SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3004 exam 1 ch 1-4

Belief in a Just World

A defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people

Cover Story

A description of the purpose of a study, given to participants, that is different from its true purpose and is used to maintain psychological realism

Attribution Theory

A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

A group made up of at least one scientist, one nonscientist, and one member not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psycho- logical research at that institution and decides whether it meets eth- ical guidelines; all research must be approved by the IRB before it is conducted

Availability Heuristic

A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Random Assignment to Condition

A process ensuring that all par- ticipants have an equal chanceof taking part in any condition of an experiment; through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants' personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions

correlation coefficient

A statistical technique that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another—for example, how well you can predict people's weight from their height

Meta-Analysis

A statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an in- dependent variable is reliable

Covariation Model

A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we note the pattern between when the behav- ior occurs and the presence or ab- sence of possible causal factors

Holistic Thinking Style

A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particu- larly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures (e.g., China, Japan, and Korea)

Analytic Thinking Style

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surround- ing context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

random selection

A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample

The experimental method is best at answering which of these questions? D.

A. How aggressively do people drive during rush hours in major U.S. cities? B. Are people who play violent video games more likely to drive aggressively? C. Are people who play violent video games more likely to be rude to someone who cuts in line in front of them? D. Does playing violent video games cause people to be more rude to someone who cuts in line in front of them?

The observational method is best at answering which of these questions? A.

A. How polite are people in public places? B. Are people from the southern United States more polite in public places than people from the northern United States? C. What makes people act politely or rudely in public places? D. Does music played in department stores influence how polite people are in those stores?

All of the following are examples of an internal attribution except for which one?

After winning close to $100 playing poker, Fred explains that he's always been a skilled gambler. Velma blames her poor grade on her biology exam on the idea that she's never been good at taking multiple-choice exams. Daphne thinks that the reason her brother is never able to hold a steady job is that he's lazy and quick to get angry with others. Shaggy says that the only reason for his recent van accident is that the road he was traveling on that day was wet from a recent rainfall. D.

Informed Consent

Agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full aware- ness of the nature of the experi- ment, which has been explained in advance

Two-Step Attribution Process

Analyzing another person's behav- ior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior

Display Rules

Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display

Research indicates that which of the following candidates would be most likely to win a political election?

Denise, whose face other people often perceive as in- dicating a warm personality Theo, who many people believe is gay based only on his facial appearance Vanessa, who has large eyes, a high forehead, and a small, child-like nose Rudy, whose face is usually seen by others as indicating a cold, calculating, and powerful personality D

Which of the following is not one of the six major emotional expressions examined by Ekman and his colleagues in their influential cross-cultural research on perception of emotions?

Disgust b. Anger c. Embarrassment d. Sadness C

Thin-Slicing

Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person's personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior

Field Experiments

Experiments conducted in nat- ural settings rather than in the laboratory

Debriefing

Explaining to participants, at the end of an experiment, the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired

Self-Serving Attributions

Explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situa- tional factors

Paul Ekman and Walter Friesen traveled to New Guineato study the meaning of various facial expressions in the primitive South Fore tribe. What major conclusion did they reach?

Facial expressions are not universal because they have different meanings in different cultures. The six major emotional expressions appear to be universal. There are nine major emotional expressions. The members of the South Fore used different facial expressions than westerners to express the same emotion. B

Affect Blends

Facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion

Social Cognition

How people think about them- selves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judg- ments and decisions

Base Rate Information

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

Which of the following statements about impression management is true?

It can be a conscious or unconscious process. It occurs in person but not during online interactions. It involves an effort to depict the self as accurately as possible. It tends to be counterproductive and "rub people the wrong way." A

Internal Validity

Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can af- fect the dependent variable; this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by ran- domly assigning people to differ- ent experimental conditions

Judgmental Heuristics

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Schemas

Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

Counterfactual Thinking

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

Deception

Misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire

Emblems

Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture, usually having direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign

Probability Level (p-value)

Probability Level (p-value)A number calculated with statisti- cal techniques that tells research- ers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variable or variables; the convention in science, includ- ing social psychology, is to con- sider results significant (trustworthy) if the probability level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be due to chance factors and not the independent variables studied

Replications

Repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings

Suppose you wanted your friend Stephan to feel like a more assertive person. According to research on _______, you should ask him to think of ______ times in the past when he acted in an unassertive manner. D.

Representativeness heuristic; 12 Availability heuristic; 3 Representativeness heuristic; 3 Availability heuristic; 12

Cross-Cultural Research

Research conducted with mem- bers of different cultures, to see whether the psychological pro- cesses of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised

5. Who of the following individuals is most likely to make a self- serving attribution?

Rory, a golfer in the early stages of his career. Mariano, a baseball player who has won multiple championships in the past. LeBron, a basketball player who has been playing since he was young. Roger, a professional tennis player with over a decade of experience A

Which of the following psychological phenomena shows the least cultural variation?

