social psych exam 2 quizzes

According to reactance theory, which of the following persuasion attempts will meet with the least resistance when a parent tries to convince his child to keep her room clean?

"Please try to remember to put your toys away when you've finished playing with them."

Agustin knows you're taking a psychology class and wants to know what he can do to be more disciplined in a few weeks when midterm exams come around. What advice do you have, based on the information in this chapter?

Exert self-control in some area now to practice for the future.

Burger's (2009) replication of Milgram's studies on obedience to authority suggests that compared with people in the 1970s, people in 2006 were ________ likely to obey authority.

just as

Assume that you were a participant in the experiment conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) in which participants were paid either a large or small sum of money to tell an innocent stranger that the boring, tedious task you had just completed was really enjoyable and very interesting. Further assume that you were paid a large amount of money to tell the stranger that lie. In this situation, you would be most likely to

maintain your original assessment of the task as dull and boring.

In all likelihood, participants in Milgram's obedience experiments (conducted in the 1960s and 1970s) were willing to administer increasingly severe shocks to a confederate learner because they were concerned that the experimenter would be disappointed or perhaps even angry with them. Such concerns reflect the power of ________ to induce obedience to authority.

normative social influence

The authors of your text suggest that there are two major motivations for people to conform:

not knowing what to do in a confusing situation and wishing to avoid ridicule and rejection.

Mrs. Hill has decided to provide her first-grade students with gold stars to reward them for reading. She has decided to use performance-contingent rewards. To do this, she will give gold stars

only to those children who can read a passage without mistakes.

Stella is very serious about dancing and starts college as a dance major. The more serious she gets about dancing, the more she worries about the pressure to succeed and the rewards associated with succeeding. She finds that dancing feels like a chore and something she has to do rather than wants to do. Her change in her views about dance is due to what social psychologists call

overjustification.

Donald didn't attend carefully to the substance of the persuasive communication, but instead paid attention to some irrelevant cues. He's using the ________ route to persuasion.

peripheral

Imagine you really enjoy lying out in the sun to get a deep, dark tan. If you heard arguments both for and against tanning, you would probably remember ________ arguments for tanning, and ________ arguments against tanning.

plausible; implausible

Emile just ditched a friend at a party to spend time with a pretty woman. Emile feels uncomfortable but he tells himself it's because the woman is so hot and not because he treated his friend badly. The way he's feeling is dissonance, but he tells himself it's sexual attraction. This describes which of the following?

self-affirmation

Results from Milgram's study, in which participants were led to believe that they were being asked to shock another person at lethal levels, suggest that people

will obey authority, even when perhaps they shouldn't.

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.

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.

Your niece Caitlin is deathly afraid of glass elevators. You have just read Chapter 8, and have decided to use informational social influence to convince Caitlin that there is no need to be afraid to ride in glass elevators. How would you apply the concept of informational social influence in this situation?

Get Caitlin's friends to ride a glass elevator, and ask them to smile and wave to you both as they ascend.

Which of the following people is using ingratiation as a self-presentational tactic?

Iman, who brings her boss coffee and offers to do other favors for her

________ conformity is to the desire to be right as ________ conformity is to the desire to be liked.

Informational; normative

Although cognitive dissonance is a very powerful way to change someone's attitude, it is not implemented on mass scales. Why not?

It would be difficult to create a situation of low external justification on a mass scale.

When Jessie sits down for the first day of class, the person next to him, Blake, is wearing a "Free Tibet" shirt. After a few minutes of talking, Jessie realizes that he likes Blake. Which of the following is most likely to happen based on the idea of social tuning?

Jessie may unconsciously alter his attitude to agree that Tibet should be freed.

Who is likely to feel best about herself?

Lori, who compares her cooking skills as a thirty-year-old to those she had just after college

Tim has asked Robin to marry him. Robin isn't sure whether she loves him enough or whether she loves him in the right way. She talks with her sister about all the reasons why it would be wise to marry Tim, and all the reasons why it wouldn't be such a great idea. According to Wilson's theory of reasons-generated attitude change, Robin might regret it were she to base her decision on the reasons she mentioned. Why is that?

