Research Methods in

Psychology
PSYC1100
Dr. Ryan Lundell-Creagh
WHY DO WE NEED RESEARCH?
Proverb Activity
Competing Hypotheses
 Competing hypotheses can’t both be true!
 “birds of a feather flock together” vs. “opposites attract”
 “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” vs. “you are too old to learn”
 “nothing ventured, nothing gained” vs. “better safe than sorry”
Hindsight Bias
 Hindsight bias: the tendency to believe after learning an outcome
that one would have foreseen it
 “I told you so…”
 “I KNEW IT ALL ALONG!!!”
 Example:
 President Trump on Coronavirus:
 Jan 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China,
and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine”
 Mar 17: “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”
Activity
 Below are some anagrams with the solution.
 KREBA: BREAK
 ORHWT: THROW
 WREAT: WATER

Estimate how long (in seconds) it would take you to solve three similar
anagrams
Time to try!
 Get your timers ready!
Activity
Start the timer and try to solve these anagrams. Stop the timer when
you have a solution to all three
 ELPNA
 ERHTE
 EPSIR
Activity
 How does your actual time compare to your estimated time?
Overconfidence
 Overconfidence: The human tendency to think we know more than
we actually do
 Anagram study:
 The vast majority of participants took much longer than they thought they
would to solve the anagrams!
 Predicting social behavior (Tetlock, 1998):
 Participants were asked to make predictions about future world events,
and then asked how confident they were in these predictions
 Average confidence level: 80%
 Average accuracy: 40%
 Even those wrong maintained confidence by declaring they were “almost
right”
Goals of Behavioral Science
 1) Describing behavior
 2) Predicting behavior
 3) Determining causes of behavior
 4) Understanding or explaining behavior
1) Describing Behavior
 Often the first step in formulating theories
 What exactly are people doing?
 Uses descriptive statistics
 Stats which tell us about the population, but not about differences between
people
 Some descriptive behavior research questions:
 What genre of movie is most popular among adults over 60?
 What is America’s favorite fast-food chain?
 How do 8–18-year-olds spend their time on the computer?
Describing Behavior
2) Predicting Behavior
 If we know certain features about a person, can we predict how they
will act?
 Uses predictive modelling
 Stats which describe how changes in one variable relate to changes in a
different variable
 The independent variable (variable that we manipulate) is used to
predict the dependent variable (variable whose levels we are interested
in)
 Some predicting behavior research questions:
 Is number of sexual partners predicted by Extraversion?
 Is intelligence predicted by number of years spent in school?
 Is aggression predicted by average height?
3) Determining the Causes of
Behavior
What CAUSES individuals to behave in specific ways?
 How is this different than predictive behavior?
 Uses inferential statistics
 Tells us about differences between groups
 Some cause of behavior research questions:
 Does experiencing fear CAUSE people to be more attracted to those
around them?
 Does interacting with friends CAUSE increases in happiness?
 Does watching tv violence CAUSE aggression in children?
 “Research shows that a child’s aggressive behavior can be predicted by knowing
how much violence a child watches on television”
4) Explaining Behavior
 Often the last step in a research program
 Once behaviors have been described and a cause-effect relationship is
established, we still need to know WHY this cause-effect relationship exists
 Ex: Do violent video games CAUSE behavior because of modelling?
 Could it be psychological desensitization?
 Testing these explanations requires new research questions and
designs, and allows us to refine theories
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The Scientific Method
 Scientific Method: A self-correcting process for evaluating ideas
with observations and analysis
 The scientific method is a cycle!

Theory

Analyze data Hypotheses

Research (collect data)