Self-serving attributions Preferences regarding eye contact and personal space Anger facial expressions Fundamental attribution error C

Applied Research

Studies designed to solve a partic- ular social problem

Basic Research

Studies that are designed to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted purely for rea- sons of intellectual curiosity

evolutionary psychology

The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic fac- tors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to be- have consistently with people's original expectations, making the expectations come true

social influence

The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior

Distinctiveness Information

The extent to which a particular actor behaves in the same way to- ward different stimuli

Consensus Information

The extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does

Accessibility

The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world

Consistency Information

The extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stim- ulus is the same across time and circumstances

Psychological Realism

The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life

External Validity

The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people

External Attribution

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in, with the assumption that most people would respond the same way in that situation

Internal Attribution

The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality

Priming

The process by which recent expe- riences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

social psychology

The scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Perceptual Salience

The seeming importance of infor- mation that is the focus of people's attention

Social Perception

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

Planning Fallacy

The tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people's behavior results from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

Bias Blind Spot

The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist

The trade-off between internal and external validity in conducting research; it is very difficult to do one experiment that is both high in internal validity and generaliz- able to other situations and people

Nonverbal Communication

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words, including via facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, movement, touch, and gaze

construal

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

3. Asch's (1946) research on person perception provided evidence for which of the following conclusions?

There is a primacy effect in social perception. First impressions serve as a filter through which subsequently learned information is interpreted c. Even when the content of information conveyed about two individuals remains the same, the order in which we learn it can have a powerful effect on our impression. d. All of the above. D

Controlled Thinking

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Automatic Thinking

Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Which of the following is true about social neuroscience? C.

This field is concerned exclusively with how different kinds of brain activity correlate with social information processing. b. This field is concerned primarily with how hormones influence social behavior. c. Social psychologists are increasingly interested in the connection between biological processes and social behavior. d. When it comes right down to it, the brain is not related to behavior, and there is not much to be learned by measuring its electrical activity or blood flow.

Decode

To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness

4. Which of the following is the most accurate conclusion based on the Jones and Harris (1967) Castro essay study?

When a target's behavior is forced, perceivers do not attribute it to any sort of internal cause. We are less generous with ourselves when making attributions for negative events than we are when others are the actors. We are more likely to make an internal attribution for a chosen action versus a forced action. We are more likely to make an internal attribution when the actor in question is perceptually salient. C

Primacy Effect

When it comes to forming impres- sions, the first traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later

Belief perseverance can help explain which of the following?

Why people who watch news programs that refer to climate change as a hoax remain convinced of that conclusion even in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary. Why during jury deliberations it is easier to convince fellow jurors to change their votes from guilty to not guilty than it is to change their minds in the opposite direction. Why weather forecasters are better at predicting rainfall totals than snowfall totals. All of the above A

archival analysis

a form of the observational method in which the researcher examines the accumulated documents or archives of a culture (diaries, novels, magazines, newspapers)

Behaviorism

a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment

gestalt psychology

a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object

Which of the following does not illustrate the fundamental attribution error? C.

a) A man says, "My wife has sure become a grouchy person," but explains his own grouchiness as a result of having a hard day at the office. b) A woman reads about high unemployment in poor communities and says, "Well, if those people weren't so lazy, they would find work." c) "The people who committed suicide at Jonestown were socially isolated and thus cut off from other points of view about their leader." d) "The people who committed suicide at Jonestown were mentally ill."

4. Who among the following individuals would you predict would be most likely to make an external attribution for any given behavior observed?

a. A U.S.-born American adult b. An 8-year-old born and raised in India c. A Hong Kong Chinese college student who had just been shown images related to Chinese culture d. A Hong Kong Chinese college student who had just been shown images related to American culture C.

Which of the following is the best example of a self-fulfilling prophecy? D.

a. A teacher believes that boys are better at math than girls, but boys in his class do worse than girls in math. b. Bob thinks that members of the Alpha Beta Psi sorority are unfriendly and snobby. Whenever he meets members of this sorority, they are friendly toward him. c. Sarah is worried that her son is not gifted in music, but he does better at his piano lessons than she expected. d. Jill thinks her daughter is not a good reader and doesn't spend much time reading to her. As a result her daughter falls behind in reading at school.

3. Which is the definition of analytic thinking? B.

a. A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other. b. A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context. c. Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. d. Thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.

Tiffany has a hard time trusting her friends because she believes they are irresponsible. Accordingly, when she makes dinner plans with one friend, she also makes backup plans with someone else, and she goes to one or the other. Her friends soon in turn begin to "blow off" their arrangements with Tiffany, because they are never sure whether she will show up. Tiffany thinks to herself, "See, I was right, my friends are irresponsible." Which of the following best explains why Tiffany made this conclusion? B.

a. Accurate social perception due to controlled processes b. A self-fulfilling prophecy. c. Holistic thinking. d. Accurate social perception due to automatic processes

Which one of the following involves the least amount of automatic thinking? C.

a. Acting according to goals that have been primed b. Using metaphors about the body to make judgments c. Counterfactual reasoning d. Self-fulfilling prophecies

2. Which of the following does not reflect the motive to maintain high self-esteem? C

a. After Sarah leaves Bob for someone else, Bob decides that he never liked her much anyway. b. Students who want to take Professor Lopez's seminar have to apply by writing a 10-page essay. Everyone who is selected ends up loving the class. c. Janetta did poorly on the first test in her psychology class. She admits that she didn't study enough and vows to study harder for the next test. d. Zach has been involved in several minor traffic accidents since getting his driver's license. "There sure are a lot of terrible drivers out there," he says. "People should learn to be good drivers like me."

