Learning

• learning: a process that results in a relatively consistent change in behavior or behavioral potential and is based on experience
  • intentional learning: purposefully
  • incidental learning: unconsciously

Learning as a Change in Behavior

• classical conditioning: a form of associative learning where a previously neutral / conditioned stimulus (e.g. bell) becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food), eventually triggering a conditioned response (e.g. salivation)
  1. control phase: before experiment (e.g. food \to$\to$ salivation, bell \to$\to$ no salivation)
  2. acquisition phase: during experiment (e.g. food + bell \to$\to$ salivation)
  3. post-conditioning phase: after experiment (e.g. bell \to$\to$ salivation)
  • influenced by: number of passes, quality / intensity of stimulus, time interval
  • no new reaction learnt, only stimulus-reaction connections are made
  • stimulus generalization: extension of conditioning to similar stimuli (e.g. horn instead of bell)
  • stimulus discrimination: narrowing the conditioning to certain stimuli (e.g. only specific types of bells)
  • Little Albert experiment: classical conditioning in humans
    • neutral / conditioned stimulus: rat
    • unconditioned stimulus: loud bang
    • conditioned response: fear
  • opposing classical conditioning: counter-conditioning, systematic desensitisation
    • counter-conditioning: linking a positive stimulus with a fear-inducing stimulus such that the positive reaction "replaces" the negative reaction (e.g. Little Peter experiment; subduing a fear of rabbits by exposing child to enjoyable actions alongside rabbit)
    • systematic desensitisation: use relaxation techniques to tolerate fear-inducing stimuli in small doses (e.g. bring rat closer and closer)
• operant conditioning: learning process developed by B.F. Skinner where voluntary behaviors are strengthened or weakened based on their consequences, such as reinforcement or punishment
  • in other words: conditioning where the reaction is not innate
  • law of effect (Thorndike's law): belief that a pleasing after-effect strengthens the action that produced it
  • principles
    • contiguity: stimulus, behavior and experience must be close in time and space
    • contingency: experience reliably follows stimulus
    • informativity: stimulus stands out from environment
  • positive reinforcement: adding a pleasant stimulus (e.g., praise, rewards) to increase a behavior
  • negative reinforcement: removing an unpleasant stimulus (e.g., stopping a loud noise) to increase a behavior
  • positive (direct) punishment: adding an unpleasant stimulus (e.g., scolding) to reduce a behavior
  • negative (indirect) punishment: removing a pleasant stimulus (e.g., taking away toys) to reduce a behavior
  • reinforcement schedule: continuous (reinforcement with each occurence, e.g. getting a piece of chocolate each time a task is done) vs. partial (occasional reinforcement, e.g. only giving a piece of chocolate sometimes)
    • partial reinforcement by quota: fixed-ratio schedule (reinforcement always after same number of reactions, e.g. every 10th coffee is free), variable-ratio schedule (reinforcement after different number of reactions, e.g. slot machine)
    • partial reinforcement by interval: fixed-interval schedule (reinforcement after a fixed period of time, e.g. sale every Tuesday), variable-interval schedule (reinforcement after a variable period of time, e.g. checking phone for messages)
    • partial more effective than continuous (continuous leads to faster learning, but also faster deletion)
    • by quota more effective than by interval
    • variable more persistent than fixed
    • swift and targeted punishment is more effective than severe penalties

• model learning: learning from the behavior of others
  • Bobo doll experiment: children watch film of adult beating Bobo doll, divided into three groups, with the film showing...
    a) reward for beating the doll
    b) punishment for beating the doll
    c) no action taken for beating the doll
    • all children showed violent behavior with varying degrees (b < a = c)
  • acquisition phase: observation (pay attention and register behavior), memorization (storing what you have seen in memory)
  • performance phase: reproduction (mental rehearsal), motivation (manifesting behavior depending on consequence)

Learning as Information Processing

• memory: the ability to absorb and store information and retrieve it when required
  • declarative knowledge: knowing what (facts, events...)
  • procedural knowledge: knowing how (strategies, actions...)
  • conditional knowledge: knowing when and why (correct application of rules)
• measuring memory performance
  • recall / free reproduction: ability to reproduce information from memory (e.g. enumerating classmates)
  • recognition: recognize certain learned information (e.g. recognizing old classmates)
  • relearning: remember something more quickly when relearning it (e.g. learning foreign language not spoken since school)

