Archives: Book

Social Psychology

Social Psychology is a broad filed of psychology that focuses on how people relate to each other.  We are going to examine how people perceive each other and maybe even act differently when others are around.  To simplify matters we are breaking down this large field into three topics.

Don’t give me attitude!!! (attitude, attribution, prejudice, and compliance)
I love you…no wait. I hate you.  I am not sure, but you are hot. (antisocial and pro-social behavior and attraction)
Me and my gang. (group influence and group dynamics)

I love you…no wait. I hate you.  I am not sure, but you are hot.

Throughout your life (and in particular high school) you will feel alot of powerful emotions towards others.  Three of the big ones will be love, hate and attraction.

Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

Coming from a law enforcement background and even teaching in a high school for several years, I have seen countless aggressive acts.  Psychologists distinguish between two types of aggression; instrumental and hostile.  Instrumental aggression is when the aggressive act has a purpose.  If Ria wanted VanTogenhogan’s lunch money and slapped him aside the head to get Hubba cash, her aggression has a goal, thus it is instrumental.  Hostile aggression is aggression that has no clear purpose.  Now if Kana just felt angry one day and kicked the crap out of Derek she would be displaying hostile aggression.

There are many theories to why aggression exists.  You can guess how many of the main theorists would view aggression.  Freud may view it as a defense mechanism or as a overdeveloped id.  Skinner may view aggression as a reinforced behavior.  But there are two popular theories of aggression:

• frustration-aggression hypothesis: this theory states that when one becomes frustrated, they are more likely to become aggressive.  Go home and annoy a brother or sister until they can’t deal with you any more and see what happens.  Or when your computer crashes you get frustrated and want to smash it.

• The second theory of aggression comes from Albert Bandura and his concept of observational learning.  Remember Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment.  He showed time and time again that when an adult models aggressive behavior (in his case hitting the Bobo doll), the child will copy that behavior.  If this theory is even a tiny bit accurate, turn on the cartoon channel and think about what we are teaching our kids.

Prosocial Behavior

Although it is more graphic to study aggression and violence, sometimes people do positive things towards each other, known as prosocial behavior.  Much of the research in this are has focused on bystander intervention, the conditions under which people nearby are more and less likely to help someone in trouble.

The most famous case dealing with bystander intervention was the murder of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, NY.

Kitty was being stabbed by a man named Winston Moseley.  At 3:15 am Winston approached Kitty and stabbed her twice while she cried out for help.  It had been recorded that 38 people heard her cries for help, yet no one came to her aid.  One woman cried down to Moseley, “leave that woman alone”.  Moseley got into his car and left only to come back 10 minutes later to find Kitty struggling to get into her building (again no one even helped her).  In her building lobby, he proceeded to stab her up to 20 times (there were knife would on Kitty’s hands to show that she tried to defend herself).  After she dies, Moseley sexually assaulted her, stole $49 out of her pocket and fled the scene (On an interesting note, when caught later Moseley confessed to two other killings besides Kitty.  He was diagnosed as a violent necrophiliac {one who has sex with dead bodies} and sentenced to death.  The death sentence was overturned and was given life in prison.  A few years later we almost killed a prison guard and took five prisoners hostage.  Years later, he took part in the famous Attica prison rising.  He is still in prison and comes up for parole in 2008.)

However the fascinating aspect of the case is why no one came to Kitty’s aid.  What we have discovered is that the larger number of people who witness an emergency situation, the less likely anyone is to intervene.  This finding is known as diffusion of responsibility.  The larger the group of people who witness a problem, the less responsible any one individual feels to help.  People tend to assume that someone else will take action so they need not to do so.

Another factor influencing bystander intervention is called pluralistic ignorance.  People seem to decide what appropriate actions to take by looking at other people.  If we are sitting in the classroom and we hear a really loud noise and I look at you guys and you guys do nothing, I may think to myself “they must  know what the noise is” and you may look at me and see me do nothing and think to yourselves “he is not doing anything, he must know what is going on”.  No none of us do anything!!!

