Chapter 1:

What is good research?

Empirical Evidence: Gather data to support assertions
Follows the scientific method
Objective/unbiased
Operational definitions: Specific definition of all metrics being
discussed, such that there is no confusion. Giving a specific
measurable, aka quantifiable, definition of the variables
being tested.
Reliability: Consistency of data/results
o Types:
Inter-rater: Having multiple people doing
data/observation. Is there consistency between
data/observations collected by multiple people?
Test-retest: Giving a test/conducting a study more
than once
*Reliability: A study is designed well enough such
that it can be replicated. Was study designed well
enough that it can be carried out again?
Validity: (accuracy), does the study or the test measure what it
was designed for.
Face Validity: Preliminarily, superficially the design of the
experiment appears valid. I.e. accurately measuring
variables/topic.
Did the location or nature of the research somehow make the
participants act in a certain way?
o Demand Characteristics: Effects of participants knowing
that they are part of a research study.
o Hawthorne effect: Participants act in a manner they
perceive to be the way the researcher wants them to act.
o Screw-you effect: participants act opposite to what they
think the researchers want.
Objectivity of the researcher (interpretation of the results)
External Validity Issues:
o Ecological Validity: Can results be applied to real life (based
on setting of the research)?
o Can we generalize from the participants in the sample to
the wider population? Yes, if a representative sample is
used.
What is good research? General Ethical Issues
o Guidelines for research involving people
o British Psychological Society
o American Psychological Association
o Steps:

1. Approval is gained from the institution the researcher is

working for
2. Informed consent from all those who will participate
3. Deception is to be avoided
When is it ok?
Psychological or physical harm?
4. Debriefing must take place
5. Participants rights include the right to confidentiality and
the right to withdraw
6. Fabrication of data is unacceptable
Guidelines for research involving animals
1. There must be a clear scientific purpose that should also
benefit the health or welfare of humans or other animals.
2. It should be assumed if the procedure would cause pain in
humans that it will also cause pain in animals, and
therefore needs strong justification.
3. Animal welfare should be monitored (humane treatment).
4. When serious or long-term harm is caused to animals, they
should be euthanized as son as possible.
Sampling Techniques
o Target Population: Group of interest for the study
Types of Samples:
o Random Sample (tries to avoid sampling bias): Every
person, within the target population, has an equal chance
of being chosen to participate.
o Opportunity/Convenience Sample: Who can you get the
easiest, who is the most willing to participate. Participants
are the easiest to get and most willing to participate.
Friends, family etc.
o Stratified/Quote Sample: Similar to representative sample.
Sample accurately represents the target population in
demographics of the group.
o Cluster Sample: Take the one section of the target
population that you are most interested in. Use sample
from one subgroup within the target population.
o Purposive Sample: Get people that will probably give the
most information. Sample people who are more like to
provide detailed information.
o Snowball Sample: Get sample to bring along more people.
Having participants ask others to come along and
participate.
Methods of collecting and analyzing data
o Design:
o Hypothesis: Testable, educated prediction about the
relationship between variables.

o Null Hypothesis: It is saying the opposite of the hypothesis.

o Independent Variable: Controlled or manipulated by the
experimenter.
Dependent Variable: The variable that changes based on
the manipulation of the independent variable. I.e.
measuring the effects of the independent variable.
o Confounding Variables: Effect the ability to accurately
measure independent variable.
o Random Assignment: Used to alleviate subject variables.
Each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to
each condition of study. This in turn helps decrease the
effect of subject variables (demand characteristics i.e.
people).
o Treatment (experimental group): Receives the
independent variable treatment
o Control Group: Does not receive the independent variable
treatment
o Placebo Control Group: Think they receive the Independent
Variable and/or treatment but are given something inactive
and/or false.
o Placebo Effect: Participants expectation influences how
they feel and perform.
o Single-blind procedure: Participants dont know what group
or condition they are placed in.
o Double-blind procedure: Participants and researcher dont
know who was assigned to what group.
Types of Experiments
o Laboratory:
Advantages: Control, variables held constant
Disadvantages: Expensive, Artificial(lacks ecological
validity), Higher chance of demand characteristics
o Field:
Advantages: Higher ecological validity
Disadvantages; harder to control, greater
confounding variables, expensive and time
consuming
o Natural or Quasi Experiments:
Advantages: Test topics that otherwise would be
impossible or unethical
Disadvantages: No random sampling and
assignments and there are not as much control.
Worksheet

