Exam 2: How Psychologists Do Research

A researcher studies the history of a suicide bomber who attempted to blow up a police station. The researcher's goal is to understand the events and personality traits that led the person to become a bomber. This type of research is called a(n):

Two sets of observations assessing hours spent watching television and grade point averages among elementary school children are compared. Which of the following is the most likely outcome?

The tendency to look for information that supports one's own belief is called:

Ideally, everything in an experiment except the dependent variable is held constant.

The arithmetic mean is a commonly used measure of variability.

In a laboratory, smokers are asked to drive using a computerized driving simulator and cover the maximum distance possible, while avoiding rear-end collisions. Some volunteers are given a real cigarette to smoke immediately before the test. Others smoke a fake cigarette without nicotine. The number of collisions the two groups make is to be compared. In this study, the independent variable is:

When Haylee takes a personality test, the researcher gives her detailed instructions and plenty of time to complete it. But Tyler takes the same test and is given only vague instructions and a limited amount of time. This procedural difference shows that the test lacks:

A magazine called Teen's Delight publishes a survey of its readers called "School Life of a Typical American Teen." A critical flaw in this research is the fact that:

____________ is an objective, standardized way of describing the strength of the independent variable's influence on the dependent variable.

A laboratory observation is a controlled test of a hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another.

Field research refers to descriptive or experimental research that is conducted on agricultural issues.

A result that is significant at the .05 level indicates that:

Bayesian statistics involve a formula that takes prior knowledge into consideration when evaluating any finding.

Which of the following pairs of variables would illustrate a negative correlation?

The word "correlation" is often used as a synonym for "relationship."

When psychologists say that a test has been standardized, they mean that uniform procedures for giving and scoring the test have been developed.

A researcher wants to know whether eating chocolate makes people nervous. Some participants are given two bars of chocolate to eat and some are given no chocolate at all, and then all of the participants are tested for nervousness an hour later. In this experiment, the amount of chocolate eaten is the independent variable.

People who are willing to take part in surveys usually have opinions and views that are different from those who decline to take part. This phenomenon is called:

An experiment is conducted to test a new antianxiety drug. After taking the drug, 35 percent of the participants receiving the medication report less anxiety, compared to 36 percent of those taking a placebo. The researchers should conclude that:

When two variables are not related, the correlation coefficient will be close to: