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What are the disadvantages of self-report measures?
Some of the disadvantages of self-report measures are as follows: People may lie or skew their answers to make themselves look better. For example, people tend to report higher happiness scores when...
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What are the disadvantages of qualitative research?
Some of the disadvantages of qualitative research include: It is more difficult to determine the validity and reliability of linguistic data It is harder to determine the extent of influence that the...
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What is measurement?
Measurement is one of those things that everybody knows but is hard to describe. And you might think you might not need to know this, but a little thinking helps you to see all forms of measurement as...
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What is an independent variable?
An independant variable in an experimental research design is one that is manipulated by the investigator. They manipulate this variable while holding others constant, to see if this has any effect on...
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What is a dependent variable?
A dependent variable is the thing that researchers are measuring in an experimental design, their outcome or target variable. For example, if I want to research the effect of facial symmetry on facial...
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What is instrument error?
Instrument error is incorrect or inaccurate error due to a malfunctioning piece of equipment. For example, you’re measuring reaction time but your recording device is faulty, leading to misleading...
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What are the assumptions of a t test?
Think you can just run a t test on any old set of data? Well think again my friend! The suitability of a t test depends on certain requirements being met. These requirements of a t test are often...
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What is an independent sample in a t test?
In t test parlance, as with other statistical procedures that test for differences between groups of data, an independent sample is one that is not connected or correlated with the one it is being...
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What are the weaknesses of p values/statistical significance testing?
Statistical significance testing — that is, determining the probabiliy of obtaining the same or greater results of any statistical test by chance assuming the null hypothesis to be correct — is pretty...
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How to run a t test in SPSS
These instructions assume you’re running an independent samples t test; that is, you’re studying two independent groups (e.g., two different sets of people). 1) Firstly, you need to make sure your...
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Is porn bad for you?
Gary Wilson of YourBrainOnPorn.com believes that it is. The empirical evidence for this is getting there but still somewhat thin. There’s a hilarious reason for that — researchers can’t find enough men...
View Article6 ways that the influence of Facebook has changed our lives
I’m writing this partly for posterity — maybe in 10 years back when we’re living our entire lives in the Facebook Virtual Reality Matrix, we’ll look back and say “Remember when it was just a social...
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Psychic powers, the collective consciousness and publication bias (and Ben...
Ben Goldacre’s second TED talk was published this month, and it’s on similar lines to the first (you can find his previous one here). He’s on top form and the whole thing is great, but I want to...
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How to improve social anxiety by training your attention
In 2009 Brad Schmidt and colleagues published a clever treatment for social anxiety disorder. Before I describe it, a short “spoiler” alert… If, as i suspect, you are reading this looking for a...
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The problem with the gaming/cognitive functioning link
As someone who spent countless hours in his youth playing Doom, Street Fighter II and other effective ways of making time speed up, I really want the link between computer gaming and enhanced cognitive...
View ArticleOpinions on free will by Steven Pinker, Michio Kaku, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett,...
In the videos below, six academics give their views on the tricky concept of free will. It seems hard to reconcile the materialist view of reality with the idea of free will, since anything that...
View ArticleDaphne Bavelier gives a nice overview of the cognitive benefits of video games
If you’re familiar with the research on the cognitive benefits of video games, you can probably skip this one. If not, here’s a good way for you to spend the next 18 minutes, and maybe break a few...
View ArticleAlan Wallace on scientific dogmatism and materialism
Alan Wallace, a Buddhist and writer on consciousness and meditation, talks about what he sees as the dogmatism and idolatry of the current, materialistic scientific paradigm. While there are some...
View ArticleRichard Feynman on thinking processes.
Feynman said that there are no miracle people, and anyone can do what he did if they put their mind to it (my thoughts here). Yet there’s one domain in which Feynman clearly had a natural gift in —...
View ArticleIs obesity actually a marker for an underlying condition?
There’s a swing in opinion happening. The current view of obesity is that it’s an effect of overeating. Obese people are largely considered to be at fault for their condition — if they’d only choose...
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