1. Tenacity -- repetitive claims

1. advertising--Volvo wagon beats BMW; Tylenol for pain relief

2. teachings -- value differences; customer is always right

2. Authority -- font of truth -- oracle; dictionary or encyclopedia; expert opinion
1. cow's teeth
2. 7 step program to speak with own personal angel

3. Experience -- direct personal experience of the world

1. Out-of-body experience & other stress reactions
2. Color-blind, tone-deaf
3. Drugs

  D. Reason & Logic -- reason applied to assumption to determine particular case

(deductive logic)

1. Faulty assumptions -- those most favored in heaven must be most favored on earth (assumption in Colonial America during the time of Cotton Mather)
2. Faulty conclusions -- "the facts, while interesting, are not relevant." Ant legs and loss of hearing.

1. Multiple choice vs. essay
2. Subjective assessment of job qualifications vs. work sample (e.g., welding, typing, etc.)

B. Quantified -- assignment of numbers rather than words; allows precision

1. How much breakfast cereal is a lot? Prime rib?
2. What temperature is warm? Hot?

C. Replication -- repetition of findings; allows confirmation or disconfirmation

1. SAT & GPA
2. Cold fusion
3. Fiedler's contingency theory of leadership

  D. Self correction--the scientific community uses empirical data and reason to solve disputes and correct errors (e.g., drive theories of motivation, malleability of cognitive ability test scores for individuals; use of personality tests for predicting sales performance)

E. Control -- manipulation of things of interest and elimination of unwanted factors

1. Manipulation

1. amount of light on factory floor (on widgets per hour)
2. amount of drug administered to rat (on bar presses)
3. type of training in tennis instruction (e.g., visualization, cross-training) (on matches won)
4. type of psychotherapy (e.g., implosion, desensitization) (on touching snakes)

  2. Unwanted factors

1. presence of psychologist on factory floor (Hawthorne effect)
2. drug induced reduction of hunger in rat as opposed to loss of coordination or perception (that is, drug works through something other than the thing of interest)
3. tennis trainees choose the type of training instead of being assigned
4. professional psychologists give one type of psychotherapy; student volunteers give the other

1. Independent variable -- the thing of interest as causal or explanatory, that which is manipulated (we also have independent variables in research where there is no manipulation, that is, in nonexperimental research)

0. Reinforcement schedule (on rats per hour caught)
1. Type of leadership, autocratic versus democratic (on profits)

0. As above (widgets per hour, fear of snakes, rats per hour, profits).
1. Things we would like to change or improve generally (e.g., subjective well being, money, or closer to home, school grades, graduation rates, or complaints about the administration of the university).

0. Sex of participants (e.g., on feelings vs. outward display of hostility).
1. Unintended experimenter effects (e.g., message about ESP).
2. In any single experiment, it is virtually impossible to control for all extraneous variables; early studies control for the most obvious extraneous variables; subsequent research can control for more subtle variables.

1. Formulation of the hypothesis -- make a prediction

0. Groups that differ in diet will differ in GPA (Twinkie test)
1. Groups that differ in study time will differ in test scores

0. Type of statement

 Directional predicts direction of difference -- people who study more will have better test scores vs. different amounts of study time will be associated with differences in test scores. Suppose you did a study where some people studied 8 hrs and others studied 12 hrs for a test and the results showed that those studying 12 hrs scored worse on average rather than better. Why might this be?

1. Induction -- from specific to general

My cat is friendly when sleepy. The sun comes up in the East.

2. Deduction -- from general to specific

My cat won't run away right now. Good-looking people get lighter sentences in court.

3. Proof and truth -- proof is a convincing argument and is the stuff of science. Truth cannot be shown to be achieved by science -- it can only be approached and pursued. This is because neither induction nor deduction always yields a correct conclusion.

1. APA principles in the conduct of research with humans (paraphrased)

1. The investigator (this means you!) has an ethical responsibility and must consider the welfare of those who take part in the research.
2. Decide whether participants are "subjects at risk" or "subjects at minimal risk" (e.g., drugs, shock, blackmail for responses, etc., vs. color preference or risk of everyday life).
3. You are responsible for those who work for you, too. If your lab assistant shocks someone, it's ultimately your responsibility.
4. Informed Consent. You must explain to a participant what your respective roles and responsibilities are before the study begins. You need to be sure that the participant understands what will happen and agrees to participate before you begin (children are a problem here). If you do not explain something that will happen, you have to be extra careful that no harm comes to the participant.
5. Sometimes concealment or deception seems necessary to find out what you want to know. If so, you must (a) decide whether the deception is worth it, (b) whether alternative procedures are available that do not use deception, and (c) provide an explanation of the deception to the participants as soon as possible.
6. Let the participant decline to participate or quit the study at any time without penalty.
7. Protect the participant from harm.
8. After the study, provide the participant with information about the study and remove any misconceptions the participant might have.
9. If you cause undesirable consequences for a participant, you have to fix them.
10. You must keep information about participants confidential unless they agree otherwise in advance. If there is the possibility that others may find out information about the participants, explain what procedures are in place to protect confidentiality.

1. Milgram's conformity study
2. Military stress studies using explosives
3. Whether deception is reasonable depends upon what is learned versus the damage done to the participant and the field of psychology.