Deck 10: Person-Situation Interactionist Aspects of Personality

Question 1

For Harry Stack Sullivan, it is most important to examine

A) what people do when they are alone and unobserved.
B) how people feel when they have been rejected by others.
C) what people do when they are alone but know they are being observed.
D) how extroverts differ physiologically from introverts.
E) how people differ physiologically when they are alone versus with others.

Answer 1

how people feel when they have been rejected by others.

Question 2

Mead's idea of the "social self" describes the idea that

A) people who do not have a "best chum" usually end up with brain damage.
B) the way we see ourselves is determined from our interactions with others.
C) people who are more sociable are more successful in life.
D) people who do not have a "best chum" usually end up with emotional problems.

Answer 2

the way we see ourselves is determined from our interactions with others.

Question 3

Sullivan integrated many ideas from which two individuals?

A) Mead and Sapir
B) Thorndike and Sapir
C) Thorndike and Mead
D) Freud and Thorndike
E) Sapir and Freud

Answer 3

Mead and Sapir

Question 4

Julian was always something of a "screwup" in school. His grades were poor, and he was suspended several times during high school for pulling pranks that his teachers didn't find funny. His parents were pleasantly surprised, however, when he went off to college. He enjoyed his biology classes so much that he decided to become a doctor and he began getting A's in all of his classes! His friends in college were the "intellectuals," and he spent many late nights at a local coffee house discussing politics and ethical issues related to the practice of medicine. After a successful first year, his parents were amazed to see him slip back into his slovenly habits and jokester ways when he returned home for the summer. Julian's behavior best illustrates the ideas of which personality theorist?

A) Horney
B) Sullivan
C) Piaget
D) Skinner
E) Rotter

Question 5

Who coined the term "personology"?

A) Murray
B) Sullivan
C) Jung
D) Lewin
E) Mischel

Question 6

According to Murray, __________ are internal motivations and the power of the situation is called __________.

A) desires; needs
B) desires; behaviors
C) needs; press
D) intuitions; needs
E) needs; behaviors

Question 7

Murray's measurement tool, designed to assess "thema" is called the

A) Life Orientation Theme Test.
B) the M. A. California Psychological Inventory.
C) Rorschach Inkblot Test.
D) Social Readjustment Rating Scale.
E) Thematic Apperception Test.

Question 8

You arrive at a new therapist's office and are told you will be given several assessments in order to help the therapist understand you better. The first thing the therapist does is show you a series of pictures and asks you to tell the "story" of what is taking place in the picture. The therapist is probably administering the

A) CPI.
B) Q-sort.
C) MMPI.
D) TAT.
E) MPQ.

Question 9

Mischel's basic argument (that began a great controversy) was that

A) knowing someone's personality traits does not allow one to predict that person's behavior in a particular situation.
B) the correlations between personality traits and behaviors are so high that it is redundant to study them both.
C) it is futile to look at the situation because behavior is almost completely determined by a person's traits.
D) "personality" is not correlated with any behavior.
E) none of these.

Question 10

Mischel stated that correlations between personality traits and behavior were

A) almost always about .30 or slightly higher.
B) always under .20.
C) ranged from 1.00 to 2.00.
D) routinely scattered everywhere from .20 to .90.
E) usually ranged from .70 to .80.

Question 11

What does it mean to say that two behaviors are "functionally equivalent"?

A) They both involve interactions with the same group of people.
B) They both take the same amount of energy.
C) They are the exact same behavior occurring in different geographic locations.
D) They are different behaviors, but they have similar meanings.

Question 12

When comparing the correlation between personality and behavior with the correlation between situation and behavior, we find that

A) neither the situation nor the personality contribute to the prediction of behavior.
B) the situation is a much better predictor of behavior.
C) the personality is a much better predictor of behavior.
D) both the situation and the personality contribute about equally to the prediction of behavior.

Question 13

Which of the following does NOT influence an individual's ability to delay gratification?

A) Modeling
B) Visibility of the desired object
C) Cognitive strategies, such as distraction
D) Generation

Question 14

According to Mischel, encoding strategies are

A) our expectations about the consequences of our behaviors.
B) the mechanisms we use to process information.
C) the plans we make.
D) our expectations of personality ability.
E) our abilities and knowledge.

Question 15

In general, people tend to attribute other people's behaviors to their personalities _______ they attribute their own behaviors to their own personality.

A) more than
B) less than
C) to the same extent that
D) with less consistency than

Question 16

People are better at judging the personalities of others when they

A) like them.
B) know them well.
C) have seen them in only a few situations.
D) dislike them.
E) don't know them at all.

