Psychology Exam 1 (quizzes)
If the correlation between children's intelligence and their creativity is +1.00, this would indicate that
among children, increased creativity is associated with higher intelligence.
An experiment was designed to study the potential impact of alcohol consumption on emotional stability. A specification of the procedures used to measure emotional stability illustrates
an operational definition
Determining a cause-effect relationship is the main purpose of conducting
An experiment
An amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity that sweep across the surface of the brain is called a(n)
EEG.
Introspection was the basic research tool used by ________ in order to study people's inner sensations and mental images.
Edward Titchener
Professor Jamison is studying the impact of alcohol consumption on driving impairment. She divides participants into two groups. One group gets the treatment, in this case alcohol, and the other group does not. Participants then complete a task to measure their reaction time. Professor Jamison finds that those who had consumed alcohol had a slower reaction time than those who did not consume alcohol. She then concludes that alcohol consumption would impair driving ability. Why is she able to reach this conclusion?
Her experiment tested theoretical principles that can help explain everyday behaviors.
Professor McClure believes that young children are frequently able to make morally correct decisions because humans are endowed with an inborn knowledge of basic ethical principles. The professor's belief is most consistent with the views of
Plato
Who are likely to show the greatest similarity in personality?
Ruth and Ramona, identical twins
What is a common feature of industrial-organizational psychologists?
They are more likely to conduct applied research.
Psychologists' personal values and goals
can bias their observations and interpretations
Dr. Caleigh conducts research on the relationship between adults' language skills and their capacity to solve mathematical problems. Dr. Caleigh is most likely a ________ psychologist.
cognitive
Investigating patterns of brain activity that accompany people's recollections of a stressful experience would be of most direct interest to the specialty area known as
cognitive neuroscience
The branch of psychology that can be considered a marriage between the science of the mind and the science of the brain is called
cognitive neuroscience.
Assessing how well one variable predicts another variable is to ________ as detecting cause-effect relationships between different variables is to _________.
correlational research; experimental research
To assess the effectiveness of the flu vaccine for county residents, Mr. McCallum wants to administer vaccine injections to all county residents rather than give half of them a placebo injection. Mr. McCallum is most clearly underestimating the importance of
creating a control group.
A questioning attitude regarding psychologists' assumptions and hidden values best illustrates
critical thinking.
Which perspective would suggest that the facial expressions associated with the emotions of lust and rage are inherited?
evolutionary
Exploring how we humans are alike because of our common biology and evolutionary history is the focus of
evolutionary psychology.
Random assignment minimizes ________ between experimental and control groups. Random sampling minimizes ________ between a sample and a population.
differences; differences
Studying people of all races and cultures is most helpful for
discerning human similarities and differences
Which of the following is an evidence-based method that draws on observation and experimentation?
empirical approach
The "runner's high" can be explained by the release of
endorphins
Dr. Renk would like to study the "hook up" culture among college students. To be able to generalize her findings to all college students, she needs a representative sample. To obtain such a sample, Dr. Renk should
seek a random sample of participants.
Charles Darwin attempted to explain the ________ that he encountered.
species variation
Phrenology highlighted the presumed functions of
specific brain regions.
Suppose you want to find out which candidate college students will vote for in an upcoming national election. To be sure the sample of college students you survey is representative of the college student population, you should
survey a large representative sample of the college student population.
Which portion of the cerebral cortex is most closely adjacent to the ears?
temporal lobes
One research team randomly assigned hospitalized premature infants either to formula feedings or to breast-milk feedings. Which research method did they use?
experimentation
Edward Titchener is to structuralism as William James is to
functionalism
William James was a prominent American
functionalist.
After noting that a majority of professional basketball players are African-American, Ervin concluded that African-Americans are better athletes than members of other racial groups. Ervin's conclusion best illustrates the danger of
generalizing from vivid cases.
Steven believes that the Earth is flat and has befriended several people on social media who also hold this view. This is an example of how ________ can feed the acceptance of misinformation.
group identity
Dr. Tate is an excellent professor. She is curious, humble, and skeptical. These are all characteristics of
having a scientific attitude
Professor Jones is examining the impact of parental divorce on adult children's attitudes regarding romantic relationships. The attitude regarding romantic relationships can be considered a(n)
mental process.
