Exam 2: Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research

The major difference between experiments and other research methods is that experiments involve __________.

Dr. Williams wants to understand the motivations behind school shootings. To begin answering her questions, she examines the social media posts and blogs by identified school shooters. She also reads all the media reports she can find about the school shooters. Doing research in this manner is __________.

When Latané and Darley replicated their experiment on helping behaviors as a field experiment, they had two burly men steal a case of beer from a convenience store, and then measured the number of customers who reported the robbery. Why would they replicate their laboratory study in a field setting?

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.

In the 1950s, Leon Festinger arrived at a theory of attitude change that was at odds with the psychological "wisdom" of the day. The genesis of this theory-cognitive dissonance theory-demonstrates the author's point that many ideas in social psychology are __________.

__________ and __________ are the hallmarks of the experimental method, which set it apart from the observational and correlational methods.

Complete the following analogy about research methods in social psychology: observational is to __________ as __________ is to causality.

Which research method allows the researcher to focus on causality?

Applied research involves studies that are designed to __________.

Experimenters who value external validity primarily want their findings to generalize across __________ and __________.

A researcher is interested in the changing nature of sex roles in contemporary society. If she were to employ an archival analysis, what would she be most likely to do?

The __________ is a number that expresses the likelihood that a given experimental finding would have occurred by chance alone.

If two variables have no correlation with each other, this means that __________.

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.

Which of the following techniques is most likely to be used by social neuroscientists?

If a researcher were to use deception as part of her experimental procedure, when would she explain the purpose of this deception to her participants?

In an experiment, the independent variable is __________ and the dependent variable is __________.

Consider the following (fictitious) conclusion reached by a social psychologist: "After analyzing a sample of over 578 experiments, we have concluded that the question of whether men are more likely than women to help is difficult to answer. Based on the findings of this large number of studies, we have concluded that men are more likely to help when helping demands physical risk or 'chivalry'; otherwise, there are no reliable gender differences in helping." This conclusion about the reliability of the relationship between gender and helping was most likely based on __________.

Which is more important: basic or applied research?

When you conduct your own research, what size p-value indicates that your research has been successful?