Attraction

Why people are attracted to each other is a very popular field of social psychology.  When I say attraction, I do mean sexual “I want to take you on the floor right now” attraction, but I also mean attraction to friends and family (hopefully non-sexual, but to each your own).  Some books say three, but I say there are FIVE factors that influence attraction.

• Similarity: The most important aspect of being attracted to someone is how similar your attitudes, backgrounds and values are.  I am not saying you can’t have a great night with someone who is very different.  But for a long lasting relationship, birds of the same feather flock together.

• Proximity: The more you are around something, the more likely you are to be attracted to it.  Remember the mere exposure effect?  Also, the more you are around something, the more likely you are to find similarities between each other.  It seems like there is a fine line between proximity and stalking.

(stalking- get it- haha)

• Reciprocal liking:  Although the idea never seems to work in elementary school, reciprocal liking is the idea that you are more likely to like someone who like you.  If I like you, I will start treating you nicely.  If I treat you nicely, you are more likely to begin liking me.  In high school this works best for friendships, but as you get older it becomes more common in romantic interests (just my observation).

• Liking through association: Sometimes we can use Pavlov’s classical conditioning to create attraction.  If I wanted Thandi Newton to like me and I new she loved Godiva chocolate, I would start showing up every time she ate Godiva.  Godiva is the UCS, and the happy feeling is the UCR.  I am neutral, but hope to become the CS when she associates me with chocolate.  Once she experiences acquisition, every time she sees me she will become happy (CR).  Thus, it is bad to pick up people at the dentist office or in math class because they may associate you with those negative stimuli (well math class may be a turn on for some people).

• Physical Attractiveness:  Although not something I notice (I look at the woman’s soul), some shallow people take looks into consideration when looking for a partner.  In reality, how someone looks is very important.  Research has demonstrated that good looking people are perceived as having all sorts of positive attributes including better personalities and greater job competence (that is the reason people think I am cool and good at my job- I must just be REALLY hot).  What constitutes physical attractiveness can vary across cultures, but one scientific definition is the symmetry of ones face (I will explain in class why this makes no sense).

Love

Ahhh- Love….what can I say about love.  There are SO many different theories on love, it would take a whole volume of books to go through them,  Most theories seem to distinguish between passionate and compassionate love.  Passionate love is that my stomach feels weird, I want to be around you all the time, there is no way something so beautiful as you farts, kind of love.  It does NOT last forever.  Hopefully passionate loves turns into compassionate love over time.  Compassionate love is when people learn to live their lives together and depend on each other for support and companionship.  This is not to say in compassionate love do not have passionate experiences (your parents get down every once and awhile).

One last communality among theories of love is that most believe that self-disclosure is vital in feeling love.  Self-disclosure is when one shares a piece of personal information with another.  Close relationships with friends and lovers are often built through a process of self-disclosure.  On the path to intimacy, one person shares a detail of his or her life and the other reciprocates by exposing a facet of his or her own.  Ok- I will go first- when I was in middle school a kid named Alejandro used to bully me and I was too scared to tell anyone- there, now that I got that out we are all on our way to being in love.

Me and my gang.

Throughout my life I have noticed that I act differently around different groups of people.  Around my old fraternity friends I am swear and talk about beer and women, but around my fellow teachers I talk about curriculum and differentiating instruction.  In other words, the people around us affect the way we behave.

How Groups influence an Individual’s Behavior

Last week I went bowling and took my wife to watch me.  She pretty much hates bowling, but she went to support me because she knew how hard I have been practicing.  Now I usually bowl around a 150 and have a few games upwards of 180 (rare-but sometimes).  When my wife was watching, I bowled a 101, 100 and a 98 on my final game.  It was mortifying (but she loves me anyway).

There is a theory in psychology called social facilitation and it is the ideas that when one is very skilled at a task, or it is a very easy task, they will perform better when others are watching than if they were alone.  Take Michael Jordan.  He is incredible skilled at basketball.

When he is practicing alone I am sure he looks pretty good.  But because he is so skilled, he actually performs better in front of a group of people. Now when a task is very hard or one is not skilled (like my bowling), one performs worse in front of a group than if they were alone.  This is called social impairment.

