Unit 1 Test

Which of the following is an evidence-based method that draws on observation and experimentation?

empirical approach

Which perspective would suggest that the facial expressions associated with the emotions of lust and rage are inherited?

evolutionary

Exploring how we humans are alike because of our common biology and evolutionary history is the focus of

evolutionary psychology

Matthias Mehl and colleagues equipped 79 students with electronic recorders and then eavesdropped on more than 23,000 half-minute life slices of the students' waking hours. They found that students who were the happiest avoided small talk and engaged in more meaningful conversations. Mehl and colleagues used which research method?

experience sampling method

British researchers randomly assigned 424 hospitalized premature infants either to formula feeding or to breast-milk feeding. They found that on intelligence tests taken at the age of 8, those who were breast fed significantly scored higher than those who were formula fed. These researchers conducted a(n):

experiment

The research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process is called a(n)

experiment

The group exposed to a newly created drug that is being tested in an experiment is called the ________ group.

experimental

In which type of research would an investigator manipulate at least one factor and observe its effect on some behavior or mental process?

experimentation

New technologies such as smart-phone apps and body-worn sensors have enabled the collection of "big data" by means of

naturalistic observation

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)

naturalistic observation

The unreliability of ________ led to the waning popularity of structuralism.

introspection

The biggest danger of relying on case-study evidence is that it

may be unrepresentative of what is generally true

When Mr. Adams calculated his students' algebra test scores, he noticed that two students had extremely low scores. Which measure of central tendency is affected most by the scores of these two students?

mean

Early psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and William James focused on the study of

mental processes

The most frequently occurring score in a distribution of scores is the

mode

The survival of organisms best suited to a particular environment is known as

natural selection

The psychology textbook that William James took 12 years to author was titled

principals of psychology

Dr. Stauffer has a medical license and so is licensed to prescribe drugs. She is most likely a

psychiatrist

Mrs. Alfieri believes that her husband's angry outbursts against her result from his unconscious hatred of his own mother. Mrs. Alfieri is looking at her husband's behavior from a(n) ________ perspective.

psychodynamic

To help control for possible confounding variables, researchers use

random assignment

Which of the following is most useful for helping survey researchers avoid false generalizations?

random sampling

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution is the

range

Colette received an unusually high grade of A on her first biology test and a B+ on the second, even though she studied equally for both tests. Which of the following best explains Colette's deteriorating pattern of performance?

regression toward the mean

The illusion that uncontrollable events are correlated with our actions is facilitated by a phenomenon known as

regression toward the mean.

Professor X is studying the effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual thoughts. She assigns students to one of two conditions. In the first condition, participants are exposed to explicit sexual content and then given a word-completion task, which involves filling in the letter missing from each word. Based on the letter added, the word could be of a sexual nature or not. For instance, b_d could be completed as "bed," indicating sexual thought, or as "bad," which has no sexual connotation. In the second condition, participants are not exposed to explicit sexual content but are assigned the same word-completion task. To ensure ethical treatment of participants, Professor X will NOT need to

report the results of individual participants.

SQ3R is a study method incorporating five steps: survey, question, read, ________, and review.

retrieve

The SQ3R study method emphasizes the importance of

retrieving information

The birth of psychology is often attributed to Wilhelm Wundt because he pioneered the investigation of mental processes using

scientific methods

Which of the following is NOT a suggestion provided in the text for how to live a happier life?

set short term goals

The fact that people diagnosed with specific learning disorder exhibit the same brain malfunctions whether they are Italian, French, or British demonstrates that

the same underlying processes guide people everywhere

Being randomly assigned to the experimental group in a research project involves being assigned

to that group by chance

Regression toward the mean refers to the tendency for

unusual events to be followed by more ordinary events.

People often fail to make accurate generalizations because they are unduly influenced by ________ cases.

vivid

For which of the following distributions of scores would the median most clearly be a more appropriate measure of central tendency than the mean?

10, 22, 8, 9, 6

In a group of five individuals, two report annual incomes of $10,000, and the other three report incomes of $14,000, $15,000, and $31,000, respectively. The mode of this group's distribution of annual incomes is

10,000

The first university psychology department in China was established in

1978

If a set of standardized test scores is normally distributed, having a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10, approximately 68 percent of the group members receive scores somewhere between

40 and 60

Approximately what percentage of the cases represented by the normal curve fall between -1 and +1 standard deviations from the mean?

68

Mr. and Mrs. Klostreich have six children ages 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, and 16. The mean age of the Klostreich children is

8

If IQ scores are normally distributed, having a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, approximately what percentage of people have IQ scores somewhere between 70 and 130?

95

Which early psychologist aimed to discover the mind's structure?

Edward Bradford Titchener

Who suggested that the mind at birth is a blank sheet upon which experience writes?

John Locke

Innate ability is to learned skill as ________ is to ________.

Nature; Nurture

Which of the following is NOT included in the ethics code of the APA for utilizing human participants in research?

Researchers must report the results of individual participants

Which perspective in psychology would focus on the extent to which different parenting styles are encouraged among various ethnic groups?

Social-cultural

Dr. Branch would like to study the relationship between room lighting and college students' test performance. He randomly assigns students to one of two groups. The first group takes an exam in a dimly lit room; the second group takes the same exam in a regularly lit room. Which is the experimental group?

There is no experimental group because this is a naturalistic observation research design.