Which of the following is true? A.

a. All human beings have the same cognitive "tools" that they can use. b. When people move from one culture to another they generally do not learn to think like people in the new culture. c. East Asians tend to think more holistically and Westerners tend to think more analytically because of genetic differences between East Asians and Westerners d. American college students were more likely to notice changes in the background of a picture whereas Japanese college students were more likely to notice changes in the main objects in the foreground of the picture.

All of the following except one are part of the guidelines for ethical research. Which is not? D.

a. All research is reviewed by anIRB(institutional review board) that consists of at least one scientist, one nonscientist, and one person unaffiliated with the institution. b. A researcher receives informed consent from a participant unless deception is deemed necessary and the experiment meets ethical guidelines. c. When deception is used in a study, participants must be fully debriefed. d. There must be a cover story for every study, because all studies involve some type of deception.

Which of the following is true about cultural differences in social thinking? A.

a. Although everyone uses schemas to understand the world, the content of those schemas is influenced by the culture in which they live. b. Schemas influence what people notice in the world but have no influence on what they remember. c. Schemas influence what people remember but have no influence on what they notice in the world. d. Culture has no influence on automatic thinking.

Research on eye gaze and perception of facial expression indicates that which of the following tends to be most quickly decoded

a. An angry face looking right at us b. An angry face looking away from us c. A fearful face looking right at us d. A fearful face with eyes closed A

Which of the following is the best summary of research on automatic thinking? A.

a. Automatic thinking is vital to human survival, but it is not perfect and can produce mistaken judgments that have important consequences. b. Automatic thinking is amazingly accurate and rarely produces errors of any consequence. c. Automatic thinking is a problem because it usually produces mistaken judgments. d. Automatic thinking works best when it occurs consciously.

What does the Wall Street Game reveal about personality and situation? d.

a. Competitive people will compete fiercely no matter what a game is called. b. Cooperative people will try hard to get competitive opponents to work with them. c. The name of the game makes no difference in how people play the game. d. The name of the game strongly influences how people play the game.

7. Imagine that you are in Hong Kong reading the morning news and you notice a headline about a double murder that took place overnight. A suspect is in custody. Which of the following headlines is most likely to accompany the story?

a. Dispute Over Gambling Debt Ends in Murder b. Crazed Murderer Slays Two c. Homicidal Maniac Stalks Innocents d. Bloodthirsty Mobster Takes Revenge A

Research using fMRI brain scanning technology indicates which of the following?

a. East Asian participants use a greater percentage of their frontal and parietal regions when making judgments than do American participants. b. Neither East Asian nor American participants are able to overcome their typical, learned ways of attending to (or overlooking) context. c. Participants from both cultures demonstrate greater activation in higher-order cortical regions when asked to perceive objects in a way that is unusual for them. d. Social neuroscience data provide no support for the hypothesis that holistic versus analytic thinking styles tend to vary by cultural background. C

A researcher is interested in whether moods vary by the day of the week. She codes the postings on thousands of Facebook pages to see whether people express more positive comments on some days than others. Which research method has she used? D.

a. Ethnography b. Survey c. Experimental method d. Archival analysis

Where do differences in holistic versus analytic thinking come from? D.

a. Genetic differences between Asians and non-Asian Westerners b. Different educational systems in the East versus the West c. Different weather patterns in the East versus the West d. Different philosophical traditions of the East versus the West

4. Social psychology had its origins in? A.

a. Gestalt psychology. b. Freudian psychology. c. behavioral psychology. d. biological psychology.

Suppose you are trying to raise money for your favorite charity and you set up a table in the lobby of a campus building. Which of the following is likely to increase the likelihood that passersby will donate money? D.

a. Give them a light clipboard with information about your charity. b. Ask people to hold a cold bottle of water while they listen to what you have to say. c. Show them pictures of Japanese cities so that they think holistically. d. Spray some citrus-scented cleaning solution on the table.

4. According to research in social psychology, why do many people believe that their horoscopes are accurate descriptions of who they are and what is likely to happen to them? A.

a. Horoscopes are written in a vague way so that most people view them as representative of their personalities and past behaviors. b. Horoscopes trigger automatic decision making. c. People find it difficult to bring to mind examples that are similar to the horoscope. d. Horoscopes automatically prime people's life goals

eleanor gets a bad grade on the first paper in her english class. to predict whether she will drop the course or stick with it, which question would a social psychologist be most likely to ask? D.

a. How did she score on a personality test of persistence? b. How did she do in the English class she took the previous semester? c. What were her SAT scores? d. What is her explanation for why she got the bad grade?

The correlational method is best at answering which of these questions? B.

a. How polite are people in public places? b. Are people from the southern United States more polite in public places than people from the northern United States? c. What makes people act politely or rudely in public places? d. Does music played in department stores influence how polite people are in those stores?