1. Reductionist: Believe that a complex situation can be explained

in a simple manner
2. Triangulation: Using multiple data-gathering approaches in a
single study to increase validity
a. Types:
i. Data Triangulation: Use of different data
ii. Researcher Triangulation: Using multiple researchers
iii. Theoretical Triangulation: Using different theoretical
approaches
iv. Methodological Triangulation: Using different
methods
3. Reflexivity: Always be ruminating and acknowledge in study on
how/and why certain things can affect or bias the experiment
being carried.
4. What are correlational studies aiming to do?
Correlational studies use statistical techniques to analyze
data. The technique tests the relationship between two
variables, and obtains a correlational coefficient. This
coefficient then tell us whether there is or is not a
correlation between the two variables.
5. Correlation Coefficient:
a. Positive: Positive Correlation
b. Negative: Negative Correlation (no correlation)
c. Closer to 1 = more likely that as one increases, the other
increases as well
d. Advantages:
i. Relatively simple and provide a numerical
representation of the relationship that can be easily
understood and compared
ii. They allow the study of a number of variables hat
cannot be manipulated experimentally.
e. Impossible to make cause-effect conclusions. Can only
determine that there is certain correlation, or relationship,
between the two variables.
f. -0.8 Best correlation description of the two variables
6. Naturalistic Observation: An observation that takes place in the
environment in which the target behavior normally occurs.
7. Strengths and weaknesses of observations:
a. Strengths:
i. Behavior can be recorded as it occurs and it will
provide the most valid conclusions, as participants
are in their natural habitat, so to speak.
b. Weaknesses:
i. Demand Characteristics
ii. Audience effects- exaggeration of behavior

iii. Defining/determining target behavior

iv. In murky ethical waters
8. Ethical concerns include the nature of the disclosing of
experiment gains. Overt observations and skewed data are a
concern as well.
9. Case Study- A study in which experimenters are conducting
experiments based on a results of what a patient or subject
has done on his or her own volition.
10.
Case Studies:
a. Strengths:
i. Construct a full and detailed description of the
subject(s) under investigation.
ii. Rich Data
iii. Higher Validity
b. Weaknesses
i. Costly, both time and money.
ii. Subjectivity
iii. Low Ecological Validity
11.
Ethical concerns include loss of anonymity, damage the
participant mentally.
1. Principles of the BLOA
a. Key Principles:
i. Emotions and behavior are products of the anatomy
and physiology of the nervous and endocrine
systems
ii. Patterns of behavior can be inherited
iii. Animal research may inform our understanding of
behavior
b. Effect of Neurotransmitters
c. Effect of Hormones
d. Effect of Localization
2. Genetic info is transmitted from parents to children and over
time physical characteristics and behaviors that are helpful to an
individual or social group in terms of survival and reproduction
can be passed on
3. Disthesis-Stress Model: Genetic Vulnerability + Environmental
Stressors
4. When studying physiology, it is valid to try to make inferences
about human behavior based on animal research because the
mechanisms that underlie behavior are the core similarity we
share with animals
a. Examples:
i. Brains can be studies in animals that appear to be
closely related to humans, such as monkeys and
apes

ii. Manipulating levels of specific neurotransmitters, for

example, in rats.
5. Biological Research Methods and Ethics
a. 3 Main Methods:
i. Laboratory Experiments
ii. Case Studies
iii. Correlational Studies
b. Laboratory Experiments;
i. Often used when not ethically possible to test
humans due to potential harm
c. Case studies
i. Takes advantage of naturally occurring irregularities
ii. Brain Damage, long-term drug use, is mostly
descriptive.
d. Correlational Studies
i. Often used at the core of twin and adoption studies
ii. Brain Imaging, FMRI and PET
6. Physiology and Behavior: Localization of function
a. Early Investigation: Phrenology Gall
b. Case Studies (Brain Damage)
i. Phineas Gage
ii. Functions of the Frontal Lobe
1. Executive Functions: Higher level thought,
reason, risk aversion etc. Decision-making,
planning, long-term goals etc. etc.
2. Some Personality Development
iii. Brocas Area:
1. Left Frontal lobe responsible for the physical
production of speech
2. Brocas Aphasia: Aphasia = Language Deficit,
only if someone suffers a stroke. Not something
people are not born with. Damaged Brocas
area. Speech is very slow and choppy.
iv. Wernickes Area:
1. Responsible for the understanding and
processing of speech. Located in the left
temporal lobe. The Temporal lobe contains the
auditory cortex as well.
2. Wernickes Aphasia: Fluid speech; however, the
person will only speak gibberish and wont
make sense due to the fact that they cant
process language.
7. Parts of the Brain:
a. Neuron
i. Dendrites: receives Messages