• multi-storage model: ultra short-term memory, short-term memory, long-term memory
  • ultra short-term memory: forwarding to short-term memory / deletion based on attention
  • short-term memory: information processing bottleneck; forwarded to long-term storage through repetition
    • capacity: around 7 elements; number varies according to task (e.g. shorter words easier to remember than longer words)
    • Peterson & Peterson: rapid deletion if another task done in between
  • long-term storage: unlimited capacity, lifetime storage

• working memory model: storage according to modalities
  • phonological loop: verbal and acoustic information
  • visual-spatial notepad: visual and spatial information
  • episodic buffer: bridge between the other two
• remembering more: chunking (organizing individual items into manageable or familiar units, e.g. easier to remember valid playing positions in football than invalid ones), mnemonics (vivid images and organizing structures), hierarchies (finding structures and hierarchies in groups of information)

Learning from a Constructivist Perspective

• self-regulation: being able to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes which can be transferred from one learning context to another and from learning situations in which this information has been acquired to a leisure and work context
  • cognitive learning strategies: doing the thinking (i.e. how do I work with this content?)
    • repetition: e.g. repeating important information at the start of project meetings
    • elaboration: e.g. integrating newly acquired knowledge into old knowledge during the project
    • organisation: e.g. presentation of the project idea in a concept map
  • metacognitive learning strategies: steering the thinking (i.e. is my approach working? what do I need to change?)
    • planning: e.g. writing a to-do list at the start of the project
    • monitoring: e.g. monitoring the progress of the project
    • evaluation: e.g. reviewing the goals set
    • regulation: e.g. intervening if interim goals are not achieved
  • motivational-affective learning strategies: fueling the thinking (i.e. do / can I keep going?)
    • identification: e.g. emphasising the identification of all project members with the project goals
    • attribution: e.g. reflection within the team on the reasons for successes and failures
    • feedback: e.g. clear communication of who to contact in the event of problems
• intelligence: a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience
  • g factor (Spearman): one general intelligence underlying all mental abilities (most empirical evidence)
  • two-factor (Cattell): general intelligence + specific abilities
  • seven factors (Thurstone): several independent abilities
  • fluid intelligence: ability to solve abstract problems, never before seen, through deductive thinking; biologic / genetic (e.g. typical IQ test question); decreases with age
  • cristallized intelligence: end product of fluid intelligence, culture and education; based on learning experience and skill accumulation (e.g. trivia question); increases with age
• memory can be manipulated
  
  
• photo-taking-impairment effect: people remembered fewer objects overall and remembered fewer details about the objects they had photographed compared with objects they had observed
• colors: cooler colors enhance memory and attention; staff are perceived as more relaxed by patients
  • not always true
    • Baker-Miller pink claimed to lower blood pressure and reduce aggression; no effectiveness according to more recent studies
    • does the color of a car determine its perceived noise level? \to$\to$ hardly any difference
• music: also changes decision-making
  

Motivation

• motivation: the internal or external drive that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors, acting as the "fuel" for human action

Behavioral Theories

• behavioral theories: behavior is shaped by its consequences
• extrinsic motivation: incentive lies in the result (destination)
• intrinsic motivation: activity itself gives satisfaction (journey)

Needs-Based Theories

• self-determination theory: a framework highlighting that human motivation, wellness, and personal growth are driven by three innate, universal psychological needs: autonomy (feeling in control), competence (feeling capable), and relatedness (feeling connected)
• theory of needs: need for achievement (performing well), need for affiliation (connecting with others), need for power (influence / lead)
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs: combination of physical and psychological needs
  

Cognition-Based Theories

• cognition: the thoughts or the judgements that employees make while working
• expectancy-value theory: employees are motivated when they believe that their effort will lead to a succesful performance, their performance will lead to a desired outcome, and that the outcome holds personal value; if any of these is missing, motivation drops
  
• self-efficacy theory: an individual's belief in their capability to execute actions to reach specific goals (self-efficacy) is a key determinant of motivation (specialized; i.e. "I can do X")
• self-concept theory: your self-concept is your organized collection of beliefs, opinions, and attitudes about who you are, influencing your behavior (generalized; i.e. "I am good at X")
• Big-Fish-Little-Pond effect (BFLPE): students (or anyone) with similar abilities have lower academic self-concepts in high-achieving environments (big ponds) compared to equally able students in lower-achieving settings (little ponds) (due to comparison with others being the basis of self-concept)
• intrinsic value: enjoyment when doing a task
• attainment value: personal importance in succeeding in a task
• utility value: extent to which a task fits into own plan
• costs: effort, anxiety, time taken
• causal attribution: determine affective reactions to success and failure
  

