PSYC 2400 Exam 1

Imagine that you could draw a flat horizontal line through the points on a scatter plot depicting the relation between X and Y. Which of the following is the closest value to the correlation coefficient that you would compute from these data?

0

Currently, the consensus among most personality researchers is that there are ________ fundamental personality traits.

5

Which of the following is true?

A measure can be reliable but not valid.

A correlation of (-) 0.99 between two variables means:

As one variable goes up, the other variable, in very close relations, goes down

_________ data derive from the researcher's direct observation of what the subject does.

B

If I used your response on item #62 above to project how you fit in with deviant college students (I actually don't care about your bathing preferences here) by correlating your response with a group of people who answered the same item, then this same data is:

B data

Bryant surveys 2,000 people and finds a positive correlation between eating chocolate and intelligence scores, r (correlation coefficient)=.52, p>.05. He gets really excited about his results and wants to create an intervention for intelligence that gets everyone to eat lots of chocolate.

Bad idea because nothing in this data says that eating chocolate will cause higher IQ scores.

________ theories of personality apply the insights and methods derived from the study of perception, memory, and thought to the study of personality.

Cognitive

I used item #62 in the past eight psychology courses given and, as it turns out, those who answer (a. shower) almost always earn a 'B' or below in the class and those who answer (b. bath) almost always earn an 'A' in the class. If I used this information to predict how you will do in the course, I'm using principles of:

Empirical Test Construction

Positive correlation coefficients are more meaningful than negative correlation coefficients.

False

Walter Mischel's marshmallow study proves definitively that self-control is hard-wired.

False

In class we listened to an interview with Walter Mischel. What was one of the important conclusions from the research?

Four-year olds that are able to wait to eat a cookie are more likely to be successful adults.

Sabrina ran an experiment in which she randomly assigned 50 students to two groups: Group 1 was asked to write about the best part of their day at the end of each day for a week, Group 2 received no writing instructions. At the end of the study, Sabrina asked all of the students how happy they were. She found that Group 1 had higher happiness ratings at the end of the week than Group 2. Her statistical results include the following values: p<.05 and effect size=0.1. How should Sabrina interpret her results?

Group 1's happiness is significantly greater than Group 2's, however the writing did not have a big effect on happiness.

Which of the following would be described as less likely to be a trait?

Hunger (Being Hungarian, Conscientious, Agreeable)

A personality description of a client by his or her therapist is an example of _____________ data.

I

__________ data are fairly easily verifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes of possible psychological significance.

L

Grace is collecting data for her thesis project. She goes to the police station and looks at arrest records. Grace is collecting:

L Data

Jean is studying the bank accounts of students. She finds that the more students go out to eat, the lower the amount of money they have in their bank account. The relationship between eating and money is characterized by a:

Negative Correlation

According to the text, which of the following would NOT be a threat to the generalizability of personality research?

Personality researchers strive to study multiple cohorts.

Which of the following is NOT one of the responses to the situationist argument?

Personality researchers worked harder to find single traits that could strongly predict single responses at a particular point in time (Personality researchers argued that Mischel's literature review was selective; Personality researchers searched for certain kinds of people who were more consistent than others; Personality researchers started to think more carefully about the importance of a correlation of .40)

Two variables plotted on an axis have a line drawn through the data points which creates a slope increasing in size on the graph from left to right. This indicates a:

Positive correlation

Which of the following is a limitation of projective tests?

Projective tests are relatively inefficient and expensive to administer.

If you were shown an inkblot and asked to describe what you saw, you would be taking the

Rorschach test

Which kind of data are the most cost-effective to collect?

S

Tim is collecting data for his honors project. He asks all of the participants to complete a questionnaire that asks questions about their daily habits. Tim is collecting:

S Data

If I am conducting a survey to determine whether to install more baths or showers in the dorms based on student preference, your response on item #62 above is:

S data

When a psychologist asks a question because he or she wants to know the answer, the question elicits _________. When the psychologist asks a question because he or she wants to see how the individual will respond to that stimulus, the test elicits __________.

S data; B data

Imagine that Sally thinks she can judge Charlie's personality better than Lucy's personality. According to a recent study, which statement is most correct?

Sally will be more accurate in her judgments of Charlie.

A group of experimental participants are separated into two. Comparisons revealed a p-value less than .05 telling me that I can probably (95% chance) count on these groups being different for reasons other than chance. Therefore, I should think of these results as:

Significant but not necessarily meaningful

What's an example of a representative design study?

Surveying a group that is similar to a larger group that you are interested in.

Which of the following is NOT considered one of the likely reasons that high-expectancy students perform better?

Teachers show an increased willingness to ignore disciplinary problems in these students.

Based on recent research, what is likely to happen when an aggressive person plays a competitive multiplayer video game?

The aggressive person will evoke aggression from the other players.

If Dr. O'Connell wants to learn about Laura, why might Dr. O'Connell want to avoid using S data?

