out then this is large, if they are clustered together this is smaller. |
| inferential statistics | methods that let us infer patterns from data and interrogate statistical validity by testing whether our interpretations are reasonable |
| confidence interval | useful when we want to know how likely the mean differs from a meaningful value like zero (no effect) |
| mean (M), standard deviation (SD), and the number of participants (n) | what you need to calculate the confidence interval |
| if it has 0 in the range then you cannot confidently say that the treatment was effective | what does the Confidence interval range tell us? |
| correlational inferences | lets researchers infer the strength and direction of a relationship |
| cohen's d | measure of effect size that tells us about how meaningful the difference between two group averages is, given the amount of variability in each group |
| 0 means no effect, less than 0.5 is a small effect, greater than 0.5 is medium, greater than 0.8 is large. Larger means likely important differences between groups | how to read cohen's d numbers |
| null hypothesis | calculates a p-value, the probability of obtaining our results (or more extreme ones) if the null (no difference) were true |
| if p is less than 0.5 we reject the null and infer that the effect is unlikely due to chance | how to read the null hypothesis |
| the placebo effect | a phenomenon where a person experiences a real improvement in their condition after receiving a treatment that has no therapeutic effect, often due to their belief in the treatment's efficacy |
| operational definition | defining what you are manipulation in as much detail as possible |