Exam 2: Psychology’s Scientific Method

Describe the placebo effect.Provide an example to explain how this effect works.

In an experimental study,external validity refers to the:

If Professor Jung wants to be able to draw cause and effect conclusions from her research,which of the following is the most crucial aspect of her experimental design?

When psychological researchers use the correlational method to study variables,a correlation coefficient indicates the _____ between two variables.

If a psychologist was to study the emotion of "love," he or she would need to have _____ love.Without this specific information,the hypothesis could not be tested.

Which of the following is a guideline to follow to consume psychological information critically and wisely?

Which of the following is an advantage of conducting psychological research in a laboratory?

In descriptive statistics,range is a measure of:

In an experimental research study,which of the following groups is an experimental group?

Dr.Gillespie conducts an experiment on childhood aggression.She has two groups in her experiment.She places participants into each group by flipping a coin.Heads places them in group A;tails places them in groupB.In this experiment,Dr.Gillespie has satisfied the requirement of:

Discuss two limitations of using surveys in research.

_____ is a measure of dispersion that indicates how much scores in a sample vary around the mean of the sample.

Standard deviation is an inferential statistic.

Leslie wants to study the relationship between dieting and low confidence in teenagers.Her hypothesis is that teenagers who diet start to develop low self-esteem because of the diet.She designs an experiment in which she places the participants into two groups-teenagers who are placed on a strict diet for three months and teenagers who are not.In the context of the experimental research method,the group that diets for three months is the:

In the context of descriptive research methods in psychology,_____ are performed mainly by clinical psychologists when,for either practical or ethical reasons,the unique aspects of an individual's life cannot be duplicated and tested in other individuals.

Lauren,a social psychologist,hypothesizes that the best way for a young woman to increase the number of friends she has on a social networking site is to place a smiling display picture in her profile.Lauren wants to establish a cause-effect relationship between these two variables.In order to accomplish her objective,Lauren should use:

If the finding from an experimental study is replicated each time it is carried out,the study is considered to be _____.

Participants in an experimental research study listen to a lecture either in a lecture hall filled with natural light or in a lecture hall with no windows and artificial light.Before leaving the lecture halls,the participants fill out a mood survey.What is the independent variable in this study?

Participants in a study are divided into two groups.One group receives a specific drug and the second group receives a pill that looks like the drug but does not actually contain chemicals.In this study,the group that receives the real drug is called the _____ group.

Professor Bobson conducted a psychological experiment on personality by administering questionnaires to subjects.Although the true nature of the experiment was supposed to be a secret,Professor Bobson always smiled when a subject checked the left boxes in the written questionnaire.As a result,subjects began to routinely check the left box.This potential problem can be described as the study's _____.