Social Psych Module 1
Which of the following comments does not illustrate the fundamental attribution error?
"The people who committed suicide at Jonestown were socially isolated and thus cut off from other points of view about their leader.
A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
Behaviorism
Which of the following is true about evolutionary psychology?
Evolutionary approaches can generate novel hypotheses about social behavior that can then be tested with experiments
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
Fundamental attribution error
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
Gestalt Psychology
Social psychology had its origins in
Gestalt psychology
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?
How Emily construes the situation.Social psychology had its origins in
What was the main contribution of Gestalt psychology to social psychology?
It showed that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts.
Which of the following does NOT reflect the motive to maintain high self-esteem?
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.
The conviction that we perceive things "as they really are," underestimating how much we are interpreting or "spinning" what we see
Naive realism
In social psychology, why is construal so important?
People's behavior is affected by their interpretation of events, not only the events themselves.
How does social psychology differ from personality psychology?
Social psychology focuses on the shared processes that make people susceptible to social influence, whereas personality psychology focuses on individual differences.
What does the Wall Street Game reveal about personality and situation?
The name of the game strongly influences how people play the game.
Which of the following motives are central to how we construe the world?
The needs to feel good about ourselves and to feel our opinions are accurate.
What do social psychology and personality psychology have in common?
They both focus on the individual
Researchers who study social cognition assume that people
Try to view the world as accurately as possible.
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?
What is her explanation for why she got the bad grade?
The "self-fulfilling prophecy" is the reason that many people
act in ways to make predictions of their own behavior or others' come true.
The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
construal
The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection
evolutionary psychology
The fundamental attribution error is best defined as the tendency to
explain our own and other people's behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, thereby underestimating the power of social influence.
A social psychologist would tend to look for explanations of a young man's violent behavior primarily in terms of:
how his peer group behaves.
"Naïve realism" refers to the fact that
most people believe they perceive things accurately.
For social psychologists, the likely explanation of the mass suicide at Jonestown was
processes that could ensnare almost any healthy person
People's evaluations of their own self-worth—that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent
self-esteem
How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret,remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions
social cognition
The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior
social influence
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
social psychology
What is the "level of analysis" for a social psychologist?
the individual in the context of a social situation.
What do social psychology and sociology have in common?
they are both concerned with group processes
The topic that would most interest a social psychologist is
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.
Which of the following research topics about violence is one that a social psychologist might investigate?
why some situations are more likely to provoke aggression than others.
