Glossary / Lexicon

Hypothesis

hypothesis means educated guess or statement to be tested by research.

In the psychology context, a hypothesis is an educated guess or prediction about a particular phenomenon or relationship that can be tested through research. A hypothesis is a statement that proposes a relationship between two or more variables, and it serves as a starting point for scientific inquiry.

For example, a psychologist might have the hypothesis that people who score high on measures of anxiety are more likely to engage in avoidance behaviors, such as avoiding social situations or avoiding tasks that are perceived as difficult. In order to test this hypothesis, the psychologist might design a study in which participants complete measures of anxiety and report on their avoidance behaviors, and then analyze the data to see if there is a relationship between the two variables.

Hypotheses are an important part of the scientific process, as they allow researchers to test their ideas and generate new knowledge about a particular topic. Hypotheses can be supported or refuted by the results of research, and they can be revised or refined based on new evidence and insights.

Description

In psychology, a hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about the relationship between two or more variables. It is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon that can be investigated through research. Hypotheses are typically formulated based on existing theories, observations, or previous research findings. They serve as the foundation for conducting experiments or studies to determine whether the predicted relationship holds true. A hypothesis can either be supported or disproved by data collected during the research process. Developing clear and well-defined hypotheses is crucial in psychological research to ensure that the study objectives are met and the results are meaningful.

Application Areas

  • Experimental research
  • Observational studies
  • Clinical trials
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Personality psychology

Treatment and Risks

  • Treatments for hypotheses in psychology involve testing the hypothesis through research methods such as experiments, surveys, or case studies.
  • Risks associated with hypotheses in psychology include potential failure to support the hypothesis, leading to the need for further refinement or rejection of the initial idea.

Examples

  • Hypothesis: Individuals who practice mindfulness meditation will experience reduced levels of stress compared to those who do not engage in the practice.
  • Hypothesis: Children exposed to violent video games will display more aggressive behavior than children who are not exposed to such games.
  • Hypothesis: People with high levels of extraversion will have larger social networks compared to those with low levels of extraversion.

