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Compilation for PSY 222

by
Moyosolaoluwa Olowokure

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT an official UNILAG FSS material. This compilation was
curated by Moyosolaoluwa for her personal revision; please use with caution
and discretion.
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INTRODUCTION
Psychology aims at observing, explaining, predicting & modifying behaviour. This is
done using the scientific method of investigation which has 6 KEY STEPS:

1-Observing, 2-Asking a Question, 3-Forming a Hypothesis,

4-Testing the Hypothesis, 5-Conclusion 6-Presenting the Results

It also has 3 MAJOR TOOLS:

1-Observation 2–Measurement (Nominal, Ordinal, Interval & Ratio Scale)
3–Experimentation (within-groups design & between-groups design)

TYPES OF SCIENTIFIC INVETIGATION::

Descriptive (Observational) – seeks to simply describe or analyse data without any
hypothesis or prediction e.g. “What is the attitude of UNILAG students towards
premarital sex?”

Experimental/Causal – Experimenter controls/manipulates an independent variable

while other variables are kept constant to see the impact/influence/effect/prediction
of one variable on another e.g. Impact of stress tolerance on suicidal ideation
among students of UNILAG

Comparative – Collects and Compares the data from different groups or within the
same group at different points in time. e.g. “Gender Differences in recall of
emotional and neutral data”, “Differences in Recall Before and After Interference”

Correlational – Investigates the relationship/association between two variables e.g.

Relationship between Self-Esteem and Anxiety Levels among students of UNILAG
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** (Many of us are guilty of using „impact” in our Titles for comparative research.
Now that we know better, we will appropriately use “Differences” in our titles for
comparative research)**

Research is also divided into:

Basic Research – No practical goal, it is the reservoir of data and explanations the
applied researcher will draw from e.g what are the causes and implications of
depression

Applied Research – Research aimed at solving a particular problem e.g how to cure
depression

CONTENTS OF A GOOD PSYCHOLOGY LAB REPORT:

Title (12-15words)
Abstract (150 words)
Introduction (definition of concepts and background of the study)
Aim & Objectives (aims are the general purpose of the study while objectives are
the steps taken to achieve those aims)
RQ
RH
Lit Review
Methodology
Results
Discussion
References
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WORD ASSOCIATION TEST

1st invented by Francis Galton in 1879 and then adopted by Carl Jung in 1910 for
psychoanalysis. It is used by psychoanalysts to analyse a person‟s subconscious
thoughts about a theme. In Jung‟s original experiment, he had 100 (German) words
and took note of where patients paused/refused to answer/asked for a break and
what they said at certain “triggering” or “critical” words. When participants showed
long reaction times or gave multiple responses to a single word, these were seen to
indicate some sort of psychological disturbance or complex. This test is also used by
brands to test names of their products.

**Short video clip: Skyfall Word Association Test Scene **

Methodology
Participants were asked to say/write the first word that came to mind after
hearing/seeing a word. The word (stimulus) was displayed for a few seconds and
participants were asked to be honest and to not hesitate before responding. Their
responses were considered and then psychoanalysed.

Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1-Men will have (significantly) higher reaction times than women.

2-Men will have a (significantly) higher number of blank responses than women.

3- Men will have (significantly) more frequent instances of giving multiple responses
than women.
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4-Words “bread” and “water” will have (significantly) longer reaction times than “lie”
and “angry” among participants.

5- Participants will have a mean reaction time that is greater than 7 seconds
(One sample t-test)
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Word
DVs – Reaction time, Number of blank responses, Frequency of multiple responses
EVs – Closeness to board, Tone of the observer, Lighting/Temperature of the
environment, Emotional state of the participant etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Independent T-test, Mann Whitney U, Descriptive Statistics, Sign test, One-sample T-
test
(This depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions).

EMOTION AND MEMORY EXPERIMENT

The limbic system and papez circuit are important for emotion and memory.
Invented by Gordon Bower in 1981, it is believed that emotionally charged words
or pictures are more easily remembered than neutral words or pictures (stimuli).

