Experimental

Psychology and
Scientific Method
Serkan Adıgüzel
Introduction
Psychology is the science of behavior. As psychologists,
we take a scientific approach to understanding behavior,
and our knowledge about psychological processes is based
on scientific evidence accumulated through research.

As scientists, we rely on scientific methods when we conduct

psychological research.

Psychology Science

Psychological Scientific
Research Method

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Introduction
The way of the word ‘Science’ is used today has two
meanings-content and process.
• The content of science is what we know, such as the
facts we learn in our psychology or chemistry courses.
• But science is also a process--that is, an activity that
includes the systematic ways in which we go about
gathering data, noting relationships, and offering
explanations.

Science

Content Process

Gravity Gather Data

Vision Explanation
Emotion Replication

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The Need for Scientific
Methodology
In our daily lives, we all collect and use psychological data to understand the behavior of
others and to guide our own behavior.
• When you notice that your roommate is in a bad mood, you don't ask for a favor.
• You dress up when you are going for a job interview because first impressions are
important.
• You don't invite John and Evan to the same party because they don't like each other.

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The Need for Scientific
Methodology
You can probably think of many more examples of situations in which you used psychological
data to predict the behavior of others and to guide your own behavior.
The kind of everyday, nonscientific data gathering that shapes our expectations and beliefs and
directs our behavior toward others has been called commonsense psychology.
Commonsense psychology seems to work well enough for us most of the time.

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At other times, though, nonscientific data gathering can mislead us.
• Students learn best when teaching styles are matched to their learning styles.
• Low self-esteem is a major cause of psychological problems.

Why common-sense is not reliable?

• Commonsense beliefs about behavior are derived from data we collect from our own
experience and what we have learned from others.
• The data we collect in our everyday lives have been generated from a very small sample of
behaviors, and the conclusions we draw from them are subject to a number of inherent
tendencies, or biases, that limit their accuracy and usefulness.
• Often, the sources of our commonsense beliefs about behavior can be unreliable, and the
explanations and predictions that we derive from them are likely to be imperfect.
• No statistical analysis.

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How to Overcome this
Issue?

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• Students learn best when teaching styles are matched to
their learning styles.

students; define, find, reach

students’ learning style; define, measure

teaching style; define, measure

learning; define, measure

Conclude

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The Characteristics
of Modern Science
The Scientific Mentality

The psychologist's goal of prediction rests on a simple, but important, assumption: Behavior
must follow a natural order; therefore, it can be predicted.
Research psychologists share the belief that there are specifiable (although not necessarily
simple or obvious) causes for the way people behave and that these causes can be
discovered through research.
• The primary assumption of psychoanalysis is the belief that all people possess
unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories.
• A basic assumption of CBT is that people can learn to identify, evaluate and change
their assumptions and core beliefs, just as they are able to identify and change their
negative automatic thoughts.

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Gathering Empirical Data

There is a specific way of reveal the natural order; by gathering empirical data.
Empirical data (evidence) is primarily obtained through observation or experimentation.
The observations or experiments are known as primary sources.

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Seeking General Principles

Modern scientists go beyond cataloging observations to proposing general principles-laws or

theories--that will explain them.
We could observe endless pieces of data, adding to the content of science, but our
observations would be of limited use without general principles to structure them.
When these principles have the generality to apply to all situations, they are called laws.
Typically, we do not have enough information to state a general law, but we advance
understanding by devising and testing a theory.

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Publicizing Results

When scientists conduct an experiment and analyze the results, the next step is to write up a
report that describes the experiment and the results and submit it for publication in a scientific or
medical journal that is “peer reviewed.”

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The Objectives of
Psychological Science

There are four major objectives of research conducted in psychology: description, prediction,
explanation, and control.

The first objective, description, is the initial step toward understanding any phenomenon.
When we define description in psychological science, we are referring to a systematic and
unbiased account of the observed characteristics of behaviors. Good descriptions allow us greater
knowledge of behaviors because they provide us with information about what the behavior will be
like.