Similar Concepts and Synonyms

  • Research hypothesis
  • Predicted relationship
  • Proposed explanation

Articles with 'Hypothesis' in the title

  • Activation-synthesis hypothesis: Activation-synthesis hypothesis is an attempt to explain how random activity in lower brain centers results in the manufacture of relatively bizarre dreams by higher brain centers
  • Alternative hypothesis: Alternative hypothesis refers to an assertion that the independent variable in a study will have a certain predictable effect on the dependent variable- also called an experimental or research hypothesis
  • Amplifier hypothesis: Amplifier hypothesis refers to the premise that Stress may serve to amplify the maladaptive predispositions of parents, thereby disrupting family management practices and compromising the parents' ability to be supportive of their children
  • Amyloid cascade hypothesis: Amyloid cascade hypothesis: Amyloid cascade hypothesis refers to the belief that deposits of amyloid proteins cause cell death in the brain- associated with Alzheimer’s disease
  • Attention hypothesis of automatization: Attention hypothesis of automatization refers to the proposal that attention is needed during a learning phase of a new task. The attention hypothesis of automatization is a theory in cognitive psychology that explains how people learn to . . .
  • Catharsis hypothesis: Catharsis hypothesis: Catharsis hypothesis is the hypothesis that states that aggressive needs can be satisfied by exhibiting or witnessing aggression
  • Clinico-anatomical hypothesis: Clinico-anatomical hypothesis is the view that regards dreams as just thinking that takes place under unusual conditions. The clinico-anatomical hypothesis is a theory that proposes a link between the symptoms of a psychological disorder . . .
  • Constancy hypothesis: Constancy hypothesis refers to the contention that there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between physical stimuli and sensations, in the sense that the same stimulation will always result in the same sensation regardless of . . .
  • Contact hypothesis: Contact hypothesis refers to the prediction that contact between the members of different groups will reduce intergroup conflict - that regular interaction between members of different groups reduces prejudice, providing that it occurs . . .
  • Critical period hypothesis: Critical period hypothesis refers to the assumption that Language learning depends on biological maturation, and is easier to accomplish prior to puberty
  • Cultural Compatibility Hypothesis: Cultural Compatibility Hypothesis refer to the hypothesis that treatment is likely to be more effective when compatible with the cultural patterns of the child (patient) and family
  • Cultural/test-bias hypothesis: Cultural/test-bias hypothesis refers to the notion that IQ tests and testing procedures have a built-in, middle-class bias that explains the substandard performance of children from lower-class and minority subcultures
  • Density–intensity hypothesis: Density–intensity hypothesis: Density –intensity hypothesis refers to an explanation of crowding proposed by Jonathan Freedman, predicting that high density makes unpleasant situations more unpleasant but pleasant situations more . . .
  • Desensitization hypothesis: Desensitization hypothesis refers to the notion that people who watch a lot of media violence will become less aroused by aggression and more tolerant of violent and aggressive acts
  • Dopamine hypothesis: Dopamine hypothesis refers to the biological hypothesis that the delusions, hallucinations, and attentional deficits of schizophrenia result from overactivity of neurons that communicate with each other via the transmission of dopamine
  • Double-deficit hypothesis: Double-deficit hypothesis poses that reading disorders can be traced to deficits in phonological processing and/or naming speed. The presence of both a deficit in phonological processing and slow naming speed is predictive of the most . . .
  • Dual-coding hypothesis: Dual-coding hypothesis refers to Paivio’s assertion that long-term memory can code information in two (2) distinct ways, verbally and visually, and that items coded both ways, for example, pictures or concrete words are more easily . . .
  • Dual-system hypothesis: Dual-system hypothesis refers to a hypothesis that suggests that two (2) languages are represented somehow in separate systems of the mind. The dual-system hypothesis is a theoretical framework in psychology that suggests that decision- . . .
  • Empathy-altruism hypothesis: Empathy-altruism hypothesis refers to the idea that when we feel Empathy for a person, we will attempt to help him or her purely for altruistic reasons- that is, regardless of what we have to gain
  • Extended optional infinitive hypothesis: Extended optional infinitive hypothesis refers to the notion that all children go through a stage in which verbs are produced without inflection, that is, they optionally appear in their infinite form without the endings that mark person, . . .
  • Facial feedback hypothesis: Facial feedback hypothesis: Facial Feedback hypothesis is a hypothesis which states that sensations from facial expressions help define what Emotion a person feels
  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis: Frustration-aggression hypothesis refers to the theory that all frustration leads to aggression, and all aggression comes from frustration. It is used to explain prejudice and intergroup aggression
