Chapter 11

During a discussion about junk food with her two adolescent children, Mrs. Kozena made it very clear that she thought junk food was disgusting and that it upset her to see her children eat it. Mrs. Kozena's negative feeling about junk food best illustrates the _____ component of attitudes.

B. emotional

Nestor belongs to the cross-country ski club at his college but is not a member of the downhill ski club. In terms of basic social categories, Nestor's cross-country club members are the _____ and the members of the downhill ski club are the _____.

B. in-group; out-group

Half the female participants were told that males typically did better than females on the math test they were about to take, and the other half were told that the test did not produce gender differences. The first group scored lower on the test than did the second group. These results are explained by a phenomenon called:

B. stereotype threat.

Mrs. Lovejoy thinks that all teenagers are reckless, promiscuous, irresponsible delinquents. Mrs. Lovejoy appears to be associating qualities that are unrelated to the objective criteria that define this particular age group. This example illustrates:

B. stereotyped thinking.

Which of the following is NOT one of the factors that increases the likelihood of bystanders helping?

B. the presence of other bystanders in the situation

Which of the following events spurred social psychologists to begin studying the conditions under which people will help another person?

C. The fact that none of the people who witnessed the murder of Kitty Genovese tried to help her.

Of the following factors, which is NOT one that will make you more likely to conform to the group's norms?

C. You have already expressed commitment to a different idea or opinion.

The mental process of inferring the causes of people's behavior, including one's own, is called:

C. attribution.

Leslie is concerned about the environment and consistently sorts her garbage by placing paper, plastic, metal, and glass in their respective recycling containers. This example best illustrates the _____ component of attitudes.

C. behavioral

Solomon Asch set up an experimental situation in which participants were asked to identify which of the three comparison lines was identical to a standard line, as shown in the illustration below. His research was designed to answer a straightforward question, namely:

A. Would people conform to group pressure even if the group opinion was clearly wrong?

Before Jackie left for college, she told her friend Lisa that she thought sororities were filled with snobs and that she would never consider joining one. But during Jackie's first week on campus, she was approached by a sorority member who invited her to a social function and encouraged her to pledge. After Jackie attended the party, she told Lisa, "Sororities do a lot of good things for the community. They're really service organizations." Jackie's change in attitude to match her behavior reflects which of the following concepts?

A. cognitive dissonance

The term cognitive schemas refers to the:

A. mental frameworks we hold about traits and behaviors associated with different types of people.

Nadine is a casual dresser who loves wearing jeans and hates worrying about clothes. However, when she went for a job interview she decided to wear a professionally tailored suit. Nadine's behavior best illustrates the importance of:

A. normative social influence.

The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated the powerful influence of:

A. situational roles and conformity to implied social rules and norms.

The branch of psychology that studies how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment is called _____ psychology.

A. social

The rules, or expectations, for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation are called:

A. social norms.

When Ainslie did poorly on the physics midterm exam, she blamed her low score on the unfair exam and the unreasonable professor. But when the final grades in the course were curved and she received an A-, she concluded that she had a real talent and mental capacity for logical, scientific thinking. This example illustrates:

A. the self-serving bias.

Which of the following statements regarding Milgram's research is FALSE?

B. Most of the subjects reported that they were emotionally traumatized by the experience and were sorry to have been in the experiment.

Which of the following factors made it easier for the Army Reserve guards to mistreat detainees at Abu Ghraib?

B. The detainees were members of a different cultural and ethnic group, which made it easier to perceive them as members of a despised and threatening out-group.

The _____ is the tendency to attribute our own behavior to external, situational characteristics, while ignoring or underestimating the effects of internal, personal factors.

B. actor-observer bias

Hindsight bias is the tendency:

B. after an event has occurred to overestimate one's ability to have foreseen or predicted the outcome.

When prejudice is displayed behaviorally it is called:

B. discrimination.

Kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in the middle of the night, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was held captive for over nine months by a drifter and his female companion. When police finally found her and the details of her captivity were widely publicized, some observers publicly questioned why the girl never tried to escape or get the attention of the police. Such responses illustrate an attributional pattern called:

C. blaming the victim

Adjusting your opinions, judgments, or behavior so that they match the opinions, judgments or behavior of other people, or the norms of a social group or situation is called:

C. conformity.

The social group to which a person belongs is called the _____, and the social group to which a person does not belong is called the _____.

C. in-group; out-group

During lunch a group of computer science majors were discussing their choice of field. One student admitted that he had once considered becoming an accountant but decided against it because "accountants are all boring number crunchers without an ounce of creativity." This statement best reflects the:

C. out-group homogeneity effect.

Which of the following is NOT a common attributional bias or explanatory pattern?

C. the bystander effect

The phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present means the less likely each individual is to help someone in distress is called:

C. the bystander effect.

While eating at a restaurant, you see a waiter's serving tray tilt and an avalanche of food and beverages splatters on four people. "What a careless, clumsy idiot," you mumble to yourself as you resume eating. You have just committed an attributional bias called:

C. the fundamental attribution error.

The _____ effect refers to the fact that when people feel, successful, happy, or fortunate, they are more likely to help others.

D. "feel-good, do-good"

According to the discussion in your text, which of the following is TRUE about the effect of attitudes on behavior?

D. Attitudes do influence behavior in many instances.

What were the basic results of psychologist Stanley Milgram's original obedience study?

D. Despite hearing protests from the learner in another room, two-thirds of the subjects continued to administer shocks all the way to the full 450-volt level.

_____ refers to the phenomenon in which the presence of other people makes it less likely that any individual will help someone in distress because the obligation to intervene is shared among all the onlookers

D. Diffusion of responsibility

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by psychologist:

D. Philip Zimbardo.

_____ is defined as a negative attitude toward people who belong to a specific group.v

D. Prejudice

In a seminar discussion on the death penalty, Bertha said she believed that the ultimate penalty should be applied to the ultimate crime of murder. Bertha's statement best reflects the _____ component of attitudes

D. cognitive

On the first day of high school, Cindy wasn't sure what to wear. Ultimately, she decided to wear a pair of jeans. However, when she got to school, she saw that all the other girls were wearing skirts. When Cindy went home for lunch, she changed into a skirt before returning to school. Cindy's behavior best illustrates the importance of:

D. informational social influence.

During Stanley Milgram's original obedience study, most of the subjects:

D. showed extreme tension and conflict as they continued to shock the learner.

Dr. Krane studies questions such as why we conform to group norms, what compels us to obey authority figures, and the conditions under which people will help a stranger. Dr. Krane's research focuses on an area of social psychology called:

D. social influence

In a series of variations of his obedience experiments, Milgram found that the subjects were LEAST likely to deliver high levels of shocks when:

D. teachers were free to choose the level of shock.