Which of the following research topics about violence is one that a social psychologist might investigate? D.

a. How rates of violence change over time within a culture b. Why murder rates vary across cultures c. Brain abnormalities that produce aggression when a person is provoked d. Why some situations are more likely to provoke aggression than others

3. A stranger approaches Emily on campus and says he is a professional photographer. He asks if she will spend 15 minutes posing for pictures next to the student union. According to social psychologists, Emily's decision will depend on which of the following? C.

a. How well dressed the man is b. Whether the man offers to pay her c. How Emily construes the situation d. Whether the man has a criminal record

Mary wants to find out whether eating sugary snacks before an exam leads to better performance on the exam. Which of the following strategies would answer her question most conclusively? C.

a. Identify a large number of students who perform exceptionally low and exceptionally high in exams, ask them whether they eat sugary snacks before exams, and see whether high performers eat more sugary snacks before exams than do low performers. b. Wait for exam time in a big class, ask everyone whether they ate sugary snacks before the exam, and see whether those who ate sugary snacks before the exam do better compared to those who didn't. c. Wait for exam time in a big class, give a random half of the students M&Ms before the exam, and see whether the students who ate M&Ms perform better. d. Pick a big class, give all students sugary snacks before one exam and salty snacks before the next exam; then see whether students score lower on average in the second exam.

what was the main contribution of gesalt psychology to social psychology? C.

a. It added an understanding of how the brain works. b. It emphasized how people perceive the physical world. c. It showed that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. d. It added historical perspective to the study of behavior.

1. Which of the following is true of the holistic thinking style? B.

a. It involves a focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context. b. People living in the West can think holistically if they are primed with pictures taken in Japan. c. The holistic style of thinking has a genetic basis. d. It may have its roots in the Greek philosophic traditions of Aristotle and Plato.

Which of the following is the best description of facilitated communication? C.

a. It is a promising new way of letting communication- impaired people, such as those with autism, express their thoughts. b. The facilitators, who hold the fingers and arm of communication-impaired people on a keyboard, are deliberately faking the answers. c. The facilitators believe that communication-impaired people are choosing what to type, but they are probably wrong and unknowingly determining the answers themselves. d. Facilitated communication helps people with mild versions of autism to communicate but does not help those with severe cases.

Suppose a certain student, Jake, falls asleep during every chemistry class. Further suppose that Jake is the only one who falls asleep in this class and he falls asleep in all of his other classes. According to Kelley's covariation theory of attribution, how will people explain his behavior?

a. It results from something unusual about this particular class because his behavior is low in consensus, high in distinctiveness, and high in consistency. b. Chemistry is really a boring class because Jake's behavior is high in consensus, high in distinctiveness, and high in consistency. c. It results from something unusual about Jake because his behavior is low in consensus, low in distinctiveness, and high in consistency. d. It results from something peculiar about the circumstances on a particular day because his behavior is high in consensus. C

A researcher wants to see whether people are more likely to donate money to a charity when they receive a small gift from that charity. She sends an appeal for money from the charity to 1,000 people. For half of the people (randomly chosen) the letter includes free address labels and for half it does not. The researcher then sees whether those who got the address labels donate more money. Which of the following is true about this study? B.

a. It uses the correlational method. b. The independent variable is whether people got ad- dress labels and the dependent variable is how much money they donate. c. The independent variable is how much money people donate and the dependent variable is whether they got address labels. d. The study is low in internal validity because the people who got the address labels may differ in other ways from the people who did not.

It is 10:00 a.m. and Jamie, an American college student, is dragging himself to his next class to turn in a paper for which he pulled an all-nighter. Through a haze of exhaustion, on the way to class he sees a student slip and fall down. How would Jamie be most likely to interpret the cause of the student's behavior?

a. Jamie's attribution will most heavily be influenced by his own personality. b. Given what we know about Jamie's current cognitive capacity and cultural background, he will likely assume that the student fell because he or she was clumsy. c. Jamie would probably attribute the cause to the situation, such as the fact that it was raining and the sidewalks were slippery. d. Jamie would be so tired that he would not make any causal attributions. B

Ming is from China; Jason is from the United States. c. Both participate in an experiment in which they take a test, are given feedback, and are told that they did very well. They are then asked to make attributions for their performance. Based on cross- cultural research on the self-serving bias, you would expect that

a. Jason but not Ming will say that he succeeded due to his high ability. b. neither Ming nor Jason will say that they succeeded due to their high ability. c. both Ming and Jason will say that they succeeded due to their high ability. d. Ming but not Jason will say that he succeeded due to his high ability. A

Jennifer and Nate are walking along the street when they see a man walk out of a convenience store clutching a bag. The owner of the store runs out and shouts for the man to stop and come back. Jennifer immediately assumes that there has been a robbery, whereas Nate immediately assumes that the man forgot to get his change and that the store owner wants to give it to him. What is the best explanation for why Jennifer and Nate interpreted this event differently? D.

a. Jennifer and Nate were engaged in controlled thinking that resulted in different assumptions about what was going on. b. Jennifer and Nate have different personalities. c. Jennifer and Nate fell prey to the self-fulfilling prophecy. d. Different schemas were accessible in Jennifer and Nate's minds, perhaps because they had different recent experiences that primed different schemas.