  • Hypothesis formation process: Hypothesis formation process refers to the stage of Research in which the researcher generates ideas about a cause-effect relationship between the behaviors under study
  • Hypothesis test: Hypothesis test refers to an inferential statistical procedure that uses sample data to evaluate the Credibility of a hypothesis about a population. A hypothesis test determines wheth er research results are statistically significant
  • Impressionable years hypothesis: Impressionable years hypothesis refers to proposition that adolescents and young adults are more easily persuaded than their elders. The impressionable years hypothesis, also known as the sensitive period hypothesis, suggests that there . . .
  • Interpersonal complementarity hypothesis: Interpersonal complementarity hypothesis: Interpersonal complementarity hypothesis refers to the predicted tendency for certain behaviors to evoke behaviors from others that are congruous with the initial behavior, with positive behaviors . . .
  • Language bioprogram hypothesis: Language bioprogram hypothesis refers to the hypothesis that children whose environmental exposure to language is limited, use a backup linguistic system
  • Matching hypothesis: Matching hypothesis refers to hypothesis that social support is helpful to an individual to the extent that the kind of support offered satisfies the individual's specific needs
  • Maternal immune hypothesis: Maternal immune hypothesis refers to the Theory of Sexual orientation that proposes that the fraternal birth Order effect of gay brothers reflects the progressive immunization of some mother s to male-specific antigens by each succeeding . . .
  • Maturation hypothesis: Maturation hypothesis: Maturation hypothesis refers to the proposition that people with antisocial personality and the other Cluster B disorders become better able to manage their behaviors as they age
  • Natural partitions hypothesis: Natural partitions hypothesis refers tothe notion that the world makes obvious the things that take nouns as labels, that is, that the meanings that nouns encode are natural chunks of meaning
  • Neurodevelopmental hypothesis: Neurodevelopmental hypothesis is the proposal that Schizophrenia is based on abnormalities in the pre-natal or neo-natal development of the nervous system, which lead to subtle but important abnormalities of brain anatomy and major . . .
  • Null hypothesis: Null hypothesis the hypothesis alternative to a primary hypothesis, stating that there is no relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable
  • Parental investment hypothesis: Parental investment hypothesis refers to the idea that having children is more costly for women than for men, which has led to the Evolution of some differences between the sexes in t he characteristics they seek in mates
  • Problem space hypothesis: Problem space hypothesis refers to the idea that problem solving is isomorphic to a search through a mental graph, with nodes corresponding to every possible state of affairs of a problem and connections corresponding to legal moves
  • Projective hypothesis: Projective hypothesis refers to the proposal that when a person attempts to understand an ambiguous or vague stimulus, his or her interpretation reflects needs, feelings, experiences, prior conditioning, thought processes, and so on
  • Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity: Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity refers to the idea that language constrains thought and perception, so that cultural differences in cognition could be explained at least partially by differences in language
  • Urban-overload hypothesis: Urban-overload hypothesis refers to the theory suggesting that people living in cities are likely to keep to themselves in order to avoid being overloaded by all the stimulation they receive
  • Maternal deprivation hypothesis: Maternal deprivation hypothesis: Maternal Deprivation hypothesis refers to the notion that socially deprived infants develop abnormally because they have failed to establish attachments to a primary caregiver
  • Cycle-of-violence hypothesis: Cycle-of-violence hypothesis refers to the repetition of patterns of violent Behavior across generations. For example, persons who are abused as children are more likely to be abusive- toward others as adults
  • Hypothesis testing: Hypothesis testing refers to an inductive reasoning strategy that involves testing a number of possible solutions to a problem and modifying them based on feedback
  • Social selection hypothesis: Social selection hypothesis refers to the premise that people tend to select environments in which there are other people similar to themselves. Other /More definition: social selection hypothesis refers to the premise that people tend to . . .
  • Cardiac hypothesis: Cardiac hypothesis refers to a hypothesis which proposed that the heart was the seat of such emotions as love and anger.
  • Equipotentiality hypothesis: Equipotentiality hypothesis: Equipotentiality hypothesis refers to the hypothesis that, at birth, both hemispheres of the brain have equal potential for acquiring language
  • Caregiving hypothesis: Caregiving hypothesis refers to Ainsworth’s notion that the type of attachment that an infant develops with a particular caregiver depends primarily on the kind of caregiving he or she has received from that person
  • Invariance hypothesis: Invariance hypothesis refers to the theory that holds that the left hemisphere of the brain has the adult specialization for language from birth.