Methodology
Participants were exposed to emotional and neutral stimuli in two sessions:
emotional words versus neutral words and emotional pictures versus neutral
pictures.
Each group of words was displayed for 15 seconds, participants were then
given another 15 seconds to write the words they could recall (regardless of word
order). The same was done for emotional and neutral pictures.
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Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1- Participants will recall (significantly) more emotional stimuli than neutral stimuli

2- Participants will recall (significantly) more emotional words than neutral words.

3- Male participants will recall (significantly) more neutral pictures than female
participants.

4- Male participants will have (significantly) higher recall than female participants.
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Stimuli (whether neutral or emotional))
DV – Recall
EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of
the environment, Evaluation apprehension, Fatigue, Participant‟s mood etc.
**this depends on your hypothesis

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Paired Samples T-test, Wilcoxon, Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions

MEMORIZATION TECHNIQUES
It is believed that chunking and organization makes for better recall of
organized information. Chunking was proposed as a memorization technique by
George Miller in 1956. He believed human short-term memory (STM) could process
7 +/- 2 units of information at a point in time.
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Methodology
Participants were exposed to unorganised and organised stimuli in two
sessions: 1- unorganised words and unorganised digits and 2- organised words and
organised digits.
Each group of data was displayed for 30 seconds; participants were then
given another 30 seconds to write the words and digits they could recall in the right
order.

Instruments:
Timer, Power-point Display, Writing Materials

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1- Participants will recall (significantly) more organised words than unorganised
words.

2- Participants will recall (significantly) more organised digits than unorganised

digits.

3- Male participants will have (significantly) higher recall of organised stimuli than
female participants.

4- Participants will have (significantly) higher recall of unorganised words than

unorganised digits.
**NOTE that all these hypotheses are directional.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Nature of Data (whether organised or unorganised), Form of data
(whether digits or words)
DV – Recall
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EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of

the environment, Evaluation apprehension, Participant mood, participant fatigue
levels, noise, etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Paired Samples T-test, Wilcoxon, Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U,
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions.

INTERFERENCE EXPERIMENT
Discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, Memory is stored information
that goes through encoding, storage and retrieval. Encoding could be semantic or
elaborative; Storage could be short-term memory or long-term memory and only
information that has been encoded or stored can be retrieved.
Forgetting is the inability to retrieve stored info due to trace decay, cue-
dependent forgetting or interference from another memory.
This interference could be proactive (old affects new) or retroactive (new
affects old) and is especially high when these memories are similar. Inhibition is a
kind of goal-oriented/intentional forgetting (suppression).
The interference experiment seeks to demonstrate and assess this
phenomenon and another early study that aimed to investigate the effect of
retroactive interference was conducted by McGeoch & McDonald in 1931.

Methodology
Participants were exposed to two lists/sets of nonsense syllables on a screen
for 2 minutes each. They were then given 45 seconds to recall and write all the
nonsense syllables they could for each list (A and B) on a sheet of paper. After this
sheet was collected, participants went on a short break and watched a short video.
Participants were asked to not discuss with one another during the experiment. On
returning from the short break, they were asked to recall and write list B and then
asked to recall and write list A.
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The participants‟ proactive and retroactive interference scores were then calculated
using a stipulated formula and analysed using SPSS.

Instruments:
Timer, Projector/Power-point Display, Nonsense syllables, Writing Materials.
Hypotheses for this test could include:
1-Female Participants will have significantly lower proactive interference scores than
male participants

2-Male Participants will have significantly higher retroactive interference scores than
female participants

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender,
DV – Proactive interference scores, Retroactive interference scores
EVs – Closeness of participant to the board, Age of participant, Intelligence level of
participants, Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of the environment, Participant
activity during the break, Noise, Evaluation apprehension, Participant Fatigue etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions
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VISUAL ILLUSION TEST

The illusion was devised by Franz Carl Muller-Lyer in 1889 to test how
people perceive length when subjected to a visual illusion. It supposes that lines
with a concave arrow >-------< will be perceived as longer than lines of the same
length with convex arrows at the end.

Methodology
Participants were exposed to 2 lines on a screen for a few seconds; one line had
convex arrows at both ends while the other had concave arrows at both ends. They
were asked to select the longer line. This was done over multiple trials with lines of
varying lengths and the errors in estimation for each participant were recorded.

