Practice questions

On a side note, my freshmen's conclusion that I would win on Cash Cab is based on an illusory correlation: they only take into account the questions I told them I know the answer to (confirming evidence) and ignore the fact that I've told them I definitely don't get all the questions right (disconfirming evidence). If they hypothesized that I know all the answers and then looked only for instances in which I answered correctly, then they would be guilty of confirmation bias, as we noted yesterday. Since, in silly freshman fashion, they continue to believe that I'm some kind of quiz show genius when I've told them repeatedly that I'm not, they are experiencing belief perseverance (chapter 10).

Short Answer questions for chapters 1 & 3:

Chapter 1: If our class was to conduct an experiment to analyze the impact of school start times on student performance, how might the following terms apply?
· Operational definition
· Independent variable
· Dependent variable
· Control condition
· Median
· Statistical significance
· Hindsight bias


Chapter 3: In an attempt to study the impact of nature and nurture on human behavior, two identical twin girls, Mindy and Mandy, are raised apart: one in London, and the other in Beijing. How might the following terms apply in this case?
· Heritability
· Norms
· Evolutionary psychology
· Environment
· Interaction
· Gender role
· Gender schema theory

Chapter 1 also (though the last term is from ch. 2): In a drug study to evaluate the effectiveness of a new Parkinson’s drug, how might the following terms apply?
· Operational definition
· Placebo effect
· Double-blind procedure
· Control group
· Dopamine
· Cerebellum