  • Relational primacy hypothesis: Relational primacy hypothesis refers to the hypothesis that analogical reasoning is available early in infancy.
  • Relational-organizational hypothesis: Relational-organizational hypothesis refers to the idea that visual imagery aids memory by producing a greater number of associations.
  • Affect-as-information hypothesis: Affect-as-information hypothesis refers to the idea that people judge something as good or bad by asking themselves "how do I feel about it?”
  • Ainsworth caregiving hypothesis: Ainsworth caregiving hypothesis refers to Ainsworth’s notion that the type of attachment an infant develops with a particular caregiver depends primarily on the kind of caregiving he has received from that person
  • Anxiety reduction hypothesis: Anxiety reduction hypothesis a term that explains the self-defeating nature of avoidance responses as a result of the reinforcing effects of relief from anxiety
  • Apparent-distance hypothesis: Apparent-distance hypothesis refers to an explanation of the moon illusion stating that the horizon seems more distant than the night sky.
  • Chemiosmotic hypothesis: Chemiosmotic hypothesis is the mechanism to explain the aerobic formation of ATP in mitochondria.
  • Core knowledge hypothesis: Core knowledge hypothesis states that infants are born with rudimentary knowledge of the world, which is elaborated based on experiences
  • Cumulative-deficit hypothesis: Cumulative-deficit hypothesis refers to the notion that impoverished environments inhibit intellectual growth and that these inhibiting effects accumulate over time
  • Dopamine hypothesis of Schizophrenia: Dopamine hypothesis of Schizophrenia refers to the proposal that Schizophrenia is due to excess activity at certain Dopamine synapses.
  • Easterbrook's hypothesis: Easterbrook's hypothesis refers to the notion that increased arousal leads to a narrowing of attention to a small number of relevant cues.
  • Direct effects hypothesis: Direct effects hypothesis refers to the theory that coping resources, such as social support, have beneficial psychological and health effects under conditions of both high stress and low stress
  • Directional hypothesis: Directional hypothesis is defined as a tentative prediction that the levels of an independent variable will cause a dependent variable to change in a particular direction
  • Dominant language switch hypothesis: Dominant language switch hypothesis: Dominant language switch hypothesis refers to the hypothesis that children tend to learn a second language more completely than adults do because children, more than adults, tend to switch to the second . . .
  • Experimental hypothesis: Experimental hypothesis is defined as the theory or proposal on which an experimental study is based. Usually, the hypothesis predicts the effects of the treatment administered
  • Flexible approach or Hypothesis-testing approach: Flexible approach or Hypothesis-testing approach is a term for a kind of approach when the Neuropsychologist selects the tests to be administered to each patient based on his or her hypotheses about the case and may even alter the . . .
  • Functional-equivalence hypothesis: Functional-equivalence hypothesis refers to belief that although visual imagery is not identical to visual perception, it is functionally equivalent to it
  • Environmental hypothesis: Environmental hypothesis refers to the notion that groups differ in IQ because the environments in which they are raised are not equally conducive to intellectual growth
  • Glutamate hypothesis of Schizophrenia: Glutamate hypothesis of Schizophrenia: Glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia refers to the proposal that Schizophrenia is due to deficient activity at certain glutamate synapses
  • Just-world phenomenon/hypothesis: Just-world phenomenon/hypothesissis refers to the notion that many people need to believe that the world is fair and that justice is served- that bad people are punished and good people rewarded.
  • Mere presence hypothesis: Mere presence hypothesis: Mere presence hypothesis refers to the hypothesis that states that the mere presence of others creates arousal sufficient to enhance performance at easy tasks and impair performance at difficult tasks
  • Nondirectional hypothesis: Nondirectional hypothesis refers to a tentative prediction that the levels of an independent variable will cause a change in a dependent variable, but not predicting the direction of that change
  • Perceptual hypothesis: Perceptual hypothesis is defined as an initial guess regarding how to organize (perceive) a stimulus pattern.
  • Prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis: Prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis is the hypothesis that language-learning children find and use clues to syntactic structure of language in the Prosodic characteristics of the speech they hear
  • Whorfian hypothesis: Whorfian hypothesis is the the hypothesis that language influences thought and, therefore, that differences among languages might cause differences in the cognition of speakers of those languages

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Summary

A hypothesis in psychology is a testable prediction about the relationship between variables, forming the basis for research projects and experiments. It is crucial in guiding the research process to determine whether the predicted relationship exists. Well-formulated hypotheses are essential for ensuring the validity and reliability of study findings. --

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