Welcome to Unit 8! Enjoy chatting and we’ll begin class at the top of the hour!

Welcome to Unit 8!

Enjoy chatting and we’ll begin class at the top of the hour!

What’s your opinion?

What do you think: Do the needs of the masses outweigh the needs of a few or the individual?

How you answer could help determine your position when it comes to researching children and/or adolescents!

Think about this. A terrorist with a hidden nuclear weapon is going to detonate it in a city of 13,000,000 people. Would it be ethical to get the information from him in anyway possible?

If your child could save the rest of th world, but he/she had to die, what would you do?

THERE’S NO RIGHT ANSWER!

Is it ethical to sacrifice some people so more can be saved?

Would you allow this?

In 1796, English Doctor E. Jenner performed an experiment on a child. He noticed that milk-maids did not get small pox, a wide-spread, deadly disease. He theorized that the milk-maids obtained immunity via being infected with cow pox, a virus similar to small pox.

To test his theory, Jenner inoculated an 8 year old boy with the cow pox virus. He repeated this six weeks later, this time with live small pox virus. Phipps, the boy did not show any symptoms. However, had the doctor been wrong, the boy could have died. The doctor used the child as a guinea-pig in order to find a vaccine and protect billions of others. Was Dr. Jenner ethically correct to have performed this experiment?

The Ethics of Experimenting on People

Over the years, ideas have changed.Many people subscribe to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Should we subscribe to the Golden Rule if we can stop a terrible act from happening?

Are you guys familiar with the following: Nazi doctors performing brutal experiments on people to see how much a human could endure?

The Tuskegee Study

Stanley Milgram’s Electric Shock Experiments

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment

What makes people so difficult to study?

1) Complexity: Psychologists study the single most complex object in the known universe. No galaxy, particle, molecule, or machine is as complicated as the human brain.2) Variability: In almost all the ways that matter, one E. coli bacterium is pretty much like another. But people are as varied as their fingerprints. No two individuals ever do, say, think, or feel exactly the same thing under exactly the same circumstances,

3) Reactivity: People often think, feel, and act one way when they are being observed and a different way when they are not. When people know they are being studied, they don’t always behave as they otherwise would.

What are some of the advantages of using children in research?

Can you think of 5?

What are some of the disadvantages of using children in research?

Can you think of 5?

Why is the Scientific Method important?

It is objective, which means that the person doing the research is unbiased and honestly looking for answers.

It requires evidence. This can be in the form of experiments or using other people’s research.

It is transparent, which means that the data collected is available for other people to double check. Nothing should be hidden.

It is self-correcting, which means when other people check the data, they can find and correct the errors. This makes the scientific method reliable.

Observing behaviors in order to understand relationships in behavior.

Defining the Research Problem: What behaviors are being observed and why?

Proposing a Hypothesis: Based on what has been observed, offering an explanation (hypothesis or “best guess”).

Conducting Research: Gathering evidence and test the hypothesis.

Publishing Results: So that we can read the results and duplicate the research to see if it is reliable.

Formulating a theory that summarizes the existing data and predicts future behavior.

Case Study

Individuals sometimes do remarkable things that deserve close study, and when psychologists study them closely, they are using the case method, which is a method of gathering scientific knowledge by studying a single individual.

For example, the physician Oliver Sacks described his observations of a brain-damaged patient in a book titled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Naturalistic Observation

Studies the behaviors of humans and animals in natural settings.

Non-experimental

Used in the “field”

Researcher does not interfere with the subjects in any way – just observes them and record observations.

Any potential problems?

Correlational Research

Takes measurements to discover the relationship between two events that appear to be connected.

Non-experimental

Descriptive

Mathematical technique for summarizing data

In Correlational research, when r = 1, the relationship between the variables is called a perfect positive correlation.

That means that every time the value of one variable increases by a certain amount, the value of the second variable also increases by a certain amount, and this happens without exception.

When r = -1, it’s a perfect negative correlation, and when it’s r = o, there is no relationship at all.

Survey Research

Asks questions about human behavior, thoughts, and attitudes.

Non-experimental

Descriptive

Does not involve direct observation

Uses interviews or questionnaires to collect data

People answering may or may not tell the truth.

Any Potential problems?

Scientific Terms

EMPIRICISM Originally a Greek school of medicine that stressed the importance of observation, and now generally used to describe any attempt to acquire knowledge by observing objects or events.

METHOD A set of rules and techniques

for observation that allow researchers

to avoid the illusions, mistakes, and

erroneous conclusions that simple

observation can produce.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITION: A description of an abstract property in terms of a concrete condition that can be measured. Very important in behaviorism!

What’s the best type of research?

IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO MEASURE!

What is measurement?

Measurement is a scientific means of observation that involves defining an abstract property in terms of some concrete condition, called an operational definition, and then constructing a device, or a measure, that can detect the conditions that the operational definition specifies.

Any Questions?