1: Thinking Critically

I. The Need for Psychological Science

1. The tendency to perceive an outcome that has occurred as being obvious and predictable is called the hindsight bias 2. Our everyday thinking is also limited by overconfidence in what we think we know. 3. The scientific approach is characterized by the attitudes of curiosity, skepticism, and humility 4. Reasoning that examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions is called critical thinking. 5. An explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts observable behaviors or events is a theory. Testable predictions that allow a scientist to evaluate a theory are called hypothesis. 6. In order to prevent theoretical biases from influencing scientific observations, research must be reported precisely-using clear operational definitions of all concepts-so that others can replicate the findings. 7. The three basic research strategies in psychology are descriptive, correlational and experimental methods.

II. Description
1. The research strategy in which one or more individuals is studied in depth in order to reveal universal principles of behavior is the case study. A potential problem with the method is that any given individual may be atypical. 2. The method in which a group of people is questioned about their attitudes or behavior is the survey method. 3. An important factor in the validity of survey research is the wording of questions. 4. The tendency to overestimate others agreement with us in the false consensus effect. 5. Surveys try to obtain a random sample, one that will be representative of the population, every person does have a chance of being included. 6. Large, representative samples are better than small ones. 7. We are more likely to overgeneralize from select samples that are

especially vivid. 8. The research strategy in which people or animals are directly observed in their natural environments is called naturalistic observation. 9. Case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation do not explain behavior; they simply describe it. 10.Using naturalistic observation of walking speed and the accuracy of public clocks, researchers have concluded that the pace of life varies from one culture to another. Researchers have also found that people are more likely to laugh in social situations than in solitary situations.

III. Correlation
1. When changes in one factor are accompanied by changes in another, the two factors are said to be correlated, and one is thus able to predict the other. If the factors increase or decrease together, they are positively correlated. If, however, one decreases as the other increases, they are negatively correlated. 2. Graphs called scatterplots are often used to depict the relationship between two sets of scores. 3. A negative correlation between two variables does not indicate the strength or weakness of the relationship. Nor does correlation prove causation; rather, it merely indicates the possibility of a cause-effect relationship. 4. A perceived correlation that does not really exist is an illusory correlation. This error in thinking helps explain many superstitious beliefs. 5. Another common tendency is to perceive order in random events. 6. Basketball players and fans mistakenly believe that players are more likely to score after having just made the last two or three shots. However, our intuition often misleads us.

IV. Experimentation
1. Research studies have found that breast-fed infants do grow up with higher intelligence scores than those of infants who are bottle-fed with cows milk. To study cause-effect relationships. psychologists conduct experiments. Using this method, a researcher manipulates the factor of interest, while holding constant other factors.

2. Researchers sometimes give certain participants a pseudo-treatment, called a placebo, and compare their behavior with that of subjects who receive the actual treatment. When merely thinking that one is receiving a treatment produces results, a placebo effect is said to occur. 3. When neither the subjects nor the person collecting the data knows which condition a subject is in, the researcher is making use of the double-blind procedure. 4. An experiment must involve at least two conditions: the control condition, in which the experimental treatment is absent, and the experimental condition, in which it is present. 5. Experimenters rely on the random assignment of individuals to experimental and control groups. 6. The factor that is being manipulated in an experiment is called the independent variable. The measurable factor that may change as a result of these manipulations is called the dependent variable.

V. Statistical Reasoning
1. The three measures of central tendency are the mode, the median, and the mean. 2. The most frequently occurring score in a distribution is called the mode. 3. The mean is computed as the total sum of all the scores divided by the number of scores. 4. The median is the score at the 50th percentile. 5. When a distribution is lopsided, or skewed, the mean can be biased by a few extreme scores. 6. Averages derived from scores with low variability are more reliable than those with high variability. 7. The measure of variation include the range and the standard deviation. 8. The range is computed as the gap between the lowest and the highest scores. 9. The range provides a crude estimate of variation because it is influenced by extreme scores. 10.The standard deviation is a more accurate measure of variation than the range. Unlike the range, the standard deviation takes into consideration information from each score in the distribution.

11.It is safer to generalize from a representative sample than from a biased sample. 12.Averages are more reliable when they are based on scores with low variability. 13.Small samples provide a less reliable basis for generalizing than large samples. 14.Tests of statistical significance are used to estimate whether observed differences are real-that is, to make sure that they are not simply the result of chance variation. The differences are probably real if the sample averages are reliable and the difference between them is relatively large.