Research Methods & Statistics Knowledge Organizer

Here’s a knowledge organizer I’ve created of the most essential concepts for research methods and statistics in an introductory psychology course. These knowledge organizers are designed to help you identify the most important factual knowledge you need to have in … Read More

The Availability Heuristic

In this video I provide an introduction to behavioral economics and the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman by describing a heuristic we use when attempting to assess the frequency of events. The availability heuristic is a shortcut that … Read More

Obstacles to Problem Solving

In this video I introduce several potential obstacles to problem-solving including overconfidence, illusory superiority, belief bias, and belief perseverance. Then I describe a “consider the opposite” strategy for potentially reducing the influence of bias when interpreting evidence that supports or … Read More

Introduction to Memory

In this video I begin the memory unit by introducing a few key terms (encoding, storage, and retrieval), explaining why it’s important not to extend the “mind as computer” analogy too far, and briefly outlining the 3-Box model of memory … Read More

A Textbook Problem: Prices, Pages, and Purpose

As we enter a new school semester, thousands of students will once again face the exorbitant prices of college textbooks. I’ve read a number of introductory psychology textbooks and while I love textbooks and have a deep appreciation for the … Read More

Internal Validity

In this video I explain the concept of internal validity and how it acts as a checklist for considering whether an independent variable has been effectively manipulated, a dependent variable has been measured without bias, and a clear pattern can … Read More

The Experimental Method

In this video I explain the experimental method and how the combination of manipulation and random assignment can help to eliminate the third variable problem. I also explain why random assignment helps avoid self-selection and bias so that we can … Read More

Observer Bias: Clever Horses and Dull Rats

In this video, I explain two well-known examples of observer bias: the case of Clever Hans, and Rosenthal and Fode’s experiment with “bright” and “dull” rats. Observer bias (or experimenter expectancy effect) is considered, along with an explanation for how … Read More

What is the Availability Heuristic?

In their first study of the availability heuristic, Tversky and Kahneman asked participants to estimate whether English had more words that started with the letter K or more words that had K as the third letter. What do you think? … Read More