Social Psych Final

Dr. Sardonicus wants to get good student evaluations for her Social Psychology course. Which prompt should she give her students?

"Please list at least 12 ways that this course could be improved."

Ayduk et al. (2012) evaluated how people respond to negative and positive feedback and how people's preexisting self-views influence their reactions to feedback. Ayduk et al. found support for which of the following hypotheses? Select all that apply.

-Negative feedback led to significantly higher negative non-verbal feedback for those with positive self-views than those with negative self-views. -People with more positive self-views had higher blood pressure when receiving negative feedback. -People with more positive self-views had greater creativity when receiving positive feedback and less creativity upon receiving negative feedback.

Recall that Elliot Aronson and his colleagues asked college students either to compose a persuasive message advocating the use of condoms or to compose and deliver their message in front of a video camera. In addition, half of the participants in each group were made mindful of the times that they didn't use condoms. Compared to the others, which (fictitious) participant would experience the most dissonance and express a greater willingness to use condoms in the future?

Bluma, who delivered her speech, and listed the times she found it difficult to use condoms

Based on your understanding of the article by Aronson et al., 1991, which of the following groups of people would be most likely to change their future behaviors?

People who reflect on their past behaviors and make public statements contradicting their past behaviors.

According to the reading by Ayduk et al., 2012 on Self-Verification Theory, which of the following is true?

People with a lower self-view are less distressed by negative feedback than people with a higher self-view.

"Are some people just better leaders than others?" Such a question about human nature is most likely to be asked by a __________.

Personality psychologist

By level of analysis, which sequence reflects the narrowest to broadest focus?

Personality psychology, social psychology, sociology

Assume that instead of conducting experiments, Bibb Latané and John M. Darley had used a correlational approach to study the relationship between the number of bystanders who witness an emergency and how quickly a victim receives help. Assume that the correlational data were compatible with results from experiments: the more bystanders, the more time it took bystanders to help. What type of correlation is this between time and number of bystanders?

Positive correlation

Paul Ekman and Wally Friesen collected convincing evidence that facial expressions of primary emotions are universal. To demonstrate that these expressions were not bound to a given culture, they studied __________.

a preliterate tribe in a visually isolated region of New Guinea

When Claude Steele had science majors and business majors wear lab coats during their experiment rating albums, they found that the lab coats served __________ for the science majors, but not for the business majors.

a self-affirmation function

"The IKEA effect" describes how some people seem to have difficulty following nonverbal instructions that clearly illustrate how to assemble flat-packed furniture but then end up loving the furniture they've helped to create. Which aspect of dissonance theory does this phenomenon most closely relate to?

justification of effort

Consider the principles of cognitive dissonance theory. When people are asked whether they'd feel happier keeping their options open or committing to a decision, they generally think that ___________.

keeping their options open is better, but they are wrong in that conclusion

Rowan and Martin are very physically attractive. In the United States, most people would think they are also __________.

kind and intelligent

Winnie is 18 years old and has an 8-year-old brother, Boris. If they are both asked to answer the question "Who am I?" Winnie is likely to answer it in __________ terms than Boris will.

less concrete

When researchers asked a group of participants to decrease the amount of time they spent on Facebook each week, they found that (compared to a group who used Facebook as they normally would) this group reported feelings of __________ .

less depression

counterfactual thinking

mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Eva wants to raise a lot of money for her cat rescue group. Based on meta-analyses of priming effects, the best strategy for doing this involves __________.

mentioning fairness or good deeds several times in the appeal for donations

Suppose a researcher wants to know whether frustration really does cause aggression. The researcher collects a large number of experimental studies that involve both children and adults, and that are conducted both in the laboratory and in the field in both the United States and in other cultures. The researcher would then conduct a(n) __________ to determine whether there is enough consistency in findings across studies to determine the generalizability of the relationship between frustration and aggression.