Conformity

Conformity is the tendency of people to go along with the views or actions of others.  People tend to conform in the presence of groups.  The big guy in this field is Solomon Asch (and yes, this guy you have to know).

In Asch’s most famous experiment he brought subjects into a room full of confederates (a confederate is someone who the subject thinks is just another subject, but really have been given instruction on what to do by the experimenter) and asked them to make a series of simple judgments.  Asch showed the subjects three vertical lines of varying sizes and asked them to indicate which one was the same length as a different target line.

All the members of the group gave their answers aloud, and the subject was always the last person to speak.  All of the trails had a clear, correct answer.  However, on some of them, all the confederates gave the same, obviously incorrect judgment.  Like in the diagram above, all the confederates would give the answer of line 3, when obviously line 2 matches the standard line.  Asch was interested in what the subjects would do.  Would they conform to the group and give an answer they knew was wrong or go against the group?

Asch found that approximately 1/3 of the times the confederates gave the wrong answer, the subject conformed.  Furthermore, about 70% of the subjects conformed to the wrong answer at least once in the trials.  The subject was most likely to conform when the group’s opinion was unanimous.  Surprisingly, the size of the group did not matter that much, only that they were unanimous.

Obedience

A controversial extension on Ash’s research occurred in 1974 by Stanley Milgram at Yale University.

Milgram was curious how German citizens during the second world war would not only conform to the Nazi party’s atrocities, but also be completely obedient to those around them.

In Milgram’s obedience studies the subjects were told that they were taking part in a study about teaching and learning, and they were assigned to play the part of the teacher.  The learner, of course, was a confederate.  As teacher, each subject’s job was to give the learner an electric shock for every incorrect response.  The subject sat behind a panel of buttons each labeled with the number of volts, beginning at 15 and increasing by increments of 15 up to 450.  The levels of shock were described in words from mild up to XXX.  In reality, no shocks were delivered; the confederate pretended to be shocked.  As the levels of shock increased, the confederate screamed in pain, said he suffered from a heart condition, and eventually fell silent.

Milgram was interested in how far the subjects would go before refusing to deliver any more shocks.  The experimenter watched the subject and, if questioned, gave only a few stock answers. such as “Please continue.”  Contrary to the predictions of psychologists who Milgram polled prior to the experiment, over 60% of the subjects obeyed the experimenter and delivered all the possible shocks.

Milgram tried the experiment many different times with various twists.  He discovered that the closer the confederate was to the subject (like if they could see each other) less shocks were delivered.  The studies done at Yale University went farther than if he did them in different buildings around New Haven (the appearance of a legitimate authority figure from Yale increased the amount of shocks).  When another confederate was present in the room and objected to the experiment out loud, the subjects became MUCH more likely to stop the shocks (Asch taught us without unanimous consent- conformity decreases).  The key aspect of Milgram’s obedience studies is that they show us that under the right conditions, we will ALL be obedient and do things we think we would otherwise not do.

It should be noted that Milgram’s studies have been severely criticized on ethical grounds.  Very often the subjects, even after they learned that the confederates were not really shocked, suffered great emotional distress with the knowledge of the insight that they would kill in the right circumstance.

Group Dynamics

We are all part of many different groups.  Whether it is you click in school, your tennis team, math club, camp friends or family, you live your life as part of various groups.  Each group has norms or rules about how group members should act.  For example, as a teacher in a school I cannot wear just my underwear to school and talk like Anthony Dice Clay (that would be breaking school norms).  Within groups, people often have roles to play.  For example, in a family I have to make decisions, act and say certain things to help my sons mature.  As a teacher, I have to maintain a certain level of decorum, cultivate young minds and create a safe environment through my actions.

Sometimes people take advantage of being part of a group by social loafing.  Social loafing is a phenomenon when individuals do not put in as much effort when acting as part of a group as they do when acting alone.  One explanation for social loafing is that when alone, an individuals efforts are more easily discernible than when in a group.  Think about the last group project you were in in class.  Many of you worked less, because if the group did badly it was not a direct reflection of your skills, but the group as a whole.