Question 17

Which of the following are examples of the power of situational factors in determining behavior?

A) "Good" people engaging in illegal activities during the 1960s
B) Decent Germans cooperating with the diabolical plans of the Nazis
C) Panic arising when a movie theater catches fire
D) Students in the 1960s getting involved in illegal forms of protest
E) All of these

Question 18

The correlation between personality and behavior is higher when

A) behavior is averaged across varying situations.
B) physiological tools are used to measure behavior.
C) only a single instance of behavior is measured.
D) the personality trait is not relevant to the behavior.
E) a stranger does the coding of the behavior.

Question 19

People who are more field independent are likely to be __________ in their behaviors across situations, as compared with those that are field dependent.

A) more insincere
B) more consistent
C) less consistent
D) less happy
E) less depressed

Question 20

What is a longitudinal study?

A) A study in which people do not know they are being studied
B) A study in which people are constantly presented with questions that have counterintuitive answers
C) A study in which people are observed and studied over significant portions of their life spans
D) A study in which people are moved from place to place by researchers so that they can be observed in a variety of situations
E) A study in which people are given lengthy forms to fill out for assessment purposes

Question 21

Which of the following is not one of the types of data collected by the Blocks in their longitudinal study?

A) Test data
B) Contradictory data
C) Self-report data
D) Life data
E) Observational data

Question 22

The study of personality across the "life course" or "life path" takes into account which of the following influences on behavior?

A) Abilities and drives
B) Culture and social groups
C) Age and life events
D) Traits and motives
E) All of the above

Question 23

The adage "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" can be applied to a person-by-situation interaction perspective to reflect which of the concepts below?

A) Experience has its effect in the context of previous experiences.
B) Older people resist new experiences.
C) Experience has its effect in the context of previous experiences, but if we have not had a learning experience in the past year, we will be unable to learn new tricks.
D) Experience is the best teacher.
E) Once we reach a certain age, we cannot learn anything new.

Question 24

Lorenz found that during a critical period, ducklings will __________ on their mother (or whoever is available).

A) implant
B) imprint
C) reprint
D) impose
E) coalesce

Question 25

Which of the following may affect our susceptibility to environmental influences?

A) Our recent experiences
B) Our experiences early in life
C) Our personality traits
D) Circadian rhythms

Question 26

It seems that small-group interactions can be categorized into which two broad dimensions?

A) Loneliness and generosity
B) Generosity and affiliation
C) Affiliation and assertiveness
D) Assertiveness and loneliness
E) Affiliation and loneliness

Question 27

According to Loevinger, people with undeveloped egos are often

A) impulsive, self-protective, or conformist.
B) individualistic and autonomous.
C) generous and unselfish.
D) high in self-control.
E) all of these.

Question 28

Imagine a boy, whose needs for love and tenderness are not being met by his mother, and who is a Catholic growing up in a prejudiced Protestant farming community, and who has the pressures of a boy with homosexual feelings growing up in an aggressively heterosexual world. This describes

A) Abraham Maslow.
B) Erik Erikson.
C) Albert Bandura.
D) Walter Mischel.
E) Harry Stack Sullivan.

Question 29

Murray's Needs include which one of the following?

A) Need for Inner Pain (IP)
B) Need for Transcendence
C) Need for Exhibition
D) Need for Multiple Orgasm
E) Need for Death (thanatos)

Question 30

A "cheating personality" cannot generally be found. This is because

A) honesty depends so much on the superego.
B) it is a cross between conscientiousness and openness.
C) honesty depends so much on the situation.
D) human nature generally strives to be honest.
E) honesty depends so much on natural selection processes.

Question 31

Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations that characterize a person's life. This is the view of

A) Henry Murray.
B) B. F. Skinner.
C) Harry Sullivan.
D) Roger Will.
E) Carl Rogers.

Question 32

John recently brought his teaching assistant a box of cookies. To determine the traits relevant to this act and the meaning of this act, Funder would suggest that you would want to know

A) the immediate situation and John's past behavior with teaching assistants.
B) how incongruent John is from his "real self " and his level of self-actualization.
C) John's level of Need for Achievement.
D) John's grade point average.
E) what the teaching assistant thinks of John and what John thinks of the teaching assistant.

