Overview of Behavioral Research

 Why won’t my dog mind me?  Why is my roommate always so mad at me?  Does adderall really people with ADD?  AND…..Would a little bit of that help me?  For the Philosophical…  Why are people prejudiced?  What causes people to walk by an accident and not render aid?  Was Hitler unusual?  What am I truly capable of?

People have had questions about the behavior of others people, and animals in their environment for as long as we have recorded history.

Fact or Fiction???

 How do we apply Science to living creatures?  How can we scientifically answer a question about behavior?  Doesn’t behavior change in different situations?  Aren’t some of those experiments performed by Evil Geniuses? And maybe they aren’t exactly legal?

 Comparison of an experimental group and a Control group.  Randomly assign participants to groups Insure your two groups are equal  Control everything but what you are interested in. I want to know if Adderall helps people not diagnosed with ADD to concentrate.  Introduce the variable of interest Give half of the people who are not diagnosed with ADD some Adderall and give the other people a placebo Independent variable: Adderall  Have a consistent way to measure the effects of the variable. Give them all a math test Dependent Variable: Math test  Analyze results Statistically compare the results between the two groups  Repeat……..

 What if I want to look at whether or not children raised in a household with same sex parents were more likely to be in a homosexual relationship?  Or………Are political science majors smarter than psychology majors?  Can I do that?

 The difference between a “relationship” and a cause……  Some research, which is just as valuable, can tell us if some events (variables) are “related”, but they cannot say that one causes the other.  Does beer drinking cause bad grades, or is there a relationship between the amount of beer one drinks and one’s grade in a classroom.  This is called correlational research: usually conducted when participants cannot be randomly assigned…….

 Correlation shows a relationship between variables  but not which came first.  True Experiment shows a temporal relationship between the IV and DV.  In this class, we will learn about both, but the writing assignment will involve a true experiment.  So….ideas??????