Which of the following is a statistical measure of both the direction and the strength of a relationship between two variables?

a correlation coefficient

If the correlation between children's intelligence and their creativity is +1.00, this would indicate that

among children, increased creativity is associated with higher intelligence

Using scientific procedures to test whether watching violent movies increases the frequency of emotionally upsetting dreams best illustrates

an empirical approach

Gamblers often throw dice gently for low numbers and hard for high numbers. This most directly illustrates

an illusion of control

Studies conducted for the sake of building psychology's base of knowledge are most clearly examples of

basic research

Contemporary psychology is best defined as the science of

behavior and mental processes

The view that psychology should be an objective science that studies observable human activity without reference to mental processes is known as

behaviorism

The neuroscience perspective in psychology would be most likely to emphasize that behavior is influenced by

blood chemistry

Experiments enable researchers to isolate the effects of one or more factors by

both manipulating the factors of interest and controlling for factors that are not of interest.

Psychologists' personal values

can bias their observations and interpretations

Little Hans' extreme fear of horses was observed as part of a(n)

case study

Researchers use experiments rather than other research methods in order to isolate

causes from effects

Dr. Caleigh conducts research on the relationship between adults' language skills and their capacity to solve mathematical problems. Dr. Caleigh is most likely a ________ psychologist.

cognitive

Beginning in the 1960s, psychological science returned to its earlier interest in mental processes. This movement was inspired by the

cognitive revolution

Depression and suicide are more common in today's North American culture than they were in the very different North American culture of nearly a century ago. But in both the past and the more recent cultural settings, pessimistic thinking and feelings of loneliness corresponded to a heightened risk of depression and suicide. This best illustrates that ________ often underlie cultural differences in behavior.

common psychological processes

Rather than seeking to change people to fit their environment, ________ work to create social and physical environments that are healthy for all.

community psychologists

If participants in the experimental group of a drug treatment study are much younger than participants in the control group, the age of the research participants is a

confounding variable

When an arithmetic average is reported in the news, it is most important for readers to

consider whether it is distorted by a few extreme cases

Which research method assesses how well one variable predicts another without demonstrating a cause-effect relationship between the variables?

correlation research

Discerning the unstated assumptions and values that underlie conclusions best illustrates ________, which is an important learning tool.

critical thinking

The transmission of customs for showing respect to those in positions of authority best illustrates the importance of

culture

Sherry is often overly generous in sacrificing her time to help others. Her friend suggests that by keeping busy in this way Sherry avoids confronting her own unconscious conflicts. Her friend's suggestion illustrates the type of explanation that is most typical of

freudian psychology

Edward Titchener is to structuralism as William James is to

functionalism

Today's psychology is best described as increasingly

globalized in its influence

Dr. Tate is an excellent researcher. She is curious, humble, and skeptical. These are all characteristics of

having a scientific attitude

Seven members of a boys' club reported the following individual earnings from their sale of cookies: $2, $9, $8, $10, $4, $9, and $7. In this distribution of individual earnings

he median is greater than the mean and less than the mode.

Aristotle suggested that the source of our personality is the

heart

Formulating testable predictions before conducting research is most directly useful for restraining a thinking error known as

hindsight bias

The scientific attitude of humility is most likely to be undermined by

hindsight bias

An experiment enables researchers to isolate the effects of one or more factors by manipulating the factors of interest and also by

holding other factors constant across experimental and control groups

In a single day, 45 babies were born in hospital X, 65 babies in hospital Y, and 25 babies in hospital Z. At which hospital is there the greatest probability that more than 60 percent of the babies are of the same sex?

hospital Z

The symmetrical bell‑shaped figure used to represent the distribution of many physical and psychological characteristics is called a

normal curve

Beginning in the 1920s, American psychologists such as John B. Watson 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

Dr. Jones is studying the effect of room lighting on college students' test performance and has defined room lighting as either dimly lit or brightly lit. This definition is an example of a(n)

operational definition

Our tendency to believe we know more than we do best illustrates

overconfidence

Which of the following is most likely to inhibit critical thinking?

overconfidence

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 than wealthy people to have a psychological disorder.

Statisticians Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller commented, "But with a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen." What were they referring to?

perceiving patterns in random events

The personality theorist Sigmund Freud was an Austrian

physician

Research on human flourishing is the major focus of

positive psychology

The explanatory power of a scientific theory is most closely linked to its capacity to generate testable

predictions

Professor X is studying the effect of exposure to sexual content on sexual thoughts. She assigns students to one of two conditions. In the first condition, participants are exposed to explicit sexual content and then given a word-completion task, which involves filling in the letter missing from each word. Based on the letter added, the word could be of a sexual nature or not. For instance, b_d could be completed as "bed," indicating sexual thought, or as "bad," which has no sexual connotation. In the second condition, participants are not exposed to explicit sexual content but are assigned the same word-completion task. The dependent variable is

sexual thoughts

Dr. Renk is studying how people interact and react in the presence of others. She is examining the ________ influence on behavior and mental processes, according to the biopsychosocial perspective.

social-cultural

Dr. Wilson attributes the delinquent behaviors of many teens to the pressures associated with being a member of a street gang. Her account best illustrates a(n) ________ perspective.

social-cultural

Charles Darwin attempted to explain the ________ that he encountered.

species variation

Which of the following is a measure of the degree of variation among a set of scores?

standard deviation

To decide whether observed differences between samples reflect actual differences between populations, you should determine the ________ of the observed differences.

statistical significance

Suppose you want to find out which candidate college students will vote for in an upcoming national election. To be sure the sample of college students you survey is representative of the college student population, you should

survey a large representative sample of the college student population

Seven members of a Girl Scout troop report the following individual earnings from their sale of candy: $4, $1, $7, $6, $8, $2, and $7. In this distribution of individual earnings

the mean is less than the mode and less than the median.

In a survey, psychologists select a random sample of research participants in order to ensure that

the participants are representative of the population they are interested in studying

Illusory correlation refers to

the perception of a relationship between two variables that does not exist.