ii. Soma: Cell body that maintains the health of the

neuron
iii. Axon: Passes message away from the cell body to
other neurons, muscles, or glands
iv. Neural Impulse: Electrical signal traveling down the
axon
v. Myelin Sheath: Covers the axon of some neurons and
helps speed neural impulses
vi. Terminal branches of axon: Form junctions with other
cells
vii. Neuron is negatively charged and when a message
needs to be sent, it becomes depolarized
viii. Reuptake: Neurons are recycled to where they came
from, so that they can be used again
ix. Action potential: Initial energy to send the neurons
x. Reuptake: Any unused neurotransmitter is eventually
absorbed back into the neuron it came from so it can
be used again
xi. Mirror Neurons: A neuron that fires when a person
performs an action or when a person observes
someone else performing the same action
8. Drug and Behavior:
a. Dopamine:
i. Chemical in the brain that is a neurotransmitter and
is involved with pressure, reward pathway, addictive
behaviors, motivation etc.
ii. L-DOPA is used to treat Parkinsons vs. antipsychotics
to treat schizophrenia. Agonist, triggers release of
dopamine in the brain where there is a lack thereof. It
also tries to mimic the affect of dopamine.
iii. Initiation of movement
iv. Tolerance: More and more to get same effect
v. Withdrawal: Physical effects of lack of stimuli
9. Genetics and Behavior:
a. Genetics info from two parents = inherited characteristics
i. Chromosomes: Tightly wound strings of DNA that
contain genetic info
ii. Genes: Groupings with the DNA of any chromosome
iii. 23 pairs of chromosomes in every cell (46 total
chrom)
iv. Genes are thought to be responsible for development
of physical and behavioral characteristics
v. Genotype: Genetic makeup of an individual
vi. Phenotype; The result of genotype and environment
interacting Observable characteristics

vii. Some characteristics are strongly affected by genetic

inheritance.
b. What does genetic information do?
i. Depends on if the role of the gene is clear
1. Ex. PKU (Artifical sweetners cant be broken
down)
ii. Many genetic studies may identify there is a genetic
cause for certain behaviors, disorders, etc. but fall
short in locating the gene responsible
1. Henston, 1996
2. Twin Studies 1991
c. Diathesis-Stress model:
i. Genetic Predisposition (inherited
factors=vulnerability) + environmental triggers
(difficult life events/stressors) = disorder/behavior to
occur
10.
Ethical Considerations in BLOA
a. Genetic Testing
i. During Pregnancy possible treatments?
ii. Later in life possible treatments?
iii. Consent and support
b. Participating in genetic studies:
i. May learn something about themselves that they are
not prepared to deal with
ii. Data can be coded anonymously
iii. Interpretation of findings (e: Bell curve)
iv. Lacking in casual evidence (no experiments) and
longitudinal studies (most are twin/adoption and are
correlational in nature).
11.
Hormones: Chemical messengers secreted by glands used
in the endocrine system
a. Adrenaline = fight of flight response
b. Schachter & Singers study (adrenaline and emotion)
12.
Melatonin = Role in sleep to turn off the body: secreted
by the pineal gland; sensitive to changes in light
a. Avery & Lewy
13.
Oxytocin = Love and trust; released as a trigger for
contractions during childbirth and during social bonding
a. Pedersen and Broccia (rats)
b. Holt-Lunstad (husband/wife)
c. Morhenn (massage/trust)
14.
Minnesota Twins Study: Thomas Bouchand: 1979
a. Studied 137 pairs of twins- 81 pairs of identical and 56
pairs of fraternal

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b. Was comprised of more than 170 individual studies that

each followed on different medical + psychological
characteristics
c. Jim Twins: Raised apart, but smoked some cigarettes,
vacation at same place, both have headaches, both bit
their hands, have same car.
d. Genetics play a bigger role than previously thought on
personality. Environment affected personality when twins
were raised apart, but not when they were raised together.
e. Found 70% of IQ variation was due to genetic differences
30% was due to genetic similarities.
f. Unsure how long twins had been reunited for
g. How did he get and attract the participants
h. Amount of tests is an ethical concern
Schizophrenia case: Heston: 1966
a. Examined adopted children whose biological mothers have
schizophrenia
b. Found that 10% of the kids were also schizophrenics,
compared to 1% of kids having it if their parents didnt
have it. Indicates that schizophrenia might be genetic
Twin Study Homosexuality: Bailey and Pillard: 1991
a. Compared Monozygotic and Dizygotic homosexuality
b. Dizygotic had 22% concordance rate
c. Monozygotic had 52% concordance rate.
Twin Study Homosexuality: Santialla (2008)
a. Carrie out study between 6000 female twins and 3000
male twins and their siblings between ages 18-22
b. Looked at potential to engage in homosexual acts and
overt acts.
Evolutionary Psychology:
a. Examine one evolutionary explanation of behavior
b. Based on BLOA
i. Predisposition for certain behavior is inherited
ii. One principles of human evolutions dictate that
genetically based behaviors of an individual who has
reproduced are passed on
iii. Genetically unsuccessful behaviors are los t over
time, then behaviors we observe today should have
evolutionary explanations
iv. Behaviors today must in the past have helped
humans survive and reproduce and we have hence
adapted.
v. Spatial Chimps
1. Matsuzawa, 2007
vi. Morning sickness and nausea
1. Fessler, 2006

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