PSYC 263 Sample Questions

Which of the following statements regarding the Implicit Association Test is NOT true

a. The IAT tests hidden biases that people have
b. The IAT is used to determine which concepts are strongly associated in memory
c. Your performance on the IAT is indicative of your consciously held and expressed beliefs
d. Your performance on the IAT is indicative of your unconsciously held beliefs, which may be inconsistent with your conscious beliefs

Answer: C

John Gottman is able to determine the likelihood that a couple will still be married 15 years down the road after observing a single interaction between the couple. To help him make these decisions he selectively attends to certain "critical" aspects of interactions. What has he determined to be the most important determinant of marital stability?

a. stonewalling
b. criticism
c. defensiveness
d. contempt

Answer: D

In cognitive terms, what is a fist

a. a distinctive pattern of which one is unaware and unable to control
b. an adaptive shortcut
c. the integration of information from all five senses
d. a distinctive pattern of which one is aware and able to control

Answer: A

The part of our brain that leaps towards conclusions based on limited slices of experience is our

a. schema
b. adaptive unconscious
c. unconscious
d. altered unconscious

Answer: B

Your friend Alice says that she is a huge fan of Coke but really dislikes Pepsi. You decide to test this out by pouring some Pepsi into a Coke bottle and giving it to Alice . She doesn't notice the difference. This is attributable to:

a. bottom-up processing
b. sensation transferrence
c. expertise
d. she probably did notice but was too polite to say anything

Answer: B

Which of the following factors is NOT highly correlated with whether a doctor is likely to be sued for medical malpractice?

a. whether the physicians engage in active listening (e.g. asking follow-up questions)
b. whether the physicians make orienting comments to their patients (e.g. first I'll do this, then I'll do this, etc.)
c. the amount of time they spend with their patient
d. the quality of medical care they provide

Answer: D

Why is it difficult for marketing research teams to determine people's feeling about new and unusual products?

a. People are unwilling to try new things
b. People have a hard time differentiating between something being different and something being bad (e.g., their knee jerk reactions to things they are not accustomed are often negative)
c. People tend to not be honest about their true feelings

Answer: B

A husband and wife decide that they are each going to open their own business. The husband decides that he would like to set up a kiosk at the mall in which he will sell jam. The wife decides that she would like to set up a car dealership. While discussing the logistics of their individual businesses, the husband and wife try to decide how many different types of product they should offer in their stores. What would be ideal for each:

a. the number of choices of product will not affect sales
b. the wife should offer a large number of car choices whereas the husband should offer a small number of jam choices
c. both businesses should offer a large number of choices of product
d. the wife should offer a small number of car choices whereas the husband should offer a large number of jam choice

Answer: B

Two friends, John and Roger, witness a man steal a woman's purse. Both John and Roger get a good look at the perpetrator and call the police to report the crime. When John and Roger go down to the police station to give an account of what they saw, they are told that the police have arrested a suspect and would like both men to identify the suspect out of a lineup. John goes first. While Roger is waiting for his turn to identify the suspect, a police officer asks Roger to describe what the individual looked like that he had witnessed earlier. What is the likely outcome of this?

a. Roger will be more likely to pick the correct suspect than John
b. John will be more likely to pick the correct suspect than Roger
c. John and Roger will be equally likely to pick the correct suspect out of the lineup
d. None of the above statements are true

Answer: B

Swinney and Seidenberg et al. did experiments in which they presented participants with sentences like "The man was not surprised to find several spiders, roaches, and other bugs in the corner of the room." They found that immediately after hearing the word "bug", the participants accessed

a. neither the "insect" nor the "hidden listening device" meanings of the word.
b. only the "hidden listening device" meaning of the word.
c. both the "insect" and the "hidden listening device" meanings of the word.
d. only the "insect" meaning of the word.

Answer: C

When we measure eye movements while people read text, people spend a lot of time looking at:

a. disambiguating words
b. the beginning of a passage
c. the end of a passage
d. all of the above

Answer: D

Which of the following is NOT one of the four main levels of language

a. semantic
b. syntactic
c. phonemic
d. morphemic

Answer: D

Functional fixedness would be UNLIKELY to occur for

a. a frequently used object
b. an object with a specific function
c. a novel object
d. a familiar object

Answer: C

Daryl thinks that the Cornhuskers probably would have made it to a bowl game this year if Bill Callahan and his staff had been fired at the beginning of the year and replaced with a better coach. Which common heuristic is Daryl using

a. simulation heuristic
b. transformational heuristic
c. availability heuristic
d. representativeness heuristic

Answer: A

Which of the following is NOT a step in the creative process?

a. illumination
b. preparation
c. incubation
d. transformation

Answer: D

According to Attention Restoration Theory, natural environments allow our _____ attention to take a break so that our cognitive resources recover.

a. effortless
b. directed
c. involuntary
d. bottom-up

Answer: B

True or False. Simply viewing photos of nature is enough exposure to gain positive cognitive benefits.

a. True
b.False

A. True

Angie has heard about how helpful nature can be when people are feeling a lot of stress, so she has decided to go for a hike at a state park. However, Angie is really scared of heights and this hike has a lot of cliffs that overlook the park below. Because of this, Angie does not feel restored or relaxed by the end of her hike. What characteristic of a restorative environment was not met on Angie’s hike?

a. Being Away
b. Extent
c. Compatibility
d. Softly Fascinating

Answer: C

When attempting to create a clear and straightforward set of instructions for how to act in emergency situations, it is important to AVOID using

a. organization
b. repetition
c. novelty
d. negation

Answer: D

Which of the following is NOT a way that police lineups and the process of witness identification have been influenced by cognitive psychology

a. we inform the victim that the suspect may not be in the lineup
b. lineups are now smaller than they were originally to give victims a better chance to attend to each suspect individually
c. we try to make sure that distractors (other non-suspects in the lineup) are similar enough so that the process of elimination isn't possible
d. we do not rely on the victims confidence in identifying the suspect

Answer: B

Advertisers have discovered that they are able to trick people into believing things that are not necessarily true as a function of how they present their message. This is because

a. People tend to extract the gist of messages and not the specifics
b. People tend to make incorrect inferences based on things that are implied but not explicitly stated
c. Distinctive presentation (e.g., unique ads) influences memory, even if the product itself is similar to that of competitors
d. All of the above

Answer: D