AP Psych Unit 7
Dr. Dameron wants to test whether the Yerkes-Dodson law holds true for the players on a college basketball team. Dr. Dameron will manipulate arousal in the players by giving them different doses of caffeine. Which method would best allow Dr. Dameron to test the causal effects of arousal on performance in the players, and what results should he expect to find?
Give three different groups of players low, medium, and high doses of caffeine during a practice game. The performance of the medium-dose group is predicted to be best.
Which of the following correctly explains the evidence (as well as the person responsible for the discovery) that stress leads to three distinct stages of physiological change: alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion?
Hans Selye conducted a study measuring cortisol and blood sugar levels in rats during different amounts of time living under stressful conditions.
To develop his theory about personality, Freud interviewed his patients during therapy sessions, typically multiple sessions per week. The patients laid on a couch while Freud asked questions and listened to the patients' responses. What was one of Freud's main contributions to personality theory, and which method did he use?
Personality is related to balance among the id, the ego, and the superego; case studies
Which of the following pieces of evidence would best support the validity of the Big Five personality traits in describing human personality?
The Big Five have been shown to apply to individuals in many countries, including, but not limited to, Hungary, Turkey, China, Japan, and Italy.
Monica is kicking a soccer ball with her brother in her front yard. When the ball rolls into the street, Monica runs into the street to retrieve it, and her father yells at her from the window. Monica becomes upset when her father raises his voice. How do the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion and the James-Lange theory of emotion differ in explaining Monica's response to her father's raised voice?
The Cannon-Bard theory proposes that Monica's emotional state and physiological arousal occur simultaneously, whereas the James-Lange theory proposes that Monica's physiological arousal precedes her emotional state.
Dr. Santiago administers a test to a patient in which she asks him to provide an interpretation of a meaningless inkblot on a piece of paper. Several weeks later, she administers the test again and is surprised to find that the results are quite different from the first administration. What type of personality test is Dr. Santiago using, and based on her experience, what level of reliability does it have?
The Rorschach test; low reliability
Dr. Howard wants to evaluate a patient's personality with respect to motivation. The patient does not read very well and does not have a very long attention span. Which of the following tests will provide reliable results in the most practical manner?
The Thematic Apperception Test
A therapist who is an adherent of the humanistic personality theory would most likely focus on which of the following?
The pursuit of self-actualization
Jess's psychologist asks him to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form® (MMPI-2-RF®). Later, his psychiatrist asks him to take the test again. If the test has high test-retest reliability, what will be found?
The results are likely to be similar.
Which of the following scenarios most directly refutes trait theories of psychology?
Victoria goes to the same restaurant and orders the same meal every day, but when she goes out to eat with friends, she likes to order the most interesting thing on the menu.
Chidi is very selfless, cooperative, and trusting of other people. According to the Big Five model of personality, these characteristics make him
high in agreeableness
According to the drive-reduction theory of motivation, drives arise because of physiological imbalances in
homeostasis
Domy was raised in a collectivistic culture, while Naureen was raised in an individualistic culture. Based on their upbringings, it is most safe to conclude that compared to Naureen, Domy is more likely to
skip going to a concert so she can have dinner with her family
An example of a primary drive is
sleeping
Paris tends to view personality as fairly stable and therefore her personality is more stable, whereas Lane tends to view personality as fairly changeable and therefore her personality is more changeable. These differences in attitudes and personality are most consistent with the
social cognitive view of personality
Before starting her day working at a day-care center, Meredith takes a few moments to smile at herself in the mirror. No matter how she is feeling before she comes in, she finds that smiling helps her feel happier before beginning her day. Meredith's experience is evidence for
the facial feedback hypothesis
Researchers conduct a study in which university students are asked to solve puzzles, a task that all students in the experiment report enjoying before the study. They split the students into two groups: a group that is paid money for doing the puzzles, and a group that is not. The researchers then observe how often students in each group complete puzzles during their break time when they are allowed to do whatever they want. Assuming that their results are consistent with previous findings, the researchers are most likely to find that
the independent variable—whether or not the students receive money for doing puzzles—has a significant effect, such that students in the paid group spend less time doing puzzles during their break time
In an experiment, a researcher showed children a video of a person interacting with a doll. Half of the children watched a video of a person behaving violently toward a doll, and the other half saw a video of a person playing nicely with a doll. The researcher also looked at whether the gender and age of the child made a difference in how they interacted with the doll. In this study, the dependent variable was
the way children interact with a doll
Tahani is hiking in the woods and sees some movement in the trees. She immediately tenses up. A few moments later, after she realizes that the trees were just rustling in the wind, she calms down. According to Joseph LeDoux, Tahani's reaction is due to the fact that
there is a fast processing path that sends sensory information directly to the amygdala, causing Tahani's initial fear response, and a slower processing path that processes the content of sensory information first, which overrode Tahani's fear response
Bella takes a test to develop an inventory of different aspects of her personality. She hopes to better understand herself and the kind of person she is. The test is most in line with a
trait theory of personality
While Luke is interviewing for a job, he takes a personality test measuring the five-factor personality model. This test is designed to be consistent with a
trait theory of personality
Diane is very disciplined and usually completes the goals she sets for herself. How would a trait theory of personality and a social cognitive theory of personality differ in their explanations of Diane's behavior?