The person supplying the S data may not want to or be able to provide accurate reports about Laura.

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of I data?

They come from carefully controlled experimental situations.

According to the text, what is the best approach to test construction?

a combination of all three approaches

Which of the following is the strongest situation using the psychological definition of a strong situation?

a funeral

In making an overall judgment of your personality, which person should be most accurate?

a lifelong best friend

A situationist would interpret a correlation of around .30 ___________.

as an example of a very small effect size

Inventories derived from the empirical method sometimes have items that seem strange or even objectionable to test takers ________.

because those items correlated with outcomes of interest to the test developers

According to the text, the purpose of personality traits is to predict ____________.

behavior in the long term

A teacher is mistakenly told that one of his students is intellectually gifted. However, by the end of the year, this student has actually made substantial gains in her standardized test scores. This is an example of what psychological phenomenon?

behavioral confirmation

Judgments of your personality by others ________.

both reflect who you are and can influence what you are like

Funder and Ozer (1983) converted the results of three classic social psychological studies to effect sizes. After comparing those effect sizes with those typically obtained by personality psychologists, Funder and Ozer concluded that _____________.

both situational and personality variables are important determinants of behavior

Advocates of any particular basic approach to personality historically ______________.

claimed that their approach explains everything worth explaining

When gathering data or clues about personality, the best policy is to ________.

collect as many clues as possible

A research strategy that involves gathering as many different measurements as you can of a particular construct and determining if those measurements correlate is called ______________.

construct validation

Dr. Low is interested in studying the relation between mood and willingness to help a stranger. Every participant in her study completes a mood-rating questionnaire and is then given an opportunity to donate money to a homeless stranger. Dr. Low is using a(n) ___________ design.

correlational

Which of the following would be an example of trying to improve the predictability of behavior from personality traits by taking into account the possibility that some people are more consistent than others?

determining if the behavior of high self-monitors is less predictable than that of low self-monitors

The primary criterion for item selection in the empirical method of test construction is determining whether the item ________.

discriminates between two known groups

According to the text, accidental mistakes in judging personality are considered _________, whereas inaccurate judgments that are influenced by prejudices are considered __________.

errors; biases

The tendency for us to become what other people believe us to be is called a(n) ______________ effect.

expectancy

Self-fulfilling prophecies are more technically known as ________.

expectancy effects

Which design is best suited for addressing the third-variable problem and may give a bitter idea of causality?

experimental

A researcher asks participants to imagine that they have been excluded from their circle of friends and then takes images of their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning technology. The images generated in this study would be considered __________ data.

experimental B

The fact that much of modern empirical research in psychology has been based on white, middle-class college sophomores may reduce the __________ of psychological research.

generalizability

If there is a positive correlation between extraversion and risk taking, then the ____________.

higher a persons' extraversion score, the more risks he or she is likely to take

Factor analysis can ________.

identify groups of items that go together

All projective tests ________.

involve stimuli with no clear meaning

Andersen (1984) found that the quality of information affected the accuracy of personality judgments. According to the results of this study, information obtained from which actions would most likely lead to a social impression that corresponded to the target's self-assessment?

listening to the target describe his or her thoughts and feelings

Someone who is _________ is likely to express his or her personality consistently from one situation to the next.

low in self-monitoring

The only difference between the experimental and correlational methods is that in the experimental method the presumed casual variable is ____________, whereas in the correlational method the same variable is __________.

manipulated; measured.

A variable that affects the relation between two other variables is known as a ________.

moderator

If a test consists of a list of True/False questions and is graded using a computer-scored answer sheet, and has very little subjective interpretation from the administrator, then it is most likely a(n) ________.

objective test

A judge may see a target's behavior, pay attention to the behavior, and use the behavior in his or her judgment about the target's personality. However, for the personality judgment to be accurate, the ________.

observed behavior must be relevant to the trait being judged

Research on intellectual and social expectancies demonstrates that ________.

other people's perceptions of your personality can influence who you are and what you do

Which of the following is NOT part of the psychological triad?

psychological health (behavior, thoughts, feelings)

To do an experimental study of the effect of smoking on physical health, we would have to

randomly assign people to a smoking condition or a control condition

Dr. Akita is designing a test to measure sociability. She writes items that seem directly and obviously related to sociability, such as "I like to go to parties" and "I enjoy the company of other people." Dr. Akita is using the ________ method of test construction.

rational

Rosa takes a test 10 times and gets the same result each time. She is testing the measure's ____.

reliability.

Do you prefer a shower or bath?

shower

The number between -1 and +1 that indexes the linear association between any two variables is called _________.

the correlation coefficient

What might be an effect of expectancies in real life?

to magnify or maintain existing behavioral tendencies

According to the text, the goal of a scientific education is ___________.

to teach what is known and how to find out what is not yet known

The purpose of personality tests is primarily to explain:

traits

Celia asks a depression expert to review her new measure to make sure it is really measuring depression. She is reviewing the measure's _____________.

validity.