Formulating the Hypothesis
M&H: Chapter 6
Anthropomorphism?
Formulating the Hypothesis
Tolyman’s control of
playing hide-and-seek
Objective observation
• High-pitch meow
• Dig claws into carpet and
crouch down at doorway
• Dart off and hide
• Jump out and meow when
seeker gets close .
Named after Edward Chace
Tolman who wrote
Purposive Behavior in
Animals and Men (1960)
Anthropomorphism? I think not!
Bertrand Russell (1945)…
“As a rule, the framing of hypotheses
is the most difficult part of scientific
work and the part where great ability
is indispensable. So far, no method
has been found which would make it
possible to invent hypotheses by rule”
(p. 545).
Hypothesis…
 Nonscientific synonyms
 The thesis or main idea of a study
 Definition -a statement about a
predicted relationship between at
least two variables
 Should fit the design of a study
Hypothesis…
 Some nonexperimental designs that
do not restrict a subjects responses
do not typically include a hypothesis.
 Phenomenology
 Case studies
 Naturalistic observation
 Surveys
Hypothesis…
 Nonexperimental hypothesis – a
statement of your prediction about
how events, traits or behaviors are
related
 Not a statement about cause and
effect
 Designs – correlational and ex post
facto studies
Examples of Nonexperimental
Hypothesis…
 Variable X will be directly related to
variable Y
 Variable X will be inversely related to
variable Y
 Subject variable – Males will score
higher than females on variable X
Experimental Hypothesis…
 Predicts the effects of specific
antecedent conditions on some
behavior that will be measured
 Every experiment has at least one
hypothesis
 Complicated experimental designs
that compare several treatments at
the same time may test multiple
hypotheses
Experimental Hypotheses…
Experimental Hypotheses…
H1
H2
H3
H4
Plausible versus Improbable
Explanations of behavior…
 Reading speed is affected by
 Style of text
 Average reading speed
 Outside noise
 Room lighting
 Whether a person has eaten
 Number of shrimp in the ocean
 Number of people singing in Tibet
Experimental Hypothesis…
 Things far removed from the situation
are not likely to be causally related
 So forget
 Number of shrimp in the ocean
 Number of people singing in Tibet
Experimental Hypothesis…
 After limiting the number of possible
factors affecting the behavior it is time
to state a hypothesis
 Each hypothesis should meet certain
basic criteria
Hypotheses must be:
 Synthetic statements
 Testable
 Falsifiable
 Parsimonious
 Fruitful
Synthetic statements…
 Some chance it is true or false
 “Hungry students read slowly”
 Can be stated in the “If…then”
 If a student is hungry then… or
 If a student has eaten then…
Nonsynthetic statements…
Avoid at all costs:
 Analytical statements – always true
 Contradictory statements – always
false
I am not pregnant or I am
pregnant, again
Yes means no and no
means yes
Yes sometimes means no,
and sometimes means yes.
Testable hypothesis…
 The means for manipulating the
antecedent conditions and
measuring the resulting behavior
must exist
 Do dogs dream?
 If dogs display muscle twitches
and vocalizations during sleep
then they must be dreaming
 No way to measure dreaming
Falsifiable statements…
 Disprovable
 If you eat enough then you won’t be
hungry
 How much is enough?
 “Enough” is too ambiguous
 Cannot be disproved
 Any failure to produce the predicted
effect can be explained away
Parsimonious statements…
 A simple hypothesis is preferred to a
more complex one
 If you are hungry, then you will read
slower on a cold Wednesday in June
Fruitful statements…
 Lead to new studies
 Difficult to know in advance
 e.g., Watson and Rayner’s, 1920
Classical condition with little Albert
 e.g., Morris, 1981
The Inductive Model…
 Reasoning from specific cases to
more general principles
 Often used in science and
mathmatics
 B.F. Skinner – operant condition
variations in the way reinforcement
was delivered or withheld led to
general principles (e.g. extinction,
PREE, spontaneous recovery).
The Deductive Model…
 Reasoning from general principles to
make predictions about specific
instances.
 Basic tool of theory testing
 The “hippocampus as a cognitive
map”
http://cognitivemap.net/
O’Keefe & Nadel’s (1978) theory has
been tested extensively…
Induction or deduction???
Combining Models…
 Start off with induction to build a
theory
 O’Keefe & Nadel’s (1978) theory was
based on hundreds of studies
referenced in their book
 Engage in deduction to test and
revise
 e.g., Hippocampus works together with
other brain structures to build cognitive
maps
Serendipity…
 The knack of finding things
that are not being sought.
 Pavlov was studying
digestion when the dog’s
“psychic secretions” started
occurring before the
experiments.
Intuition…
 Knowing without reasoning
 e.g., a hunch or guess
 Not necessarily unscientific
 Intuition may actually be based on
past experience that is just not
readily accessible to our conscious
awareness.
 E.g., behavior based on ‘habits’ are
quite logical, although they do not
produce conscious thoughts
Counterstereotypic Performance
 Is there a true gender difference in math
ability
 Men and women college students that
received a B grade in Calculus
 Were told of the controversial findings and
that they were selected because of their
strong background in math.
 Different groups were given additional
infromation: the test you will take has been
shown - 1) to produce gender differences
or 2)not to produce gender differences
Results
25
Men
Women
Math Score
20
15
10
5
0
No Gender
Difference
Gender
Difference
How are you finding journal articles?
1. PsychInfo & Medline to RefWorks
2. Google scholar
3. ResearcGate
4. Interlibrary loan – Illiad - for books &
journal articles
5. website’s of authors (e.g., for vMWM try
Derek Hamilton at UNM)
6. Ask a prof, e.g., I may be able to hook
you up…