AP Psychology

the tendency to believe after learning an outcome that one would have forseen it

• -thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions
• -it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions

an explanation using integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events

a testable prediction, often implied by a theory

• -a statement of procedures used to define research variables
• Ex. human intelligence-ehat an intelligence test measures

repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other [articipants and circumstances

an observation technique in which one person is started in depth in the hope of revealing universal priniciples

a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group

all cases in a group being studied, from which smaples may be drawn

a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion

observing and recording behavior in naturally occuring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation

a measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other

a statistical index of the relationship between two things

• -a graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables
• -slope of the points suggests the direction of the relationship between two variables
• -amount of scatter suggests the strength of the correlation (little scatter indicates high correlation)

the perseption of a relationship where none exists

• -a research method in which a researcher directly manipulates one or more factors to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process
• -make it possible to establish cause-effect relationship

the procedure of assigning participants to the experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

• -an experimental procedure in which neither the experimenter nor the research participants are aware of which group is recieving the treatment
• -used to prevent experimenters' and participants expectations from influenceing the results of an experiment

occurs when the results of an experiment are cuased by expectations alone

participants in an experiment are exposed to the independent variable being studied

group in which the treatment of interest or independent variable is withheld so that comparison to the experimental condition can be made

the factor being manipulated and tested by the investigator

• -the factor being measured by the investigator
• -the factor that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable

• -the most frequently occuring score in a distribution
• -simplest measure of central tendency to determine

the arithmetic average, the measure of central tendency computed by adding the scores in a distribution and dividing by the number of scores

the score that falls at the 50th % cutting a distirbution in half

a meausure of variation computed as the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

• -a computed measure of how much scores in a distribution deviate around the mean
• -more precise measure of variation than the range because it is based on every score in the distribution

the symetrical, bell-shaped distribution describing many types of psychological data, in which most scores fall near the mean, with fewer and fewer at the extremes

an obtained result, such as the difference between the average for two smaples, very likely reflects a real difference rather than sampling variation or chance factors

the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next