Emotion

• emotion: reaction of the whole organism and comprises physiological arousal, conscious cognitive experience and expressive behavior
  • physiological level: body reactions, e.g. hormone release
  • cognitive level: own psychological experience, feeling interpretation
  • expressive behavior: open behavior and expression, e.g. smiling

The Brain

• thalamus: sensory input
• amygdala: rapid detection (automatic, fast); central for fear, anger responses
• prefrontal cortex: regulation and interpretation; evaluates, interprets and regulates emotions

Dimensions of Emotion

Theories of Emotion

• common sense: subjective emotion experience \to$\to$ physiological arousal (e.g. I am happy, so I smile)
• James-Lange theory: (stimulus \to$\to$) physiological arousal \to$\to$ subjective emotion experience (e.g. I am happy because I smile)
  • facial feedback hypothesis (FFH): facial expressions do not just reflect emotions but actually influence or trigger them
• Cannon-Bard theory: thalamus \to$\to$ physiological arousal + subjective emotion experience (e.g. I smile and feel happy at the same time)
• Schachter-Singer / Two-factor theory: physiological arousal \to$\to$ cognitive evaluation \to$\to$ subjective emotion experience (e.g. I smile, and since there is no reason to be nervous, I guess I must be happy)

Achievement Emotion

• achievement emotion: emotions that relate to “activities and outcomes that are judged according to competence-based standards of quality”
  • influences: perceptions of control (can I do this?) and value (is it meaningful to do this and why?)
  • relation to autonomic states: individual indicators cannot distinguish between different emotions, but activation/deactivation seem to occur depending on whether engagement with the task is meaningful
    
    

Emotion Self-Regulation

• self-regulation: ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state (based on SS/2F)
  • situation selection and modification: avoiding or changing the context
  • attention deployment: shifting attention away
  • cognitive reappraisal: rethinking the situation
  • suppresion / response modulation: inhibition of affective expressions
    
• misattribution of the state of arousal / Creaky Bridge experiment: people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused (e.g. when actually experiencing physiological responses related to fear, people mislabel those responses as romantic arousal)

Social Psychology

• social psychology: the scientific study of how thinking, feeling and behavior are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Social Perception

• encoding: expressing own emotions
• decoding: interpreting emotions in others
• implicit personality theory: subconscious belief system to assume certain traits go together, allowing quick judgments about people, like assuming a "warm" person is also "generous" or "kind," even with little information, forming mental shortcuts (schemas) for social understanding, often influenced by culture and experience
• halo effect / error: tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings of a person, company, country, brand, or product in another area (e.g. after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, assume that the person in the photograph is also a good person)
  • Dr. Fox effect: "Dr. Myron L. Fox" (actor) gives lecture on "Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physican Education"; looks distinguished and sounds authoritative, lectures with humor and joy and answers questions afterwards; has absolutely no idea about the subject because he is an actor; results in satisfied participants

Reasons for Behavior

• internal attribution: reason for the behavior lies within person
• external attribution: reason for the behavior is the situation
• fundamental attribution error: tendency to overestimate internal factors (e.g. he is late because he is selfish) and underestimate situational factors (e.g. he is late because of traffic); due to stronger focus on the visible person as opposed to the resource-intensive, invisible situation
  

Behavioral Justification

• Heaven's Gate: mass suicide in 1997, extreme example of a normal need to justify one‘s own actions and commitment to values

• cognitive dissonance: mental discomfort experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes, or when behaviors clash with beliefs (e.g. person might justify unhealthy eating habits by saying they will exercise more later, or rationalize a poor purchase decision to feel better about it)

  • reduction: behavior amendment (e.g. quitting smoking), change in cognition (e.g. not believing that smoking is really that harmful), adding a new cognition (e.g. comparing to someone who's old and smokes)
  • post-decision dissonance: dissonance that occurs after making a difficult decision, especially between two equally attractive options
    
    

• punishment: harsher does not necessarily mean better (experiment by Aronson / Carlsmith)
  

