Exam 2: Research in Psychology

The kind of treatment a client is given (e.g.,EMDR versus no treatment)and the results of that treatment (the amount of anxiety reduction observed)are examples of ____,or the specific factors or characteristics that are manipulated and measured in research.

Surveys are able to address the problems associated with ____,which are inherent in case studies.

Dr.Ayala conducts an experiment where she gives half her participants a yellow pill containing a drug that keeps them awake during psychology lectures.She gives the other half of her participants an identical-looking yellow pill that does not contain the drug.This experimental design controls for ____.

Zack believes that drinking milk improves memory.He conducts an experiment in which he randomly chooses a group of participants and randomly divides them into two groups.Group A drinks milk before trying to remember a list of nonsense syllables.Group B drinks nothing before trying to remember a list of nonsense syllables.The experimental group in this experiment is ____.

Dr.Gholson tells his students to maintain caution as they begin to draw conclusions on their own research.He encourages them to follow the law of parsimony,which means that ____.

Jon believes that exercise is a cause of higher levels of life satisfaction.If Jon plans to study this hypothesis experimentally,his independent variable would be the ____.

Julian and Meghan are discussing several theories they have found that offer explanations for why children become bullies in schools.Julian is not sure how to sift through all the theories because they all seem equally convincing.Meghan suggests that they go with the explanation that is the simplest.Meghan's decision are made based on____.

Dr.Narayan is interested in how much of personality is inherited,so she tests whether the personalities of siblings are more similar to each other than they are to distant cousins.This research would best be described as ____.

An experimenter wants to determine if taking a specific amount of the drug Prozac relieves depression.Which element will be most in need of an operational definition in this study?

Hilary wants to know whether women are getting paid the same amount of money as men for equal work.She asks men and women in several business firms for information about their salaries.What research method is Hilary using?

Select a television or radio commercial that makes a claim (e.g.,"Bluebird fabric softener makes your clothes feel softer").Put that claim to the test by using the five-question process of critical thinking.

Shantae is doing an experiment on how anxious people will feel if they are told that they did not do well on an intelligence test.She asks her participants to rate how nervous,upset,and anxious they feel on a scale from 1 (not at all)to 7 (very).Participant's scores on the scale are a(n)____.

A doctor has completed a three-year research project on patients with dissociative fugue.She has decided the next step is to run correlational studies on her data.The doctor is doing this to ____.

Tai is interested in how alcohol consumption affects driving ability.He gives college students two,four,or six beers and then measures how many obstacles the students "hit" when they are in a driving simulator.The dependent variable is ____.

Psychologists are most likely to use case studies instead of other research methods when they wish to study ____.

P.W.Herman wants to know whether consumption of alcoholic beverages affects peoples' bicycling abilities.He suggeststhat the alcohol itself doesn't have any negative effects,but that people who drink alcohol expect to have their riding abilities impaired so they "act drunk." To control for the participants' expectations,P.W.gives half of his sample vodka and the other half of his sample vodka-flavored water.P.W.is using a(n)____research method,and the vodka-flavored water is a ____.

Researchers who want to find the best explanation of a phenomenon when they have several rival hypotheses should ____.

To avoid bias and confounds in a controlled experiment,participants should be assigned to either the experimental or control group ____.

A psychologist who is interested in determining the effects of a new diet regimen on the stress tolerance level of severely intellectually impaired patients would most likely choose which research method?

James reads a magazine ad about a drug that doctors say may help college students perform better on multiple-choice type tests.Being the inquisitive person that he is,James decides to do an experiment to see if the magazine's claims are true.He administers the drug to one of his classes,and gives the other class a placebo.James then tests the students in both groups on material they have recently discussed in class.In this example,the experimental group is the ____.