AP Psychology Unit 1 and Unit 2 Multiple Choice Questions

By seeking to measure "atoms of the mind," who established the first psychology laboratory?

Wilhelm Wundt

Which philosopher proposed that nerve pathways allowed for reflexes?

René Descartes

Who coined the term "tabula rasa" (blank slate) to help explain the impact experience has on shaping an individual?

John Locke

Which of the following best describes research typical of Wilhelm Wundt's first psychology laboratory?

Measuring the reaction time between hearing a sound and pressing a button

With which of the following statements would John B. Watson most likely agree?

Psychology should focus on observable behavior

Which of the following perspectives is most likely to address how the encoding storing, and retrieval of information might alter our thoughts?

Cognitive

Who among the following would most likely study the interaction of people, machines, and physical environments?

Human factors psychology

Psychiatrists differ from psychologists in that they...

are medical doctors licensed to prescribe medication

A humanistic psychologist working with some poets might ask which of the following questions

How can we get them to reach their highest potential

Betsy works in a human resources department. She plans training sessions, recruits people to work for the company, and implements techniques to boost morale around the office. Of the following Betsy is most likely a(n)...

Industrial-organization psychologist

Which of the following psychologists most strongly emphasize that human behavior is powerfully influenced by the interaction between people and their physical, social, political, and economic environments?

Community

Which of the following psychologists would be most likely to investigate biological, psychological, cognitive, and social changes over time?

Developmental psychologist

A psychologist investigates the methods teachers use to enhance student learning. With which of the following subfields is the psychologist most likely aligned?

Educational psychology

A psychologist works with children whose parents are divorcing. She helps them develop skills they need to cope with the situation. Of the following, what kind of psychologist is most likely helping these children?

Counseling psychologist

Dwayne is interested in helping people make good decisions regarding their physical well-being. Dwayne should consider a career as a...

Health psychologist

Which perspective would be most useful when explaining how people from different countries express anger?

Social-cultural

The debate about the relative contributions of biology and experience to human development is most often referred to as what?

The nature-nurture issue

Which of the following professionals is required to have a medical degree?

Psychiatrist

Which psychological principle best explains why studying an hour a day for a week is more effective than one 7-hour study session?

Distributed practice

Which of the following kinds of psychologists would most likely explore how we process and remember information?

Cognitive

According to the behaviorist perspective, psychological science should be more rooted in what?

Observation

Which of the following psychologists would most likely conduct psychotherapy?

Clinical

Which field of psychology is most interested in studying the link between mental activity and brain activity?

Cognitive neuroscience

What was the main difference between the psychological thinking of Wilhelm Wundt and earlier philosophers who were also interested in thinking and behavior?

Wundt and his students gathered data about human thinking and behavior in a laboratory setting

Which school of psychology focused on the adaptive nature of thinking and how our consciousness evolves to meet our needs?

Functionalist

The study of the importance of satisfying love and acceptance needs best describes which school of psychology?

Humanistic

Which of the following statements is the best example of applied research?

Using psychological concepts to boost worker productivity

Self-reflective introspection about the elements of experience best describes a technique used by which school of psychology?

Structuralists

Which psychological perspective is most likely to focus on how our interpretation of a situation affects how we react to it?

Cognitive

The science of behavior and mental processes is the definition of which field of study?

Psychology

After the student council election, a friend tells you he has known for weeks who would be elected president. What does this seem to illustrate?

Hindsight bias

While taking a standardized test with randomly scrambled answers, you notice that your last four answers have been "C." Which of the following is true concerning the probability of the next answer being "C"?

It is unaffected by previous answers. It is as likely to be "C" as any other answer

What do we call the tendency to exaggerate the correctness or accuracy of our beliefs and predictions prior to testing?

Overconfidence

Which of the following is an example of hindsight bias?

Marcy cannot recognize a definition on a flashcard. After turning the card over and viewing the term, she tells herself she knew what the answer was all along

Why is an operational definition necessary when reporting research findings?

