research methods

False Positive or False Negative

Type I and Type II Error
type I error
is a false positive. It is where you accept the alternative/experimental hypothesis when
it is false (e.g. you believe the building is on fire, and run outside, but it is not). The
psychiatrists in Rosenhan’s (1973) research all committed a type I error – they believed
that the pseudo-patients had a real mental disorder when they did not.
type II error
Is a false negative. It is where you accept the null hypothesis when it is false (e.g. you
think the building is not on fire, and stay inside, but it is burning).
research methods
Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio
Levels of Measurement
In psychology, there are different ways that variables can be measured and psychologists
typically group measurements into one of four scales: nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio.
Nominal
level data is frequency or count data that consists of the number of participants falling
into categories. (e.g. 7 people passed their driving test the first time and 6 people didn’t.)
Ordinal
level data is data that is presented in rank order (e.g. places in a beauty contest, or
ratings for attractiveness).
Interval
level data is data measured in fixed units with equal distance between points on the
scale. For example, Celsius scale, or time.
Ratio
level data is the same as interval level data, but with a true zero. For example, height
or weight.
research methods
The Decision Tree
Statistical Testing
Selecting a
 Unrelated Design Test of association
Unrelated Design Related Design or correlation
Nominal Chi-Squared Sign Test Chi-Squared
Data
Ordinal Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon Spearman’s rho
Data
Nominal Unrelated t-test Related t-test Pearson’s r
Data
Issues & Debates Issues & Debates
Gender Bias
gender bias
is the differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on
stereotypes and not on real differences. In psychology there is evidence that gender is
presented in a biased way. This bias leads to differential treatment of males and females,
based on stereotypes and not real differences.
alpha bias
refers to theories that exaggerate the differences between males and females. For
example, in his psychoanalytic approach, Freud argued that because girls do not suffer
the same Oedipus conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly
as boys identify with their fathers, and so develop weaker superegos.
beta bias
refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume
that the findings from studies using males can apply equally to females. For example,
Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development, which was applied to girls and boys,
was based on extensive interviews that he conducted with boys only.
Issues & Debates Issues & Debates
Culture Bias
culturE bias
is the tendency to judge people in terms of one's own cultural assumptions.
Ethnocentrism
means seeing the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing that this
one perspective is both normal and correct. Ethnocentrism is a lack of awareness that
other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own. For example, definitions of
abnormality vary from culture to culture. Rack (1984) claims that African-Caribbeans
in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ on the basis of behaviour that is
perfectly normal in their subculture, and this is due to the ignorance of African-Caribbean
subculture on the part of white psychiatrists.
Cultural relativism
insists that behaviour can be properly understood if its cultural context is also understood.
Therefore, any study that draws its sample from only one cultural context (like American
college students) and then generalises its findings to all people everywhere, is suspect.
Issues & Debates Issues & Debates
Free Will & Determinism
Free will
is the idea that we can play an active role and have choice in how we behave. The
assumption is that individuals are free to choose their behaviour and are self-determined.
Biological determinism
is the opposite view: free will is an illusion, and internal or external forces over which
we have no control govern our behaviour. This comprises biological, environmental and
psychic determinism.
• Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behaviour is innate and
determined by genes.
• Environmental determinism is the view that behaviour is determined or caused by
forces outside the individual, including previous experience learned through classical
and operant conditioning.
• Psychic determinism claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood
experiences and innate drives (id, ego and superego), as in Freud’s psychodynamic
model of psychological development.
Issues & Debates Issues & Debates
Nature vs. Nurture
NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE
The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest debates in psychology. It centres
on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to
human development and behaviour.
RESEARCH SUPPORT
Correlational studies such as family, twin and adoption studies show that the closer the
relatedness of two people, the more likely it is that they will show the same behaviours.
For example, the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia is approximately 1% of
the general population. However, Gottesman and Shields (1991) pooled the results of
around 40 family studies and found that the risk increases to 46% for those with two
parents who have schizophrenia.
Issues & Debates Issues & Debates
Holism and Reductionism
Holism
comes from the Greek word ‘holos’, which means ‘all’, ‘whole’ or ‘entire’ and is the idea
that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience, and not as
separate parts.
Reductionism
is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler
component parts.
• Biological reductionism refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce
behaviour to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters,
hormones, brain structure, etc.
• Environmental reductionism is also known as stimulus-response reductionism.
Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be reduced to the simple building blocks
of S-R (stimulus-response) associations and that complex behaviours are a series of
S-R chains.