Chapter 1 Psychology
Which of the following methods is most helpful for clarifying cause-effect relationships?
The experiment
Which of the following is true for those assigned to a control group?
The experimental treatment is absent
The case study is a research method in which
a single individual is studied in great depth
Which perspective most clearly focuses on how we learn observable responses?
behavioral
Dr. Robinson conducts research on the relationship between brain chemistry and intellectual functioning. Which psychological specialty does Dr. Robinson's research best represent?
biological psychology
The neuroscience perspective in psychology would be most likely to emphasize that behavior is influenced by
blood chemistry
Which psychological perspective is most likely to be concerned with identifying the powers and the limits of human reasoning?
cognitive
Behaviorism dismisses the value of
introspection
Looking inward and reporting your immediate sensations, images, and feelings is called
introspection
On a series of coin tosses, Oleg has correctly predicted heads or tails seven times in a row. In this instance, we can reasonably conclude that Oleg's predictive accuracy
is a random and coincidental occurrence
The cognitive perspective in psychology focuses on how
people encode, process, store, and retrieve information
A negative correlation between degree of wealth and likelihood of suffering from a psychological disorder would indicate that
people who are poor are more likely to have a psychological disorder than are wealthy people
The personality theorist Sigmund Freud was an Austrian
physician
An inert substance that may be administered instead of a drug to see if it produces any of the same effects as the drug is called a
placebo
In a study of the effects of drinking alcohol, some participants drank a nonalcoholic beverage that actually smelled and tasted like alcohol. This nonalcoholic drink was a
placebo
Dr. Mills conducts research on why individuals conform to the behaviors and opinions of others. Which specialty area does his research best represent?
social psychology
Mike Crampton's stockbroker has informed him that he has suffered substantial investment losses. When Mike tells his wife, she angrily responds, "I could have told you that your investment plan would fail!" Her comment best illustrates
hindsight bias
A testable prediction that is often implied by a theory is called a(n)
hypothesis
Which psychologists are MOST likely to be involved in applied research?
industrial-organizational psychologists
From the 1920s through the 1970s, American psychologists emphasized the study of
observable behavior
A statement describing the exact procedures for measuring an anticipated experimental outcome is known as a(n)
operational definition
A theory is an organized set of principles that ______ observations and ______ events.
organizes; predicts
Who was the American philosopher-psychologist who authored a textbook in 1890 for the emerging discipline of psychology?
William James
Correlation is a measure of the extent to which two factors
are related and vary together
Contemporary psychology is best defined as the science of
behavior and mental processes
Which psychologists are MOST likely to be involved in basic research?
clinical psychologists
To determine whether the strength of people's self-esteem is related to their income levels, researchers would most likely make use of
correlational research
A questioning attitude regarding psychologists' assumptions and hidden values best illustrates
critical thinking
Three key attitudes of scientific inquiry are
curiosity, skepticism, and humility
In a psychological experiment, the variable that may be influenced by the manipulated experimental treatment (i.e., independent variable) is called the ________ variable.
dependent
Which perspective highlights the reproductive advantages of inherited psychological traits?
evolutionary
The hindsight bias refers to people's tendency to
exaggerate their ability to have foreseen an outcome
In which type of research would an investigator manipulate one factor and observe its effect on some behavior or mental process?
experimentation
William James was a prominent American
functionalist
A correlation between physical attractiveness and dating frequency of +1.00 would indicate that
less frequent dating is associated with lower levels of physical attractiveness
The biggest danger of relying on case-study evidence is that it
may be unrepresentative of what is generally true
Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory work involved experimental studies of
mental processes
Research participants are randomly assigned to different groups in an experiment in order to
minimize chances that participants in any group know each other
Psychologists who carefully watch the behavior of chimpanzee societies in the jungle are using a research method known as
naturalistic observation
The placebo effect best illustrates the impact of ________ on feelings and behaviors.
positive expectations
Humanistic psychologists focused attention on the importance of people's
potential for healthy growth
Correlational research is most useful for purposes of
prediction
Clinical psychologists specialize in
providing therapy to troubled people
To accurately isolate cause and effect, experimenters should use
random assignment
When every individual in a large population has a small but equal chance of being included in a survey, researchers are using a procedure known as
random sampling
The scientific attitude requires an open-minded humility because it involves a willingness to
recognize the errors in our own ideas
Which technique involves repeating the essence of an earlier research study with different participants and in different circumstances?
replication
Which research method would be most appropriate for investigating the relationship between the religious beliefs of Americans and their attitudes toward abortion?
the survey
Professor Shalet contends that parents and children have similar levels of intelligence largely because they share common genes. His idea is best described as a(n)
theory
Cognitive neuroscience studies relationships between
thought processes and brain functions
