Thinking Critically with Psychology

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Thinking Critically with Psychology
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Theory

• An explanation that organizes facts to predict
• E.g. Self image and depression
• Black holes in space

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Hypothesis

• A testable prediction
• Generally based on a theory

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What do you study? - Variables

• Variables
• Independent variable
• Dependent variable

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How are variables related? - Correlation

• Positive and negative

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Positive correlation

• Mortality rates increase as people age
• Grades increase as study time increase

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No (zero) Correlation
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Negative correlation

• As income increases free time decreases
• As one goes up, the other goes down

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Illusory correlation

• Buying stocks that performed well last year
• Adoption and conception

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Confusing correlation with causation

• Correlation is not causation
• Large brains (or ice cream) violence

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How do you get people to study?

• Population
• All NSCC students
• Representative Sample
• Random sample
• Ensures a representative sample
• Random assignment

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Random sampling
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Research methods

• Survey
• Case study
• E.g. Stroke victim
• Naturalistic Observation
• Observing behavior in a singles bar
• Experimentation

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The experiment

• Groups
• Experimental group
• Control group
• Problems
• Placebo effect
• Placebo Pill with no drug
• The double blind procedure
• Neither experimenter nor subject knows which pill
  is the drug or placebo.
• Hawthorne effect
• Subjects give the results they think the
  experimenter wants

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Comparing research methods
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Replication

• Repeating a study
• Helps to confirm the results of an earlier study
• E.g. Classroom learning vs. distance learning
• Cold fusion

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Problem Thinking

• Seeing order in random events
• E.g. 10 heads in a row of coin toss
• Generalizing (Problems)
• Generalizing from unrepresentative samples
• Generalizing from select cases
• Most remedial reading students in Mrs. Browns
  class are boys
• Therefore, boys have more trouble reading than
  girls
• Hindsight bias
• Explaining events in hindsight
• Lee Harvey Oswald Pres. Kennedy

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