PSY 230- Class 2

1. PSYC 230: Evidence vs.
Beliefs

2. Overview
• Evidence vs. Beliefs
• Understanding Bias
• Identifying Trustworthy Sources
• Reading Scientific Sources

3. How many people
have seen
something like
this go viral?
Contagion effect
(Piedrahita et al.,
2018)

4. This also happens with scientific
“facts”…

5. Myths About Psychology,
Debunked

9. Research & Evidence
• Last class we talked about different TYPES of research:
• Descriptive/Correlational research provide lots of helpful evidence
• Experiments provide the strongest evidence!
• Comparison groups
• Controlling for confounds

10. Research & Evidence – Comparison Groups
• Why do we need comparison groups?
• You might also hear the term “control groups”.
• Take this example:
• A psychology professor decided to change their method of teaching
for their Advanced Biopsychology course. At the end of the semester,
the class average is a 75 (out of 100!!).
• Did the professor’s teaching method help the students?

11. Research & Evidence – Comparison Groups
• How about this one?:
• You take a quiz and earn a 90 out of 100.
• Did you do well? No

12. Without comparison groups, we
can’t answer these questions!

13. Research & Evidence – Comparison Groups
• A psychology professor decided to change their method of teaching
for their Advanced Biopsychology course. At the end of the semester,
the class average is a 75 (out of 100!!).

14. Research & Evidence – Comparison Groups
• How about this one?:
• You take a quiz and earn a 90 out of 100.

15. Research & Evidence - Confounds
• Experimental research helps us compare groups based on specific
variables
• Ex: College Freshman vs. College Seniors
• Ex: Republicans vs. Democrats vs. Independents
• Ex: People feeling envious vs. Control group
- keeping the groups as similar as possible helps avoid confounds

16. Why is it so difficult to avoid false
“facts” in the sciences?

17. Overview
• Evidence vs. Beliefs
• Understanding Bias
• Identifying Trustworthy Sources
• Reading Scientific Sources

18. Understanding Bias - Heuristics
• Heuristics are mental shortcuts
• We use them without even knowing it
• There are MANY, MANY that we use, but we will focus on:
• Availability heuristic
• Confirmation bias/Backfire effect
• Bias blind spot
• Experimenter bias

19. Understanding Bias
• Availability heuristic (Kahneman and Tversky, 1973)
• We assume that something is correct/happens more frequently if it comes to
mind more easily

20. Understanding Bias
• Airline accidents  tons of media coverage!
• Actual odds: 1 in 11 million
• Shark attack  tons of media coverage!
• Actual odds: 1 in 11.1 million (1 in 264.1 million odds of dying from one)
• Car accidents  no media coverage, unless it’s reaaaallly bad
• Actual odds: 1 in 103
• Heart disease  no media coverage of individual cases, because
there are millions
• Actual odds: 1 in 6

21. Understanding Bias
• Confirmation bias
- More likely to believe something that aligns with what we already
believe
- Less likely to believe or even pay attention to things that go against our
beliefs
Backfire effect--- when you try to provide someone with evidence that
goes against what they believe, and it makes their beliefs stronger
- especially true for topics that trigger emotions like political issues

22. Understanding Bias
• Bias blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002)
• Believing that you are less susceptible to bias because you know
about bias
• We are better able to identify bias in others than in ourselves

23. Understanding Bias
• Experimenter bias
• We will discuss this more in-depth when we discuss experiments
For now, think of it as what happens if a researcher experiences conformation
bias
• Researcher may be unconsciously looking for a particular result
• May factor into ho their hypotheses are designed

24. Overview
• Evidence vs. Beliefs
• Understanding Bias
• Identifying Trustworthy Sources
• Reading Scientific Sources

25. Who Do We Trust?
• Biases play a role here!
• We have a tendency to:

26. Who Do We Trust?
• We have a tendency to:

27. Who Do We Trust?
• We have a tendency to: prefer a quick rundown rather than a detailed
explanation
• Ex: few second ad compared to a journal article

28. Who Do We Trust?
Scientific sources tend to be detailed and written by people we are
unfamiliar with

29. Trustworthy Sources
• Come from experts/authorities in their field
• Offer evidence to back up claims not just anecdotes
• Cite other trusted sources
• How journal articles are formatted
• Why they follow this format
• How to reference and cite these
• How to critically review media articles that are based on research

30. Overview
• Evidence vs. Beliefs
• Understanding Bias
• Identifying Trustworthy Sources
• Reading Scientific Sources

31. Psychology Journal Articles
• Typically consist of 7 parts:
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion/Conclusion
• References
• Appendix

32. Psychology Journal Articles
• Abstract – a summary (usually less than 250 words) of your research
study/studies
• Found at the beginning of the article
• Skimming offers a quick way to determine if the article is what you
are looking for

33. Psychology Journal Articles
• Introduction – contains background information
• Relevant sources are cited throughout this section
• Ex: If I were describing an article I wrote last year, I would cite it like this at the
end of a sentence  (Behler, 2018).
• First section of the body of the article
• Explains: what is being tested, why it is important to test the variables

34. Psychology Journal Articles
• Method – details the steps of the study
• Should also include info about:
• 1) Participants
• Who were they? (race, gender, age)
• How many were there? (sample size (N))
• How were they recruited

35. Psychology Journal Articles
• Method – details the steps of the study
• Should also include info about:
• 2) Procedure – the steps taken in the study
• In what order did you complete the steps?
• What were participants the study was about?
• What instructions were participants given?

36. Psychology Journal Articles
• Method – details the steps of the study
• Should also include info about:
• 3) Materials/Apparatus - What was used to assess
participants?
• Survey items
• Computer games or tasks
• Physiological equipment (EEG machines)

37. Psychology Journal Articles
• Results – contains info on the
findings of the study
• Includes detailed description of which
statistical tests were run
• Findings are presented as:
• Statistical analyses
• Tables, graphs, figures

38. Psychology Journal Articles
• Discussion – summarizes the findings of the study

39. Psychology Journal Articles
• Remember those references mentioned earlier?
• Special section at the end of the article
• Must be in APA format
• American Psychological Association  They make the rules!
• A helpful guide found here: APA Formatting Guide
• Also in your textbook (towards the back)

40. Psychology Journal Articles
• Green, J. D., Sedikides, C., Van Tongeren, D. R., Behler, A., & Barber, J. R.
(2017). Self-enhancement, righteous anger, and moral grandiosity.
Self and Identity, 18(2), 201-216.
• Author names are not listed alphabetically for a reason. They are listed based on the amount
a person contributed to the project.
• Each line of every reference after the first is indented.
• General Format of an APA style journal article reference:
• Last name, First Initial. (YEAR). Title of the article. Title of the Journal Where it is
Published, Volume # (Issue #), Page #’s.

41. Psychology Journal Articles
• Note: The example on the previous slide is for research journal
articles ONLY. When citing other types of sources, refer to the APA
style guide linked on the previous slide.
• Warning: Using Google for citations can be tricky and I recommend
you avoid it until you learn how to do it on your own.
• There are several that are missing key pieces of information or are outdated
(i.e., written using a previous version of APA format).
• If you are unfamiliar with APA format, you will likely miss these errors!

42. Psychology Journal Articles
• One more section…the Appendix (or Appendices if more than one)
• Includes full version of any materials described in the article

43. Take Home Messages:
• Psychology findings can be easily misinterpreted if we are not careful
• It is important to understand your biases as a research producer AND
consumer
• Finding trusted sources is key to being a good research consumer
• Empirical journal articles follow a specific format (similar in most
scientific fields)