Deck 10: Social Influence and Social Psychology: From Mesmer to Milgram and Beyond

Question 1

According to Le Bon,hopes of achieving lasting international harmony are:

A) good, because scientific understanding of group behavior will make mutual understanding easier.
B) bad, because crowd behavior is essentially unpredictable.
C) uncertain, because they depend on the particular values of the leaders who happen to seize control.
D) bad, because the unconscious racial ideas of different national groups are unlikely to be recognized and dealt with.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Puységur's belief that hypnotized subjects will never act out suggestions running counter to their moral beliefs:

A) is now known to be true.
B) is now known to be false.
C) must be interpreted very cautiously, since people in any social influence situation may sometimes be induced to do things they would otherwise avoid.
D) is now known to be true for normal subjects, but is not always the case with disturbed people.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

When Mesmer testified before the commission investigating Gassner's exorcisms,he convinced them that:

A) Gassner's cures were real, but had naturalistic rather than demonological causes.
B) Gassner's cures were mainly the result of suggestion.
C) any patients "cured" by Gassner had really been malingerers.
D) Gassner's cures were the genuine result of exorcism.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

_________________ believed that only hysterics were hypnotizable,while ____________ argued that normal people could be hypnotized as well.

A) Charcot; Le Bon
B) The Nancy School; Le Bon
C) The Nancy School; Charcot
D) Charcot; The Nancy School

Question 5

When a few physicians in England,such as Elliotson and Ward,raised the possibility of using mesmerism as a surgical anaesthetic in the 1840s:

A) they were roundly ignored by their colleagues.
B) they were ridiculed or actively persecuted by the established medical community.
C) they established their point successfully for a short time, until hypnotism was superseded by chemical anaesthetics.
D) their early experiments were failures, so they abandoned the idea.

Question 6

James Braid helped lend scientific respectability to mesmeric phenomena by suggesting which new name for them?

A) artificial somnambulism
B) neuro-hypnology
C) the perfect crisis
D) hypno-magnetism

Question 7

An incorrect implication of Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism was that:

A) the secret of hypnosis lies in the power of the hypnotist or magnetist.
B) illness is caused by disaligned magnetic fields in the body.
C) some people are natural healers because of their magnetic personalities.
D) all of the above

Question 8

Who was the original founder of the Nancy School of hypnotism?

A) Auguste Liébeault
B) Hippolyte Bernheim
C) Joseph Delboeuf
D) Jean Charcot

Question 9

The ancient Greeks believed hysteria was caused by:

A) malingering.
B) an excess of overheated humours in the brain.
C) the wandering of the uterus to inappropriate body parts.
D) after-effects of traumatic experiences.

Question 10

Mesmer's medical dissertation,written years before his first documented magnetic cures:

A) spelled out the essential details of his theory of animal magnetism.
B) emphasized the importance of the contagion effect in groups of people.
C) asserted that the planets and stars directly influence people through the effect of "animal gravitation."
D) all of the above

Question 11

Charcot's most important scientific contribution was probably his:

A) victory over the Nancy School in the debate about the nature of hypnosis.
B) demonstration that hysteria was caused by neurological degeneracy.
C) demonstration of the relationships between hysteria and crowd behavior.
D) having the courage to study such unfashionable subjects as hysteria and hypnotism.

Question 12

The model Charcot followed in specifying types and formes frustes for the illnesses he studied was first suggested by:

A) grand mal and petit mal epilepsy.
B) major and minor hysteria.
C) poliomyelitis.
D) hypnotism.

Question 13

Which of the following was one of the pioneers in the use of mesmerism as a surgical anaesthetic?

A) Jean Charcot
B) The Marquis de Puységur
C) Gustave Le Bon
D) James Esdaile

Question 14

Which of the following did Puységur incorrectly believe to be an easily produced effect in a good hypnotic subject?

A) abilities enhanced beyond what is possible in the normal state
B) amnesia for the events of the trance
C) paralyses which can move about the body upon suggestion by the hypnotist
D) greatly heightened general suggestibility

Question 15

Bernheim,on finding that lower class patients were especially responsive to his hypnotic suggestions,argued that hypnotizability must be closely related to:

A) low intelligence.
B) a general trait of suggestibility.
C) susceptibility to hysteria.
D) the fees patients had to pay.