A trait theory might say that Diane is highly conscientious, whereas a social cognitive theory might say that Diane's belief about her own self-efficacy drives her behavior.
Priscilla has recently found diaries from her family dating back multiple generations. She has noticed that there are similarities in their life events and in the way they thought about things that happened to them. She believes that it has to do with the fact that they all have the same inherited instincts that drive their behavior and that these instincts exist in all humans. Priscilla's way of thinking is most in line with
Carl Jung's collective unconscious
Which scenario below is most descriptive of the psychoanalytic theory of personality?
Charlie is overly precise and methodical in everything he does, to the point that he is constantly annoying his family and missing deadlines at work. Dr. Katz believes that this is because Charlie never moved past the anal stage of development.
Giraldo is unhappy at work. One explanation that is consistent with psychoanalytic theories of personality is that
Giraldo feels critical of his choice not to go to college, and his defense mechanism is to blame his job for his unhappiness
When Jordan was one year old, he and his father were in a car accident. Neither he nor anyone else in the car was seriously injured, and as an adult he has no memory of the event, though his father developed anxiety around cars as a result. Jordan is now 26 years old. Despite not having been in any car accidents since he was one year old, Jordan has recently begun experiencing anxiety every time he gets in a car. According to psychoanalytic theories of personality, why is Jordan experiencing anxiety?
Despite not having any conscious memory of the accident, he remembers it in his subconscious, and that has begun to cause his anxiety.
Larry wants to be more open to new experiences. According to a behaviorist, how could he teach himself to be more open?
Give himself a reward every time he convinces himself to participate in a new experience.
Michael is a kindergartner who is habitually very kind to his classmates and always wants to play with others, even if it means sharing his toys. However, every morning when his mother leaves him at school, he becomes very upset and cries for a half hour. How would a trait theorist most likely characterize his relative levels of extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness?
High on extraversion; high on neuroticism; high on agreeableness
Dr. Anderson is a psychologist who currently has a patient who is having difficulty forming relationships with others. To help her patient work through his issues, Dr. Anderson focuses on developing with him a strong relationship that is characterized by unconditional positive regard. Dr. Anderson's approach is most consistent with which type of theory of personality?
Humanist
If a personality survey with high internal consistency includes two different questions related to the personality dimension of agreeableness, then which of the following is true?
People will tend to give similar answers to both questions.
Leo and Caitlin are both experiencing feelings about their date tonight. Leo has had bad dates lately, and so he feels fear and dejection. Caitlin, meanwhile, has had very good dates, and so she feels excited and happy. According to Richard Lazarus' appraisal theory,
Leo and Caitlin have an immediate unconscious interpretation of the scenario, which leads them to simultaneously both label their feelings as either positive or negative and have the appropriate physiological response
Alison is completing a practicum in a psychiatric clinic, and her supervisor has asked her to select an appropriate test for a patient she suspects has a personality disorder but who is otherwise within the normal range for IQ and does not appear to have other cognitive issues. Of the following measures, which would be the most appropriate choice?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form® (MMPI-2-RF®)
Dr. Brenner works with people to help them decide what jobs would be most suitable for them. She wants her clients to take a personality inventory and believes that the five-factor model of personality is the best model to use to determine job fit. The test that will give her reliable results and best fit her view of personality is the
NEO™ Personality Inventory-3 (NEO™-PI-3)
Dr. Emerson is seeing a patient named Nandini who is currently going through a divorce. She has moved out of her house and is staying on a friend's couch. While she is going through this, Nandini is struggling to find meaning in her life. Humanist theorist Abraham Maslow's explanation for Nandini's dissatisfaction with life would most likely be that
Nandini has not fulfilled basic needs (shelter, relationships, love), and thus cannot fulfill higher levels of needs
Dr. Maisel is creating a new personality test. The test is a self-report measure in which participants answer questions on a scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" about how they would respond to particular situations. He then uses the responses to place participants along a spectrum in a number of different traits. He compares the results of the test to reports from the participants' managers at work on their working styles and ability to work within their team and finds that the test results are highly positively correlated with managers' reports. What type of test is he developing, and what type of validity or reliability can be determined from his work on the test?