Group polarization is the tendency of a group to make more extreme decisions than the group members would make individually.  Studies about group polarization usually have participants give their opinions individually, then group them to discuss their decisions, and then have the group make a decision.  For example, pretend that you are pro death penalty and had to make a decision about a rapist.  As an individual you may waiver about whether to give the rapist the death penalty.  If you got together with a group of pro death penalty people, as a group you would more likely give the rapist the death penalty.

Just remember that there are no moderate middle of the line groups.  Groups are usually extreme and see issues as black and white.  Only as an individual can you see gray areas.

Picture this, in class your teacher picks up a desk and throws it through the window yelling, “Let’s trash this place!!!!”  A couple of kids follow the teacher and begin trashing the school.  Many more students would start rioting in the school, not because they really care about the riot but because they are experiencing what psychologists call deindividuation. Deindividuation is the loss of less restraint when group members feel anonymous and aroused.  They do not think of the individual consequences of their actions.  Looting and rioting behaviors can be partially explained by deindividuation.

I remember while pledging Beta Theta Pi in college we were sent out to steal all the doors of another fraternity’s house (while they were at their annual formal).  I knew what was doing was wrong and I really did not want to do it (it was 10 degrees and snowy outside).  But I cared more about maintaining strong relationships with my pledge class than I did about stealing doors.  The idea that group members may suppress their reservations about a group decision is called groupthink.  Highly cohesive groups (football teams, inner city gangs, current white house administration etc…) involved in making risky decisions see to be at particular risk for groupthink.

Don’t give me attitude!!!

I seem to be always telling people not to give me attitude.  I tell my wife about once a week, my kids about once a day, and my students about once a minute.  When I say attitude, I am trying to tell people to show respect.  In reality an attitude is just a set of beliefs and feelings.  We have attitudes towards almost everything and these attitudes are very evaluative, which means they are judgmental in either positive or negative way.

Researching people’s attitudes is a really big deal in psychology.  In fact, the whole filed of advertising is based on people’s attitudes.  For example, Sony Playstation wants you to develop a favorable attitude towards them and an unfavorable one towards Microsoft X-Box (and they spend a whole boatload of money to do so).

(By the way- I have the PS3 and it is awesome!!!!!!)

At least when my wife lets me play it….

  Advertisers are well aware of a psychological concept called the mere-exposure effect, which states that the more you are exposed to something the more you will come to like it.  When I am going to buy some toys for my kids (I can’t believe I have three kids- how did that happen?), I always seem to go to Toy-R-Us.  The reason being that growing up I heard that freaking Toys-R-Us theme song so many times that I cannot help but want to go there.

Advertisers also learned that the person communicating the message can influence your attitude.  There is a whole lot of research on this, but to make a long story short- attractive (hot) people are more persuasive communicators.  People look at hot (and famous) people and 1.want to be like them or 2. want to be with them.  There is some research that says that more educated people are less persuaded by advertisements (that says some bad things about my education because my house is full of As Seen on TV stuff and infomercials are a huge weakness of mine).  It has been shown that with a less educated audience a one sided message works best.  But with a more educated audience, a communication that acknowledges and refutes opposing arguments will be more effective.

Attitude and Behavior

It used to be assumed that if you knew someone’s attitude, then you could predict their behavior.  In other words, if I knew that Ginger hated video games, then I could predict that she would not buy an X-Box (but who would with a PS3 out there).  However, researcher LaPiere in the 1930’s showed us that the relationship was not as clear.  LaPiere was examining prejudice against Asians in the United States.  He traveled with an Asian couple around the country and watched how they were treated.  Only on one occasion was the couple treated badly due to their race.  After the trip, LaPiere contacted all of the establishments they had visited and asked about their attitudes towards Asian patrons.  Over 90% of the respondents said they would NOT serve Asians.  The finding illustrates that attitudes do not perfectly predict behaviors.