meta-analysis

Recall that Elliot Aronson and Merrill Carlsmith told preschoolers that they were not allowed to play with a toy that the children had already rated as more attractive than other toys. Half of the children were threatened with mild punishment if they disobeyed, and the other half with severe punishment. When the experimenter left the room, none of the children played with the forbidden toy. When the experimenter returned and asked the children to rate all the toys again, those children who received __________.

mild threats reduced their dissonance by rating the forbidden toy as less attractive than before

If you wanted to make use of the concept of insufficient punishment, how would you discipline your misbehaving child? Give the child a stern look and tell her __________.

nothing else if she stops the forbidden behavior

Why do social psychologists tend to not just simply ask people about the reasons driving their behavior?

people might not know, might not want to tell, or might not understand the reasons for their own behavior

In trying to make sense of the mass suicide in Jonestown, a behaviorist would probably examine the __________.

rewards and punishments that Jim Jones used to influence his followers

When you meet your new roommate for the first time, he is wearing glasses, listening to classical music, and reading a copy of The New York Review of Books. You think, "Well, maybe rooming with an intellectual this year will be good for me." You instantly categorized your roommate as an intellectual on the basis of your __________.

schemas

Assume that the winning lottery ticket was purchased at the convenience store just around the corner from your house. Based on the principles of counterfactual thinking, you would probably feel worse than if the winning ticket had been purchased all the way across the state, because __________.

you could think back on a dozen opportunities that you had to buy the winning ticket, but didn't

Why is the belief in a just world a self-serving belief?

We can convince ourselves that we are safe from misfortunes.

Not all social influence is direct or deliberate. Compared to the others, which example BEST illustrates indirect or subtle social influence?

A child sees other kids wearing their T-shirts inside out and starts wearing a T-shirt the same way.

When people have an expectation about what another person is like, it may influence how they act toward that person; this further results in that person's behaving consistently with the other's original expectations. This is known as __________.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

In order to examine the importance of loving relationships in several different generations of Americans, a researcher decides to collect the lyrics from the 50 most popular songs of each decade from 1940 through 2010, and to code those lyrics for how often love-related themes are present. Which research method is this researcher using?

Archival

Imagine that you have just moved into a house with four other people. One of your housemates, Herman, doesn't seem to like you all that much. If you were to make use of the Ben Franklin effect, what can you do to increase Herman's liking for you?

Ask Herman if he could give you a ride to the grocery store

Barry spent an hour and a half running cables and toying with connections in order to receive cable TV in his room. When he was finished, he got 50 channels, but all of them were kind of fuzzy. His roommate, Vance, arrived home when Barry was done, and they both sat down to watch television. Which one will enjoy the cable TV the most?

Barry, because of justification of effort

Why would people be less likely to engage in dissonance-reducing behaviors in a collectivist culture?

Because they would be focused on group harmony rather than self-justification

Imagine that both Vera and Carol are against affirmative action. Vera is offered $50 to write an essay about the benefits of affirmative action, whereas Carol is offered only $1 to write a similar essay. After writing the essays and receiving their payments, both women are asked to report their attitudes toward affirmative action. Assuming that their attitudes were similarly negative at the outset, which of the following results would you expect?

Carol would be more favorable than Vera toward affirmative action.

According to the study by Ruba & Pollak (2020), which of the following is true?

Children were equally good at identifying emotions when faces were covered by masks and by sunglasses

Compared to the others, which person or group would be most likely to lose their enthusiasm for reading if a "Read for Cash" program were implemented in their school?

Children who enjoy reading to begin with

What are the three reasons that schemas become accessible?

Chronic accessibility due to experience; a current goal; priming

In the article you read on cultural differences in perceptual processing, Nisbett and Miyamoto (2005) made which of the following arguments?

Culture influences the extent to which you focus on particular objects vs. the context.

Which person has fallen prey to the fundamental attribution error?

Hans, who points to a person who fell down and says, "What a clumsy person!"

Edgar and Julius are both in line for a movie, but it sells out before either of them can get tickets. Edgar is the last person in line, but Julius is directly behind the person who got the last ticket. Based on the principles of counterfactual reasoning, why will Julius be more upset than Edgar?

