PSY311- Exam 3 Meade

In which of the following cases is conformity due to information social influence least likely to occur?

A repairman falls off a ladder and breaks his leg while working in the hospital.

Jane's softball team is planning to steal the other team's mascot-a baby goat. Jane does not want to participate in such a scheme. Which of the following situations would make it more likely that Jane will refuse to help her team steal the goat?

Another member of the team decides not to participate

Given the role of informational and normative social influence processes in contributing to participants' willingness to shock a confederate learner (e.g., Milgram, 1974), which of the following situations would yield the least obedience?

Before leaving the room, two experimenters disagree on instructions before finally telling participants to take their time and choose their own shock levels.

Group or team learning activities are becoming more common in the university setting. That is, professors often assign students to work in groups. Given what you know about social loafing, what advice would you give a professor who is considering using group learning activities?

For simple assignments, the groups will likely do worse than you would expect from individuals.

Which situation below best exemplifies the tenet of social impact theory that immediacy is directly related to conformity?

John won't smoke around his girlfriend, but he does smoke when he talks to her on the phone.

Which person is least likely to be in a group with the other three?

Lauren: age twenty-five, single, liberal waitress (out of: Sally: age forty-eight, married, politically conservative manager, Lauren: age twenty-five, single, liberal waitress, Sam: age forty-seven, single, ultra-conservative lawyer, Ben: age fifty, married, politically conservative accountant)

A group of five students are sharing a house. All of the students like to take long, hot showers in the morning, but when they do, there is not enough hot water for their housemates. Which of the following will be leastsuccessful in getting the students to take shorter showers?

Negotiate hot water use online via an instant messenger.

If you wanted to alter the cleaning behavior of your roommates using a technique similar to Shultz and his colleagues (2007), you could give them feedback about injunctive norms using which of the following methods?

You can put a smiley or sad face drawing on a report about their behavior.

All of the following are examples of informational social influence except :

You decide to lose weight, because the people you see on the covers of popular magazines are thinner than you are and you want people to like you more.

"We will not talk about other members behind their backs, and we will never divulge one another's secrets to anyone, inside or outside this group." The preceding statement reflects

a group norm

The major downside risk of informational social influence is that the more ________ the situation is, the more we rely on others who are no more likely to be knowledgeable or accurate than we ourselves are, leading us each to adopt others' mistakes and misinterpretations.

ambiguous

According to Anderson and her colleagues (1992), why would a heavy female body be preferred in cultures where food supplies were scarce or unreliable? In these cultures,

b. heavy women would be perceived as healthy and fertile.

Why do group members tend to be homogeneous?

because many groups attract people who are similar and groups tend to operate in ways that encourage similarity in the members.

Steph reads an anti-drinking ad in the student newspaper that states, "Students at this school, on average, only drink three drinks per week." She typically drinks no alcoholic beverages per week, but after seeing the ad she starts consuming more because she is "below average." Steph is exhibiting the

boomerang effect.

During a drought, Lynne noticed that all of her neighbors had stopped watering their lawns even though there were no laws against it. Lynne was following a(n) ________ norm when she let her lawn turn brown, too.

descriptive

According to social-psychological reasoning, a large "student body" is not a social group because

each student cannot possibly interact with all other students.

Under certain conditions, people will choose the cooperative option when playing the "prisoner's dilemma" game. For example, when a player ________, that player will be more likely to play cooperatively.

expects to interact with his or her partner in the future

Mark is a Democrat. He just joined a Welfare Reform Committee made up of nine Republicans. Mark holds a minority opinion on this issue. If Mark wants his opinion to influence the group's final recommendations, he should

express a consistent, unwavering viewpoint.

Execution teams who work at prisons tend to deny personal responsibility for the executions and state that they are just following orders. Such justifications for taking a human life illustrate that when people obey authority they can

externally justify their actions.

The study group you belong to is discussing class materials for the upcoming exam. Based on research presented in your text about information sharing, which type of material would group members be most likely to focus on?

facts that all group members know

According to the authors, in part because the experimental procedures were so ________, it was difficult for participants in Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments (e.g., Milgram, 1974) to abandon the "Obey legitimate authority" norm in favor of the norm that says, "Do no harm."

fast-paced

For Halloween, Jeff wears a sheet and goes to a party as a ghost. How is this costume likely to influence his behavior? He will

feel less personally accountable for his behavior.

Group decision-making can be improved and the problems of process loss avoided if groups make sure to do all of the following except

focus on seeking consensus between group members.

In order to avoid the phenomenon of groupthink, the leader of a group should

form subgroups that discuss the problem separately.

Researchers such as Baumeister and Leary (1995) argue that the need to belong to groups is present in all societies because

group membership has conferred evolutionary advantages to humans

Charlene typically goes along with what her group of friends wants and asks of her. However, one day she refuses to meet them for smoothies after class. Chances are, Charlene will face little retribution for this as long as she has enough

idiosyncrasy credits

If you wanted to resist an influence attempt, social impact theory (Latané, 1981) suggests that you should

increase the distance between yourself and the group.

In order to predict whether the presence of others will help or hinder performance, one needs two pieces of information: whether ________ and whether ________.

individual performance can be evaluated; the task is simple or complex

In which of the following does the role of informational rather than normative social influence most predominate?

mass psychogenic illnesses

A high level of group cohesiveness would be leastbeneficial to which of the following groups?

members of a political campaign team developing a strategy

Shelley was initially moderately in favor of a proposal to build a city bike path. At a meeting, she learns that not only will the path provide recreational opportunities and allow for some decrease in traffic, but that in towns with paths, the crime rate tends to go down and businesses along the path do better. She is now strongly in favor of the proposal. The theory that best explains her change of opinion is the ________ theory.

persuasive arguments

Dr. Hammerstein is a college dean and wants to design a program to help deal with the problem of binge drinking on her campus. The technique currently in favor and that you'd suggest, is based on the use of

presenting information on campus norms that are lower than students expect.

Adam is part of a group organized to increase blood donations in a local community. As a social psychologist, Adam has a relevant background in persuasion tactics, but his group members fail to realize the important contributions he could make. This scenario is an example of

process loss

In a variation of his standard experiment, Solomon Asch (1957) found that when participants could write their responses on a piece of paper, conformity dropped dramatically. This finding indicates that participants exhibited ________, not ________, during the standard experiment.

public compliance; private acceptance

When it is important to provide a correct answer and the stakes are high, people are more likely to

rely on informational social influence.

In describing his experiences during decision making that preceded the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's adviser, Arthur Schlesinger, reported that although he was opposed to the invasion, he didn't speak out because "others would regard it as presumptuous of him, a college professor, to take issue with august heads of government institutions." This example best reflects ________ as a symptom of groupthink.

self-censorship in the interest of avoiding criticism

Nan had pretty much made up her mind before a group discussion. During the discussion, however, she thinks to herself, "I think I'll hang back and see how the others feel about it. I don't want them to think I'm nuts or anything." Nan's thoughts best reflect the ________ interpretation of group polarization.

social comparison

Teenagers are often more susceptible to influence attempts from peers than from their parents. This is because peers become more important to teenagers than their parents are. This example represents the influence of Bibb Latané's (1981) concept of ________ on normative conformity.

strength

Sometimes famous performers have horrible final rehearsals in empty auditoriums prior to a big performance, yet they end up having wonderful performances in front of audiences. Why would the presence of others increase performance on a well-rehearsed task, such as musical performance?

they are aroused

According to your textbook, all of the following are true with respect to women and leadership except

women are even harsher toward other women who act counter to the feminine role than men are.