Question 16

With its regular sequence of stages ("epileptoid," "large movement," "hallucinatory," and "delirious"),Charcot's grande hysterie was:

A) typical of most of the hysterics at the Salpêtrière.
B) considered by him the purest "type" of hysteria.
C) the result of localized neurological injuries.
D) often cured by Charcot through hypnosis.

Question 17

When "Good Father Liébeault" used hypnosis on his patients,he:

A) had an elaborate setting, with background music and flamboyantly dressed assistants, to enhance the effect of suggestibility.
B) did so only for demonstration purposes, because he believed no permanent cures could be effected by hypnosis.
C) proceeded very simply, first suggesting they would go to sleep, and then that their symptoms would disappear.
D) took advantage of the opportunity to explore their suppressed emotional life.

Question 18

The Royal Commission appointed to investigate Franz Mesmer concluded that:

A) Mesmer was an exorcist.
B) Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism was worthless, so his cures must have been imaginary.
C) there was no such thing as animal magnetism, but Mesmer's cures were genuine.
D) Mesmer's work should be continued by more competent scientists.

Question 19

Those patients who responded most strongly to Mesmer's magnetic inductions:

A) passed quietly into a sleeplike trance.
B) demonstrated heightened physical powers and clairvoyance.
C) continued to behave in apparently normal ways.
D) often experienced violent and painful "crisis states."

Question 20

When people in a crowd begin behaving the same way they see their neighbors behaving,they illustrate:

A) hypersuggestibility.
B) the social contagion effect.
C) a craze.
D) the autosuggestive effect.

Question 21

The earliest laboratory studies investigating suggestibility and social influence were conducted by:

A) Gustav Le Bon.
B) Alfred Binet.
C) Solomon Asch.
D) Hippolyte Bernheim.

Question 22

Solomon Asch's experiments showed that his subjects' greatest tendency to conform in giving incorrect responses occurred when:

A) they were outnumbered by a unanimous majority of three.
B) they were outnumbered by a unanimous majority of seven.
C) they were outnumbered by a majority of fourteen but with one other dissenter.
D) b and c were approximately equal in producing maximum conformity

Question 23

Le Bon recommended that crowd leaders make use of which of the following practices or attitudes to maximize their effectiveness?

A) sincerity, fervor, affirmation
B) repetition, enthusiasm, effective timing of appeals
C) affirmation, repetition, pre-placing of followers in the crowd
D) reason, sincerity, effective timing of appeals

Question 24

Which of the following is not a major characteristic of crowds,compared to individuals,according to Le Bon?

A) radical values
B) heightened suggestibility
C) intellectual inferiority
D) an increased likelihood of performing heroic actions

Question 25

Floyd Allport made all of the following contributions to the establishment of social psychology except:

A) he completed the first PhD dissertation on an experimental social psychology topic.
B) he co-edited The Journal of Abnormal Psychology and added Social Psychology to its title and subject matter.
C) he wrote the first textbook devoted to experimental social psychology.
D) he created the first social psychology laboratory at Harvard University.

Question 26

Binet and Henri's experiments showed that children's reported recall of recently observed stimuli:

A) was remarkably accurate even in young children.
B) was influenced by "leading questions" but not by neutral ones.
C) was strongly unreliable under all conditions.
D) was most accurate when they were simply given paper and a pencil and asked to write down what they remembered

Question 27

In the aftermath of the furor aroused by his obedience research,Stanley Milgram conducted studies of which of the following?

A) the "small world" phenomenon
B) what happens "when prophecy fails"
C) the "prisoner's dilemma"
D) the "lost in the mall" memory reconstruction

Question 28

In his landmark obedience research,Stanley Milgram found:

A) that certain personality types were more obedient than others.
B) that in his laboratory situation subjects were far more obedient than anyone had predicted.
C) that men were more obedient than women in administering shocks.
D) both b and c

Question 29

Festinger and his colleagues discovered that the most effective way to change a person's attitude was:

A) to pay him or her well to publicly express a contrary attitude.
B) to get the person to publicly express a contrary attitude for a small reward.
C) to put the person in a group where many different opinions are expressed.
D) b and c both had strong positive effects

Question 30

__________________ was a Gestalt-trained psychologist who conducted pioneering research on the effects of authoritarian versus democratic leadership styles.

A) Alfred Binet
B) Kurt Lewin
C) Max Wertheimer
D) Kurt Koffka