Yourself

• social comparison theory: people evaluate their own abilities, opinions, and worth by comparing themselves to others, driving self-evaluation, improvement, and enhancement (if no objective standard is available or if insecure)
• impression management: trying to present yourself as you would like to be seen by other people.
  • integration: interacting with people of higher status
  • self-handicapping: making excuses in advance
• terror management theory (TMT): human behavior is largely driven by an unconscious, existential fear of death; to manage this, individuals cling to cultural worldviews, faith, and self-esteem to provide meaning and a sense of literal or symbolic immortality
• interpersonal attraction: caused via proximity, similarity, sympathy, physical attractiveness
  • proximity: may be physical (i.e. literally close to eachother) or functional (i.e. close by some communication channel, e.g. same hallway)
    • mere exposure effect: the more we are exposed to a stimulus, the more we are willing to like it
  • similarity: perceived more important than actual
  • sympathy: beats similarity; but similarity is more important long-term

Social Conformity

• social conformity: the tendency to adjust your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to align with a group's norms or expectations, driven by a desire to fit in, be liked, or because you believe the group has better information
• informational social influence: we use other people as a source of information when we are unsure (private acceptance, public compliance)
  • when? ambiguous situation, crisis situation, others are experts
• normative social influence: we adapt in order to be liked or accepted (no private acceptance, only public compliance)
  • when? physically close group, emotionally important group, 5-7 people
• Milgram experiment: measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience
  • result: a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, with (nearly?) every participant going up to deadly voltage levels, due to informational and normative influence by the authority figure (aborting = admitting that actions up to this point were wrong)

Prosocial Behavior

• altruism: desire to help, even if it puts the helper at a disadvantage; both genetic and learned
  • kin selection: helping relatives helps your genes survive
  • reciprocity norm: help now, get help later
  • group selection: passing on the genes of a group of people is important
• urban overload hypothesis: people in small towns are more likely to help than those from larger cities
• bystander effect: people are less likely to help when others are around
• giving > taking: two groups receive $20 each, first one asked to spend on themselves, second asked to spend on others; group 2 happier
• likelihood of getting help: test subjects asked to ask people on the street for a favor and estimate beforehand how many people they would need to ask until someone agrees; underestimated the likelihood that others will help up to 50%
• negative emotions are not always necessarily perceived badly: expression of anger may create impression of competence; norm violators are perceived to be more powerful

Social Groups

• Stanford Prison Experiment: reenacting the social situation in prisons; aborted because guards became too violent
• social facilitation: tendency for people to perform better on simple tasks and worse on difficult tasks when others are present and their individual performance can be assessed (other people get us excited)
• social loafing: tendency for people to take a relaxed approach when other people are present and their individual performance cannot be assessed (other people make us feel relaxed)
• group think: form of thinking in which group cohesion and solidarity are more important than objective criteria for decision-making
  • group is very cohesive: the group is held in very high esteem
  • group isolation: group is isolated from other points of view
  • leader directive: leader dominates the discussion
  • high stress: members have the impression that the group is under threat
  • poor decision-making processes: lack of standard methodology
• Robbers Cave experiment: intergroup conflict arises from competition for limited resources, while cooperation is fostered by shared, "superordinate" goals
  • bonding \to$\to$ competition \to$\to$ reducing friction

Work and Organisational Psychology

• organisation: association of people to achieve a certain goal

Work Design, Working Conditions

Job Characteristic Model

• task characteristics
  • skill variety: employees should bring multiple skills and competencies to ensure that they can take over diverse tasks
  • task identity: the job has a clearly defined beginning and end, giving employees a sense of purpose and fulfilment
  • task significance: employees should feel that their work has an impact on the company or society
  • autonomy: the job should be flexible enough to let employees decide how and when to complete it (within reason)
  • feedback: employees should have ready access to feedback to give them an avenue to improve professionally
• psychological states of experience
  • skill variety, task identity, task significance \to$\to$ meaningfulness
  • autonomy \to$\to$ responsibility
  • feedback \to$\to$ knowledge
• effects of the work: high motivation, high quality of work performance, high job satisfaction, low absenteeism and fluctuation

Equity Theory

• equity theory: employee motivation is driven by a desire for fairness, where individuals compare their input-outcome ratio (effort/skills vs. rewards/recognition) to that of others
  • under-reward \to$\to$ anger
  • over-reward \to$\to$ guilt
  • behavioral reaction: employee may lower productivity or reduce quality of work
  • targeting others: employee may try to reduce other's inputs / outcomes or pressure them to leave

Stress, Health, and Well-Being at Work

• stress: subjectively intensely unpleasant state of tension that arises from the fear that a strong aversive situation that is close in time and lasts a long time is very unlikely to be completely controllable, but which subjectively seems important to avoid; person-environment interaction
• burnout: emotional exhaustion caused by personal and work / organisational stressors, depersonalisation, feeling of no longer being able to achieve anything personally

Lazarus' Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

• coping: how people deal with stressful situations
  • problem-focused (instrumental): people take concrete actions to avert current threats (e.g. searching for information...)
  • emotion-focused (palliative): people try to control their own emotions and affective reactions to stress (e.g. trivialisation, distraction, use of drugs...)

