AP Psych College Classroom Questions #2

All of the following are American Psychological Association ethical guidelines for researchers EXCEPT:

Research may not involve deception.

If research on eating disorders regularly involves only women referred by physicians, the results of the studies might be limited because of the presence of

Sampling bias

Students from a journalism class ask only their friends to participate in a school newspaper survey and neglect to ask the rest of the student body. The journalism students' data may not be generalizable due to

Sampling bias

The correlation between two measures obtained on a group of individuals is graphically represented as a

Scatterplot

John B. Watson is best known as the founder of

Behaviorism

The control group in the experiment (violent vs non violent tv) is the group that

watched the nonviolent cartoon

Which of the following values best represents the value of the statistic associated with the graph?

0.00

In data set A, the mean is

11

A psychologist administered the most recent edition of the Stanford-Binet IQ test to 50 students and their scores are shown in the chart above. How many students earned scores higher than two standard deviations above the mean?

2

Exam Scores 8 6 5 10 5 7 1 5 10 A student who scored at the mode would have how many points?

5

Exam Scores 8 6 5 10 5 7 1 5 10 Which of the following is the median score?

6

3 4 5 5 7 7 7 8 8 10 Ten participants in a treatment group were asked to rate their feelings of self-worth on a scale of one to ten, with a value of ten indicating a very positive feeling of self-worth. The data for the participants are above. What is the mean?

6.4

A test has a mean of 80 with a standard deviation of 4. Which of the following scores is within one standard deviation of the mean?

77

A person displays a set of rare behaviors that psychologists had not known about previously, because nobody had ever shown them before. The best strategy to investigate the nature of those behaviors is

A case study

Neither the research team nor the children knew which drinks had caffeine and which drinks did not. The researchers were using

A double-blind design

To minimize experimenter bias, researchers should use

A double-blind design

Dr. Larson was interested in whether classical music helps students perform better on a test. Dr. Larson randomly assigned half of the study's participants to a group that listened to classical music while taking a test. The other half of the participants did not listen to music while taking a test. The research design Dr. Larson used is

An experiment

A basic assumption underlying the evolutionary approach to sexual attraction is that men seek potential mates who

Appear fertile

Researchers have found a negative correlation between income and dental problems. What conclusion can correctly be drawn from this statement?

As income increases, the likelihood of dental problems decreases.

A double-blind control is essential for which of the following?

Assessment of a treatment designed to reduce schizophrenic symptoms

The research team concluded that a student's attitude toward school achievement is the result of family size. Which of the following is the most important error made by the research team?

Assuming that correlation proves causation

Which of the following approaches to psychology emphasizes observable responses over inner experiences when accounting for behavior?

Behaviorist

Synesthesia is a phenomenon that has been estimated to occur in only a few people in a million. Because of its rarity, researchers are likely to choose which research method to study it?

Case study

Which theoretical perspective in psychology attempts to characterize the way in which humans store and process sensory information?

Cognitive

Ivan Pavlov was most well known for which of the following?

Conditioning dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell

Which of the following is a term for a variable that researchers do not control and that can affect the results of a study?

Confounding Variable

Which of the following would an industrial-organizational psychologist be LEAST likely to study?

Corporate profitablility

In an experiment, which of the following variables refers to the outcome that is measured by the experimenter?

Dependent

Which of the following is true of the frequency distributions shown in the graphs above?

Distribution B has more variation than distributions A or C.

Which of the following scenarios is regulated by federal law?

Dr. Mast, a psychologist, has a client, Tim, who threatens to seriously harm his brother, Carl. Tim has a history of serious violence and the means to carry out the threat; therefore, Dr. Mast must inform Carl.

A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group. This research method is best characterized as

Experimental

Which of the following research approaches would be best for testing the hypothesis that the presence of certain odors causes people to gamble more?

Experimental

Which of the following research techniques would be the best way to demonstrate that getting eight or more hours of sleep produces higher exam scores the following day?

Experimentation

The claim that a whole is different from the sum of its parts is central to which of the following schools of thought?

Gestalt psychology

The primary emphasis on growth is most reflective of which of the following perspectives?

Humanistic

A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group. What is the dependent variable in this study?

Incidence of aggressive behavior

Leadership, job satisfaction, and employee motivation are all studied in which of the following psychological disciplines?

