Vocabulary
- Anecdotal evidence
- An argument that is based on personal experience and not considered reliable or representative.
- Archival research
- A type of research in which the researcher analyses records or archives instead of collecting data from live human participants.
- Basking in reflected glory
- The tendency for people to associate themselves with successful people or groups.
- Big data
- The analysis of large data sets.
- Complex experimental designs
- An experiment with two or more independent variables.
- Conceptual Replication
- A scientific attempt to copy the scientific hypothesis used in an earlier study in an effort to determine whether the results will generalize to different samples, times, or situations. The same—or similar—results are an indication that the findings are generalizable.
- Confederate
- An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a “stooge.”
- Confederate
- An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a “stooge.”
- Correlational research
- A type of descriptive research that involves measuring the association between two variables, or how they go together.
- Cover story
- A fake description of the purpose and/or procedure of a study, used when deception is necessary in order to answer a research question.
- Demand characteristics
- Subtle cues that make participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave.
- Dependent variable
- The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.
- Dichotic listening
- A task in which different audio streams are presented to each ear. Typically, people are asked to monitor one stream while ignoring the other.
- Ecological validity
- The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.
- Electronically activated recorder (EAR)
- A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.
- Empirical methods
- Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.
- Ethics
- Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.
- Exact Replication (also called Direct Replication)
- A scientific attempt to exactly copy the scientific methods used in an earlier study in an effort to determine whether the results are consistent. The same—or similar—results are an indication that the findings are accurate.
- Experience sampling methods
- Systematic ways of having participants provide samples of their ongoing behavior. Participants' reports are dependent (contingent) upon either a signal, pre-established intervals, or the occurrence of some event.
- Falsified data (faked data)
- Data that are fabricated, or made up, by researchers intentionally trying to pass off research results that are inaccurate. This is a serious ethical breach and can even be a criminal offense.
- Field experiment
- An experiment that occurs outside of the lab and in a real world situation.
- Hypotheses
- A logical idea that can be tested.
- Hypothesis
- A logical idea that can be tested.
- Implicit association test (IAT)
- A computer-based categorization task that measures the strength of association between specific concepts over several trials.
- Inattentional blindness
- The failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected, object or event when attention is devoted to something else.
- Inattentional deafness
- The auditory analog of inattentional blindness. People fail to notice an unexpected sound or voice when attention is devoted to other aspects of a scene.
- Independent variable
- The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.
- Laboratory environments
- A setting in which the researcher can carefully control situations and manipulate variables.
- Manipulation check
- A measure used to determine whether or not the manipulation of the independent variable has had its intended effect on the participants.
- Naturalistic observation
- Unobtrusively watching people as they go about the business of living their lives.
- Operationalize
- How researchers specifically measure a concept.
- Participant variable
- The individual characteristics of research subjects - age, personality, health, intelligence, etc.
- Priming
- The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.
- Priming
- The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.
- Random assignment
- Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.
- Sample Size
- The number of participants in a study. Sample size is important because it can influence the confidence scientists have in the accuracy and generalizability of their results.
- Samples of convenience
- Participants that have been recruited in a manner that prioritizes convenience over representativeness.
- Scientific method
- A method of investigation that includes systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
- Selective listening
- A method for studying selective attention in which people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while deliberately ignoring other auditory information.
- When performance on simple or well-rehearsed tasks is enhanced when we are in the presence of others.
- An interdisciplinary field concerned with identifying the neural processes underlying social behavior and cognition.
- A field of research that investigates how the activation of one social concept in memory can elicit changes in behavior, physiology, or self-reports of a related social concept without conscious awareness.
- Survey research
- A method of research that involves administering a questionnaire to respondents in person, by telephone, through the mail, or over the internet.
- Systematic observation
- The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world.
- Terror management theory (TMT)
- A theory that proposes that humans manage the anxiety that stems from the inevitability of death by embracing frameworks of meaning such as cultural values and beliefs.
- Theories
- Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
- WEIRD cultures
- Cultures that are western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.