In the 1960s, the cognitive revolution in psychology involved a renewal of interest in the scientific study of
mental processes.
A descriptive technique of monitoring and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to change or control the situation is called
naturalistic observation.
According to evolutionary psychologists, our predisposition to overconsume fatty junk foods most clearly illustrates that we are biologically prepared to behave in ways that promoted the ________ of our ancestors.
reproductive success
SQ3R is a study method incorporating five steps: survey, question, read, ________, and review.
retrieve
Which theorist most clearly influenced William James' efforts to understand the adaptive functions of thinking and consciousness?
Charles Darwin
Who is best known for highlighting the reproductive advantages of environmentally adaptive traits?
Charles Darwin
The conclusion that "playing violent video games leads to violent crime" has been refuted by the American Psychological Association (APA). Why did the APA refute the statement?
Correlation does not prove causation.
What do the parallel research findings of "Eighty percent of prisoners in the United States were spanked as children" and "Seventy-five percent of college students in the United States were spanked as children" demonstrate?
Correlation does not prove causation.
Janna has low self-esteem because she is often teased for being overweight. Appreciating the complexity of Janna's difficulties requires
a biopsychosocial approach
A direct relationship in which two factors increase together or decrease together represents
a positive correlation.
The case study is a research method in which
a single individual or group is studied in great depth
Suppose that people who watch a lot of violence on TV are also particularly likely to behave aggressively. This relationship would NOT necessarily indicate that watching violence influences aggressive behavior because
association does not prove causation.
Studies conducted for the sake of building psychology's base of knowledge are most clearly examples of
basic research.
Contemporary psychology is best defined as the science of
behavior and mental processes.
Exploring how we humans are diverse because of our differing genes and environments is the focus of
behavior genetics
Which perspective studies the relative contributions of our genes and our environment on our individual differences?
behavior genetics
Akira believes that her son has become a good student because he is frequently praised for his learning efforts. Her belief best illustrates a ________ perspective.
behavioral
Depression and suicide are more common in today's North American culture than they were in the very different North American culture of nearly a century ago. But in both the past and the more recent cultural settings, pessimistic thinking and feelings of loneliness corresponded to a heightened risk of depression and suicide. This best illustrates that ________ often underlie cultural differences in behavior.
common psychological processes
Rather than seeking to change people to fit their environments, ________ work to create social and physical environments that are healthy for all.
community psychologists
If participants in the experimental group of a drug treatment study are much younger than participants in the control group, the age of the research participants is a
confounding variable.
Citing a recent report stating that "Eighty percent of prisoners in the United States were spanked as children" to support the idea that corporal punishment during childhood leads to criminal behavior in adulthood is problematic because
correlation does not prove causation.
To discover the extent to which economic status can be used to predict political preferences, researchers are most likely to use
correlational measures.
Which research method assesses how well one variable predicts another without demonstrating a cause-effect relationship between the variables?
correlational research
To determine whether the strength of people's self-esteem is related to their income level, researchers would most likely make use of
correlational research.
Reasoning that does not blindly accept available arguments and conclusions illustrates
critical thinking.
After an experiment, research participants are told its purpose and about any deception they may have experienced. This is called
debriefing.
In a psychological experiment, the factor that may be influenced by the manipulated experimental treatment is called the ________ variable.
dependent
Professor Smith told one class that drinking alcohol has been found to increase sexual desire. He informed another class that drinking alcohol has been found to reduce sexual appetite. The fact that neither class was surprised by the information they received best illustrates the power of
hindsight bias
An experiment enables researchers to isolate the effects of one or more factors by manipulating the factors of interest and also by
holding other factors constant across experimental and control groups.
Which psychologists are MOST likely to be involved in applied research?
industrial-organizational psychologists
Potential research participants are told enough about an upcoming study to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate. This illustrates the practice of seeking
informed consent
A researcher would be most likely to discover a positive correlation between
intelligence and academic success
To assess the influence of self-esteem on interpersonal attraction, researchers either insulted or complimented students about their physical appearance just before they went on a blind date. In this research, the dependent variable was
interpersonal attraction.