Which of the following is the best way to increase the external validity of a study? C.

a. Make sure it is low in psychological realism. b. Conduct the study in the laboratory instead of the field. c. Replicate the study with a different population of people in a different setting. d. Make sure you have at least two dependent variables.

Which of the following statements best describes cultural differences in the fundamental attribution error?

a. Members of collectivist cultures rarely make dispositional attributions. b. Members of Western cultures rarely make dispositional attributions. c. Members of collectivist cultures are more likely to go beyond dispositional explanations, considering information about the situation as well. d. Members of Western cultures are more likely to go beyond dispositional explanations, considering information about the situation as well C

Which of the following is true about cross-cultural research? B.

a. Most social psychological findings have been found to be universal; that is, true in virtually all cultures that have been studied. b. The purpose of cross-cultural research is to see which social psychological findings are universal and which are culture-bound. c. To conduct a cross-cultural study a researcher travels to another country, translates the materials into the local language, and replicates the study there. d. It is relatively easy to conduct a study that is interpreted and perceived similarly in different cultures.

Which of the following is true about evolutionary psychology? D.

a. Natural selection works differently in humans than other animals. b. It is easy to test evolutionary hypotheses by doing experiments. c. Most social behaviors are genetically determined with little influence by the social environment. d. Evolutionary approaches can generate novel hypotheses about social behavior that can then be tested with experiments.

According to the social cognition approach?? D.

a. People almost always form accurate impressions about the social world. b. People rarely form accurate impressions of the social world. c. When viewing the social world, people's main goal is to feel good about themselves. d. Even when people are trying to perceive the social world as accurately as they can, there are many ways in which they can go wrong, ending up with the wrong impressions

5. According to this chapter, which is the best analogy to describe people's thinking abilities? D.

a. People are cognitive misers. b. People are motivated tacticians. c. People are skilled detectives. d. People are flawed scientists.

Which of the following is the best summary of research on automatic goal pursuit? B.

a. People can only select which goals to work toward using controlled thinking. b. People often pursue goals that have been recently primed, without realizing that that is why they are pursuing the goal. c. People often pursue goals that have been recently primed, but only if they are consciously aware that the goal has been primed. d. People never choose their goals consciously; they only pursue automatically primed goals.

2. Which of the following is true about research on free will? B.

a. People rarely overestimate the amount of control they have over their behavior. b. Sometimes people underestimate the amount of control they have over their behavior. c. Studies have shown that people have free will over almost everything they do. d. The more people believe in free will, the more likely they are to engage in immoral actions such as cheating.

Based on everything you've read in this chapter, what is the best conclusion about social cognition? B.

a. People would be better off if we could turn off automatic thinking and rely solely on controlled thinking. b. Whereas people are sophisticated social thinkers who have amazing cognitive abilities, there is also plenty of room for improvement. c. Social cognition is pretty much the same throughout the world in all cultures that have been studied. d. One purpose of controlled thinking is to set goals for ourselves; that cannot be done with automatic thinking.

in social psychology, why is construal so important? A.

a. People's behavior is affected by their interpretation of events, not only the events themselves. b. People's behavior is primarily determined by the objective circumstances they are in. c. People are aware of their biases in perceiving events. d. People realize that other reasonable people see things they way they do.

Which of the following is one of the ethical principles of the American Psychological Association? A.

a. Psychologists respect the dignity and worth of all people, and the rights of individuals to privacy, confidentiality, and self-determination. b. Psychologists may not use minors (those younger than age 18) as participants in research. c. If a study is conducted over the internet, psychologists need not obtain informed consent from participants. d. Psychologists are not responsible for protecting the confidentiality of information they obtain from participants.

4. Enrolling in which of the following graduate programs would be most likely to improve your statistical reasoning ability about problems in everyday life? A.

a. Psychology b. Medicine c. Law d. Chemistry

Which of the following is true about the use of schemas? C.

a. Schemas are an example of controlled thinking. b. When people have an incorrect schema, rarely do they act in a way to make it come true. c. Although schemas can lead to errors, they are a useful way of organizing information about the world and filling in gaps in our knowledge. d. The schema we use is influenced only by what information is chronically accessible and not by our goals or by what has been primed recently.

1. Which of the following is the best summary of the function of schemas? C.

a. Schemas usually result in erroneous judgments because of the self-fulfilling prophecy. b. Schemas are always beneficial because they help people organize the world and fill in the gaps in their knowledge. c. Schemas are useful in helping people organize information about the world, but they are problematic when they result in self-fulfilling prophecies. d. Schemas are useful for helping us organize information about other people but not about events such as what we should do when eating in a restaurant.

Rob is definitely not the most attractive guy in the dorms, but he is extremely confident about who he is and how he looks. He is convinced that most women find him to be very attractive, and he in fact usually gets dates with women who are much more attractive than he is. What is the best explanation of Rob's success? B.

a. Self-affirmation theory b. Self-fulfilling prophecy c. The representativeness heuristic d. Holistic thinking

Suppose a researcher found a strong positive correlation between the number of tweets people send each day and their reported happiness. Which of the following is the best conclusion he or she can draw from this finding? C.

a. Sending tweets makes people happy. b. Feeling happy makes people want to tweet more. c. Happy people are more likely to send a lot of tweets than sad people. d. There is a third variable that makes people happy and send a lot of tweets.