Sometimes if you can change people’s behavior, you can change their attitudes.  Cognitive Dissonance theory is based on the idea that people are motivated to have consistent attitudes and behaviors.  When their attitudes and their behaviors do not match, they experience an uncomfortable mental tension (dissonance).  The dissonance will often cause them to change either their attitude or behavior to match each other.  For example, suppose Morgan thinks studying is only for geeks.  If he then studies 8 hours for a AP US History test, his attitude will not match his actions and he will experience cognitive dissonance.

Since he cannot change his actions (he already studied for 8 hours), the only way to reduce the dissonance is to change his attitude and decide that studying does not necessarily make someone a geek (be aware that this change in attitude does NOT occur in conscious awareness).

Compliance Strategies

Sometimes people us compliance strategies to change others behaviors (and we know that can lead to a change in attitude according to cognitive dissonance theory).  There are three popular compliance strategies that you should know.  Many of you use them daily and if you don’t, use them wisely.

• foot-in-the-door: this phenomenon suggests that if you get people to agree to a small request, they will become more likely to agree to follow-up requests that are much larger.  You want to borrow $500 for a PS3 (well worth it) from your Mom.  You ask her for $100 and she says yes.  Since she said OK to $25, she is more likely to say yes to $50 tomorrow and so on.

•  door-in-the-face: this strategy argues that after people refuse a large request, they will look more favorable upon a follow up request that seems small in comparison.  You ask your Mom for $15,000 for a new car and when she says “you must be on drugs!!!”, you say, “fine, just get me a PS3 instead”.

• norms of reciprocity: it is common courtesy to think that when someone does something nice for you, it is your duty to do something nice in return.  Here you make your Mom dinner, then ask her for the PS3.

 Charities always send me free stuff in the mail (like personalized mailing labels and bookmarks) hoping I will feel the norms of reciprocity and send them money.  They just don’t know me so well…..damn charitable organizations- they ain’t gettin my money.

Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

Unfortunately, embedded in our attitudes can be negative feelings we have towards groups of people.  We all have ideas about what members of certain groups are like.  We call these ideas stereotypes, and they can be either positive or negative.  You could think that all kids form Harrison are cool or all kids from Rye are preppy and stuck up (most stereotypes are not this benign.  Piaget would view stereotypes as strict schemas about various groups of people.

A prejudice is am undeserved, usually negative, attitude towards a group of people.  Stereotyping can lead to prejudice when negative stereotypes are applied to all members of a group, resulting in a negative attitude towards members of that group.  For example, you meet someone from Rye and automatically think they are stuck up.

While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination involves an action.  When one discriminates, they act on a prejudice.  For example, I think kids from Rye are stuck up so I won’t teach them.

People tend to see members of their own group, the in-group, as better than members of other groups, out-groups.  This idea is called out-group homogeneity.  For example, I grew up in Rye and so I know that most people here are not preppy and stuck up.  To me, they are intelligent and kind.  But I do not know many people from Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I would tend to look for favorable towards people from Rye, because they are who I know; in-group bias.

We are not sure where prejudice comes from.  many psychologists point to Bandura’s concept of modeling behaviors.  If this is true, then prejudices can be unlearned through modeling as well.

One theory to reduce prejudice is called contact theory.  Contact theory states that is you bring hostile groups together, and give them a common goal (they call superordinate goal) then they will work together and prejudice will be reduced.  For example, if I bring the Harrison Husky football team and the Rye Garnet team together and give them a superordinate goal (raise money for sick children), the two groups would see more similarities than differences and would begin to accept each other.  Think about how we can use this idea to help all groups, from clicks in the high school to warring cultures.

Attribution Theory

Attribution theory is a unique area of social psychology that tries to explain how people determine the cause for what they observe.  As you will see, the way in which I judge your actions can often lead to everything from prejudice to love.  Let’s say you are driving down the street and some “dude” in a red BMW cuts you off and almost causes an accident.

There are basically two ways you are going to view the dude who cut you off.  You may think that the dude is an a-hole, which means that you have made a personal or dispositional attribution.  Or you may think that the dude must be having a bad day, or is in a rush because of an emergency, and thus are making a situational attribution.  If you judge someone’s behavior as being a product of their personality then you are making a personal or dispositional attribution and if you judge their behavior as a product of the environment around them then you are making a situational attribution.

