Questions tagged [experimental-psychology]
For questions about the application of specific experimental methods to study psychology.
249
questions
2
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0answers
25 views
Is there evidence to support the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The well known Dunning-Kruger effect is oft cited as a general explanation for why people with limited expertise overestimate their abilities. Other than the initial research that described this ...
2
votes
1answer
506 views
Has the Open-Source Psychometrics Project been well received by the community?
I am not a psychologist/psychology student, but I've just recently discovered the Open-Source Psychometrics Project, and I think it's great.
To my untrained eyes, it seems like they have solid ...
1
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0answers
14 views
How does self-observation influence performance?
Assuming that the performance in performing a motor or mental task can be quantitatively measured (e.g. by measuring its duration, efficiency, and quality of the outcome) I wonder if there have been ...
5
votes
1answer
82 views
Terror management theory: Is this a valid conclusion based on the conducted experiment?
I am currently reading the book ‘The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life’. I have to say that I am a bit skeptical about many of the statements posed, and I’m trying to identify why that is,...
0
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0answers
11 views
Best/Low Budget Electrocardiogram For a Study
I am conducting a study. I need a low budget (within 70$) ECG that 1. monitors 2. records heartbeats and most importantly I want to be able to 3. export recorded data statistical analysis in SPSS.
I ...
0
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0answers
16 views
Differences in reaction time onsets of vocal and manual responses
I'm currently working on a study and incidentally found that reaction timings were slower for vocal responses compared to manual responses (i.e. 600ms for the manual response vs. 700ms for the vocal ...
1
vote
0answers
26 views
Becoming an expert with accumulative hours of practice much less than the average expert?
Anders Ericsson's work is famous for creating the idea of "deliberate practice" and its creation of experts, but Anders also talks about how long hours are inevitable in becoming an expert. Let's ...
1
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0answers
16 views
Are there studies in psychology on how psychology researchers design experiments?
For example, give subjects a research topic, and observe how they conduct psychology experiments, in order to study the psychology of those who are asked to study psychology.
1
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0answers
10 views
How can I properly match subjects in my sample based on behavioral performance?
I have brain and behavioral data for which I am comparing two groups- younger and older adults. I would like to select a subset from the younger and older group that are matched for behavioral ...
2
votes
2answers
44 views
What important psychological results would not have been discovered without experiments on non-human animals?
Many psychological experiments involve shocking animals, playing loud sounds near them, depriving them of social contact, etc. For example, Martin Seligman's studies of learned helplessness in dogs ...
2
votes
2answers
127 views
Effects of subliminal messaging
From what I've read up thus far, subliminal messages do have some sort of 'influence' over our decisions or atleast our thought process, to some extent. To what extent if any is the human mind or ...
0
votes
0answers
16 views
Measuring originality of a person on a sentence completion task
I conducted an experiment where I had 20 people complete 100 sentences with only one word. They had to come up with their completion independently of others and could give any answer they thought was ...
2
votes
2answers
236 views
What is the difference between “target” and “foil” in experimental design?
What is the difference between
"target"
and
"foil"
in experimental design in psychology? And how is a foil different from a distractor?
1
vote
0answers
56 views
Are there any psychological studies of thirst following food that account for SFO-Nos1 activity?
Some studies up to 2015 surprising found that salty vs. non-salty food doesn't make much difference to thirst. E.g. a 2015 study found that:
However, according to Prof. Leshem, despite our gut ...
2
votes
1answer
41 views
In operant conditioning, how do you get the subject to “pull the lever” for the first time?
We're taught early on that the rat is placed within the following setup.
In that diagram, there are no potential distractions for the rat. There's only a lever.
1) Does the rat simply 'discover' the ...
2
votes
1answer
25 views
Open data for behavioral psychology experiment?
I have a model I'd like to compare to the Drift Diffusion model, which is commonly used to model response times and error rates in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. Lots of publications use the ...
1
vote
0answers
18 views
Looking for a paper: Fear response in a computer generated VR environment
I am writing a paper on why people ascribe certain qualities to certain places. I seem to recall an experiment where the subjects used a virtual reality system to navigate a completely fictional ...