Reasons Robin generates during the conversation won't predict her long-term attitudes and feelings very well.

Recall that 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. Which (fictitious) participant below would experience the most dissonance and express a greater willingness to use condoms in the future?

Sally, who delivered her speech, and listed the times she found it hard to use condoms

Suppose that Lauren has always wanted to go out with Sam. She calls him up and asks him to go to a movie with her, and he accepts enthusiastically. Under which of the following conditions will she experience the most joy?

She had taken some allergy medicine that, unknown to her, causes mild arousal.

Based on research about the effectiveness of argument strength versus prestige of the source, which of the following is true about the importance of argument strength?

Stronger arguments are always more effective than weaker arguments, all other things being equal.

According to research presented in the text, students shot a roll of film and printed two photographs. Some were told that they could exchange the one they chose to keep within five days, but others were told that their choice was final. Which group of students liked their photograph best?

Those who were not given an exchange period, because the decision was irrevocable.

Which of the following people is engaging in upward social comparison?

Toni, who reads William Faulkner to assess her own writing skills

Two weeks after making a public statement at odds with his previous positions, which politician is most likely to report to his close friends that he sticks by his most recent (contradictory) statement?

a candidate who couldn't quite figure out why he contradicted himself

It is estimated that one-third of the electorate knows almost nothing about specific politicians. Nonetheless, these people hold very strong opinions about them. This pattern of findings suggests that people's attitudes toward politicians may be largely

affectively based.

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

Researchers gave a group of college women either a dating profile of a male student, which included a photo and basic demographic information, or the opinion of another female student who had been on a speed date with him. Then both groups had a speed date with him and rated how much they enjoyed it. Because of _______, the group that _______ made a better prediction about how much they would enjoy the date.

an affective forecast, heard the opinion from the other student

Imagine that you have just moved into a house with four other people. One of your housemates, Tony, 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 Tony's liking for you?

ask Tony if he could give you a ride to the grocery store

Politicians often preface their remarks with statements such as "I know that my opponent will try to tell you that I'm weak on crime." This strategy is an example of

attitude inoculation.

The theory of planned behavior states that the best predictors of deliberate behaviors are

attitudes toward the specific behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control.

After reducing postdecision dissonance, people are more likely to rate the chosen and unchosen alternatives as

being more dissimilar, such that the chosen alternative is much more desirable than the unchosen one.

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

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.

When participants were first placed in a dark room alone and asked to estimate the apparent movement of a point of light, individuals were consistent in their own estimates, and these estimates differed greatly from participant to participant. When participants made the same estimates in a group setting, their estimates converged. According to Muzafer Sherif (1936), why did this happen? Conformity occurs when people

can use others' behaviors as cues for what's right.

At the new-car dealership, Josh asks the salesperson a number of questions: "How good is the gas mileage on this model? What does Consumer Reports say about this make and model? Does this car hold its resale value?" The ________ component of Josh's attitude toward the car is most likely to inform his questions.

cognitive

George thinks of himself as an honest person until his brother reminds him that he's been known to keep extra change given to him by a cashier and to stock his home office for a sideline business with supplies taken from his job. George is now probably feeling a sense of discomfort known as

cognitive dissonance.

Doty is out weeding her petunias when she sees a garden snake. She feels fear and jumps up and runs back to the house, all the while thinking, "I know that garden snakes are not dangerous." This example illustrates an inconsistency between the ________ component of attitudes and the ________ components.

cognitive; affective and behavioral

One evening after work, Barbara arrives home in a very bad mood. Noticing this, her husband James asks her why she seems so angry and upset. Barbara hadn't thought about her mood before James mentioned it, and now she thinks hard about what has caused her to be so sullen. She decides that it was because she was hungry and tired, and she tells James so. Barbara is ________ her behavior.

constructing a causal theory about

Lisa and Marcie have a really tough exam in anthropology. Both women are considering cheating on the exam. Based on what you read about cognitive dissonance, Lisa, who ________, is likely to later report that all cheaters should be punished severely, and Marcie, who ________, is likely to report that cheating really is no big deal because there are no victims.

did not cheat; cheated

Ying just purchased a rather expensive wristwatch. She had debated for weeks about the merits of two different styles before making her final decision. It's now likely that Ying will

emphasize all of the positive aspects of the chosen watch.