It was easier for Julius to imagine how he could have gotten a ticket.

Juano was having a tough time deciding between a SonicMelter microwave oven and a BlastFurnace! microwave oven. Both appliances had good and bad features, and both were quite attractive alternatives, but in the end, Juano bought the SonicMelter. Based on the principles of postdecision dissonance, what should Juano be experiencing about the purchase he made?

Juano should like his SonicMelter even more than he previously did.

According to the self-fulfilling prophecy, our expectations about the social world are sometimes fulfilled simply because we believe them to be true. Which example best illustrates this point?

Karen expected her blind date to be funny, so she cracked a lot of jokes. He laughed along and told some jokes of his own.

Given that field experiments are high in external validity, why is it that social psychologists still rely on laboratory experiments?

Laboratory experiments allow for better control over extraneous variables.

Which situation would produce feelings of cognitive dissonance?

Mary firmly believes in equal opportunity in the workplace; Mary rigged a job posting to get her cousin hired.

Which situation represents a primary threat to internal validity?

Randomly changing several aspects of the study in addition to the independent variable

Assume that you were a participant in Bibb Latané and John M. Darley's experiment examining the conditions under which people offer help in an emergency. You believe that there are five other people participating with you in a discussion, although you are isolated in a booth to ensure privacy. As you are listening to the other participants, you hear one of them beginning to have a seizure. If you behave like the typical subject in Latané and Darley's research, what are you most likely to do?

Remain in the booth, do nothing, and hope for the best.

Martin and Lewis are standing at the counter of the convenience store, and Martin, who has just failed his social psychology exam, is animatedly telling Lewis that the exam was unfair and that the professor is unreasonable. As he takes his change, Martin sees his image on the security camera. This causes him to wonder whether he actually studied enough for the exam. Martin's self-scrutiny in this situation would be predicted by __________ theory.

Self-awareness

Nora has been blind since birth and has never seen a smile, frown, or furrowed brow. At age three, how capable would she be of expressing emotions through her facial expressions?

She would be able to express all six basic emotions about as well as sighted people.

Compared to the others, which person is using an internal justification to reduce dissonance?

Terri, who changes her attitude to bring it in line with an undesirable behavior

The Westgates bought their television from a store with a 30-day return policy, and the Leongs bought the same television from a different store with a policy that "All Sales Are Final!" Based on the principles of cognitive dissonance, which family is more likely to be satisfied with their TV?

The Leongs

__________ explain(s) why providing young children with large rewards for reading (e.g., money, prizes) might backfire and convince them that they don't really like reading as much as they thought at first.

The overjustification effect

When social psychologists talk about construals, what are they referring to...

The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world

What do observational and correlational research have in common?

They cannot answer causal questions

Social psychologists asked Black middle-school students to complete carefully constructed self-affirming writing assignments regarding their good qualities outside of school. How did this activity affect these students?

They reduced their academic anxiety and did better in school.

In the introduction to Chapter 1, you read about a number of social phenomena: selfless and selfish actions performed during the COVID pandemic; a sister and brother disagreed on the attractiveness of the same fraternity; and more than 800 people committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. What do these examples have in common?

They reveal the power of social influence

Compared to the others, who would be more likely to express a feeling of shame publicly?

Tran, a man from a collectivist culture

Compared to the others, which strategy is LEAST likely to be successful when avoiding temptation?

Try not to think about potential temptation

In an experiment conducted by Trey Hedden and his colleagues examining brain activity, East Asian participants and American participants underwent an fMRI while focusing on either a target or the context of a picture. In which circumstance did Americans exert more attention?

