Research Methods in

Psychology: Asking
Questions, Getting Answers
PSY 101, BRAC University
Summer 2023
Ayesha Seddiqa
Psychology and Science
• What is science
• What is an experiment
• The beginnings of experimental psychology
• Some issues in experiments
• A few psychological topics
"Almost half of children of divorces enter
adulthood as worried, underachieving, and
sometimes angry young men and women.”

--Time, “The Lasting Wounds of Divorce”

How do you know what is true?
•AUTHORITY (faith)

• REPETITION (tenacity)

• A PRIORI (reasonable)

• SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS
What makes something science?
What makes something scientific?
• The scientific method!
• Falsifiable
• Probabilities
• Explanatory
• Description
• Correlation
What makes an experiment?
• Dependent variable
• What you measure: the outcome

• Independent variable
• What you vary

• Random assignment to ‘treatment’ and ‘control’ conditions

Correlation vs. Causation
•only an experiment (independent
variable) can define causation
Correlation means there is a statistical association
between variables. Causation means that a change
in one variable causes a change in another variable.
An example: Age of Parent
& Risk for Disease in
Child
 DOES AGE OF MOTHER
INCREASE LIKLIHOOD OF
DISEASE IN CHILDREN?
Down’s Syndrome
Mother ages 20-24 - 1/1562
over 42 - 1/19
 DOES AGE OF FATHER
INCREASE LIKELIHOOD
OF DISEASE IN
CHILDREN?
Estimated cumulative incidence and percentage of offspring estimated to
have an onset of schizophrenia by age 34 years,
for categories of paternal age
25

Estimated cumulative incidence rates per 1000

1/47

20

15 1/68

1/80
1/85

1/99
10
1/121
1/141

0
<25 25-29 30-34 35-39 40- 45-49 50-54
44
Paternal age (years)
Data from Malaspina, D., et al. "Advancing Paternal Age and the
Risk of Schizophrenia."Arch Gen Psychiatry 58, no. 4 (2001): 361-
7.
Image by MIT OpenCourseWare.
 DOES AGE OF FATHER
INCREASE LIKELIHOOD OF
DISEASE IN CHILDREN?

or who marries later in life?

What are some issues with
psychological experiments?
What are some issues with psychological
experiments?

• Experimental population (who is in your experiment)

• Experimenter bias/demand characteristics
• Experimenter effects/confirmation bias
• Little things can affect behavior!
Who Is in Your Experiment?

• Random recruitment; random

assignment of people to conditions;
generalize from a small specific group
to human population as a whole
generalizable principles of human
mind & behavior
 Experimenter bias or
demand characteristics
• 200 sheets of papers filled with random
digits - add them pairwise - would take
hours - did it for hours
• Or also pick up a card after each page that
instructed them to tear the page into at least
32 places
 Experimenter Effects
• Students told that rats were either
“maze-bright” or maze-dull”
• Actually rats were just rats
 Experimenter Effects
• Students told that rats were either
“maze-bright” or maze-dull”
• Actually rats were just rats
• Students tested the rats on a maze
• “Maze-bright” rats performed
significantly better than “maze-dull”
rats!
 Confirmation Bias
We look for evidence that confirms what we believe,
and overlook evidence that could disconfirm what
we believe!
 Little Things Can Influence Behavior
Williams & Bargh, Science, 2008

“Warmth” is the most powerful personality trait in social judgment, and attachment theorists have stressed the
importance of warm physical contact with caregivers during infancy for healthy relationships in adulthood.
Intriguingly, recent research in humans points to the involvement of the insula in the processing of both physical
temperature and interpersonal warmth (trust) information. Accordingly, we hypothesized that experiences of
physical warmth (or coldness) would increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness), without the person's
awareness of this influence. In study 1, participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a
target person as having a “warmer” personality (generous, caring); in study 2, participants holding a hot (versus
cold) therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves.
Folk Psychology & Scientific Psychology

• everybody has ideas about how they think

and behave and how other people think and
behave
• scientific psychology sometimes supports and
sometimes contradicts these ideas
 SELF ESTEEM
•high self-esteem sounds good to
everybody
• higher self-esteem is correlated with
(a) initiative & persistence & (b)
happiness & emotional resilience &
(c)narcissism & bullying
•Baumeister et al., 2003 – reviewed 15,000
studies – no evidence to support view that
self-esteem is causal (higher self-esteem may
be a product rather than a cause of positive
things)
 Ideas About People & Psychology
No

No
No

No

These were all statements that come from the Western

No

World. Can we think of a few that are from our partNoNoof

the world? No
No
No
No

No

No

No
Confidentiality
Consent
Thank you!