Exam 2: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science

Unlike correlational studies,experiments involve

What do the parallel research findings of "Eighty percent of prisoners in the United States were spanked as children" and "Seventy-five percent of college students in the United States were spanked as children" demonstrate?

Professor Ambra was skeptical about the accuracy of recently reported research on sleep deprivation.Which process would best enable her to assess the reliability of these findings?

Dr.C has found that teenagers whose parents read to them as children are more likely to do well academically.He can reach which conclusion?

To study the development of relationships,Dr.Rajiv carefully observed and recorded patterns of verbal and nonverbal behaviors among men and women in singles bars.Which research method did Dr.Rajiv employ?

Psychologist Philip Tetlock collected more than 27,000 expert predictions of world events.He repeatedly found that experts were ________ percent confident in their prediction but were correct less than ________ percent of the time.

Dr.Jones is studying the effect of room lighting on college students' test performance and has defined room lighting as either dimly lit or brightly lit.This definition is an example of a(n)

Giving half the members of a group some purported psychological finding and the other half an opposite finding is an easy way to demonstrate the impact of

A group of experimenters want to test the effectiveness of a well-known and expensive brand of pain medication against the effectiveness of a lesser-known and cheaper brand.To prevent any expectations about brand effectiveness from influencing their experimental test,the researchers are likely to make use of

If those with low self-esteem are also particularly likely to suffer from depression,this would not necessarily indicate that low self-esteem triggers negative emotions because

In a test of the effects of cigarette smoking on physical health and development,groups of monkeys were raised in either a smoke-free or smoke‑infested environment.Monkeys in the smoke-infested environment were assigned to the ________ group.

Governor Donovan was greeted by large,enthusiastic crowds at all of his political rallies.As a result,he became overconfident about his chances of reelection.In this instance,the governor needs to be alerted to the value of

An explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events is called a(n)

An inert substance that may be administered instead of a drug to see if it produces any of the same effects as the drug is called a

Suppose you want to find out which candidate college students will vote for in an upcoming national election.To be sure the sample of college students you survey is representative of the college student population,you should

After noting that a majority of professional basketball players are African-American,Ervin concluded that African-Americans are better athletes than members of other racial groups.Ervin's conclusion best illustrates the danger of

Brandon reads his psychology text regularly and attends class most days,so he felt prepared when he took the midterm exam.He just knew he aced the test.When his Professor returned his exam,he found that he earned a C.What happened?

Professor X is studying the effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual thoughts.She assigns students to one of two conditions.In the first condition,participants are exposed to explicit sexual content and then given a word-completion task,which involves filling in the letter missing from each word.Based on the letter added,the word could be of a sexual nature or not.For instance,b_d could be completed as "bed," indicating sexual thought,or as "bad," which has no sexual connotation.In the second condition,participants are not exposed to explicit sexual content but are assigned the same word-completion task.The experimental group consisted of the students who

Professor Shalet contends that parents and children have similar levels of intelligence largely because they share common genes.His idea is best described as a(n)

In an experimental study of the impact of exposure to criticism on self-esteem,exposure to criticism would be the ________ variable.