Research Methods Of Psychology

Research Methods Of Psychology

Objectives:

1. Describe hindsight bias and explain how it often leads us to perceive psychological research as common sense.

2. Discuss how overconfidence contaminates our everyday judgments.

3. Compare and contrast case studies, surveys, naturalistic observation and the experimental method.

4. Explain the importance of proper sampling.

5. Describe the differences between positive and negative correlations.

6. Identify the basic elements of an experiment.

7. Describe three measures of central tendency and two measures of variation.

Key Vocabulary: hindsight bias, critical thinking, theory, hypothesis, operational definition, replication, case study, survey, false consensus effect, population, random sample, naturalistic observation, correlational coefficient, scatterplot, illusory correlation, experiment, placebo, double blind procedure, experimental condition, control condition, random assignment, independent variable, dependent variable, mode, mean, median, range, standard deviation.