AP Psych Chapter 1 Questions

Theories are defined as:

principles that help to organize, predict, and explain facts

A friend majoring in anthropology is critical of psychological research because it often ignores the influence of culture on thoughts and actions. You point out that:

Even with specific thoughts and actions vary across cultures, as they often do, the underlying processes are much the same

What best describes hindsight bias?

Event seem more predictable after they have occurred

Which research method does NOT belong with the others? Case Study, Survey, Naturalistic Observation, Experiment

Experiment

Which research strategy would be best for determining whether alcohol impairs memory?

Experiment

Your roommate is conducting a survey to learn how many hours the typical college student studies each day. She plans to pass out her questionnaire to the members of her sorority. You point out that her findings will because:

Experimental control allows researchers to study the influence of one or two independent variables on a dependent variable while holding other potential influences constant

A professor constructs a questionnaire to determine how students at the university feel about nuclear disarmament. Which technique should be used in order to survey a random sample of the student body?

From an alphabetical listing of all students, every 10th (or 15th, e.g.) students should be asked to complete the questionnaire.

The scientific attitude of skepticism is based on the belief that:

Ideas need to be tested against observable evidence

Joe believes that his basketball game is always best when he wears his old gray athletic socks. Joe is a victim of the phenomenon called:

Illusory correlation

Which procedure is an example of the use of a placebo?

In a test of the effects of a drug on memory, a participant is led to believe that a harmless pill actually contains an active drug

In an experiment to determine the effects of exercise on motivation, exercise is the:

Independent Variable

If a height and body weight are positively correlated, what is true?

Knowing a person's height, once can predict his or her weight

Which measure of central tendency that would be most affected by a few extreme scores?

Mean

A psychologist studies the play behavior of third-grade children by watching groups during recess at school. Which research strategy is being used?

Naturalistic Observation

According the text, what is true?

No psychological theory can be considered true until tested

To ensure that other researchers can repeat their work, psychologists use:

Operational Definitions

Juwan eagerly opened an online trading account, believing that his market savvy would allow him to pick stocks that would make him a rich day trader. This belief best illustrates what?

Overconfidence

One reason researchers base their findings on representative samples is to avoid the false consensus effect, which refers to our tendency to:

Overestimate the extend to which others share their belief

The strength of the relationship between two vivid events will most likely be:

Overestimated

If a shoe size and IQ are negatively correlated, what can be said about them?

People with small feet tend to have high IQs

Dr. Salazar recently completed an experiment in which she compared reasoning ability in a sample of females and a sample of males. The means of the female and male samples equaled 21 and 19, respectively, on a 25-point scale. A statistical test revealed that her results were not statistically significant. What can Dr. Salazar conclude?

The difference in the means of the two samples is probably due to chance variation

In generalizing from a sample to the population, it is important

that the sample be representative

In generalizing from a sample to the population, it is important that:

the sample is representative of the population, large, and the scores in the sample have a low variability

What is false about the ethics of experimentation with people and animals?

Animals are used as subjects in almost 25 percent of all psychology experiments

Psychologists' personal values:

Can bias both scientific observation and the interpretation of data

After detailed study of a gunshot wound victim, a psychologist concludes that the brain region destroyed is likely to be important for memory functions. Which research strategy did the psychologists use to deduce this?

Case Study

In a test of the effects of air pollution, groups of students performed a reaction-time task in a polluted or an unpolluted room. To what condition were students in the unpolluted room exposed?

Control

In order to determine the effects of a new drug on memory, one group of people is given a pill that contains the drug. A second group is given a sugar pill that does not contain the drug. This second group constitutes the:

Control Group

Which type of research strategy would allow you to determine whether students' college grades accurately predict later income?

Correlation

A researcher was interested in determining whether her students' test performance could be predicted from their proximity to the front of the classroom. So she matched her students' scores on a math test with their seating position. The study is an example of:

Correlation Research

In an experiment to determine the effects of attention on memory, memory is the:

Dependent Variable

Your best friend criticizes psychological research for being artificial and having no relevance to behavior in real life. In defense of psychology's use of laboratory experiments you point out that:

Psychologists intentionally study behavior in simplified environments in order to gain greater control over variables and to test general principles that help to explain many behaviors

"Psychology is a science" means that:

Psychologists study thoughts and actions with an attitude of skepticism and derive their conclusions from direct observations.

The procedure designed to ensure that the experimental and control groups do not differ in any way that might affect the experiment's results is called:

Random Assignment

Well-done surveys measure attitudes in a representative subset, or _________, of an entire group, or _________.

Random sample; Population

Which of the following is the measure of variation that is most affected by extreme scores?

Range

Rashad, who is participating in a psychology experiment on the effects of alcohol on perception, is truthfully told by the experimenter that he has been assigned to the "high dose condition." What is wrong in this experiment?

Rashad's expectations concerning the effects of "high doses" of alcohol on perception may influence his performance and Knowing that Rashad is in the "high dose" condition may influence the experimenters interpretations of Rashad's results

Which of the following is not a basic research strategy used by psychologists?

Replication

The scientific attitude of humility is based on the idea that:

Researchers must be prepared to reject their own ideas in the face of conflicting evidence

In order to study the effects of lighting on mood, Dr. Cooper has students fill out questionnaires in brightly lit or dimly lit rooms. In this study, the independent variable consisted of:

Room Lighting

A lopsided set of scores that includes a number of extreme or unusual values is said to be what?

Skewed

The set of scores that would most likely be most representative of the population from which it was drawn would be a sample with a relatively:

Small standard deviation

The football team's punter wants to determine how consistent his punting distances have been during the past season. He should compute the:

Standard deviation

In the experiment on subliminal perception, students listened for 5 weeks to takes they thought would enhance their memory of self esteem. At the end of the experiment:

Students who though they had a memory tape believe their memories had improved; but, in fact, there was no improvement.

When a difference between 2 groups is "statistically significant," what does it mean?

The difference is not likely to be due to chance variation

In a difference between 2 samples is not statistically significant, which of the following can be concluded?

The difference is probably not a true one, the difference is probably not reliable, the difference could be due to sampling

Esteban refuses to be persuaded by an advertiser's claim that people using their brand of gasoline average 50 miles per gallon. His decision probably is based on:

The possibility that the average is the mean, which could be artificially inflated by a few extreme scores, the absence of information about the size of the sample studied, and the absence of information about the variation in sample scores

You decide to test your belief that men drink more soft drinks than women by finding out whether more soft drinks are consumed per day in the men's dorm than in the women's dorm. Your belief is a(n)______, and your research prediction is a(n)______.

Theory; hypothesis

Martina believes that high doses of caffeine slow a persons reaction time. In order to test this belief, she has 5 friends each drink three 8-ounce cups of coffee and then measures their reaction time on a learning task. What is wrong with Martina's research strategy?

There is no control condition

If eating saturated fat and the likelihood of contracting cancer are positively correlated, what is true?

They are not CAUSED by saturated fat. You do not know that people who are prone to develop cancer prefer foods containing saturated fat and they dont know if a separate factor links the consumption of saturated fat to cancer

Illusory correlation refers to

the perception of a correlation between two unrelated variables