Suppose you have invited a new acquaintance over to your apartment and want to make a good impression; in other words, you want this person to like you. Which of the following should you do? A.

a. Serve the person a warm drink and hope that he or she holds it in their hands while you are talking to him or her. b. Serve the person a cold drink and hope that he or she holds it in their hands while you are talking to him or her. c. Bake some bread before the person comes over so that the apartment smells nice. d. Serve the person a snack on a very heavy plate

Which of the following is true about new frontiers in social psychological research? C.

a. Social psychologists are interested in the role of culture but not in evolutionary processes. b. Social psychologists are interested in evolutionary processes but not the role of culture. c. Social psychologists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to correlate different kinds of brain activity with social information processing. d. The purpose of cross-cultural research is to show that all social psychological findings are universal with no cultural variations.

How does social psychology differ from personality psychology? B.

a. Social psychology focuses on individual differences, whereas personality psychology focuses on how people behave in different situations. b. Social psychology focuses on the shared processes that make people susceptible to social influence, whereas personality psychology focuses on individual differences. c. Social psychology provides general laws and theories about societies, whereas personality psychology studies the characteristics that make people unique. d. Social psychology focuses on individual differences, whereas personality psychology provides general laws and theories about societies

Suppose a researcher found a strong negative correlation between college students' grade point average (GPA) and the amount of alcohol they drink. Which of the following is the best conclusion from this study? C.

a. Students with a high GPA study more and thus have less time to drink. b. Drinking a lot interferes with studying. c. If you know how much alcohol a student drinks, you can predict his or her GPA fairly well. d. People who are intelligent get higher grades and drink less.

Which of the following best illustrates the idea of belief perseverance?

a. The first time Lindsay meets Tobias, she is impressed with his intellect and ambition, but quite quickly she comes to sour on him and see him as lazy and ineffectual. b. Gob is quite smitten with Marta when he first gets together with her, but once they begin an exclusive dating relationship, he feels that he has made a big mistake. c. Michael's first impression of Anne is a negative one, and even though he comes to observe her in a variety of scenarios displaying a variety of skills, he remains convinced that she will never amount to very much. d. Buster was shy and awkward as a young boy and remains much the same now as an adult. C

What is the "level of analysis" for a social psychologist? A.

a. The individual in the context of a social situation. b. The social situation itself c. A person's level of achievement. d. A person's level of reasoning.

Which of the following is not a way in which schemas can become accessible in people's minds? A.

a. The more negative in content a schema is, the more likely it is to be accessible. b. Schemas can be accessible because of people's past experiences. c. Schemas can become temporarily accessible because of priming. d. Schemas can be accessible if they are related to our current goals.

What central motives influence the way we construe the world? D.

a. The need to maintain self-esteem. b. The need to be accurate in our perceptions and decisions. c. The need for self-expression. d. a and b. e. a and c.

Over Thanksgiving break, your parents ask you if you can think of 12 reasons why your college is better than its arch rival. You find it hard to come up with many reasons and end up thinking, "Hmm, maybe the schools aren't all that different." Which of the following mental strategies did you probably use to reach this conclusion? D.

a. The representativeness heuristic b. Base rate information c. The anchoring and adjustment heuristic d. The availability heuristic

Research on controlled thinking and free will shows that: A.

a. There is a disconnect between our conscious sense of how much we are causing our actions and how much we are really causing our actions. b. It doesn't really matter whether or not people believe that they have free will. c. Some primates have just as much free will as human beings. d. People definitely do not have free will.

what do social psychologist and sociology have in common? D.

a. They both examine demographic trends in society. b. They both study national institutions. c. They both are concerned with personality differences. d. They both are concerned with group processes.

what do social psychology and personality psychologist have in common? A.

a. They both focus on the individual. b. They both focus on personality traits. c. They both focus on formative childhood experiences. d. They both focus on genetic contributions to personality.

Which of the following is true about Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)? C.

a. Universities can decide whether to have an IRB to approve psychological research. b. The purpose of IRBs is to review research after it is conducted and review any complaints. c. IRBs review psychological studies before they are conducted to make sure they meet ethical guidelines. d. IRBs must be made up entirely of nonscientists

What is a major assumption of Kelley's covariation model of attribution?

a. We make quick attributions after observing one instance of someone's behavior. b. People make causal attributions using cultural schemas. c. People infer the cause of others' behaviors through introspection. d. People gather information to make causal attributions rationally and logically. D

Mr. Rowe and Ms. Dabney meet on a blind date. They get along well until they get into his black convertible to go to a movie. Ms. Dabney is quiet and reserved for the rest of the evening. It turns out that her brother had recently been in a serious accident in that same type of car and seeing it brought up those unwanted emotions. Mr. Rowe assumes that Ms. Dabney has a cold and reserved personality, thereby demonstrating

a. a belief in a just world. b. the fundamental attribution error. c. perceptual salience. d. insufficient justification. B

