1. Overview of Behavioral Research

2.  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?

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

4. Fact or Fiction???

5.  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?

6.  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……..

7.  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?

8.  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…….

9.  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??????