Conflicts

• worst: relationship, task conflicts (\to$\to$ weaker group performance)
• positive?: judgement conflicts (\to$\to$ positive correlation with performance due to more intensive engagement with task)
  
  

Communication

• forms: oral, written, nonverbal
• transmitter-receiver model (Shannon-Weaver): one of the first models of communication
  
• four-sides model (Schulz von Thun): every message has four facets though not the same emphasis might be put on each (e.g. "it's cold in here")
  • factual information: what is literally being said (e.g. "the temperature is cold")
  • self-revelation: what the speaker reveals about themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally (e.g. "I'm uncomfortable")
  • relationship: what the speaker signals about their view of the listener and their relationship (e.g. "you're the one responsible for the room")
  • appeal: what the speaker wants the listener to do / think / feel (e.g. "you should turn the temperature up")
    
• supervisor-subordinate communication: downward to control processes (e.g. targets, instructions, regulations), upward to give information to managers that they need (e.g. project data, status reports...)
  • downward issue: takes a long time
  • upward issue: communication distortion (incomplete, passing on of information)
    

Leadership

• leader alone does not directly determine leadership success; also depends on situation / managed employees
  • trait: stable, long-term
  • state: temporary, short-term
  • styles: autocratic, transactional, democratic, transformational...
    • autocratic: focus on results and team efficiency; expect employees to do what leaders asked for
      • in other words: "I decide, do it"
    • transactional: *intense exchange on day-to-day task *(short term); provide direction / maintaining the status quo; rewards & punishments
      • in other words: "you do this, you get that"
    • democratic: leaders share decision-making with group; promoting social equality; encourages participation from all members based on their skills
      • in other words: "let's decide together"
    • transformational: aims to transform followers‘ needs and thinking, communicates compelling vision; inspires followers with a sense of purpose and excitement
      • in other words: "let's change things together"

Engineering Psychology

• engineering psychology: science of human experience and behavior when dealing with technical systems, with the aim of optimizing this interaction
  • specify the capacities and limitations of the human
  • identifying the psychological aspects and processes that cause the particular implementation of an artifact to be the best / most suitable / etc.
• human-machine system: targeted interaction between people and technical systems to fulfill an externally assigned or self-imposed task

Core Psychological Models

• SEEV model: represents where your attention goes
  • Salience: extent to which the AOI stands out from the background (or from other AOIs) by virtue of its size, color, intensity, or contrast (more significant AOIs should be made more salient)
  • Effort: cost of moving attention from one AOI to another (distance between AOIs should be negatively correlated with their frequency of use)
  • Expectancy: expectation regarding the occurrence of changes within an AOI
  • Value: usefulness (importance) of the information
• overload: users have to deal with more stimuli/information than they are capable of handling \to$\to$ distraction, insufficient time for adequate information processing
• underload: insufficient stimulation \to$\to$ reduced alertedness and attention
• multiple resource model: attention consists of multiple, partly independent resources; tasks interfere when they draw on the same resources
  • in essence: multitasking success depends less on how hard tasks are and more on whether they compete for the same human resources
    

