College Level Psychology

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Behavioral psychology often makes use of experimental psychology, mostly because of the direct observability of behaviors. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning both fall under the category of experimental psychology studies.

ANALYZING RESEARCH FINDINGS The goal of a research project is to find a correlation between two or more variables. A common way to measure correlation is through a correlation coefficient. This is a number that ranges from -1 to +1. A minus one correlation is a strong indication that there is a negative correlation between the variables. A plus one correlation is a strong indication that there is a positive correlation between the variables. Correlations of zero mean that there is no relationship between the variables. Things that increase in the same direction have a positive correlation, while things that go opposite to one another have a negative correlation. These things can be tested on a scatter plot. Figure 2 shows a scatter plot with a positive correlation:

Figure 2.

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