Question 33

The ethological idea of "readiness," as applied to understanding the interaction of the person and the situation, implies that

A) when the male is ready to mate, other considerations become secondary.
B) that we are more affected by certain environments at certain times in our lives.
C) that women signal their readiness with blushed lips when the time is right.
D) that the dance of the stickleback and the pheromones of insects have their counterparts in any disco or singles bar.
E) that we are not ready to act until we can interact.

Question 34

The primary idea behind an interactionist perspective is that

A) an extrovert will always behave in an identifiably extroverted manner.
B) certain situations lead to identical behavior in introverts and extroverts.
C) personality can only be appropriately judged in the context of interpersonal interaction.
D) observed behavior results from a mix of situational and dispositional causes.
E) people's relationships with one another are a consequence of childhood behavior patterns.

Question 35

The idea that the situation and personality interact

A) is a new idea with limited empirical support.
B) was first discussed by Mischel in the 1960s.
C) was first discussed by Funder in the 1980s.
D) has been discussed since the 1930s at least.
E) can only be studied using longitudinal data.

Question 36

Sullivan's approach to understanding personality is sometimes referred to as the

A) interpersonal theory of psychiatry.
B) Chicago school of sociology.
C) personological system.
D) modern interactionist approach.
E) narrative approach.

Question 37

Mischel based his argument that personality is not a useful construct on the fact that

A) you can predict what an individual is going to do based on a previous measure of that person's personality.
B) the environment rarely has an effect on personality.
C) people's behaviors vary across situations.
D) it is always difficult to reliably measure personality.

Question 38

Trait relevance refers to the idea that

A) some traits are irrelevant to studying humans.
B) traits only guide behaviors in relevant situations.
C) some traits are irrelevant to the different genders.
D) all traits are not equally relevant to all situations.
E) all traits are not equally relevant to all people.

Question 39

A prospective research design

A) studies people across time.
B) uses individuals' present experiences to explain the past.
C) examines children as they become adolescents.
D) uses earlier measures to predict later outcomes.
E) uses primarily projective assessments.

Question 40

Recent research suggests that personality is most stable when people are in their

A) 50s.
B) teens.
C) 20s.
D) 30s.
E) 70s.

Question 41

In the circumplex model, the major dimensions are

A) affiliation and assertiveness.
B) biology and environment.
C) persons and situations.
D) extroversion and conscientiousness.
E) occupational tasks and societal tasks.

Question 42

From childhood to early adulthood researchers find

A) personality consistency is about .50.
B) almost no personality consistency.
C) personality consistency is about -.30.
D) personality consistency is about .99.
E) as much personality consistency as is found among older adults.

Question 43

__________ looked at the combined influence of internal drives and external influences.

A) Freud
B) Watson
C) Skinner
D) Murray
E) Heartstein

Question 44

An important facet of Sullivan's personality theory is which of the following concepts?

A) Chumship
B) Honesty
C) Neuroticism
D) Creativity
E) Genetics

Question 45

Which of the following statements best describes the main idea behind Harry Stack Sullivan's approach to personality?

A) A person's personality develops over an entire lifespan.
B) People need interaction with other people to develop fully.
C) Personality is inextricably tied to social situations.
D) A person's behavior varies with situational expectations.
E) All of these

Question 46

According to Harry Stack Sullivan, the idea that a person has a fixed personality that does not vary with changes in situation is called the Illusion of

A) Personality.
B) Change.
C) Individuality.
D) Altruism.
E) Mankind.

Question 47

What was the name that Murray gave to his theory of personality?

A) Personality System
B) Personological System
C) Person-Situation System
D) Person-Personality System
E) Multiple Personalities Systems

Question 48

Which two things are combined to make up Murray's theory of personality?

A) Unconscious motivations and internal drives
B) Internal motivations and external motivations
C) Unconscious demands and internal motivations
D) Unconscious desires and conscious demands
E) Internal motivations and external demands

Question 49

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), developed by Henry Murray, measures

A) Needs and Press
B) Attitudes and Perceptions
C) Perceptions and Opinions
D) Social vs. Internal drives
E) Needs and Individual personality traits

Question 50

Walter Mischel combined which two ideas in his theory of personality to explain where behavior comes from?

A) Primary Drives and Secondary drives
B) Cognitive ability and societal influences
C) Societal influences and internal drives
D) Internal Motivations and External Drives
E) Chumship and cognitive abilities

Question 51

Which of the following statements best describes behavioral signatures?

A) A set of never changing, inherent personality traits
B) The relationship between opposing personality traits
C) A set of changing behaviors that are not relatable to personality traits
D) Situation-behavior relationships that are typical of an individual
E) How overtly a person enacts a behavior in different situations

Question 52

Which of the following is a weakness of Walter Mischel's approach?

