Research Notes

Research Methods

• Why do we need to learn?

• Everything is research, because psychology is a science

Hindsight Bias

• The tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you knew the outcome before it happened

Overconfidence

• Tend to think we know more than we do

Barnum Effect

• Tendency for people to accept very general/vague characterizations of themselves and take them to be accurate

Applied vs. Basic Research

• Applied Research:
• Has clear, practical applications
• You can use it
• Basic Research:
• Explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used

Hypothesis

• Expresses relationship between two variables
• Variable is anything that can vary among participants in a study

Independent Variable

• Whatever is being manipulated in the experiment

Dependent Variable

• Whatever is being measured

Operational Definitions

• Explain what you mean in your hypothesis
• How will the variables be measured in “real-life” terms