An operational definition allows others to replicate the procedure

A researcher looking for gender differences in 3 year olds observes a preschool class and records how many minutes children of each gender play with dolls. She then compares the two sets of numbers. What type of descriptive research is she conducting?

Naturalistic observation

Which of the following questions is best investigated by means of a survey?

Are students more likely to be politically liberal or conservative?

A testable prediction that drives research is known as a(n)...

Hypothesis

Researchers are interested in finding out if winning Congressional candidates display more positive facial expressions than losing candidates. The researchers attend political debates and record how frequently each candidate displays positive facial expressions. Which research method are the researchers using?

Naturalistic observation

An individual with an exceptional memory is identified. She is capable of recalling major events, the weather, and what she did on any given date. What research method is being used if a psychologist conducts an in-depth investigation of this individual including questionnaires, brain scans, and memory tests?

Case study

Which of the following is most important when conducting survey research?

Choosing a representative sample

Which of the following is an example of negative correlation?

People who spend more time exercising tend to weigh less

Which of the following is used only in correlation studies?

Scatterplot

Researchers have discovered that individuals with lower income levels report having fewer hours of total sleep. Therefore...

Income and sleep levels are positively correlated

Which of the following correlation coefficients represents the strongest relationship between two variables?

-85

The purpose of random assignment is to...

Ensure that every member of the population had an equal chance of being selected to participate in the research

Which of the following is a measure of variation?

Range

Which statistical measure of central tendency is most affected by extreme scores?

Mean

A researcher calculates statistical significance for her study and finds a 5 percent chance that results are due to chance. Which of the following is an accurate interpretation of this finding?

This is the minimum result typically considered statistically significant

Descriptive statistics ___________ , while inferential statistics ___________

Summarize data; determine if data can be generalized to other populations

In a normal distribution, what percentage of the scores in the distribution falls within one standard deviation on either side of the mean?

68 percent

Which of the following is more likely to be emphasized in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures?

Personal achievement

What must a researcher do to fulfill the ethical principle of informed consent?

Allow participants to choose whether to take part

Which ethical principle requires that at the end of the study participants be told about the true purpose of the research?

Debriefing

Which of the following beliefs would most likely be held by an individual in a collectivist culture?

Children should be encouraged to develop harmonious relationships

Which descriptive statistic would a researcher use to describe how close a student's SAT score is to a school's average SAT score?

Standard deviation

Which method should a psychology researcher use if she is interested in testing whether a specific reward in a classroom situation causes students to behave better?

Experiment

When a distribution of scores is skewed, which of the following is the most representative measure of central tendency?

Standard deviation

A researcher wants to conduct an experiment to determine if eating a cookie before class each day improves student grades. He uses two psychology classes for the experiment, providing daly cookies to one and nothing to the other. At the end of the semester, the researcher compares the final grades of students in the two classes. What is the independent variable for this experiment?

The presence or absence of cookies

Which of the following represents naturalistic observation?

Researchers watch and record how elementary school children interact on the playground.

"Monday morning quarterbacks" rarely act surprised about the outcome of weekend football games. This tendency to believe they knew how the game would turn out is best explained by which psychological principle?

Hindsight bias

Researchers studying gender have found that...

there are more similarities than differences between the genders

A journalism student is writing an article about her school's new cell phone policy, and she'd like to interview a random sample of students. Which of the following is the best example of a random sample?

The writer pulls the names of five students from a hat that contains all the students' names. She interviews the five selected students

Which of the following is positive correlation?

As study time decreases, students achieve lower grades

Why is random assignment of participants to groups an important aspect of a properly designed experiment?

If the participants are randomly assigned, the researcher can assume that the people in each of the groups are pretty similar

Which of the following demonstrates the need for psychological science?

Our intuitions about human thinking and behavior are not always accurate

Which of the following is a potential problem with case studies?

They may be misleading because they don't fairly represent other cases

Which of the following is not an ethical principle regarding research on humans?

Participants should always be informed of the hypothesis of the study before they agree to participate

There is a negative correlation between TV watching and grades. What can we conclude from this research finding?

We can conclude that this is an illusory correlation

A scientist's willingness to admit that she is wrong is an example of...

Humility