In general people tend to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors and underestimate the role of situational factors.  This is called the fundamental attribution error.  In other words, you are more likely to think the dude who cut you off is a jerk than the possibility that he had a bad day.  In general, the less you know someone, the more likely you are to attribute their behavior to their personality.  The more you know someone, the more likely you attribute their behavior to a situation.  If your best friend was a schmoolie to you one day, you would think to yourself that something must be wrong and attribute their behavior to a bad situation they are in.

Now the fundamental attribution error was named fundamental because it was believed to be very widespread.  Scientists today say that the error is very cultural and found more often in individualistic cultures rather than collectivistic cultures (I cannot remember if we ever defined what these cultures were earlier in the year- I will assume we did because I am lazy).  The error was first thought to be global in proportions.  The researchers who first discovered the fundamental attribution error and assumed it was widespread in all cultures were sufferring from the false-consensus effect.  The false-consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate the number of people who feel how you feel.  If you live in New York you probably love the Yankees.  You assume that there are SO many Yankee fans because you are around them all the time.  In reality, the Yankees are the most hated team in the USA.  We Yankee fans suffer from the false-consensus effect.

Not only are we are biased in how we attribute behaviors, but we are biased in just about everything about us.  Self-serving bias is the tendency to take more credit for good outcomes and less for bad ones.  I coach the Varsity bowling team and when we win it is because of my great coaching.  When we lose it is 1.the oil on the lanes or 2. lack of team talent (yeah Nicole, Lisa and Christine…. I’m talking about you!!!).

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

 In 1968 two researchers, Rosenthal and Jacobson, conducted a very famous, yet controversial, experiment called “Pygmalion in the Classroom”.  They gave a test to a bunch of elementary school children and told the teachers and the students that the test would measure those who who on the verge of great academic growth (potential geniuses)- in reality the test was just a basic IQ test.  Then they randomly took a bunch of students and told the teachers that these were the students that were on the verge of great academic growth.  In reality, the scores did not matter because the students were chosen at random to be in that group.  Five months later, at the end of the school year, they gave the test again to the students.  Incredibly, the students who were randomly chosen to be in the group that the teachers were told were smarter, had much higher IQ scores than the rest of the kids.  How did this happen?

Well, think about it.  The teachers were told that this group of students were on the verge of academic greatness.  They then began to treat the students as if they were smarter.  The students responded and actually became smarter.  In psychology we call this concept a self-fulfilling prophecy; where preconceived notions about people influence the way we act towards them, often making the notions a reality.  If I think you hate me (and pretend you do not), I will begin to treat you badly.  If I treat you badly, you will actually begin to hate me.  My belief (even though it was originally false) created a reality- powerful stuff.

Research Methods

Let’s take a look at real science!!!!

There are two reasons why it is vital that you have a solid understanding of research methods.  First, you are more likely to see a free response question on the AP exam from this topic than anywhere else.  Second, above all, it is important to remember that psychology is a science.  So whenever a psychologist has an idea that he or she wants to show the world, there are a certain set of rules they must follow called the scientific method.  The Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge.

Hopefully, every theory and idea that you have learned about so far in this course (in all of your science classes for that matter) has been tested through the scientific method.  There are basically two types of research that can take place; applied and basic.  Applied research is when the scientist has clear and practical reasons and applications for her study.  If a psychologist was trying to come up with a new behavior therapy to stop heroin use, it would be applied research.

Basic research explores questions that are really interesting to psychologists but have no immediate, real-world application.  Studying the differences between cultures and physical beauty is an example of basic research.

Now before we go on to the various ways to conduct research it is important to know that all research should be both valid and reliable (hope you remember these terms).  Research is valid when it measures what the researcher sets out to measure; is it accurate.  Research is reliable when it can be replicated.  This is an important idea.  If I conduct a research study and discover that AP Psychology teachers are consistently the best looking teachers in high schools, would everyone automatically believe me?  I hope not.  After I publish my results and how I conducted the research, I hope that other scientists try to copy my experiment.  If all the scientists around the world replicate my study and come up with similar results, then the research is reliable and we can start putting it in our text books.  ALL TOO OFTEN we hear about some research (either a new drug or fact about food etc…) and we take the information as fact.  It usually has only been done once!!!!  You should not rely on any research until it has been replicated over and over again.