The principal of a local elementary school plans to implement a "Reading for Cash" program, whereby children would be given cash rewards for reading. Before investing in this plan, the principal asks for your assessment. Because ________ tend to ________, you would probably tell her that the program would not be an effective way to increase interest in reading.

external rewards; reduce any inherent intrinsic interest

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.

Kevin just got a low grade on his term paper. If Kevin has a ________ mindset, he would be most likely to give up and reduce his efforts in the class, feeling as though he is just "a bad writer."

fixed

Imagine that you are a participant in the experiment conducted by Schachter and Singer (1962). You were injected with a vitamin compound called Suproxin and told that you might experience an increased heart rate, hand tremors, and sweaty palms. Further imagine that while completing a questionnaire, the person in the room with you begins to act angry, tears up the questionnaire, and storms from the room. You are likely to ________ because ________.

ignore this situational cue; you know the source of your arousal

The concept of social norms refers to

implicit or explicit rules a group has for acceptable beliefs, values, or behavior.

When Daphne goes on an interview, she does her best to present herself well and put her best foot forward. Which function of the self is exemplified in this situation?

impression management

It's Libby's first day in college. When she approaches the professor to have an "add" form signed, she listens to other students to see if they address the professor as "Professor," "Dr.," "Mrs.," or by her first name, and then she does the same. This is an example of

informational social influence.

Earl wants to understand his self-concept better, so he sits quietly by himself and thinks about who he is and what his values and attitudes are. What is Earl engaging in?

introspection

In most stores, owners provide background music for shoppers. Now, this music may not be to everyone's taste, but from the perspective of social psychologists who study routes to persuasion, it is probably designed to ________, and thus to ________.

put them in a good mood; make products more attractive to them

Scott believes very strongly that saccharine is an unsafe sugar substitute that may even cause cancer. Even though Scott is diabetic, and thus should be using sugar substitutes, he 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," he thinks to himself. Scott's behavior and thoughts are examples of ________ in the face of cognitive dissonance.

rationalizing

According to the authors, a particularly dangerous effect of advertising is that it

reinforces and perpetuates stereotypes.

As Nina lights up her fifteenth cigarette of the day, she glances at the Surgeon General's warning on the package and shrugs, thinking "Eh, cancer is for old people, and not only do I have good genes, the research on cigarettes causing cancer is inconclusive." It is unlikely that Nina will change her behavior and quit smoking unless

she gets out of the self-justification cycle.

In order to gauge whether he had studied long enough for his psychology exam, Markus texted two of his classmates to ask them how long they had spent reviewing material. Markus is engaging in

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

Eva's friends and her husband think that it's important that she get a mammogram at her next annual checkup. Eva believes that it will be relatively easy for her to make time in her schedule for that extra procedure. Thus, Eva has every intention of getting a mammogram as part of her annual checkup. This example best reflects the power of ________ and ________, respectively, to influence behavioral intentions and subsequent behaviors.

subjective norms; perceived behavioral control

You have been hired to help design a campaign to get people to conserve energy. Based on the research by Nolan and colleagues (2008), what is the most effective way to convince people to conserve?

tell them that their neighbors are doing it

Based on information provided by your text, external justification is to ________ as internal justification is to ________.

temporary change; lasting change

Rudy thinks that if he ever got kicked off the football team he would be depressed for months, and that his life would lose all meaning. In actuality, his response would probably not be this severe or prolonged. What is Rudy demonstrating?

the impact bias

People are more likely to pay attention to characteristics of the communicator, rather than to the contents of the message, when

the issues are too complex to comprehend fully.

The authors of your text report instances of teens taking a "polar plunge" by jumping into freezing water. Which of the following best explains such dangerous behavior?

the power of normative social influence

Explicit attitudes influence our behavior when ________, while implicit attitudes influence our behavior when ________.

we are monitoring our behavior; we are not monitoring our behavior