Looking inward and reporting your immediate sensations, images, and feelings is called
introspection
Research participants are asked to monitor and report their own immediate sensory reactions to differently colored objects. This research involves a technique known as
introspection
The unreliability of ________ led to the waning popularity of structuralism.
introspection
Behaviorists dismissed the value of
introspection.
The tendency to perceive order in random events often leads to overestimating the value of
intuition.
Which of the following is NOT a weakness of the experimental method?
lack of control of variables
One research team studied the ups and downs of human moods by counting positive and negative words in 504 million Twitter messages from 84 countries. The researchers' method best illustrates the use of
naturalistic observation.
Which perspective would help us to understand the impact of strokes and brain diseases on memory?
neuroscience`
John B. Watson is to Edward Titchener as ________ is to ________.
observable behavior; inner sensations
Dr. Jones is studying the effect of room lighting on college students' test performance and has defined room lighting as either dimly lit or brightly lit. This definition is an example of a(n)
operational definition
Dr. Murphy is studying the relationship between alcohol intoxication and risky driving behaviors. Dr. Murphy defines alcohol intoxication as having a blood alcohol level of .08. This definition of alcohol intoxication is a(n)
operational definition
Our adaptive flexibility in responding to different environments contributes to our fitness, which refers to
our ability to survive and reproduce
Which nervous system is responsible for gathering information and transmitting decisions from the CNS to other parts of the body?
peripheral nervous system
A behavior geneticist would be most interested in studying hereditary influences on
personality traits
In a study of the effects of drinking alcohol, some participants drank a nonalcoholic beverage that actually smelled and tasted like alcohol. This nonalcoholic drink was a
placebo.
Discovering and promoting human strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive is the major focus of
positive psychology
A "modern culture where people's emotions and personal beliefs often override their acceptance of objective facts" is Oxford English Dictionary's definition of
post-truth.
Students learn and remember course materials best when they
process information actively.
Clinical psychologists specialize in
providing therapy to troubled people
Which major force in psychology emphasized unconscious thought processes?
psychoanalytic psychology
To accurately isolate cause and effect, experimenters should use
random assignment
To assess the impact of test difficulty on persistence of effort, researchers plan to give one group of children relatively easy tests and another group more difficult tests. To reduce the chance that the children in one group are more intelligent than those in the other group, the researchers should make use of
random assignment.
To assess reactions to a proposed tuition hike at her school, Ariana sent a questionnaire to every fifteenth person in the registrar's alphabetical listing of all currently enrolled students. Ariana is ensuring that her survey results are accurate by using
random sampling.
Why might so many people believe the commonly accepted idea that roaches could survive a nuclear bomb?
repetition
Repeating the essence of a previous research study to verify whether its findings extend to a new group of research participants and to different circumstances is called
replication.
To accurately generalize study results, researchers need
representative sample.
People often fail to make accurate generalizations because they are unduly influenced by ________ cases.
vivid
Although phrenology incorrectly suggested that bumps on the skull revealed a person's character traits, phrenology did succeed in focusing attention on
the localization of function.
The fact that people diagnosed with a specific learning disorder exhibit the same brain malfunctions whether they are Italian, French, or British demonstrates that
the same underlying processes guide people everywhere.
Professor Shalet contends that parents and their children have similar levels of intelligence largely because they share common genes. His idea is best described as a(n)
theory
Cognitive neuroscience studies relationships between
thought processes and brain functions.
Professor X is studying the effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual thoughts. She assigns students to one of two conditions. In the first condition, participants are exposed to explicit sexual content and then given a word-completion task, which involves filling in the letter missing from each word. Based on the letter added, the word could be of a sexual nature or not. For instance, b_d could be completed as "bed," indicating sexual thought, or as "bad," which has no sexual connotation. In the second condition, participants are not exposed to explicit sexual content but are assigned the same word-completion task. The experimental group consisted of the students who
were exposed to explicit sexual content
In their research on people's perception of the relationship between gun violence and gun control in the United States, Dr. Margo and Dr. Dillman have found that people are more approving of "commonsense gun legislation" than "banning weapons." This finding demonstrates which of the following?
wording effects
