Making Decisions about Evidence

Making decisions about the extent and quality of available evidence is an important aspect of accepting claims about behavior and mental processes. For each of the following research descriptions, decide whether you think the researcher's conclusion should be accepted "beyond a reasonable doubt."

1			An experimental finding indicates that exposing individuals to an emotionally shocking event, compared to a neutral event, causes people to have poorer memory for the details of the event.
2			A research study investigating people's willingness to forgive someone who has hurt them reveals that approximately 25% of the participants indicate there is at least one person whom they will never forgive.
3			Across many studies with many different research participants, research findings indicate that "cramming" for a test (i.e., studying all at one time) leads to poorer long-term memory for test material compared to distributing study across multiple sessions.
4			Findings from a survey indicate that persistent feelings of anger following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are associated with greater desires for revenge.