Exam 2: Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research

Which of the following threatens the internal validity of an experiment?

In a study of group dynamics, participants were placed in groups consisting of either three or ten people. During the study, group members worked together trying to solve a puzzle. After completing the task, participants reported how satisfied they were with the other members of their group. ________ is the independent variable in this study.

How did Latané and Darley (1968) vary the number of bystanders in their experimental study of the effects of the number of witnesses exposed to an emergency?

Suppose someone says to you, "I don't understand what you can learn from laboratory psychology experiments in social psychology. They are so artificial, and most of them are done with limited populations, namely college students." What would your best response be, according to a social psychologist?

Why is random assignment important in an experiment?

Which is more important: basic or applied research?

In the 2000 presidential election, the polls of upper-middle-class Americans tended to show Bush leading Gore by a landslide. When election night came, the final results were closer than had been predicted, and it turned out that Gore won the popular vote while Bush won the more critical Electoral College vote. One possible problem with the earlier survey results was that they relied primarily on polls of upper-middle-class people. This illustrates the finding that a major problem with surveys is

Recall that Latané and Darley observed the number of participants in each experimental condition who left their cubicles to help the alleged victim of a seizure. The ________ was the independent variable in their experiment.

There are many advantages to using experiments; however, a major drawback is

If a researcher were to observe women exercising and then men exercising and compare these groups, why would this not be considered an experiment?

Using a cover story to enhance the psychological realism of an experiment is one way to increase the ________ of a study.

According to the authors of your text, archival research can tell researchers about

A hypothesis is most like a(n)

In Chapter 2, the authors included a brief quiz about research findings. This quiz was designed to illustrate that

The idea of explaining social behavior in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time based on natural selection is the crux of the idea behind

Dissonance research resulted from Festinger's skepticism about the behaviorist approach. In recent years, new researchers have explored alternatives to dissonance explanations for social phenomena. These events illustrate

Suppose a researcher wants to know whether frustration really does cause aggression. She collects a large number of experimental studies that involve both children and adults, and that are conducted both in the laboratory and in the "real world" in both the United States and other cultures. She then conducts a(n) ________ to determine whether there is enough consistency in findings across studies to determine the generalizability of the relationship between frustration and aggression.

Replications are designed to ensure that

Carlos, the president of a fraternity on campus, randomly sampled 500 students, asked them if they belonged to a fraternity or sorority, and asked them about their current GPA. He discovered that the GPAs of those people in fraternities and sororities are higher than those of people who are not involved in the Greek system. Gleefully, he presented his findings to the dean, saying that being involved in a fraternity or sorority leads to higher grades. What rule of research methods is Carlos breaking?

All of the following are limits on observational research except