Social Psych Exam 1 Q&A

Social psychology is the scientific study of…

the social experiences and behaviors of individuals

Social psychology and sociology…

are different in their focus on the individual versus the group

Kurt Lewin’s creative synthesis involved combining…

internal and external causes of behavior

According to Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is likely to occur when…

people hold two inconsistent attitudes

Social cognition can be defined as the study of…

mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of oneself and others

Dr. James argues that everything people do is goal oriented. Which guiding assumption is he advocating?

social behavior is purposive

Which of the following is NOT an example of dispositional influence?

• Personality

• Culture

• Personal characteristic

• Attitude

culture

After hearing that a heavily favored basketball team lost the championship game, a surprised Randolph says “I knew they would lose.” Randolph is exhibiting the…

hindsight bias

”Embodied cognition” is the idea that mental processes…

arise from and are encompassed by the sensory experiences of the body

Social neuroscience…

examines the reciprocal relationships between physiology and social behavior

According to the tripartite brain thesis, the mammalian brain includes…

the amygdala and thalamus

The idea that the human brain evolved primarily due to changes in group size is called the…

social brain hypothesis

Which brain structure is associated with moral disgust?

insula

Social neuroscientists interested in understanding how the brain responds to particular social stimuli often measure changes in…

event-related potentials

Place holder

Two of the goals of social cognition are to…

be accurate and feel good about oneself

What is required to maximize accuracy, according to the text?

expending our cognitive resources by engaging in deep, careful processing of information

The evolutionarily newer parts of the brain are closely connected to…

controlled processing

Which of the following is primarily reflexive implicit, or automatic, operating without conscious thought?

• C-system

• X-system

• P-system

• Z-system

X-system

The triggering of a knowledge structure without conscious awareness is called…

priming

You see Erin around campus, but haven’t met her. She wears expensive clothes and drives a Jaguar; therefore, you assume that she is wealthy. Your assumption is an example of reliance on the…

representativeness heuristic

When we ignore underlying probabilities and instead focus on unusual or atypical instances, we are demonstrating the…

base rate fallacy

Playing a pricing game in which you are asked to determine whether the “actual” price of the item is higher or lower than the price marked utilizes which heuristic?

anchoring and adjustment

This occurs when a person’s mental processing is influenced by that person’s desires, feelings, or goals.

motivated reasoning

After reading and believing a set of scientific studies demonstrating that Americans tell more lies than Canadians, Shane is told that the studies were fabricated and there is no evidence for this statement. Despite this, Shane continues to believe that Americans lie more than Canadians. This is an example of…

belief perseverance

Mrs. Carry is a second grade teacher who believes that boys tend to be naughtier than girls. She pays more careful attention to this misbehavior of the boys in her class than that of the girls for the entire school year, and then concludes that she was right that boys are much naughtier than girls. Mrs. Carry’s thinking illustrates…

the confirmation bias

Jacques read an inconclusive study about the effects of negative advertising on political campaigns. Nevertheless, he interpreted the study to support his preferred position. Jacques is demonstrating…

biased assimilation

Since he was a young boy, Anatoly’s parents taught him that taking vitamin C would prevent him from getting cancer. During his college health class, he read that all controlled studies have shown that this is not the case. Nevertheless, Anatoly continues to believe that the supplement can prevent cancer. Anatoly is demonstrating…

belief perseverance

The self is defined as the psychological apparatus that gives a person the capacity to…

consciously think about himself or herself

When people ask you to expand on your abilities as a student, they are asking you to access information from your academic…

self-schema

Isabel is a physician, but often thinks about how she wishes she had instead become a mathematician. According to Self-Discrepancy Theory, “mathematician” would be an example of Isabel’s…

ideal self

Cooley’s (1902) notion of the looking-glass self reflects…

how we see ourselves through the eyes of others

Which of the following reflects a potential failure of introspection?