A) It does not explain what a correlation of 0.30 between behavior and personality actually means.
B) It assumes a fixed, simple model of behavior.
C) It assumes personality traits lead directly to behavior.
D) It assumes that a correlation of .30 is so small that it is not useful/meaningful.
E) All of these

Question 53

What is the main importance of longitudinal studies in the study of personality?

A) To look for consistency and change in personality over time
B) To predict future behaviors
C) To prevent future generations from making the same mistakes
D) To prove non-longitudinal studies incorrect
E) To end up with a large amount of data

Question 54

What is the main focus of attribution theories?

A) Examines the ways we draw inferences about other people's behaviors
B) Examines the ways other people's behaviors affect us
C) Examines the ways we act in different situations
D) Examines personality traits and how they affect behavior
E) Examines the functionality of certain personality traits in differing societies

Question 55

What is the main role of mirror neurons?

A) To help us distinguish right from left
B) To help us understand that our reflection in a mirror is how the world sees us
C) To help us feel the same emotions and experience the same states as other people, at the same time
D) To regulate our breathing and heart rate to maintain stability
E) To repress traumatic images in our memories

Question 56

According to Harry Stack Sullivan's idea of __________, a preadolescent's pals serve as a social mirror for forming his or her identity.

Question 57

Harry Stack Sullivan's __________ focuses on the recurring social situations that we face.

Question 58

The __________ is the idea that how we think of ourselves arises from our interactions with those around us.

Question 59

The idea that it is just an illusion to believe a person has a single, fixed personality is called the __________.

Question 60

Henry Murray's term for his theory of personality that emphasizes the richness of the life of each person and the dynamic nature of the individual as a complex organism responding to a specific environment is called the __________.

Question 61

According to Henry Murray, people have a variety of internal _________ that necessitate taking action in the social environment.

Question 62

The push from situational forces, called the __________, are directional forces on a person that arise from other people or events in the environment.

Question 63

According to Murray, a typical combination of needs and presses is termed a __________.

Question 64

The __________ is a projective test in which a person is presented with a series of ambiguous pictures and instructed to compose a story.

Question 65

Delay of __________ is a specific aspect of self-control that occurs when an individual chooses to forgo an immediate reinforcer to wait for a later, better reinforcer.

Question 66

The notion that behavior is caused at that moment as a function of a variety of influences is called __________.

Question 67

According to Mischel, the individual differences in the meanings people give to stimuli and reinforcements that are learned during experiences with situations and their rewards are called __________.

Question 68

Behavioral __________ are the sets of situation-behavior relationships that are typical of an individual and that contribute to the apparent consistency of an individual's personality.

Question 69

The biasing tendency for people to see certain traits as going together and to perceive consistencies when viewing the personalities of others is part of __________.

Question 70

Theories that examine the ways in which individuals draw inferences about other people are called __________.

Question 71

__________ is the close, comprehensive, systematic, objective, sustained study of individuals over significant portions of the life span.

Question 72

The extent to which individuals are likely to respond appropriately in a given situation, as a function of their prior experiences with that situation is called __________.

Question 73

The study of personality that emphasizes the patterns of behavior change as a function of age, culture, social groups, life events, and so forth, as well as internal drives, motives, and traits is called the __________ approach.

Question 74

__________ believed personality is "the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations."

Question 75

Due to his emphasis on studying the richness of the life of each person, Murray preferred the term "__________" to the term "personality."

Question 76

Why does it make sense to study personality, even though correlations between measured personality and behavior in specific situations are often quite low?

Question 77

Assume that Judy is introverted and shy. You watch Judy arrive at a party and park her car in the driveway. Briefly describe two things that she might do next which, although behaviorally different, would be functionally equivalent.

Question 78

If you are really craving a bag of potato chips, but you know you need to stick to your diet, you will try to delay gratification-that is, you will try NOT to eat the potato chips (which would, no doubt, taste wonderful and be quite rewarding) so that you will feel attractive in your bathing suit next weekend (which is even more wonderful and rewarding). Describe two tactics you might use to make your delay of gratification easier.

Question 79

It is unfortunately common for student riots to occur on or near college campuses, especially in April and May. Describe how the concept of "the power of the situation" can explain such behavior by intelligent and well-educated people.

Question 80

Explain what is meant by "creating situations." Provide an example of how you have created a situation that you currently experience, and its influence on you.