Chapter 1: Research in the real world
Ways that we know what we know and their problems
Tradition
What we’ve been told, what we’ve been socialized to believe
(ex) mom says you need to brush your teeth or else you’ll get cavities pros: you don’t have to do the experiment yourself; very efficient cons: you don’t think abt doing it yourself; we never question it so it becomes mindless of the world; constrained, tunnel-vision
Authorities
individuals who have the right to direct others
(ex) police, professors, doctors, judges, etc pros: efficient; rely upon them b/c they are accurate sources of info cons: they don’t know everything; knowledge may change over time
Personal Experience we are our own individual social psychologists …show more content…

continuous/ordered continuous/ordered -- variables that range in value from more or less of a variable (ex) driving skills, height, age, income, weight nominal/categorical -- variable whose attributes are categorical (not ordered, simple diff)
(ex) types of cars, eye color, race, gender
Hypothesis construction a stated relationship between two variables must be falsifiable stating causal relationships should indicate direction of causality
Types of relationships (associations, causal [pos, neg]) simple associations -- there is an association between x and y negative -- as variable x increases, variable y decreases positive -- as variable x increases, variable y increases

Connecting research and theory: deductive and inductive has to do with theory deductive model -- research is used to test theories most common; loosely follows the scientific method theory before data begins with a sometimes vague or general question, which is subjected to a process of specification, resulting in hypotheses that can be tested through empirical observations inductive model -- theories are developed from analysis of data data before theory observe aspects of social life and seek to discover patterns that may point to relatively universal principles idiographic and. nomothetic types of explanations