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PSYC 100 Fall Exam Questions And
Answers
The essential elements of science - Answers✔Systematic observation
Hypothesis
Democratic
Cumulative
Code of ethics - Answers✔Informed consent
Confidentiality
Privacy
Benefits
Deception
Empirical methods - Answers✔Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and
observation.
Ethics - Answers✔Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that
protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of
interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.
Hypotheses - Answers✔A logical idea that can be tested.
Systematic observation - Answers✔The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better
understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise
organize information about the natural world.
Theories - Answers✔Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
Anecdotal evidence - Answers✔A piece of biased evidence, usually drawn from personal experience,
used to support a conclusion that may or may not be correct.
Causality - Answers✔In research, the determination that one variable causes—is responsible for—an
effect.
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Correlation - Answers✔In statistics, the measure of relatedness of two or more variables.
Data (also called observations) - Answers✔In research, information systematically collected for analysis
and interpretation.
Deductive reasoning - Answers✔A form of reasoning in which a given premise determines the
interpretation of specific observations (e.g., All birds have feathers; since a duck is a bird, it has
feathers).
Distribution - Answers✔In statistics, the relative frequency that a particular value occurs for each
possible value of a given variable.
Empirical - Answers✔Concerned with observation and/or the ability to verify a claim.
Fact - Answers✔Objective information about the world.
Falsify - Answers✔In science, the ability of a claim to be tested and—possibly—refuted; a defining
feature of science.
Generalize - Answers✔In research, the degree to which one can extend conclusions drawn from the
findings of a study to other groups or situations not included in the study.
Hypothesis - Answers✔A tentative explanation that is subject to testing.
Induction - Answers✔To draw general conclusions from specific observations.
Inductive reasoning - Answers✔A form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is inferred from a set
of observations (e. g., noting that "the driver in that car was texting; he just cut me off then ran a red
light!" (a specific observation), which leads to the general conclusion that texting while driving is
dangerous).
Levels of analysis - Answers✔In science, there are complementary understandings and explanations of
phenomena.
Null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST) - Answers✔In statistics, a test created to determine the
chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as extreme as the one observed if the null
hypothesis were actually true.
Objective - Answers✔Being free of personal bias.
Population - Answers✔In research, all the people belonging to a particular group (e.g., the population of
left handed people).
Probability - Answers✔A measure of the degree of certainty of the occurrence of an event.
Probability values - Answers✔In statistics, the established threshold for determining whether a given
value occurs by chance.
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Pseudoscience - Answers✔Beliefs or practices that are presented as being scientific, or which are
mistaken for being scientific, but which are not scientific (e.gAstrology, the use of celestial bodies to
make predictions about human behaviours, and which presents itself as founded in astronomy, the
actual scientific study of celestial objects. Astrology is a pseudoscience unable to be falsified, whereas
astronomy is a legitimate scientific discipline).
Representative - Answers✔In research, the degree to which a sample is a typical example of the
population from which it is drawn.
Sample - Answers✔In research, a number of people selected from a population to serve as an example
of that population.
Scientific theory - Answers✔An explanation for observed phenomena that is empirically well-supported,
consistent, and fruitful (predictive).
Type I error - Answers✔In statistics, the error of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true.
Type II error - Answers✔In statistics, the error of failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false.
Value - Answers✔Belief about the way things should be.
Behaviorism - Answers✔The study of behavior.
Cognitive psychology - Answers✔The study of mental processes.
Consciousness - Answers✔Awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Empiricism - Answers✔The belief that knowledge comes from experience.
Eugenics - Answers✔The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.
Flashbulb memory - Answers✔A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.
Functionalism - Answers✔A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness.
Gestalt psychology - Answers✔An attempt to study the unity of experience.
Individual differences - Answers✔Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion,
cognition, and development.
Introspection - Answers✔A method of focusing on internal processes.
Neural impulse - Answers✔An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.
Practitioner-Scholar Model - Answers✔A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes
clinical practice.
Psychophysics - Answers✔Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of
those stimuli.
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stimuli. - Answers✔
Realism - Answers✔A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing
knowledge of the external world.
Scientist-practitioner model - Answers✔A model of training of professional psychologists that
emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills.
Structuralism - Answers✔A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of
conscious experience.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon - Answers✔The inability to pull a word from memory even though there
is the sensation that that word is available.
Key components to a statistical investigation are: - Answers✔Planning the study, Examining the data,
Inferring from the data, Drawing conclusions
Cause-and-effect - Answers✔Related to whether we say one variable is causing changes in the other
variable, versus other variables that may be related to these two variables.
Confidence interval - Answers✔An interval of plausible values for a population parameter; the interval
of values within the margin of error of a statistic.
Distribution - Answers✔The pattern of variation in data.
Generalizability - Answers✔Related to whether the results from the sample can be generalized to a
larger population.
Margin of error - Answers✔The expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for
95% confidence level.
Parameter - Answers✔A numerical result summarizing a population (e.g., mean, proportion).
Population - Answers✔A larger collection of individuals that we would like to generalize our results to.
P-value - Answers✔The probability of observing a particular outcome in a sample, or more extreme,
under a conjecture about the larger population or process.
Random assignment - Answers✔Using a probability-based method to divide a sample into treatment
groups.
Random sampling - Answers✔Using a probability-based method to select a subset of individuals for the
sample from the population.
Reliability - Answers✔The consistency of a measure.
Sample - Answers✔The collection of individuals on which we collect data.
Statistic - Answers✔A numerical result computed from a sample (e.g., mean, proportion).