Case Studies and Field Studies

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Prediction, the second objective, refers to the capacity for knowing in advance when certain
behaviors would be expected to occur, to be able to predict them ahead of time because we have
identified other conditions with which the behaviors are linked or associated.
We know that the death of a grandparent, for example, is associated with grief, and we can predict
that a person will feel grief if a grandparent has died recently. Thus, prediction is useful for
psychologists, both researchers and clinicians.

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Explanation, the third objective, goes a step further. When we have explained a
behavior, we also understand what causes it to occur.
Explanation includes knowledge of the conditions that reliably reproduce the occurrence
of a behavior.

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Control, the fourth objective, refers to the application of what has been
learned about behavior.
Once a behavior has been explained through experimentation, it may be
possible to use that knowledge to effect change or improve behavior.

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The Nature of Psychology Experiments:
Variables and Conditions

In order to investigate a psychological issue scientifically, you should comply

with a two-step research process.
• First, you must formulate hypotheses. The kind of hypothesis that
we will consider in this chapter is a formal statement predicting that a
specific change in one thing will produce a specific change in another.
‘The more positive the mood of people, the better their intellectual
performance.’

• The second step consists of testing the hypothesis.

The most commonly used technique for testing these types of
hypothesis is the experiment.

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Experimental Studies
‘The more positive the mood of people, the better their intellectual performance.’

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Independent and dependent variables

Experiments test hypotheses that two things stand in a causal relationship, or,
more specifically, that changes in one thing will produce changes in another
thing.

In an experiment, the things that are expected to change are known as

variables.

So, considering our case, we hypothesize that specific changes in mood will
produce specific changes in performance: that means that both mood and
intellectual performance are variables because they may vary from being very
bad to very good.

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There is, however, an important difference between the two variables in our
experiment.
Let us consider the variable ‘mood’ first. We have exposed two groups of
participants to different stimuli (i.e., participants watch different video
excerpts), so that participants in one group experience a good mood (because
they watch a funny video excerpt), and participants in the other group do not
experience any alteration in their mood (because they watch an emotionally
neutral video excerpt).
That means that we have purposefully varied the levels of the variable ‘mood’.
Or, to put it differently, we have carried out a deliberate manipulation of the
variable ‘mood’ (in order to observe how specific variations in the level of
mood influence intellectual performance).
The variable that is manipulated, and whose changes are supposed to
produce changes on another variable, is called an independent variable
(or IV for short).

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Concerning the variable ‘intellectual performance’, this is not subjected to
manipulation, and therefore its levels are not predetermined by the
experimenter.
On the contrary, the levels of intellectual performance shown by participants in
the experiment are hypothesized to depend on the variations of participants’
mood (the IV).
In fact, we expect that when mood is good intellectual performance will be
high, and when mood is neutral intellectual performance will be average.
Now, the variable whose levels depend on the levels of a prior variable is
defined as a dependent variable (DV for short).

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Levels of the independent variable and conditions of the experiment

Positive Movie;
high mood

Neutral Movie;
Average mood
Situation levels of IV Conditions
Drama Movie;
low mood

….

The condition in which the experimenter alters the normal level of the IV is
commonly defined as the experimental condition, while the baseline
condition is called the control condition.

It is important to specify that not all experiments include a control condition.

In some cases, experiments are based on two experimental conditions, each one
characterized by a different treatment.
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How many IVs and conditions can we have in an experiment?

Although we have designed an experiment with one IV having two conditions,

an experiment can be much more complex, involving more than one IV and
more than two levels of each IV.

Mood Type Hunger Being Bilingual Playing Instrument

Intellectual Ability

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Between-subjects design vs within-subjects design

Note that in our experiment we are proposing to use different participants in

the different conditions of the experiment. That is, 20 individuals are assigned
to the experimental condition (watching funny movie) and 20 different
individuals are assigned to the control condition (watching neutral movie).
This type of experimental design is called independent groups design
(or between-subjects design).