• The process of thinking about how we feel can change the way we feel

• Introspection is an accurate reflection of what affects us

• Introspection can enhance our satisfaction with our decisions

• The process of thinking about how we feel does not, in fact, impact our feelings

the process of thinking about how we feel can change the way we feel

Agnes loved drawing cartoons until she began getting paid for each cartoon. The change in her motivation for drawing cartoons is an example of the _____ effect.

overjustification

The research of Crocker and Wolfe (2001) demonstrates that _____ reflect(s) the ways in which self-esteem draws from multiple domains.

contingencies of self-worth

This reflects one’s efforts to enhance one’s self-image

self-promotion

People engage in _____ when they are motivated to feel better about themselves by contrasting their performance and abilities with that of those who did worse or have lower skill sets.

downward social comparison

Teenagers who engage in risky behaviors are more likely to believe that most (or all) teenagers engage in such behaviors. This is an example of the…

false consensus effect

When people hold incorrect beliefs about how different they are from others, they are demonstrating the…

false uniqueness effect

Raymond blames his coach for his own tennis mistakes and takes credit for his own successes. This pattern is consistent with the concept of…

self-serving judgments

Joseph just participated in a study in which he was asked to disguise his disgust while tasting unpleasant foods. However, when he was asked how likely it was that someone else could tell exactly what he thought of the foods he was tasting, he indicated that someone could easily tell how disgusting he thought they were. This situation illustrates the…

illusion of transparency

This involves setting up circumstances to attribute failure to non-self-threatening causes.

self-handicapping

Impressions formed from exposure to “thin slices” of another person rely on the…

X-system

Self-fulfilling prophecies stem from…

inaccurate beliefs

Which of the following is NOT one of Ekman’s six universally recognized emotion-based facial expressions?

• Contempt

• Happiness

• Anger

• Disgust

contempt

Research by Becker et al. (2011) _____ te face-in-the-crowd effect demonstrated by Hansen and Hansen (1988).

• supported

• contradicted

• found further evidence for

• was unrelated to

contradicted

When someone appears to display two or more emotional expressions, he or she is said to be displaying…

blended emotions

Focusing on eye contact, eye shifting, or gaze aversion makes lie detection…

has no effect on lie detection

A person who believes that the odds of a coin coming up heads are greater after having just come up tails rather than heads in the last flip is exhibiting the…

gambler’s fallacy

The _____ reflects the belief that identical random outcomes indicate a “streak.”

hot hand illusion

In the actor/observer effect, the actor attributes her behavior to _____ factors, whereas the observer attributes it to _____ factors.

situational; personal

Harry is the spokesperson for his university president and does not always agree with what he is told to say on the president’s behalf. Isabella thinks that Harry agrees with everything he says. Isabella is exhibiting the…

correspondence bias

This is defined as internal or external change as a result of the real or imagined pressure of others.

social influence

Leona changes her class schedule after her best friend, Galina, asked her to do so. This is an example of…

compliance

The limited-quantity and deadline techniques are based on what principle?

scarcity

The principle of commitment/consistency helps to explain why people are susceptible to the…

foot-in-the-door technique

Susan asks Jane to borrow $50. When Jane says no and asks Susan how dare she ask for so much money, Jane apologizes and asks for $5 instead. Given the concession on Susan’s behalf, Jane agrees to lend her $5. This is an example of which technique?

door-in-the-face technique

Which of the following is an example of an injunctive norm?

• People should not text while driving

• Most people do not text while driving

• Most people text while driving

• People rarely text while driving

people should not text while driving

According to Zimbardo, one of the main lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment is that…

situations can overwhelm personalities

According to the text, which of the following is true about Individualism/Collectivism and conformity?

collectivists tend to conform more than individualists

Which is an example of obedience?

• Bennett convinces his older sister to buy him a coffee

• Susanna changes her dress after her husband asked her too

• Ricardo crosses the street after a police officer instructs him to do so

• Lucia claps her hands at the end of a play because everyone else does

Ricardo crosses the street after a police officer instructs him to do so

What was the most significant difference between Milgram’s original study and Burger’s 2006 replication?

Burger stopped at 150 volts

The graduated way in which Milgram’s studies garnered obedience is partially explained by Cialdini’s _____ principle.

commitment/consistency

Factors that can increase the power of an authority do NOT include:

• the existence of “expert power”

• various symbols of authority, such as uniforms

• living in an individualistic culture

• the immediacy of the authority

living in an individualistic culture

Early (1987) argued that the fact that women conform slightly more often than men may be related to…

traditional social roles

Illustrate how each of the three levels of explanation (evolutionary, contextual, and individual) could be applied to understanding obedience to authority.

What is reductivism? Why is it a problem for social psychologists?

Identify the three goals of social cognition and provide an illustration of each

What is self-monitoring? In your response, please compare and contrast high and low self-monitors.

Describe and give an example of Paul Ekman’s five categories of nonverbal communicative behaviors.

Briefly describe Milgram’s obedience to authority studies. What are two factors that affected obedience rates?