Industrial-organizational psychology

Which of the following is a statistical approach concerned with forming conclusions about the effect of the independent variable on variations in the dependent variable?

Inferential

In the early years of psychology, a research participant might have been asked to observe carefully and systematically his conscious experiences. What method would the participant be using?

Introspection

The mean will be higher than the median in any distribution that

Is positively skewed

Which of the following statements is true of behaviorism?

It holds that development is largely a product of learning.

In which of the following types of research are the same children tested periodically at different points in their development?

Longitudinal

In their discussions of the process of development, the advocates of nature in the nature-nurture controversy emphasize which of the following?

Maturation

Which of the following measures can be precisely located on the graph of a skewed distribution without doing any calculations?

Mode

A researcher interested in cooperative play in young children unobtrusively places several video cameras at a public playground and counts how many children engage in cooperative play behaviors. Which type of research method is the researcher using?

Naturalistic observation

A disadvantage of longitudinal studies is that

Participants who drop out during the course of the study may be different in important ways from ones who do not drop out

Which of the following have been shown to have a positive correlation

Perceived lack of control and learned helplessness

An illusory correlation is best defined as a

Perceived relationship where one does not exist

Research in the field of positive psychology is most supportive of which of the following conclusions?

Perception of control is related to a sense of well-being.

Which of the following is required for a psychological experiment?

Precise operational definitions

In studying the behavior of five year olds in freeplay situations, a cognitive psychologist would be most interested in the children's

Problem-solving strategies

The notion that human behavior is greatly influenced by unconscious thoughts and desires is most consistent with which of the following psychological approaches?

Psychodynamic

Which of the following is used to reduce the effects of confounding variables in experiments?

Random assignment

Which of the following procedures is intended to control for preexisting differences between the groups of participants in an experiment?

Random assignment

A psychology professor wants to investigate the study habits of students at her university. She cannot collect data from every student but hopes to use a subset of the students to draw accurate conclusions about the behavior of the student body. Which of the following features of research design will best address her goal?

Random sampling

In order to yield information that is generalizable to the population from which it was drawn, a sample must be

Representative of the population

Introspection, a research tool used by early psychologists, is a technique which involves

Self-examination of mental processes

Using the data in sets A and B, which of the following statements is true?

Set B has a smaller deviation that set A

Which of the following most accurately describes a dependent variable?

Some aspect of a participant's response that is measured in an experiment

Which of the following studies has had the most profound impact on ethical issues in psychological research?

Stanley Milgram's study of obedience

A research psychologist generalizes from a particular sample to an entire population. This is an example of

Statistical inference

Cognitive psychologists are most likely to study

The acquisition of knowledge, planning, and problem solving

While reviewing scores from a chapter test, a teacher discovered that the mean score was higher than the median. Which of the following statements is most likely correct?

The distribution of scores for the test is positively skewed.

A psychological researcher designs a study to determine whether positive feedback affects self-esteem...Which of the following elements constitutes the independent variable in the study?

The feedback about relative performance in coin tossing

Which of the following is the independent variable in this experiment? (headaches)

The medicine

Which of the following statements is supported by the results of this experiment?

The medicine was more effective in reducing the severity of the headaches than was quiet rest.

Which of the following best describes the response of members of the American Psychological Association to ethical issues in research?

They have developed codes of ethics for research with both human participants and animal subjects.

A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group. What is the independent variable in this study?

Type of television program viewed

She measures the amount of time he spends playing with each toy before he comes to bother her. Which of the following is the independent variable in this example?

Type of toy

A research group involved with advertising is conducting a study to investigate whether shoppers are more likely to engage in impulse buying at the checkout than at any other place in the store. For the results of the study to be generalizable, the researchers should

Use a representative sample

The dependent variable in the experiment (violent tv and aggressive behavior) is the

amount of aggressive behavior exhibited by the children

According to Wilhelm Wundt, the focus of scientific psychology should be the study of

conscious experience

The most important reason to use operational definitions in psychological research is it

helps everyone involved with the research understand and collect data in the same manner.

A teacher finds the distribution of scores on a final exam to be positively skewed with low variability. On the basis of this information, the teacher would be most justified in concluding that

the exam was too difficult

The results of a correlational study involving student volunteers in a psychology laboratory might not apply to the general population because

the sample is not randomly chosen and therefore may not be a representative sample