Objective; construct validity
Which of the following is considered the most basic of needs?
Obtaining food and water
A researcher wants to test whether increasing the size of a monetary incentive will motivate a person to perform better on a skill-based task. Which of the following methods is the best way to test this question, and what result will the researcher most likely find?
Offer three different groups of participants three different payment amounts (small, medium, or large) based on their performance on a single task. The researcher will likely find that participants perform best on the task that pays the most.
Rolf is beginning to learn to ski, but he is nervous about going down some of the steeper slopes. Which of the following potential explanatory factors would theorist Alfred Adler be most interested in exploring to understand Rolf's concerns?
Rolf's feelings about his older sister, who qualified for the Olympics in skiing
Which of the following summations most accurately depicts the psychoanalytic theory of personality?
Rory has a deep-seated sense of inferiority and compensates by constantly trying to prove she is better than everyone else. Some would say that Rory is compensating for her inferiority complex by striving for superiority.
Russ went for a run, and Nelly took a nap. They then watched a horror movie together. Usually, Russ and Nelly are about equally scared when they watch horror movies. In this situation, Schachter's two-factor theory of emotion predicts that
Russ will be more scared of the movie because he is aroused from the run
A researcher wants to understand the personality characteristics and motivations that might help explain a famous political figure's rise to power. She studies his early childhood experiences and other formative events in his life. The method this researcher is using to study personality is known as
a case study
Rufus wanted to go to college after high school, but he did not go because he was afraid it would be too much work. For years he has considered going to college but he still fears that it will be too hard. Eventually he feels so unhappy that he goes to see a therapist, who follows Carl Rogers's theory of humanistic personality. The therapist is most likely to explain Rufus's unhappiness as being a result of
a mismatch between his ideal self and his real self
Every time Antonio fails a test he attributes his failure to a lack of sufficient intelligence, even though he rarely studies. According to the sociocultural theory of personality, Antonio is experiencing
an external locus of control
Arun's coworkers regularly describe him as being very agreeable. According to the behavioral perspective of personality, Arun's agreeableness most likely comes from
being rewarded for exhibiting agreeable behavior as a child
According to Kurt Lewin's motivational conflict theory, approach-avoidance conflict occurs when a situation has
both positive and negative aspects
According to Kurt Lewin, an approach-approach conflict occurs when a person has to
choose between two outcomes that are both desirable
The best method to understand the causal effect of a reward on an intrinsically motivated behavior is to
conduct an experiment in which intrinsic motivation for a behavior is tested prior to administering a reward for that same behavior in a random sample of the participants and then measure the motivation after the reward is taken away
Stress can most likely contribute to heart disease because
cortisol released during stress reduces the flexibility of blood vessels, so the heart has to work harder
Hans grew up in Germany and later moved to Japan for a job opportunity. Back at home, he never had issues making friends or had interpersonal issues with colleagues at work, but in his new home, Hans is having difficulty interacting with his colleagues. According to psychologists who study how culture influences behavior, his difficulties most likely stem from
cultural differences in emotional expression and body language between Japan and Germany
Chronic stress is most likely to lead to
decreased functioning of the immune system
Exposure to stressors decreases the effectiveness of lymphocytes in the blood stream, which perform the function of
defending the body from viruses
Jenny and Anne are identical twins but were separated at birth and adopted by different families. When they meet each other as adults, they are interested to learn that they share some aspects of personality but differ in other aspects. Albert Bandura, known for the social learning theory of personality, would most likely attribute the differences in the twins' personalities to
differences in the environmental stimuli they experienced and elicited from others during development
The neurotransmitter that is primarily associated with the feeling of wanting something is
dopamine
The final stage of general adaptation theory is known as
exhaustion
Emotions are controlled primarily by the
limbic system
Personality tests that use forced-choice questions are beneficial in identifying personality traits because they
minimize desirability bias because test takers are choosing between two unrelated statements
The neurotransmitter dopamine is most closely associated with
reward-seeking behavior
Shanni loves to travel internationally, owns many unusual pieces of art from local artists, and enjoys attending concerts featuring an eclectic collection of musicians. According to theorists Paul Costa and Robert McRae, Shanni's personality is likely high on
openness to experience
Alfred Kinsey used a method that allowed for extensive information to be collected from discussions with individual participants. The research method that he used, and his research contributions, were
personal interviews; sexual behavior in women
One feature that distinguishes Carl Rogers' person-centered approach to personality development from behaviorist approaches to personality development is that the person-centered approach suggests that
personality is shaped by unconditional love and support for children's behavior, whereas behaviorist approaches suggest that personality is conditioned through rewards and punishments