Now, you must be aware that not all experiments require assigning different
people to the different conditions. In some cases it is possible, and even
desirable, to use the same individuals in the different conditions.
This type of design is called repeated measures design (or within-
subjects design).

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True Experiment vs Quasi Experiment

Suppose that we want to investigate how being male or female affects

musical skills. In this case, we would devise a study in which the gender of the
participants constitutes the IV – with two levels of the IV, ‘male’ and ‘female’ –
and musical skills is the DV.
However, by doing so we would not manipulate the levels of the IV, because
we would just use the categories that are already available in reality,
independent from our intervention.
Now, whenever we design a study in which the IV is not truly manipulated, we
are not entitled to define the study as a ‘true’ experiment. In fact, in this
case we would conduct a quasi-experiment.
This is so because the study closely resembles an experimental design, but it
does not involve a real manipulation of the IV. Note that it is more difficult to
infer a causal relationship between the IV and the DV from the results of a
quasi-experiment.

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True Experiment vs Quasi Experiment

Suppose that we want to investigate how being male or female affects

musical skills. In this case, we would devise a study in which the gender of the
participants constitutes the IV – with two levels of the IV, ‘male’ and ‘female’ –
and musical skills is the DV.
However, by doing so we would not manipulate the levels of the IV, because
we would just use the categories that are already available in reality,
independent from our intervention.
Now, whenever we design a study in which the IV is not truly manipulated, we
are not entitled to define the study as a ‘true’ experiment. In fact, in this
case we would conduct a quasi-experiment.
This is so because the study closely resembles an experimental design, but it
does not involve a real manipulation of the IV. Note that it is more difficult to
infer a causal relationship between the IV and the DV from the results of a
quasi-experiment.

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Correlational Studies
Meaningful Conversations Couples Who Meet Online
Linked to Happier People Have Better Marriages

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• THE TWO STATEMENTS are examples of association claims that are
supported by correlational studies.
• Each one is an association claim because it describes a relationship between
variables:
• meaningful conversations and happiness,
• where people met their spouse and marriage quality.
• The verbs used in each case are association verbs.
• In the first claim, the verb is linked, and the second claim’s verb is have.
• Neither statement argues that X causes Y, or X makes Y happen, or X increases
rates of Y.
• (If they did, they would be causal claims, not association claims.)

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• An association claim describes the relationship found between two measured
variables is called as bivariate correlation.
• A bivariate correlation, or bivariate association, is an association that involves
exactly two variables.
• To investigate associations, researchers need to measure the first variable and
the second variable in the same group of people.
• Then they use graphs and simple statistics to describe the type of relationship
the variables have with each other.
• Positive, negative, zero

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• Meaningful Conversations Linked to Happier People
• Sample; Random People
• Variable 1; Meaningful Conversation Rate; Recording
• Variable 2; well-being level; Well-being scales

Sample Meaningful Well-being scores

Conversation Rate
1 80 90
2 76 42
3 30 15
4 45 52
5 92 88
… … …
300 44 51

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• Couples Who Meet Online Have Better Marriages
• Sample; Random Couples
• Variable 1; Where they meet; simply ask
• Variable 2; marital satisfaction; Couples Satisfaction Index

Sample Place they meet Satisfaction score

1 Online 7
2 Online 6.7
3 Offline 5.1
4 Online 5.9
5 Offline 4.6
… … …
300 Offline 4.9

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Next Week Presentation

Your presentation should include

• Your hypothesis
• Define your prediction(s), define your variables
• Quick summary of your literature review
• What’s been done, what are the gaps, your research importance
• Method
• Design, identify your IV(s) and DV(s), sample
• Measurements
• Identify your measurement techniques and attach screenshots of them

• Your presentation should last 6-7 minutes

• Although making presentations in English is recommended, using Turkish is also welcomed

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Thank you
Serkan Adıgüzel
PhD Candidate
[email protected]