Instruments:
Muller-Lyer software
Hypotheses for this test could include:
1-Female Participants will have significantly higher error in estimation than male
participants

2-Psychology students will have significantly higher error in estimation than

engineering students

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender, Department
DV – Error in estimation
EVs - Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of the environment, Noise, Evaluation
apprehension, Participant Fatigue etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Independent T-test, Mann Whitney-U
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions
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ZEBRA-CROSSING EXPERIMENT

Methodology (Place-centred)
A structured observational checklist was used for data collection. The gender
and number of pedestrian actors at the zebra crossing, as well as the gender, vehicle
type (private car, commercial car, commercial bus) and compliance level of the
motorists (yes, no, or remorseful) were recorded.
Motorists were subjected to 6 experimental conditions each repeated (five)
times which resulted in a total of (30) trials.

Instruments:
Observation form, Writing Materials, Video recorder, Pedestrian actors, Zebra
crossing,
Hypotheses for this test could include:
1-The Frequencies of Normal/Expected Behaviour will be significantly higher than
that of Abnormal/Unexpected Behaviour.

2-The Durations of Normal/Expected Behaviour will be significantly longer than that

of Abnormal/Unexpected Behaviour.

Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Gender of pedestrian actor, Number of Pedestrian actors, Gender of Driver
DV – Driver Compliance level
EVs – Driver mood or fatigue

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Chi-square goodness of fit, Chi-square Test of Independence, Descriptive Statistics
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions
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BEHAVIOUR MAPPING EXPERIMENT

Behavioural maps were developed by Ittelson et. al in 1970. It could be:
Place-centred which observes if a space/place is used for the purpose/behaviour it
was designed for by observing expected and unexpected behaviours at a specific
place and time.
It could also be Person-centred which is used to identify underlying patterns
of behaviour and movement in specific locations by tracking/following participants‟
movement within the space either visually or with a device.

Methodology (Place-centred)
Participants were observed at 2001 Eatery, UNILAG selected based on convenience
sampling but were unaware they were being observed (This natural/unobstructive
observation improves the study‟s ecological validity but may raise some ethical
concerns). Participants were not exposed to harm nor was their personal information
collected or shared. The expected and unexpected behaviors as well as their
frequencies and durations were operationalized, observed and recorded over a
period of 30 minutes split into three 10-minute observation sessions.

Instruments:
Observation sheet, Writing Materials, Restaurant environment

Hypotheses for this test could include:

1-Frequencies of Normal/Expected Behaviour will be significantly higher than that of
Abnormal/Unexpected Behaviour.

2-The Durations of Normal/Expected Behaviour will be significantly longer than that

of Abnormal/Unexpected Behaviour.

3-There will be a relationship between gender/age and type of behaviour engaged

in by the participants
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Independent, Dependent and Extraneous variables could be:

IVs – Type of Behaviour (whether expected or unexpected), Gender, Age (maybe if
you want to use a test of independence for Hypothesis 3)
DV – Duration of behaviour, Frequency of Behaviour
EVs - Time of day, Lighting, Temperature of the environment, Noise, Evaluation
apprehension, Participant Fatigue etc.

Possible Statistical Instruments to use for this test:

Chi-square goodness of fit, Chi-square Test of Independence, Descriptive Statistics
**this depends on your hypothesis and data assumptions

Reporting example for Chi Square Goodness of Fit:

A Chi-square goodness of fit test was conducted to see if the frequency distribution
of drivers who complied differed between male and female drivers. The proportions
differed significantly by gender, X2 (df, n) = (X2 value) , p = .00

References

Kensinger, E.A., Corkin, S. Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional
words more vividly remembered than neutral words?. Memory &
Cognition 31, 1169–1180 (2003). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195800

Studies on Interference. (n.d.). StudySmarter UK.

https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/psychology/basic-
psychology/studies-on-interference/

The Association Method By Carl Jung. (n.d.). Psychology. https://www.all-about-

psychology.com/association-method.html

TheICONTheMICKing. (2022, February 12). Skyfall (2012) - Word Association Test

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZXXluOPr3o
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