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Beyond the Second Chapter: How to Include More Statistics in your Social Psychology Course

Dr. Jessica Hartnett

Gannon University

Erie, PA

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2012

Hartnett, J.L. (January, 2012). Stephen Colbert, Cohen’s d, and p-values. Talk presented at the Teaching Preconference at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, San Diego, CA.

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2024

  • I have been blogging for 12 years.
  • I am writing an introduction to psychological statistics textbook for W.W. Norton & Company.
  • I am a Tenured Associate Professor.

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  • The Society for the Teaching of Psychology remains my professional home.

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Ch 2 Issue

  • Your department’s stats people need you.

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Format of my talk

Theory 

Example

TL;DR

Rabbit hole

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How do I use these?

  • Mostly, to reinforce stats tests after I teach the stats tests.
  • They all have data, so I just use them in my stats class for analysis.
  • I teach classes of 20.
  • I teach stats with a side of Social Psychology
    • You can teach Social Psychology with a side of stats.

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Theories

Social Comparison Theory

Body Language

Social Norms and Emotional Expression

Self Reference Effect

Helping Behaviors

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Social Comparison Theory

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From YouGov

(I heart YouGov)

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Similar data, but with your community vs. the US

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/43489-americans-rate-local-and-national-problems-poll

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TL;DR

Social comparison theory evidence by accident.

Humans are motivated to feel good about themselves.

Between subject design

What does this make your students wonder?

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Rabbit Hole

Run the ANOVA

Run the t-test

Chopping up response scales.

Full report.

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Social Norms and Emotional Expression

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Resume io gathered IG data to determine the happiest colleges in the US, UK, and Australia

https://resume.io/blog/the-happiest-schools-in-the-us-uk-and-australia

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TL;DR

  • Norms of IG
  • Using social media to replicate IRL findings.
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of gathering data from IG?
  • Data scraping.
  • Eyeball the US data…why so many Southern schools?

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Rabbit Hole

Use IG to create your own data set.

Run the ANOVA.

Run the t-test

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Body language and communication

Thank you. Dr. Bray!

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Body language/cues

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Research Methods shared via Tweet.

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TL;DR

  • Puppies!
  • A decent one-sample t-test design.
    • Test value is probability
  • The effects of domestication
    • Evolution
    • They just like treats?
    • Why did they need to be PUPPIES

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Deep Dive

  • Run the t-test
    • Use of probability is a double lesson.

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  • Go back to Dr. Bray’s entire thread, it is great.

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  • Go ahead and run the other t-tests as well.

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Self-reference effect

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Do Daves know more Daves?

Thanks, Quoc!

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TL;DR

  • Ask students if they can remember facts about others if it applies to the self.
    • Subaru drivers
  • Violin plots and the importance of variability
  • Simple comparison of mean differences

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Deep Dive

  • Run the t-test.
  • Stats Nerd Reddit
    • r/DataIsBeautiful
    • r/SampleSize
  • Data cleaning
    • Sus #s of Daves

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Prosocial Behaviors and Helping

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Babies provide more aid to strangers who dance in sync.

Dr. Laura Cirelli

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TL;DR

  • I am delighted by developmental psychology research designs.
  • Something for them to use in real life to get to know kids.
  • This data came out of working a minimum wage job at a day care.
  • Babies judge adults.
  • Discuss chi-square designs.

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Deep Dive

  • Run the chi-square
  • Listen to the NPR story in class

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That’s it.

  • I hope you can remember, like, one of these examples after several days of conferencing.
  • Remember: Your stats professors can’t do it all.
  • Thank you for paying attention!