When asked to attend to the context

Jerzy, Nina, and Abdul were carpooling to work. As they were driving through heavy traffic, they were almost hit by a car that was driving along the shoulder. Jerzy immediately assumed it was a rebellious, reckless teenager who clearly was choosing not to follow the rules of the road. Nina assumed it was an impatient, hostile guy in his thirties not wanting to wait with everyone else on the road. Abdul immediately said, "Hey you two, what if the person driving was trying to get a pregnant, laboring woman to the hospital in time for the delivery?" Everyone in the car committed the fundamental attribution error EXCEPT _________.

abdul

"Live fast and die young, that's what I always say," Rosie pronounces, as she stuffs down three more Ding-Dong snack cakes and opens another pint of high-fat ice cream. Rosie knows that her diet is unhealthy and harmful, of course. To reduce her dissonance, Rosie is __________.

adding a cognition that is consonant with her problem behavior

Pietro's expression when Jana saw him at lunch was difficult to decode. One part of his face displayed one emotion and another part of his face displayed a different emotion. Pietro was demonstrating __________.

an affect blend

Dan Gilbert and his colleagues proposed a multistep model to explain the correspondence bias (also known as the fundamental attribution error). Which steps take place during this process?

an automatic internal attribution, followed sometimes by an effortful correction of that attribution

Researchers conducted a study in which participants viewed either photos of U.S. city scenes or Japanese city scenes, then were asked to detect differences between two similar pictures. They found that participants who viewed Japanese city scenes were more likely to detect changes in _________.

background

Cyndi bets a tidy sum that her university polo team will defeat Brandex University in the upcoming championships. If Cyndi is like most people, after making the bet, cognitive dissonance will lead her to __________.

become even more likely to believe that her university will win

The logical outcome of distressed couples making external attributions for positive behavior and internal attributions for negative ones is that the relationship is going to __________.

become less satisfying

When Marnie first met Phillip, he was drunk and loud. Now, months later, she still doesn't like him very much, even though she recently found out the reason he was so drunk was because his prescription medication interacted with the few sips of alcohol he'd had. Marnie's lingering opinion of Phillip is a result of __________.

belief perserverance

In a controlled experiment, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson informed primary school teachers that some of their students (called "bloomers") would show great academic improvement in the upcoming year. In reality, the "bloomers" were chosen randomly by the researchers and were no smarter than any of the other students. Which statement best describes the results of this experiment? At the end of the year, __________.

bloomers improved more on an IQ test than did non-bloomers

During an experiment investigating motivation, after observing the amount of time elementary school students spent playing new math games, researchers provided rewards to children for playing with the games. After the rewards were removed, __________.

children's intrinsic interest in the math games decreased

When observers consider the extent to which different people respond in the same way toward a given stimulus, they are using __________ information.

consensus

__________ information addresses the extent to which an actor behaves in a similar way in response to a stimulus across time and circumstances.

consistency

representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

__________ information addresses the extent to which the same person responds similarly to different stimuli.

distinctiveness

Judy raises her thumb to communicate to her sister that everything is okay. Although in America this is a common gesture, it may be interpreted differently elsewhere in the world. What kind of gesture is this?

emblem

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer's experiment in which participants were injected with epinephrine (allegedly as part of a study of the effects of a vitamin compound on vision) is one of the most famous studies in social psychology because the experiment showed that __________.

emotions can be the consequence of self-perception processes

Express is to __________ as interpret is to __________.

encode; decode

Fabia smiles to express that she is happy. Fabia's smile is a way of __________ the emotion of happiness.

encoding

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

A researcher wants to investigate the subculture of snowboarders. He begins hanging out with the snowboarders but does not impose his own ideas on the group. He merely records his observations of the group. This is an example of a(n) __________.

ethnography

In Stanley Schachter's theory of emotion, we observe our behavior and then __________.

explain to ourselves why we are behaving that way

Rafael has always hated mathematics courses. However, he likes most other courses at the university. Most other students tend to avoid math courses whenever possible, too. Given this information about consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus, most people would make a(n) __________ attribution for Rafael's attitude.

external

"Ksenya's bicycle was stolen yesterday," Amelia said, "and that's why she's so cranky today." Amelia has just made an ________ to explain the cause of Ksenya's behavior.

external attribution

Dr. Lim conducts a study in which she places either an expensive or a cheap purse on a park bench. She then counts how many people try to return the purse to its owner. What kind of study is this?