0
votes
1answer
10 views
What is the difference between experience and knowledge and how could we make use of that in machine learning and AI applications?
Let's suppose that i am a blind person whom never had any experience with sight before. I will also suppose that i have started some courses to learn about the eyes and the way it function with ...
1
vote
0answers
28 views
Is there any empirical support to “chemical imbalance theory” for mental illness?
Has it been proved by measurement of chemicals in the brain that psychiatric disorders have either their origin or continuance due to chemical imbalance in the brain? I saw the documentary Diagnostic &...
3
votes
0answers
57 views
Is there any evidence that the Dunning-Kruger Effect applies to self-appraisals of soundness or reasonableness of judgement?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the peculiar phenomenon wherein those with the lowest ability also have impaired metacognition, resulting in a peculiar overestimation of their ability e.g. stupid person ...
1
vote
0answers
279 views
Has the John Calhoun's “Mouse Utopia experiment” been replicated? If so where, if no, why?
Here is a YouTube video summarizing his experiment.
Over a number of years, the ethologist John B. Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on Norway rats (in 1958–1962) and mice (in 1968–1972)....
1
vote
1answer
111 views
How do psychologists measure malicious behaviour?
How do psychologists measure malicious behaviour in humans? Is there a definitive definition of what constitutes malicious behaviour? Are there varying scales of malicious behaviour? Is it possible do ...
2
votes
0answers
66 views
Are all personalities divisive?
Most people like the smell of oranges. You might say that the distribution of reactions to the smell of oranges leans to the right.
Most people dislike the smell of sewage. You might say that the ...
2
votes
0answers
53 views
How many moving objects can a person count (on average)?
I wonder if experiments in perceptual or cognitive psychology have been performed following these considerations:
Standard experiment: Present small numbers of simple items to a test subject, for the ...
1
vote
1answer
15 views
What speaker is commonly used for low-latency audio stimulation
We need to purchase a new speaker for audio ERP study, so the sound should be played in lowest possible latency with lowest possible jitter. I have seen quite a few suggestion on the OS/driver/sound ...
1
vote
0answers
29 views
How to encourage people to experiment/try new things?
In a New York Times op-ed, Sendhil Mullainathan (professor of economics at Harvard) laments that it is difficult to get people to try new things or experiment. He gives himself as an example, saying ...
-1
votes
1answer
44 views
Is there medical term for depression?
I have heard of many kind of depresssions. Depression is nothing but not letting our feelings outspoken . If we dont why it is said that the feelings stay inside and affect. Is it a solid particle ...
1
vote
1answer
27 views
When did the old term experimental reagent become experimental subject?
I've read a paper on an experiment called "The Feeling of Being Stared at", which investigates a concept which on Wikipedia is called the psychic staring effect. It was first investigated by ...
1
vote
1answer
31 views
How can two-way dependencies in factorial designs be interpreted?
Scenario: Given there are results from two factorial experiments that show a two-way dependency between two variables A and B.
Details: In the first experiment A is the independent variable with two ...
2
votes
1answer
43 views
What is an empirical proof that two concepts are not independent/orthogonal?
Given there are two psychological concepts A and B that are considered to be independent/orthogonal.
Would the following empirical results proof the opposite? If not why?
In the first experiment A ...
3
votes
1answer
129 views
Finding largest level of imperceptible noise in an image
Suppose that we want to find the "largest level" of a random noise that can safely be added to an image such that the resultant noisy image cannot be distinguishable from the original noise-free image....
0
votes
2answers
152 views
how to statistically analyse accuracy data (psycholinguistics)
My experiment is a naming task, in which participants name pictures and their vocal responses are recorded and the onset of vocalization. The data I am dealing with are reaction times in ms and ...
4
votes
1answer
95 views
What pro- or anti-environmental behaviors are feasible to measure objectively rather than with self-report?
One of the central challenges in understanding pro-environmental behavior is measurement. Currently, most researchers (including myself) lean on self-report of behavior.
I'm looking for a brainstorm. ...
