Deck 8: American Pioneers: James, Hall, Calkins, and Thorndike

Question 1

James's The Principles of Psychology had chapters on all of the following except:

A) emotion
B) will
C) habit
D) the Unconscious

Answer 1

D

Question 2

James's theory of emotion holds that emotions are:

A) the causes of internal bodily changes.
B) the perceptions of internal bodily changes.
C) unstable glandular responses to fleeting external stimuli.
D) the result of specific chemical secretions in the body.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

William James's attitude toward spiritism and psychical research is best described as follows:

A) complete skepticism as he argued strenuously against the reality of all paranormal phenomena
B) firm belief in the genuineness and reality of at least some paranormal phenomena
C) He actively encouraged and participated in psychical research and was disappointed when experiments turned out negatively.
D) He simply ignored all attempts to attract his interest in the subject.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

According to the James-Lange theory of emotion,which of the following sequences is correct?

A) We lose our fortune, weep, and feel sorry.
B) We meet a bear, run, and feel frightened.
C) We are insulted by a rival, get angry, and strike.
D) both a and b above

Question 5

What was the name James gave to his philosophical approach?

A) Logical positivism
B) Creative evolution
C) Pragmatism
D) Radical skepticism

Question 6

James's Principles asserted the following about human acts of will:

A) The sense of willing is completely an illusion as all human behavior is predetermined.
B) Acts of will are strongly accompanied by attention, and he left it an open question as to whether they are mechanistically determined or "free."
C) They are clear examples of behavior that is not mechanistically determined.
D) The sensation of freely willing one's own behavior becomes stronger as a person matures.

Question 7

William James clearly established himself as an outstanding teacher of psychology with the publication of his 1890 book entitled:

A) Handbook of Physiological Psychology.
B) The Principles of Psychology.
C) Varieties of Religious Experience.
D) Pragmatism.

Question 8

Which the following was not one of James's eminent students?

A) G. S. Hall
B) Mary Whiton Calkins
C) Edward Thorndike
D) James Roland Angell

Question 9

A criterion for "truth" which William James adopted early and retained throughout his life,was to accept as true:

A) ideas which it proved useful to believe in.
B) only ideas which could not be doubted.
C) only ideas which had been proven valid by experiment.
D) only things that he had seen or experienced for himself.

Question 10

James believed that the best metaphor for conscious thought is as a:

A) chemical compound.
B) network of associations.
C) stream.
D) soaring kite.

Question 11

The "Metaphysical Club," to which James belonged as a young man,was devoted to:

A) philosophical discussion of questions such as Darwinism and the pragmatic evaluation of scientific ideas.
B) critical discussion of the "new" experimental psychology, its methods and techniques.
C) discussion of new books and their literary as well as scientific value.
D) informal discussions between Harvard teachers and their best students on current topics.

Question 12

The James-Lange theory of emotion holds that:

A) emotion is a consequence rather than a cause of the bodily changes associated with it.
B) emotions cause bodily changes such as sweating and a rapid heartbeat.
C) emotions and bodily changes occur at the same time.
D) both a and b above

Question 13

William James's most important contribution to psychology was probably:

A) an infectious enthusiasm and point of view that made psychology seem interesting and attractive.
B) his series of experiments on consciousness.
C) his theory of language and society.
D) all of the above

Question 14

William James's theories regarding habit were influenced by which of the following?

A) Bain's neural connection theory of habit
B) Wundt's introspective view of habit
C) Titchener's structuralist view of habit
D) Hall's evolutionary theory of habit

Question 15

William James's personal crisis was resolved in part because of his reading the following philosophical work:

A) John Locke on associationism
B) Emmanuel Swedenborg on "vastations"
C) David Hume on causality
D) Charles Renouvier on free will

Question 16

James argued that emotional states could most effectively be changed by:

A) behaving as if they were different.
B) changing one's surroundings and getting away from it all.
C) clearly bringing out the suppressed ideas that cause them.
D) both a and b above

Question 17

___________ was a Wundt?trained German psychologist recruited to Harvard by William James in 1892 to take over main responsibility for Psychology.

