Short Answer
For each short-answer question, be sure to fully answer what the question asks, and answer in complete sentences if possible.
1. What is psychology, and what is the basis for all perspectives of psychology? (5 points)

2. What can an experiment prove that an observational study cannot? Give a reason why this is true. (5 points)

3. For each item in the list below, name which perspective in psychology is most closely related to the question. (10 points total, 2 points per item)
i. How can hatred between different groups of people be reduced?

ii. How can people change their thinking and behaviors to have better relationships?

iii. What do people need in order to be who they most want to be?

iv. Does exercise improve memory?

v. Do early interactions with parents affect people’s ability to learn language?

Application and Critical Thinking
For these questions, answer all parts of the question completely. Use complete sentences.
4. Imagine that you are conducting an observational study to see if getting less sleep correlates with more or less happiness during the day. You use a group of 10 close friends as subjects for the study. You design a Web-based application that allows volunteers to track the amount of sleep they get each night and to rate their happiness three times during the day. Your friends are interested in your study and want to see it succeed, so they are willing to answer all survey questions when they are supposed to answer them. You find a strong positive correlation between the hours of sleep and self-reported happiness.
i. Name one example of bias that might be at work. Explain how this hidden variable could affect the results. (5 points)

ii. Does the study prove that getting more hours of sleep will make people happier? What principle of science proves your answer, and what is one reason why this principle is true? (5 points)

iii. Imagine a scatterplot of the data from this study, showing hours of sleep across the bottom (0 – 10), and happiness scores on the right (0 – 10).
Draw and label two scatterplots, one that shows a weak positive correlation and one that shows a strong positive correlation. Use 10 data points in each of your plots. (5 points)

5. Imagine that you are conducting an experiment to prove that the correlation in the previous question is a causal relationship. You recruit 10 friends, and randomly assign them to two groups: One group will keep their normal schedule and the other group will be excused from their morning class so that they can sleep an extra hour in the morning. Using the same Web application, you ask the subjects to report the number of hours they slept, along with how sleepy they feel three times during the day.

You find a weak negative correlation between the hours of sleep and self-reported sleepiness.
i. Explain what a negative correlation is, and if you found this in your experiment, what would it mean? (5 points)

ii. Explain what a hidden variable is. What is a hidden variable that might be at work in this study? How could it have affected the results? (5 points)

iii. If the hypothesis for this study was “Increased sleep will decrease absences,” does this experiment clearly prove or disprove the hypothesis? Explain why. (5 points)

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