Research Methods

Psychology is a science.

Like all scientists psychologists use the scientific method.

38 people watched and did nothing

Two psychologists read about the murder of Kitty Genovse and thought that the behaviour of the witnesses was caused by the number of people who heard her screams and saw her murder.

To test this hypothesis they designed and conducted an experiment.

One group of participants sat alone in a room as smoke was pumped into a room.

A second group of participants sat in a room with other people as smoke was pumped into the

room.

How long it took the participants to get up and do something about the smoke was timed.

The time for all the participants to get up and do something in each group was compared.

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The Smoke Filled Room Study

What is the Independent Variable (IV)?

What is the Aim of the experiment?

What is the Dependent Variable (DV)?

What did the psychologists conclude?

Attica Prison

Prison riots at Attica

A psychologist called Phillip Zimbardo observed the riots and thought the riots were caused by

the situation: the prison environment.

He developed a hypothesis: the role of prisoner and prison guard influenced the behaviour of the people in the prison and caused them to behave

aggressively.

Zimbardo conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

What is the Aim of the experiment?

What is the Independent Variable (IV)?

What is the Dependent Variable (DV)?

What did the psychologists conclude?

Aims

Hypothesis

Independent Variable (IV)

Dependent Variable (DV)

Read the handout ‘Doing Psychological Research’

Psychologists design and conduct experiments to find out what causes the behaviour they are

interested in.

There are three different ways that psychologists can conduct an experiment.

Each way is called a ‘design’.

There is the experimental method and specific experimental designs.

The smoke filled room experiment divided the participants into two groups.

The experiment on the effect of noise on memory divided the participants into two groups.

The experiment on the effect of chewing gum on memory divided the participants into two groups.

This type of experiment is known as an ‘Independent Groups design’.

The images below are all cars but each car has a different design

Read the handout ‘Methods and Techniques’