Now most research has an hypothesis.  I know that in middle school you learned that a hypothesis was “an educated guess”, and that is kinda right.  A hypothesis really is a way to express a relationship between two variables.   Let’s say I notice that AP Psychology teachers are incredible good looking, so I set out to explore the relationship between attractiveness (one variable) and AP Psychology teachers (another variable).  There are many ways to delve into the relationship using the scientific method (and some ways are alot better than others).  For the rest of this unit we will explore different ways we can talk about conducting research and finish up with some ways we can describe the results of the research we do to others.

Descriptive Research
Correlational Research
Causational Research

Descriptive Research

Descriptive research is any type of research that describes the “who, what, when, where” of a situation, not what caused it.  It describes a situation, but in the end, tells us nothing about how the universe works.

A classic example of descriptive research is a case study.  A case study is a research method used to get a full, detailed picture of one subject or a small group of subjects.  For example, if I wanted to study anorexia and its link to drug use (not there is one) and I chose to study Nicole Richie.

So I follow Nicole around.  I study her every move.  I interview her.  I talk to her friends (maybe Paris, maybe not…).  I research her childhood.  I get a complete picture of Nicole Richie.  I learn all about her life.   It would be a very interesting story (a detailed version of those VH1 specials).  This would be a case study.

BUT there are a few very big problems with the case study.  FIRST, I may learn all about her alleged anorexia and drug use (the what, how, where and when) but her story would never truly tell me the reason WHY.  I would never be able to say with certainty that the link between anorexia and drugs is…….

The SECOND and maybe more significant weakness of a case study is that the results are not generalizable to the rest of the population.  What that means is that studying Nicole would not give me any idea why millions of people become anorexic and use drugs.  Studying just ONE person is not going to tell me anything about the many more out there.  I must study a larger sample of people.  Besides, is Nicole Richie a typical anorexic?  No way, she is the daughter of a Commodore (Lionel) and the best friend (or arch enemy) or my one true love Paris Hilton.  Studying Nicole would tell me nothing about the average anorexic, drug using girl.

We constantly make the mistake of taking a single case study and making policy changes based on that one example.  Take Columbine for example.  A horrible shooting occurred in a Colorado school and is was studied every which way by the popular media and scientists.  Columbine became a case study for school violence.  What happened was high schools around the country began making changes to their security policies because of the fear that another Columbine would occur.  In reality, do you think your school was any more or less dangerous before or after Columbine?  Probably not.  But the fear of the case study of Columbine was the catalyst for unnecessary policy changes around the country.  Case studies can be both powerful and dangerous.

Other types of research can also be descriptive research.  For example, it is possible that surveys or naturalistic observation can be designed just to gather descriptive data.  But for the sake of simplicity we will define them under their more common guise of correlational research.

Causational Research

Causation research is more often called the experimental method.  What makes this so important in science is that it is the ONLY way to show cause and effect.  Trying to show that one thing causes another thing to change is really hard to do.

Let us take an example.  I have noticed that when my kids eat hard boiled eggs, they get gas.  So over time, I have come to the conclusion that eggs cause farting.

=

If I wanted to prove that eggs CAUSE gas then I have to set up a true experiment.   The hard part is proving that the eggs actually CAUSE the gas and nothing else could have produced the farts but the eggs.

Experiments can be divided into laboratory experiments and field experiments.  Laboratory experiments are conducted in a lab, a highly controlled environment, while field experiments are conducted out in the world.  The extent to which laboratory experiments can be controlled is their main advantage.  The advantage of field experiments is that they are more realistic.

Ok- we are going to try to prove that eggs cause gas in an experiment through a series of steps outlined below.  Please note that no experiment is ever perfect and this is FAR from it.

