PSYC217 Chapter 2 - Variables and Articles Intro - The first three steps in the process of conducting research are 1. Generating an idea 2. Finding relevant past research 3. Shaping your question into a testable hypothesis. Where do Research Ideas Come From - There are five broad sources of ideas for research: 1. Common assumptions 2. Observation of the world around us 3. Practical problems 4. Scientific theories 5. Past research. Questioning Assumptions - One source of ideas that can be tested is the common assumptions that people have and that they use to explain the world. · E.g., researchers can question whether common-sense or folk-wisdom beliefs held within a culture are true " "Opposites attract" or do "early bird gets the worm"? · Are friends and parents the greatest influence on how children end up? - Asking questions such as these can lead to research on interpersonal relationships, child development, and the role of visual images in learning and memory, respectively. - Conducting research to test common assumptions often forces us to go beyond a common-sense theory of behaviour and examine more closely what occurs in the real world. · Testing widely held assumptions can be valuable because these notions don't always turn out to be correct. Research might also show that the real world is much more complicated than our assumptions would have us believe. · E.g., despite the belief that 'opposites attract', decades of research have shown people tend to be attracted to those like themselves. Observation of the World - Making careful observations of what happens around us can lead us to develop intuitions about the world. - Rather than accept intuitions unthinkingly, one must keep a scientifically skeptical mindset pushing intuitions to fuel research ideas. · E.g., setting aside a certain amount of time to complete a project, only to find it takes much longer than anticipated > having this experience could inspire future research on how and why people underestimate the time it takes to complete tasks. - Taking a scientific approach to an everyday problem can lead to new discoveries with useful applications.
- Observing the world can help people take advantage of serendipity, or fortunate coincidence, to generate research ideas. - Ivan Pavlov is best known for discovering what is called classical conditioning > pairing a neutral stimulus (a tone) with an unconditioned stimulus (food) to produce a reflex response (salivation), so that the neutral stimulus presented alone will produce the response. " Pavlov did not set out to discover classical conditioning. " Instead, he was studying the digestive system in dogs -> one of his students noticed the salvation, leading Pavlov to study stimulus and response ( - Accidental discoveries aren't purely accidental > they are far more likely when you approach the world with curiosity and an inquisitive eye. Practical Problems - The purpose of applied research is to address practical problems directly; the very existence of real-world problems can trigger an idea for a research project. " Groups