Step 1: Theory
 Theory: an explanation using an integrated set of principles that
organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events
 Some interesting scientific theories:
 Universal emotions do not exist
 Drug overdose is the result of classical conditioning
 Children’s motivation to learn is affected by ink color
 IMPORTANT: Scientific theories must be testable via hypotheses
generation and data collection
 Some non-scientific theories:
 Aliens exist
 Human flight is possible via evolution
Step 2: Generate Hypotheses
 Scientific theories produce testable hypotheses
 Hypothesis: A prediction about how an individual or group of
individuals will behave which is based on an underlying theory
 Ex: Theory: Children’s motivation to learn is affected by ink color
 Hypothesis: Red ink will cause children to be demoralized by their
errors and leads to lower grades on future tests
 How would we test this hypothesis?
 IMPORTANT: A good hypothesis will tell you what data would support
it and what data would reject it
TYPES OF RESEARCH
Step 3: Research (Collect Data)
 Truth #2: All scientific claims require the collection of data
 There are three different categories of methods that researchers can
use to test their hypotheses:
 Descriptive
 Correlational
 Experimental
Descriptive methods
 A research method is descriptive if it is used to describe behaviors
in some way
 There are three different descriptive research methods:
 Case studies
 Naturalistic Observation
 Surveys
 None of these methods can be used to EXPLAIN behavior
The Case Study
 Case Study: Systematic analysis of one person or a group of people
 Note: The textbook includes “in the hope of revealing universal
principles” as part of the definition
 Why is this NOT always true?
 Some examples:
 Brain damage
 Clinical cases
 When psychology was still a developing scientific discipline (think
Freud era, ~1870s), this was the most common type of research
 Why?
Strengths and Limitations
 Strengths:
 Relatively inexpensive
 Observations provide good starting point
 Others?
 Limitations:
 One person is NOT representative of the entire population
 Difficult to run formal statistics on the data
 Others?
Naturalistic Observation
 Naturalistic Observation: Any study in which behaviors of interest
are observed while the subject(s) are in their natural habitats
 Some examples:
 Darwin’s finches
 Observing a child interact with their mother
 Monitoring activity via a smartphone app
 Some cool conclusions from these studies:
 Chimpanzees use tools and deception
 Humans laugh 30 times more often in the presence of others
 Happier people have more meaningful conversations
Strengths and Limitations
 Strengths:
 Removes the “laboratory” setting
 No manipulation of variables necessary
 Others?
 Limitations:
 Extremely time consuming
 Can be VERY expensive
 Researcher subjectivity
 Human subjects behave differently knowing they are being observed
 Others?
Surveys
 A survey is a self-reported data collection technique where the
researchers ask a large group of participants to provide their own
opinions or evaluate their own behaviors
 Self-Report: refers to any data obtained that is provided by the
person about themselves
 Some examples:
 Political surveys: “Who are you most likely to vote for in the next election”
 Religious surveys: “How important is religion in your life”
 Consumer behavior surveys: “What is your favorite fast food restaurant”
 Some interesting findings from surveys:
 1 in 500 people from 22 countries believe that aliens have come to earth
and are now disguised as humans
 America’s favorite fast food restaurant is Chick-Fil-A
 First dates which were arranged online are 34% more likely to end in a kiss
Strengths and Limitations
 Strengths:
 Provides us with easy access to descriptive statistics
 These are numerical facts which describe the population of interest
 Easy to distribute to a large sample
 Others?
 Limitations:
 Representative samples can sometimes be hard to obtain
 Selection Effects
 Response bias
 Social desirability bias
 Others?
Correlational Studies
 These examine how two variables relate to one another
 Variables: Anything that has the potential to change and is of
interest to the researchers
 Correlation: a measure of the extent to which two variables are
related
 This is represented by the correlation coefficient
 Correlation coefficient:
 A numerical value between -1 and +1
 The sign (- vs. +) only indicates the direction of the relationship!
 The larger the absolute value of this number is, the stronger the
relationship between the two variables
 In a bivariate (two variable) relationship, the correlation coefficient is the
slope of the line!
An example
Correlational Studies
 Correlations are best visualized using scatterplots
 Scatterplots: A graph in which one variable is on the X-axis
(horizontal axis) and the other is on the y-axis (vertical axis)
 Each point on the graph represents a person in the study
Interpreting Correlations
How Related Are These Variables?
 Recall: 0 means no relationship, +1 means perfectly related, -1
means perfectly negatively related
 1) Time spent running on treadmill and # of calories burned
 2) Hours of sleep and levels of energy the next day
 3) Hours spent studying and exam scores
 4) Taking daily Asprin and surviving a heart attack
 5) Time spent on social media and hours of sleep
 6) Extraversion and happiness
 7) # of chickens on a farm and Google stock price
 8) Height and IQ
Strengths and Limitations
 Strengths:
 Allows investigation of more than one variable of interest
 No variable manipulation needed
 Can study things we aren’t allowed to manipulate
 Others?
 Limitations
 Correlation is NOT causation!!!
 Third variable problem
Experiments
 Experiment: A type of data collection in which one or more variables
are manipulated to observe the effects on another variable
 This is the bread and butter of psychology
 It is the ONLY type of data collection which can make cause and effect
claims
 The most common type of experiment has an experimental group
and a control group
 Experimental group: The group exposed to the “treatment” or
manipulation of the independent variable
 Control group: The group not exposed to the manipulation, which
will serve for comparison purposes
Designing an Experiment
 Independent variable (IV): The variable in the experiment which is
being manipulated
 Dependent variable (DV): The variable in the experiment whose
value depends on the manipulation of the IV
 Confounding variable (third variable): Factors other than the IV
which may influence the DV and thus change the study results
Activity
 Identify the IV and DV in the following examples:
 1) Researchers are interested in whether ethnic background
determines number of home visits that a realtor gets
 2) Researchers want to test whether drinking alcohol increases
aggression
 3) Researchers want to study how food choices differ based on time
of day
Strengths and Limitations
 Strengths:
 Can provide cause and effect claims
 Multiple IVs can be investigated at once
 Others?
 Limitations:
 Can be VERY expensive
 Some variables can’t be manipulated
 It is impossible to control for all confounding variables
 Others?
Summary
Step 4: Analyze the data
 Descriptive statistics
 These are used to describe a population or sample
 Often presented as pie charts or bar graphs
 Ex: ratios, measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion
 Ex: 67% of people think the guitar is a romantic instrument
 Inferential statistics
 Allow us to make guesses (inferences) at the actual value of a population
or the relationship between variables
 Ex: t-tests, ANOVA
 A significant t-test allows us to infer that the mean of group A is higher than the
mean of group B
Myth #3: Extrasensory Perception is
a Well-Established Scientific
Phenomenon
Read the article about ESP posted on the course website and identify
how the authors used the scientific method to disprove this myth
 1. What is the theory?
 2. What data was collected?
 3. How was the data analyzed?
 4. What are the conclusions?