In Miller's (1984) cross-cultural investigation of attribution style in the United States and India

a. among young children, Americans were more likely to make external attributions, and Indians were more likely to make internal attributions but few cultural differences emerged with adult participants b. among young children, Americans were more likely to make internal attributions, and Indians were more likely to make external attributions, but few cultural differences emerged with adult participants. c. few cultural differences emerged with children, but among adults, Americans were more likely to make external attributions, and Indians were more likely to make internal attributions. d. few cultural differences emerged with young children, but among adults, Americans were more likely to make internal attributions, and Indians were more likely to make external attributions. D

Researchers took photographs in randomly chosen locations in cities in Japan and the United States. They found that on average, city scenes in Japan contained more: C.

a. businesses and advertisements. b. people and residences. c. objects that competed for people's attention. d. buildings and concrete.

Whereas individuals in Western cultures tend to think more like _______, individuals in Eastern cultures tend to think more like _______.

a. children; adults b. psychologists; sociologists c. personality psychologists; social psychologists d. introverts; extraverts C

Suppose a psychologist decides to join a local commune to understand and observe its members' social relationships. This is D.

a. cross-cultural research. b. applied research. c. an experiment. d. ethnography.

Sam is playing a carnival game challenging him to guess which of the 20 cups is hiding the red ball. Unfortunately ,he picked the cup directly to the left of the winning cup and thus did not win the stuffed donkey he wanted. According to social psychological research, he is most likely to B.

a. experience cognitive dissonance. b. engage in counterfactual thinking. c. blame his mistake on the noise of the crowd. d. subsequently avoid similar games.

1. the fundamental attribution error is best defined as the tendency to ? a.

a. explain our own and other people's behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, thereby underestimating the power of social influence. b. explain our own and other people's behavior in terms of the social situation, thereby underestimating the power of personality factors. c. believe that people's group memberships influence their behavior more than their personalities. d. believe that people's personalities influence their behavior more than their group memberships.

A researcher conducts a study with participants who are college students. The researcher then repeats the study using the same procedures but with members of the general population (i.e., adults) as participants. The results are similar for both samples. The research has established ________ through ________. A.

a. external validity, replication b. internal validity, replication c. external validity, psychological realism d. internal validity, psychological realism

In Masuda and colleagues' (2008) study of cross-cultural perceptions of emotion,

a. eye-tracking technology is used to demonstrate that American participants spend less time looking at the peripheral individuals surrounding the central figure than do Japanese participants. b. American participants' perceptions of the central figure's emotional state are significantly influenced by the emotions of the peripheral individuals. c. context has little influence on the social perception processes of the participants. d. American participants begin by looking at the peripheral individuals before shifting their attention to the central individuals. A

2. Although he claims to hate reality television, Simon never misses an episode of Hoarders. Simon's behavior (i.e., watching Hoarders) is

a. high in distinctiveness. b. low in distinctiveness. c. low in consensus. d. low in consistency. A

1. A social psychologist would tend to look for explanations of a young man's violent behavior primarily in terms of: C

a. his aggressive personality traits .b. possible genetic contributions. c. how his peer group behaves. d. what his father taught him.

The topic that would most interest a social psychologist is: B.

a. how the level of extraversion of different presidents affected their political decisions. b. whether people's decision about whether to cheat on a test is influenced by how they imagine their friends would react if they found out. c. the extent to which people's social class predicts their income. d. what passers-by on the street think of global warming.

Social psychologists often do experiments in the laboratory, instead of the field, to: A.

a. increase internal validity. b. increase external validity. c. conduct a meta-analysis. d. decrease psychological realism.

Megan reads a research study which shows that children who see a lot of violence on television are more likely to be aggressive on the playground. Megan thinks, "This is obvious; I could have predicted that!" Megan's reaction to the study is probably an example of: B.

a. internal validity. b. the hindsight bias. c. external validity. d. psychological realism.

A team of researchers wants to test the hypothesis that drinking wine makes people like jazz more. They randomly assign college students who are 21 or older to one room in which they will drink wine and listen to jazz or to another room in which they will drink water and listen to jazz. It happens that the "wine room" has a big window with nice scenery outside, whereas the "water room" is windowless, dark, and dingy. The most serious flaw in this experiment is that it B.

a. is low in external validity. b. is low in internal validity. c. did not randomly select the participants from all college students in the country. d. is low in psychological realism.

Which of the following is true about the ethical conduct of psychological research? B.

a. it is good scientific procedure to tell participants about the research hypotheses before they participate. b. If research participants are misled about a study they must be fully debriefed at the end of the study. c. Darley and Latané could have easily tested their hypotheses about helping behavior by telling participants in advance that they would hear someone pretending to have a seizure. d. It is never permissible to use deception. must be fully debriefed at the end of the study.

The basic dilemma of the social psychologist is that B.

a. it is hard to teach social psychology to students because most people believe strongly in personality. b. there is a trade-off between internal and external validity in most experiments. c. it is nearly impossible to use a random selection of the population in laboratory experiments. d. almost all social behavior is influenced by the culture in which people grew up.