field experiment

Lars has been blind since birth. Which facial expression of emotion is likely to be expressed ambiguously to others?

frustration

The tendency most Americans have to discount situational explanations of behavior in favor of personality characteristics or traits is called the __________.

fundamental attribution error

Whereas American people have the proverb "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," Japanese people have a proverb that states, "The nail that stands out gets pounded down." These two different proverbs mirror social-psychological research that has demonstrated that people in Asian cultures __________.

have a more interdependent concept of self than do Americans

A negative correlation means that __________.

high values of one variable are associated with low values of the other

base rate information

information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

After starting your job, your manager sends you a friend request on Facebook. You accept but find that your manager posts the most childish jokes on his page. When he asks you in the morning if you saw his post last night, you say, "Yes, and I thought it was hilarious. I particularly liked the joke about the three men entering the bar." You are using __________ to help your manager like you.

ingratiation

By controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions, an experimenter can achieve high __________.

internal validity

Participants in a classic experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being asked to administer increasingly strong shocks to another person. Films of the participants showed them laughing nervously, chain-smoking, sweating, and fidgeting anxiously. Based on these records, it could be inferred that Milgram's experiment was high in __________.

psychological realism

The only way to be certain that the results of a survey represent the behavior of a particular population is to ensure that the respondents are __________ that population.

randomly selected from

Wing Na believes very strongly that saccharine is an unsafe sugar substitute that may even cause cancer. Even though Wing Na is diabetic, and thus should be using sugar substitutes, she often opts for sugar-laden foods and drinks to avoid saccharine. "I'll just exercise more later; the sugar isn't a big deal. I'm really being healthier by avoiding saccharine," she thinks. Wing Na's behavior and thoughts are examples of __________ in the face of cognitive dissonance.

rationalizing

Recall that Jack Brehm asked women in an experiment to rate the desirability of a number of appliances and then allowed them to choose one of those appliances as a gift. Twenty minutes later, all women re-rated the same appliances, including the one they chose. Women tended to rate the alternatives they rejected lower than they had originally, and to rate their chosen appliance more positively. These results suggest that people __________.

reduce dissonance by overestimating differences between chosen and unchosen alternatives

There is a moderately strong correlation between the number of ice cream cones sold in a day and the number of criminal acts occurring in a day. It seems more likely that it is really hot temperatures that are associated with both the increased ice cream sales and the increased crime, rather than that criminals treat themselves to ice cream after committing their crimes. This observation illustrates that correlations are __________.

subject to a third variable for their explanations

LaRhonda is going to be rewarded for completing a task, no matter how well (or poorly) it is done. This is an example of __________.

task-contingent rewards

Kirk mistakenly believes that there are more words that begin with the letter "k" than there are with the letter "k" in the third position due to ___________.

the availability heuristic

After Lyla's husband was injured in a car accident, she said, "I woke up that morning with a bad feeling in my stomach; I knew something awful was going to happen that day." Lyla is exhibiting __________.

the hindsight bias

anchoring heuristic

the process of making decisions based on certain ideas or standards held by the decision maker

Simon is meek, tidy, quiet, and overly concerned with order and detail. People guess that he's a bookkeeper because of

the representativeness heuristic.

Nutsenboltz, Inc., employs 100 people; 80 are salespeople and 20 are engineers. Nunzio, a salesperson at the company, is quiet, likes to keep to himself, and carries a calculator. Most people, when asked whether Nunzio is a salesperson or an engineer, will guess that he is an engineer. These people are using __________ to make this faulty guess. A correct guess would have been made if they had used __________.

the representativeness heuristic; base rate information

Behavioral self-handicapping is to __________ as reported self-handicapping is to __________.

using drugs and alcohol; blaming bad mood and test anxiety

When Bibb Latané and John Darley began to seriously consider why no one helped Kitty Genovese during her brutal attack, they hypothesized that the explanation was that __________.

when many people witness a crime, they assume someone else will call for help