Step One:  Come up with an hypothesis.  In this case we will say “Eggs cause farts”…..pretty simple.

Step Two: Identify the population you are going to study.  In this case we will study Harrison High School students.  But giving everyone eggs at Harrison and smelling their farts would be impossible.  So we are going to have to randomly select a small group from Harrison High School students (let us select 40 kids out of a hat).  Then we will randomly assign the 40 kids into two groups of twenty.  We will call one group the experimental group and one group the control group.

Step Three: Identify your variables.  In any experiment there are at least three types of variables.  This is where it gets complicated so pay attention.

• First, there is what we call an Independent Variable (IV).  The IV is the thing you are going to manipulate in the experiment.  It is whatever some people get and some people do not.  The IV is supposed to cause change in the experiment.  Another way of putting it is that the IV is what the experimental group will get and the control group will not.  In this case, one group of students will get eggs (experimental group) and one group will not (control group).  So the Independent Variable is the EGGS!!!!

• Second there is the Dependent Variable (DV). The DV is what you are measuring in the experiment.  What are you looking for?  The dependent variable is called as such because it is dependent on the independent variable.  In other words, the IV will cause change in the DV.  So what are we measuring in this experiment?  Farts!!!!  The DV is farting because it depends on eggs (the IV).

• A third type of variable is called extraneous or confounding variables (these are basically the same thing).  These variables are BAD and we do NOT want them in our experiment.  Extraneous or confounding variables are anything that causes changes in the dependent variable that is not the independent variable.  In other words, anything that causes more farts that is not eggs is an extraneous variable.  If our sample of students used Beano (anti gas medication) that would effect how much gas they have.

    If one of our students had diarrhea, it would effect their farting behaviors and it would have nothing to do with the eggs.  Remember, the object is to prove that eggs cause the gas, and if anything else could have caused the gas, it    messes up our study.  There is no way to eliminate all confounding variables, thus no experiment is perfect.

Step Four: Operationalize the variables.  This is a complicated way of stating exactly what you mean by your hypothesis.  In other words, turning your idea into real life steps.  What do you mean by eggs?  Scrambled, hard boiled, poached?  Two eggs, four eggs etc…?  What do you mean by farts?  Smelly farts?  Long farts?  Wet Farts?  When you operationalize your variables you have to be VERY specific.  The reason is that if some scientist from Finland or Texas wanted to replicate your experiment, he or she would have to know exactly what you did.  In the case of our experiment let us operationalize eggs by saying two hard boiled eggs on an empty stomach.  Let us operationalize fart by saying three or more farts within the hour of eating the eggs that cause a noticeable foul odor.

Ok….now that you have everything in place.  You  need to actually do the experiment.  So you have two groups, the experimental group and the control group.  Now there are bunch of things you can do…here is one possibility.

You tell both groups not to eat anything for four hours before they come in (trying to eliminate some of those extraneous variables).  You give the subjects in the experimental group each two hard boiled eggs (IV).  You give the subjects in the control group fake hard boiled eggs (a placebo) or nothing. Obviously neither group knows why they are eating the eggs or fake eggs because that might bias the experiment (blind study).  Then you wait a few hours and start to measure their farts.  You can do this by either asking them if they farted, using a fart bag (it actually exists) or just smelling their behinds.  Hopefully the group that had the eggs (the IV) farted more than the group that had the placebo.

This is a machine developed by students at Cornell University that measures the intensity of farts.  It does this by measuring the smell (hydrogen sulphide), the sound (amplitude) and the temperature (kinetic energy).  Let it not be said that great things happen at college and your parents’ money is well spent!!!!

Sometimes scientists have biases in their studies that they might not be aware of.  Think about it, you really want your study to be successful, so maybe you smell a little bit more intensly to those you know had the eggs.  This would not be fair.  To eliminate these types of biases, many scientists use what they call a double-blind study.  Here, the scientist is not aware who had the eggs and who had the placebo, so the measuring of the DV occurs without bias.

Once you tabulate your results (measure you dependent variable), you must show the world your results through the wonderful language of statistics.