A) Hugo Münsterberg
B) E. B. Titchener
C) Hermann Ebbinghaus
D) Max Wertheimer

Question 18

What was James's stand on the free-will determinism issue?

A) He believed all things to be completely determined.
B) As a psychologist he accepted determinism, but in his other roles he accepted free will.
C) He believed in free will, and argued that psychologists had a major obligation to account for it in their theories.
D) He felt it was a foolish issue that ought not to be considered at all.

Question 19

James succeeded as a teacher of psychology in large part because:

A) he had the best equipped experimental psychology laboratory and could demonstrate the new scientific psychology in an exciting way.
B) he had an engaging teaching style and the ability to make the findings of psychology personally relevant to his students.
C) he was able to incorporate literary references from his brother's and other popular novelists' work into his lectures.
D) all of the above

Question 20

A famous passage in James's textbook described ____________ as "the enormous flywheel of society," which "saves the children of fortune from the uprisings of the poor," and "dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice."

A) instinct
B) emotion
C) habit
D) personal character

Question 21

Edward Thorndike's early research on learning involved which kinds of subjects?

A) human children
B) chickens and cats
C) white rats
D) all of the above

Question 22

Three women were featured as "star" psychologists in the 1903 edition of American Men of Science.Which of the following was not one of them?

A) Mary Calkins
B) Margaret Washburn
C) Christine Ladd-Franklin
D) Eleanor Gibson

Question 23

In the early 1900s Edward Thorndike collaborated with Robert S.Woodworth in an influential study of:

A) maze learning in cats.
B) the genetics of intelligence.
C) the transfer of training in humans.
D) associations in dreams.

Question 24

The finding that when certain stimulus?response sequences are followed by pleasure they are strengthened,and when followed by annoyance or pain they tend to be "stamped out" exemplifies:

A) Thorndike's Law of effect.
B) Calkins's Paired Associates relationship.
C) Hall's Law of reinforced learning.
D) The James-Lange Theory of emotion.

Question 25

Mary Whiton Calkins's research on "paired associates" revealed:

A) that numerals associated with vivid colors were remembered somewhat better than those with neutral colors.
B) that women had better recall of number-color pairs than men did.
C) that strong emotions could be triggered easily with vivid colors.
D) that responses that were followed by pleasure were strengthened while those followed by pain tended to be "stamped out."

Question 26

G.Stanley Hall advocated which of the following approaches in his theory of child development?

A) a "structuralist" view, that the child passes through several distinct cognitive stages
B) a "recapitulationist" view, that individual development parallels the evolution of the species
C) a "functional" view, that the child progresses via trial-and-error learning experiences
D) a "Freudian" view, that the child passes through several sexually oriented stages

Question 27

Who was the first President of the American Psychological Association?

A) William James
B) G. Stanley Hall
C) Edward Lee Thorndike
D) Mary Calkins

Question 28

Which of the following was not true regarding the career of Mary Whiton Calkins?

A) She became President of both the American Psychological and American Philosophical Associations.
B) She was the first woman to receive a PhD in Psychology from Harvard.
C) She published articles on association and dreams while still a student.
D) She promoted an influential psychology of the self.

Question 29

Who was the first African American to earn a PhD in psychology?

A) Francis Cecil Sumner, supervised by Hall
B) Kenneth B. Clark, supervised by James
C) Mamie Phipps Clark, supervised by Thorndike
D) Francis Cecil Sumner, supervised by Calkins

Question 30

Which the following was not one of G.Stanley Hall's important contributions?

A) founding of the American Psychological Association
B) introducing the term "adolescence" to a wide audience
C) conducting pioneering research on learning in animals
D) bringing Freud to America and publicizing his theory