For social psychologists, the likely explanation of the mass suicide at Jonestown was C.

a. members of the cult were mentally unstable or clinically depressed. b. the cult leader used hypnotism or drugs to coerce his followers into obedience. c. processes that could ensnare almost any healthy person. d. the open, welcoming nature of the cult that made members feel it was safe to obey their leader.

5. "Naïve realism" refers to the fact that D.

a. most people are naïve (uneducated) about psychology. b. few people are realistic. c. most people would rather be naïve than accurate. d. most people believe they perceive things accurately

Suppose you're driving home from watching a scary movie about a hitchhiker who was a murderer when you see someone talking loudly with a friend. Because you saw the movie, you assume that you are witnessing an argument that will probably end in a fight. This is an example of A.

a. priming. b. base rate information. c. belief perseverance. d. controlled thinking.

Professor X wants to make sure his study of gifted youngsters will get published, but he's worried that his findings could have been caused by something other than the independent variable, which was a new teaching method he introduced. He is concerned with the ________ his experiment. D.

a. probability level b. external validity c. replication d. internal validity

which of the following is a basic assumption that social psychologists make? C.

a. social problems have complex causes and we will never know why they occur. b. it is hard to study what effect is looking at pornography has on people, because everyone is different. c. many social problems can be studied scientifically. d. many people fail to help others in emergencies because they dont care about other people

In social psychology, the level of analysis is B.

a. society at large. b. the individual in a social context. c. groups and organizations. d. cognitive and perceptual brain processes.

social psychology is the study of? A.

a. the real or imagined influence of other people b. social institutions, such as the church or school c. social events, such as football games and dances. d. psychological processes, such as dreaming.

Suppose that Mischa has found that when she sits in the first row of discussion classes, she gets a better participation grade, regardless of how much she actually participates. Her positioning in front of the teacher could have an effect on how large of a role the teacher thinks Mischa has in discussion due to

a. the teacher's use of schemas. b. perceptual salience. c. the "what is beautiful is good" schema. d. the two-step process of attribution. B

how do social psychologist formulate hypotheses and theories? D.

a. they are inspired by previous theories and research. b. they disagree with a previous researches' interpretations of their study. c. they construct hypothesis and theories based on personal observations in everyday life. d. all of the above answers are correct.

which of the following is true about social psychology findings? A.

a. they sometimes seem obvious after we learn about them, because of a hindsight bias. b. most people could easily predict them in advance of knowing how the studies turned out. c. wise people such as our grandparents could easily predict them in advance of knowing how the studies turned out. d. most people who live in the culture in which the studies were conducted could predict the findings in advance of knowing how the studies turned out.

Researchers who study social cognition assume that people A.

a. try to view the world as accurately as possible. b. can't think clearly with other people around them. c. distort reality to view themselves favorably. d. are driven by the need to controls others

Tracy and Matsumoso's (2008) research on Olympic athletes indicated that the nonverbal expression of shame was

associated with losing for many athletes but not those from highly individualistic cultures such as the United States. different for blind athletes than it was for sighted athletes. difficult to distinguish from the nonverbals associated with pride among athletes from more collectivistic cultures such as Japan. more often displayed rather than hidden by athletes from highly individualistic cultures such as the United States. A

social cognition

how people think about thems and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions

3. The two-step process of attribution suggests that

people first make an internal attribution and then correct for situational influences. people first make an external attribution and then correct for dispositional influences c. Americans are less likely than Chinese to commit the fundamental attribution error. d. if the attribution process is disrupted at either step, no attribution will be made. A

self esteem

people's evaluations of their own self worth -- that is, the extent to

surveys

research in which a representative sample of people are asked (often anonymously) questions about their attitudes or behavior

Darwin's evolutionary perspective on nonverbal communication of emotion led him to predict that facial expressions were

specific to particular cultures. B. Related to physiological reactions that proved to be a useful way to respond to a particular type of stimulus. c. a way to increase but not decrease input through senses such as vision and smell. d. universal across all animal species. B

naive realism

the conviction that we perceive things "as they really are," underestimating how much we are interpreting or "spinning" what we see

ethonograhy

the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have

experimental method

the method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable (the one thought to have a casual effect on people's responses )

observational method

the technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior.

correlational method

the technique whereby two or more variables as systematically measured and the relationship between them and the relationship between them. ( how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed

hindsight bias

the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occured, how much they could have predicted it before it occured.

Belief Perseverance

the tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider

independent variable

the variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable

dependent variable

the variable a researcher mea- sures to see if it is influencedby the independent variable the researcher hypothesizes that the dependent variable will depend on the level of the independent variable

Ambady and colleagues were able to conclude that the thin- sliced impressions formed by their participants were based on meaningful information because

their ratings based on 30-second clips were little different than their ratings based on 6-second clips. B. their ratings of the silent video clips corresponded strongly with the ratings that the instructors received from their actual students at the end of the semester. C ratings were similar for silent video clips and for the same video clips when shown with audio. D. while the thin-sliced video clips were brief, it took participants a relatively long amount of time to come up with ratings of the instructors they viewed B

Encode

to express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back