-1
votes
1answer
101 views
How to use QUEST in a discrimination task
Similar to the question "How to use a QUEST staircase in 2-AFC”. I also have a question about using QUEST. In fact, I too tried to find an answer in
Psychophysics: A Practical Introduction by Kingdom ...
1
vote
1answer
52 views
Does psychology lose it's validity when the subject is versed in psychology?
Quite often, I find myself conforming to typical psychological principals, and exhibiting predictable behavior based on external stimuli. However, upon better research of the psychology behind past ...
3
votes
0answers
51 views
What would be areas of ethical or safety concerns with a smartphone app interacting with people sleeping?
The BBC News article Hi-tech dreamcatcher defeats sleep amnesia mentions a recent talk by Adam Haar Horowitz and then describes some limited tests of an apparatus called Dormio at the MIT media lab, ...
3
votes
1answer
96 views
Uses of the Brief Anxiety Scale
I am currently completing my undergraduate research thesis on self-affirmations measured with anxiety. I am trying to see if the self-affirmation task reduces anxiety after. I found the Brief Anxiety ...
0
votes
1answer
34 views
Cognition of people born by C-section vs born ordinarily?
Has there been any research comparing the cognition of people born via C-section to people born vaginally?
During a vaginal birth, the baby's head is pressured and deforms somewhat in order to make ...
4
votes
1answer
81 views
Which experimental design is this? Factorial vs within groups
I have two independent variables (age and gender) and one dependent variable (the results of a questionnaire using a Likert scale).
I'm trying to see whether age and/or gender have an effect on the ...
4
votes
2answers
102 views
Reason for Inter-stimulus-Interval in psychology studies
In many of the studies that I have read or participated in, I have seen that they show a blank screen between two stimuli. For example, in a study by Cohen et al. (2017), a training paradigm was used ...
4
votes
1answer
65 views
Experiments demonstrating irreligious people spontaneously developing superstitious rituals?
I saw a video in which four adults were led into a room with a digital counter on the wall (see below), and a collection of random objects on the floor: small boxes, hand tools, stuffed animals, ...
3
votes
1answer
179 views
In general, how does one resolve two competing theories in Psychology?
In looking at a post on twitter from a somewhat well-known psychologist Tal Yarkoni, he references a paper which lists multiple sets of competing theories in Psychology that have not been resolved.
...
1
vote
1answer
61 views
Name of sound-induced-hunger condition
When I was a student I used to notice that towards supper time, whenever I would go from my quiet study space to a place where people were talking, it people started to tell in my quiet space, i would ...
4
votes
1answer
119 views
What is a “norming experiment”?
I am a non-psychologist reading some papers from psychology. I keep seeing the term "norming experiment" (e.g. "Normative Representation of Objects: Evidence for an Ecological Bias in Object ...
2
votes
1answer
115 views
Is it recommendable to put participants in different conditions across trials?
In a pilot study we want to give participants 3 different problems. Those come in two versions, one (supposedly) easier than the other. Participants will randomly be assigned one version of the ...
5
votes
3answers
103 views
Should I look at the data of an experiment before the dataset is complete?
For a research internship I am running psychological experiments online. As it takes a while until the experiment is done (meaning that enough people participated, so that a sufficient sample size is ...
1
vote
0answers
14 views
Quasi-experiment: If I change some procedures from my pilot experiment, can I still compare post-intervention results to the pilot results?
I am running a quasi-experiment with English proficiency as a factor (native speakers=9, ESL speakers=10)
I just completed a pilot and fully plan to conduct the intervention as closely to the pilot's ...
3
votes
0answers
13 views
Is there research that estimates when people think something supposedly random is rigged?
Let’s say you flip a coin three thousand times. If it comes up heads two thousand times, I think it’s safe to say that people will assume this is a rigged coin in spite of the fact that each outcome ...
2
votes
0answers
34 views
saccadic countermanding task
The saccadic countermanding task is used to measure response inhibition (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698999000115).
It is basically the stop-signal task that makes use of ...
6
votes
2answers
652 views
How does this experiment prove a causal relation between coherence and good feelings?
I'm reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and I came across the following text:
The Remote Association Test has more to tell us about the link between cognitive ease and positive ...