Research

• research question: addresses a research gap, is based on the current state of research, is based on a theoretical assumption, considers initial methodological decisions
  • formulation: must not be too general \to$\to$ not investigatable!
  • descriptive question: what is happening? (frequency, intensity, distribution)
    • typical: how many...; how often...; to what extent...
    • example: how many hours do people sleep on average?
  • relational (correlational) question: how are things related?
    • typical: is X related to Y...; do people with more X tend to have more Y...
    • example: is there a relationship between sleep deprivation and attention?
  • causal (explanatory) question: does X cause Y?
    • typical: does X influence Y...; what is the effect of X on Y...
    • example: does sleep deprivation reduce attention?
  • comparative question: are there differences between groups / conditions?
    • typical: do groups differ in...; is there a difference between...
    • example: is learning better online or in-person?
• hypothesis: presumed answer to a research question based on previous results, relevant theories and / or everyday experiences / intuition
  • example: sleep deprivation is associated with attention performance
  • criteria
    • empirically verifiable: must be possible to assign observable data to the concepts it contains (real-life)
      • counter-example: it's hotter than 220°C in hell
    • (certain) claim to general validity: assertion going beyond the individual case
      • counter-example: if Peter keeps drinking so much alcohol, he'll have a headache tomorrow
    • formal structure: if..., then...; the more...
      • example: if seminar content is not relevant to the exam, then students forget it more quickly
    • theoretical justification: validity and relevance can be justified with scientific theories
      • counter-example: if you dye your hair red, you eat more fish
    • falsifiability: results that contradict the conditional sentence must also be conceivable
      • tautology: a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form
      • counter-example: bachelors are unmarried (true by definition)
  • undirectional hypotheses: presence of any difference or correlation without specification of the direction
    • example: on average, individuals differ in the number of hours they sleep per night (no mention of whether one number is higher or lower than the other)
  • directional hypotheses: existence of a difference or a correlation in a certain direction
    • example: individuals sleep fewer than the recommended average number of hours per night

Research Methods

• qualitative study: new facts
• quantitative study: facts that already happened

Descriptive Questions

• observational methods: what do people actually do?
  • +: less dependent on participants’ self-reports or recall
  • -: time-consuming, limited access to internal state (e.g. thoughts)
• interview: what does something mean to people?
  • +: flexible and responsive to participants’ perspectives
  • -: resource-intensive, potentially influenced by interviewer effects
• surveys, questionnaires: what do people think / experience?
  • +: standardized, easy to analyze quantitatively
  • -: limited to self-report, susceptible to biases (e.g., social desirability)
• physiological measures: what happens in the body?
  • +: less affected by self-report and social desirability biases
  • -: costly, technically demanding, and require careful interpretation

Correlational Questions

• correlation hypotheses: about relationships between two or more variables (cross-sectional)
  • ! correlation does not mean causality
  • example: there is a negative correlation between the amount of social media usage and children's well-being scores
• change hypotheses: change in variables with constant people over time (longitudinal)
  • example: over a one-year period, an increase in social media usage is associated with a decrease in children’s well-being scores

Causal Questions

• experiment: make statements about the causal effects of an independent variable (UV) on a dependent variable (AV) (cross-sectional?)
  • independent variable (UV): systematically manipulated
  • dependent variable (AV): effect observed / measured
  • randomization: randomly assigning people to a group
  • confounding variables: eliminated / controlled as far as possible
  • example: hours of usage, number of posts (UV) \to$\to$ well-being (AV)
• pre-post-design: before-and-after design (longitudinal)
  

Comparative Questions

• difference hypotheses: about differences between two or more groups
  • independent variable (UV): grouping variable (e.g. 1st group: children with social media usage; 2nd group: children without social media usage)
  • dependent variable (AV): characteristic on which the group difference is to be shown (e.g. well-being indicators)
  • example: children with exposure to social media have lower well-being scores than children who have no social media use
• quasi-experiments: experiments without a randomized assignment
  • why? study does not allow manipulation of treatment, random assignment may not be possible, etc.
  • when? natural groups exist (e.g. a school introduces a no-phone policy, another one does not), no reasonable control group (e.g. school introduces phone ban during school hours), manipulatable but unethical treatments (e.g. randomly assigning children to force them to use social media for X hours a day while prohibiting others altogether), not accepted (e.g. researcher fakes creation of new social media platform, allows children to join, intentionally manipulates experiences)

Primary, Secondary, and Meta-Analysis

• primary analysis: data is collected and analyzed by the researcher himself
• secondary analysis: existing datasets are used for re-evaluation
• meta-analysis: summarizes results of several studies on the same question

Responsible Practices

• data protection: personal reference always exists when statements or behavior could be assigned to an individual person
• declaration of consent: processing of personal data is only permitted if there is a legal basis or a valid declaration of consent
• processing activity: specific operation involving personal data, such as collection, storage, transfer, or deletion; as soon as personal data is collected, a processing activity must be created
• ethics committee: scientists require the vote of an ethics committee to conduct medical research projects or studies involving human subjects in other disciplines