Question 1

A characteristic limitation of Eysenck's viewpoint is:

Accepted Answer

Eysenck's viewpoint is limited by his tendency to reduce personality to just three dimensions (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) and the possibility of extraversion and introversion as being two separate dimensions.

Question 2

A sales manager reads in a letter of reference that an applicant is a hardworking and conscientious member of the professor's research team. The personnel manager is concerned about the extent to which the student's behavior will be similar if he comes to work in her sales department. The sale's manager is questioning the _______ of the student's personality.

Accepted Answer

The sales manager is questioning the cross-situational consistency of the student's personality, which refers to whether the student's hardworking and conscientious behavior will remain consistent across different situations, such as moving from a research team to a sales department.

Question 3

In a classic study of the stability of moral behavior of children from one situation to another, the conclusion was that moral behavior was:

Accepted Answer

The study concluded that children's moral behavior was rather inconsistent across different situations, indicating variability in how they acted morally depending on the context.

Question 4

A bank manager finds that there is very little correlation between employees' scores on a honesty test and the amount of supplies stolen from the various bank branches. Such a concern for the ability of personality tests to predict behavior is represented in what Mischel referred to as the:

Accepted Answer

Mischel referred to the "personality coefficient" as the low correlation between personality measures and actual behavior, indicating skepticism about the predictive power of personality tests.

Question 5

The ability of traits to predict behavior increases when you:

Accepted Answer

Allowing people to select traits they feel consistent with and selecting highly predictable people both enhance the accuracy of predicting behavior based on traits.

Question 6

Your usually fast-driving friend slows down when he sees a "Radar Zone" sign. This is an example of:

Accepted Answer

Situationalism refers to the idea that behavior is influenced by external situational factors, such as the presence of a "Radar Zone" sign causing the friend to slow down.

Question 7

You seem to study your psychology notes better while alone but your history notes better while with other people. Your best friend tends to do just the opposite. This illustrates the concept of

Accepted Answer

This scenario illustrates interactionism, which suggests that behavior is a result of the interaction between individual characteristics and situational factors. Different subjects and social contexts affect study effectiveness differently for different individuals.

Question 8

You are attending your first sales meeting as a sales associate trainee. As you sit down, you look for cues that might help you interpret the situation and decide what you should be doing. This situation illustrates the operation of:

Accepted Answer

Cognitive factors involve the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, which help individuals interpret situations and decide on appropriate actions.

Question 9

Her friends notice that sometimes Sue is too shy to talk to others at parties while at other times she will walk right up to total strangers and begin a conversation with them. David thinks he can explain her inconsistency by pointing out that she seems to speak only to those individuals at parties who are wearing t-shirts that indicate they share her interest in retro bands from the 1980's. In this case David is introducing the cognitive factor of:

Accepted Answer

David is suggesting that Sue's behavior is influenced by a specific condition or cue (people wearing t-shirts indicating a shared interest), which aligns with the concept of "if...then" relations, where behavior is contingent on specific situational cues.

Question 10

A(n) ______ situation has very strict behavioral expectations.

Accepted Answer

A "powerful" situation is one where there are strong norms and expectations for behavior, leaving little room for individual differences.

Question 11

While waiting in line to see a movie, some individuals talk, others read, and a few eat. Such diversity of behavior indicates that waiting in this line is a relatively ______ situation.

Accepted Answer

A weak situation is one where there are few norms or rules dictating behavior, allowing for a wide range of individual actions, as seen in the diverse behaviors of people waiting in line.

Question 12

Being in the parlor of a funeral home where everyone behaves in a relatively reserved manner is an example of a(n) ______ situation that has very strict behavioral expectations.

Accepted Answer

A "powerful" situation is one that has strong norms and expectations for behavior, such as a funeral home parlor where reserved behavior is expected.

Question 13

A sales manager looks at the behavior of an employee while at the sales counter, during breaks in the staff lounge, and while participating in staff meetings to determine how cooperative this person is. The sales manager is employing the logic of _____ to make his decision.

Accepted Answer

Aggregation research involves assessing behavior across different situations to determine consistent patterns, which is what the sales manager is doing by observing the employee in various contexts.

Question 14

To determine an individual's degree of altruism, a researcher counts the number of times the person helps others. This is an example of the _____ approach.

Accepted Answer

The act frequency approach involves counting specific acts or behaviors to assess a trait, such as altruism, by observing how often an individual engages in helping behaviors.

Question 15

Hostile Harold and Belligerent Bernardo are from different cultures but work in the same office location of a multi-national investment firm. Both of these individuals show a high degree of aggressiveness in that they seem to get into arguments while at work with all of their co-workers, their teammates on the department's softball team, and with individuals from other office locations when having regional sales meetings. Such a similar pattern of behavior for these two individuals from different cultures illustrates:

Accepted Answer

Relative cross-situational consistency refers to the consistency of behavior across different situations, which is demonstrated by Harold and Bernardo's aggressive behavior in various contexts.

Question 16

A personality psychologist studying creativity in students with different majors notes that there is a tendency for highly creative psychology majors to display a sense of creativity in both their science and literature courses than highly creative biology majors, whose creativity seems to be limited to only their science courses. In this study, psychology majors display a greater degree of _____ than the biology majors.

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is A: absolute cross-situational consistency (ACSC). ACSC refers to the tendency for individuals to display consistent levels of a trait across different situations. In this case, the psychology majors display a greater degree of ACSC than the biology majors, as they exhibit creativity in both their science and literature courses, while the biology majors' creativity is limited to their science courses.

Question 17

Differences in the degree of absolute cross-situational consistency among four groups of individuals who lived in separate parts of the world when taking self-report measures of their moods over a seven-day period illustrates the:

Accepted Answer

C  The differences in mood consistency across different groups highlight the impact of cultural factors on behavior (A) and suggest a lack of relative cross-situational consistency (C) as moods vary across situations and cultures.

Question 18

While at a party, Kevin tends to talk about how much joy and satisfaction he receives by being a member of his company's softball team, as well as the pride he has when wearing the team's championship tee shirt around town. Kevin's reactions are consistent with individuals who live in a _____ culture.

Accepted Answer

The answer of While at a party, Kevin tends to...

Question 19

Which group of individuals seems to display the characteristics features associated with an independent culture?

Accepted Answer

Americans are known for their individualism and independence, which are characteristics of an independent culture.

Question 20

A personality psychologist studying primitive cultures discovers that a tribe living north of the river has 13 different words for the personality trait of "friendliness" while the tribe living south of the river has only two words for it. Based on the ______ approach, the northern tribe seems to value friendliness more than the southern tribe.

Accepted Answer

The lexical approach suggests that the number of words a culture has for a concept indicates its importance in that culture.

Quiz 7: The Trait Viewpoint: Psychological Dispositions of Personality