Psychology: Module 26 LC

Making several minor household repairs, Alyssa uses a shoe as a hammer and a butter knife as a screwdriver. Which statement BEST characterizes Alyssa's problem solving?

she is not constrained by functional fixedness

People more quickly recognize that a blue jay is a bird than that a penguin is a bird because a blue jay more closely resembles their _____ of a bird.

prototype

Whenever Tarik reminded himself that his musical skills could earn him fame and fortune, he became less creative in his musical performance. This BEST illustrates that creativity may be inhibited by _____ motivation

extrinsic

When Judy's professor failed to recognize that Judy had her hand raised to answer a question, Judy began to think her professor was unfriendly. Judy later learned that the professor's limited vision kept him from seeing her raised hand, but she continued to think he was unfriendly. Judy's reaction BEST illustrates:

belief perseverance

Psychologists refer to the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating as _____.

cognition

Mary Ellen is a registered Republican. She believes that her positions on political issues are correct because she often finds similar viewpoints expressed in conservative media. Mary Ellen is demonstrating:

confirmation bias

According to the principle of belief perseverance, when faced with evidence that conflicts with one's point of view on a controversial issue, one tends to

discount the information

One major impediment to problem solving is _____, which is the inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective.

fixation

Most adults are more likely to choose a birth control method that is said to have a 95 percent success rate than one that is said to have a 5 percent failure rate. This BEST illustrates the impact of _____.

framing

At the beginning of a race, someone asks a group of elite runners if they think they will come in first; they all say yes. Of the judgment and decision-making phenomena described in the textbook, this example BEST illustrates _____.

overconfidence

Because he mistakenly believes that older workers are not as motivated to work as hard as younger workers, a factory foreman is especially vigilant for signs of laziness among his senior employees. When he sees a younger employee slacking off, he usually assumes that the employee is taking a well-deserved break. His supervision strategy BEST illustrates

Confirmation bias

While studying chimpanzees, _____ observed that animals have the ability to display insight

Wolfgang kohler

If someone estimates the likelihood of events based on the ease with which he or she can retrieve it from memory, he or she is demonstrating the _____ heuristic.

availability

The easier it is for an individual to remember a circumstance in which a car battery failed to function, the more he or she expects such an event to recur. This BEST illustrates the impact of the _____ heuristic.

availability

A potential source of irrationality is _____, our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence

belief perseverance

Alex was an African gray parrot who could

indicate which of two numbers was greater

Fourteen-year-old Francisco enjoys playing the piano and never needs prompting from his parents to practice. He writes music and plays the piano several times a day. He tells his parents that he plays because he enjoys creating music. Francisco plays the piano because of _____ motivation

intrinsic

Isaac Newton stated that he was able to solve difficult scientific problems "by thinking about them all the time." This BEST demonstrates

intrinsic motivation

After gathering extensive information about the colleges she was interested in attending, Krista let the information incubate outside her conscious awareness for several days. This provided time for her decision to be potentially enhanced by

intuition

Experienced air traffic controllers can tell you a plane's flight pattern at a glance, yet they cannot tell you how they do it. Their acquired expertise is such an automatic habit that it feels like

intuition

Instead of taking the time to rationally think about every decision that is faced on a daily basis, people often resort to:

intuition

David tends to study the same way for every class he takes no matter the subject. So far, he has been successful. This is an example of a(n)

mental set

Students will tend to study the same way for every class they are taking, especially when they have been successful. This is an example of a

mental set

Your friend has a cockatiel that he has trained to discriminate between pictures of dogs and cats. Your friend shows him a picture of a dog and the bird pecks at a dog symbol on the cage. Your friend shows him a picture of a cat and the bird pecks at a cat symbol. The bird is showing

that it can form concepts

In testing thousands of different materials for use as light bulb filaments, Thomas Edison BEST illustrated a problem-solving approach known a

trial and error