Social Psych Chapter One

Jim is 28, single, and a freelance writer who works from his apartment. Throughout high school, college, and graduate school, Jim felt happy and engaged with life, but he has recently felt more and more unhappy and detached. According to social psychology research, what short-term solution should Jim take to improve his happiness?

A- He should join one or more groups

A researcher thinks that a person's mood has an effect on how helpful that person is likely to be. To test this, the researcher has some research participants come to the laboratory where they are first given a difficult test and then either heavily praised or strongly criticized for their test performance. Afterward, participants are asked to help the researcher's assistant move some heavy boxes into another room. The researcher makes careful note of how many and which participants help with moving the boxes. In this example, the hypothesis is

A- a person's mood has an effect on how helpful that person is likely to be

A multicultural perspective is recognized as increasingly important to research in social psychology because

A- a variety of cultural factors such as race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability help determine self-identity

A researcher wants to know whether writing an essay on a controversial topic will have an effect on the attitudes held by people. First, she administers an attitude survey that covers a number of topics, including electronic voting machines. She then randomly assigns subjects to write an essay either supporting or opposing electronic voting machines. One week later, she administers the same attitude survey and compares those responses to the responses from the first time the survey was administered. In this experiment, the independent variable (IV) is the

A- attitude survey

Thom's mental state is very affected by the weather. During the summer, he readily admits that he feels happier and more carefree. During the winter, when it is cold and gets darker earlier, Thom feels irritable and occasionally depressed. Thom's thoughts and behavior are impacted by

A- environmental variables

A researcher is interested in the relationship between courtship behaviors and physical characteristics of people. If the researcher should establish that there is a correlation of +.37 between physical attractiveness and dating frequency, we can conclude that ________.

B- more attractive people date more often than less attractive people

Research of adult populations has documented a negative correlation between 1) obesity and 2) participation in physically demanding leisure activities. One possible interpretation of these results is that

B- obese people tend to exercise less than non-obese people

Research has shown a positive correlation between 1) socio-economic status of the family of origin and 2) college graduation rates. Based on this information, we can conclude that ________.

B- students born into wealthier families are more likely to complete college than students born into poorer families

Which of the following best explains the difference between a theory and a hypothesis?

C- A theory makes predictions about observable events, whereas a hypothesis tests predictions made

A researcher worked with members of a political action committee (PAC) to survey potential voters by telephone before an election. PAC members conducted the poll themselves while the researcher tabulated the results. The poll asked which candidate people plan to vote for in the upcoming election. Which of the following may present problems for the accuracy of the results?

C- All of these may present problems for the accuracy of the results

Which of the following study questions could absolutely NOT be explored using experimentation due to ethical reasons?

D- How do individuals cope when their spouse dies?

Sue is conducting an experiment in which she is trying to determine the influence of staring at a speaker on how much different speakers stutter. Sue sends people to a speech class with instructions to stare for varied amounts of time at the speaker. The dependent variable is the

D- amount of stuttering that occurs

Yelena is researching the effect of volume on people's social interactions. She invites participants to play a card game that requires the cooperation of members of a group. There is music playing in the background. With each game, she adjusts the volume of the music. She keeps the lighting, the number of participants, and the length of the games the same. The volume of the music is the

A- independent variable

A researcher is interested in the relationship between courtship behaviors and physical characteristics of people. If the researcher should establish that there is a correlation of +.37 between physical attractiveness and dating frequency, we can conclude that ________.

A- less attractive people date more often than more attractive people

Social psychologists focus their attention mainly on individuals because

A- our actions are performed by and thoughts occur in the minds of individuals

The moon is full, and Cristinel has been behaving wildly. Although sober, he's been alternately barking like a dog at strangers on the street and/or asking them, "aren't ya' just happy now?" According to your text, Cristinel's behavior could be due to ________.

A- the moon as an environmental influence

Rafael is concerned with the idea of inherent morality and wants to research ethical indicators present in toddlers and babies. He knows that many other social psychologists have also been concerned with this topic, so Rafael focuses on analyzing previously published research on this topic in order to find repeating patterns among results and also to see if there are any gaps in the body of research. Rafael is focused on

A- the survey method

Researchers were recently surprised to learn that the correlation between the type of clothing people wear when they are not at work and the type of jobs they hold is approximately zero. Based on this, we can conclude that

B- there is no relationship between the types of clothing worn in non-work settings and the type of work that people do

Professor Garcia is studying how cancer patients are coping with their illness by giving them one of the following sets of instructions: they are to keep a daily diary and write about anything, keep a daily diary and write about how they are trying to cope with their illness, or not told to keep any diary whatsoever. After following this protocol for a month, Professor Garcia then measures the cancer patients' self-reported level of depression. The independent variable in this hypothetical study is ________ and the dependent variable is ________.

B- the type of diary kept, if any; the self-reported level of depression

Kim knows she needs to go take summer courses, but worries about leaving her new boyfriend for three months. She wonders, will "absence make the heart go stronger" be true, or is "out of sight, out of mind" more applicable? This is an example of

A- the unscientific nature of conventional wisdom

Renata created an experiment to observe how temperature affects social interactions. However, she did not state this purpose to participants. In fact, participants, all graduate students, were under the assumption that they were attending a campus-sponsored food and drink social gathering. Over the course of two hours, Renata drastically changed the room's temperature every 10 minutes and recorded information on how participants behaved. At the end of the two hours, Renata emerged and discussed the full nature of the experiment with the participants, including the deception she employed and why she needed to do so. At the end of the experiment, Renata employed the tactic of

C- debriefing

In an experiment, researchers wanted to know whether changing the level of lighting in a factory would have an effect on the productivity of employees. In order to address this question, employees were randomly assigned to three separate identical work areas, but the lighting was set at a different level in each of the work areas. Then, employees in all three work groups began to operate machinery that produced small electrical components. The number of components produced by each group was carefully tallied at the end of each 8-hour shift. In this example, the hypothesis is the

C- level of lighting will affect employee productivity

Eric is a social psychologist who is respected in his field. However, his colleagues are often apprehensive of challenging Eric's strongly held ideas, even when they know that Eric's ideas are laden with errors, because Eric has been known to get upset when he has to question his assumptions. Eric struggles with maintaining the core value of

C- open-mindedness

Researchers believe that experiencing strong negative emotions such as fear or anxiety will increase people's need to affiliate. To test this idea, the researchers randomly assigned participants to one of two small groups. Members of Group 1 were left for 10 minutes in a room with no windows. While waiting, the lights went out for a brief period of time and the participants could hear screams from another room. Members of Group 2 were likewise left for 10 minutes in a room with no windows, but the lights were left on and no screams were heard. Researchers observed how frequently members of each group started conversations with other members of their group on non-experiment related topics. Researchers assigned participants to one of the two groups randomly because

C- random assignment ensures that any changes in the dependent variable are caused only by changes in the independent variable

Suppose smoking and drinking alcohol are found to be correlated at +.65. We can conclude that

C- smoking is probably related to drinking