2019 AP Psych Research Exam Review

Psychologists generally prefer the experimental method to other research methods bc

• experiments are more likely to support psychologists hypotheses

• experiments can show cause effect relationships

• it is easier to obtain a random sample for an experiment

• experiments are more likely to result in statistically significant findings.

Theoretically, random assignment should eliminate

• sampling error

• need to use statistics

• concerns over validity

• many confounding variables

Charlotte and Tina are lab partners assigned to research who is friendlier, girls or boys. After conversing with their first 10 participants, they find that their friendliness ratings often differ. With which of the following should they be most concerned?

• reliability

• confounding variables

• ethics

• validity

Which of the following hypotheses would be most difficult to test experimentally?

• People exposed to the color red will be more aggressive than those exposed to the color blue.

• Divorce makes children more independent.

• Exposure to violent TV increases aggression

• Studying leads to better grades

Professor Matt wants to design a project studying emotional response to date rape. He advertises for participants in the school newspaper, informs them about the nature of the study, gets their consent, conducts an interview, and debriefs them about the results when the experiment is over. If you were on the IRB, with ethical consideration would you most likely have the most concern about in the study?

• deception

• confounding variables

• confidentiality

• coercion

Some psychologists consider Stanley Milgram's obedience studies to be unethical bc of which ethical consideration?

• improper sampling procedure

• risk of long term harm

• clear scientific purpose

• debriefing

One of the principal differences between the ethical guidelines for human and animal research is

• Animals can be placed at much greater physical risk than human participants can

• Human participants can be deceived for experimental purposes and animals can not.

• Human participants must be chosen much more carefully than animals subjects

• Environmental conditions for human studies must be monitored much more closely than they are in an animal study.

What is the median of the following distribution: 6,2,9,4,7,3

• 4

• 5

• 6

• 7

Emma scores a perfect 100 on a test that everyone else fails. If we were to graph this distribution, it would be

• symmetrical

• positively skewed

• negatively skewed

• straight line

Joe hypothesizes that a new drug he has just invented will enhance mice's memories. He feeds the drug to experimental group and gives the control group a placebo. He then times the mice as they learn to run through a maze. In order to know whether his hypothesis has been supported, Joe would need to use

• inferential statistics

• scatter plott

• descriptive statistics

• histograms