Learning Objectives for Syllabus
1. Know your instructor’s office hours and the location of his office.
2. State the procedure to be followed when you change an answer on your Scantron form and
you cannot erase the old mark completely; state the consequence of not following this
procedure if the scoring machine marks this item wrong due to incomplete erasure.
3. Know the cell phone policy for this class.
4. State the policy for making up a missed exam.
5. Find the dates for the exams and know where they appear on the syllabus.
6. Explain how to earn extra credit points in this class.
Learning Objective for Chapter 1 (pp. 1-5 & 11)
1. Define psychology and distinguish between mind and behavior.
2. Describe strategies for improving study skills (p. 11).
Learning Objectives for Chapter 2
1. Define empiricism.
2. Define theory and hypothesis, and describe the process by which the scientific method can
be used to learn about the world; explain why evidence can prove a theory to be wrong, but
can never prove a theory to be right.
3. Explain how complexity, variability, and reactivity make the study of human behavior
difficult, and provide an example of each attribute.
4. Distinguish between the two keys of scientific measurement—definition and detection, and
define operational definition.
5. Describe three properties of a good measure: validity, reliability, and power.
6. Define demand characteristics, and explain how naturalistic observation, anonymity, the use
of unobtrusive measures, and double-blind observation may be used to diminish the
problems they present.
7. Interpret a frequency distribution and describe the basic characteristics of a normal
distribution.
8. Define three measures of central tendency and two measures of variability.
9. Explain what is meant by the statement “Two variables are correlated,” and describe how a
correlation coefficient indicates both the direction and strength of this relationship.
10. Explain why natural correlations cannot be used to infer causality and define the thirdvariable problem.
11. Describe two key features of an experiment: manipulation and random assignment.
12. Distinguish between independent and dependent variables.
13. Distinguish between experimental and control groups.
14. Explain what is meant when an experimental result is described as statistically significant.
15. Distinguish between the internal and external validity of an experiment.
16. Describe the case method.
17. Distinguish between a population and a sample, explain the process of random sampling to
achieve representativeness.
18. Describe the three basic principles and specific rules within psychology of ethical research
using human and animal participants.