Deck 11: Social Psychology

Question 1

Howard explained the low evaluation he received on his job performance review by saying that his boss was a jerk and had it in for him. Howard appears to be:

A) using hindsight bias.
B) experiencing cognitive dissonance.
C) using the self-serving bias.
D) making the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 1

using the self-serving bias.

Question 2

On numerous occasions in the past, Destiny strongly advocated alternative energy sources and less reliance on fossil fuels. So her friend Sara was surprised to see Destiny drive up in a large gas-guzzling SUV. Sara asked, "So Destiny, how do you guys like your new SUV?" Without a moment's hesitation, Destiny replied, "You know, we really needed a bigger vehicle to haul the kids and all their soccer stuff around. And I sure don't have any problems fitting all the grocery sacks in the back!" Destiny's change in attitude to match her behavior reflects:

A) self-serving bias.
B) hindsight bias.
C) cognitive dissonance.
D) diffusion of responsibility.

Answer 2

cognitive dissonance.

Question 3

Deliberate, conscious mental processes are to _____ as automatic, nonconscious mental processes are to _____.

A) hindsight bias; implicit personality theory
B) implicit cognitions; explicit cognitions
C) stereotypes; prejudice
D) explicit cognition; implicit cognition

Answer 3

explicit cognition; implicit cognition

Question 4

"I can't believe that people would be so stupid as to build a house on the edge of a cliff like that; it's their own fault they are homeless now," Owen said as he looked at the news footage of the wrecked expensive homes at the bottom of the muddy hillside collapse. Owen's response illustrates an attributional pattern called:

A) the self-serving bias.
B) the fundamental attribution error.
C) blaming the victim.
D) hindsight bias.

Question 5

Gilda volunteers two or three mornings a week at a local animal rescue center because she believes that helping abused and abandoned animals is "the right thing to do." Her friend Wilda volunteers a few times a week at the same shelter because she believes that it gives her valuable work experience and may help her gain admission to veterinary school. Gilda's motivation is guided by _____, and Wilda's motivation reflects _____.

A) altruism; prosocial behavior
B) normative social influence; informational social influence
C) prosocial behavior; altruism
D) informational social influence; normative social influence

Question 6

"I don't care what kind of lawyer he is! I can't believe that Mia is going to marry a lawyer! They're all just money-grubbing, bloodless leeches. You know what you call an honest lawyer? An impossibility!" Kathy laughed. Kathy's view that all lawyers share the same qualities is an example of:

A) the out-group homogeneity effect.
B) the fundamental attribution error.
C) an implicit personality theory.
D) blaming the victim.

Question 7

For 30 years, the community of Wichita, Kansas, was haunted-and taunted-by a serial killer who dubbed himself the BTK killer, which stood for "bind, torture, kill." In February of 2005, a break in the case came when Wichita police arrested Dennis Rader, aged 59, a city inspector, former Boy Scout leader, and church council president who was married with two adult children. Based on what you learned in the social psychology chapter, which of the following statements explains how Rader escaped detection for so many years?

A) Strong feelings of ethnocentrism convinced people that the BTK killer was someone from outside their community.
B) Diffusion of responsibility allowed people to psychologically distance themselves from the people murdered by BTK.
C) Rader contradicted the implicit personality theory that people have for a serial killer.
D) People have a strong, natural tendency to blame the victims for contributing to their fate rather than the person who murdered them.

Question 8

Which of the following is a fairly common attributional bias?

A) hindsight bias
B) the in-group bias
C) the "feel good, do good" effect
D) diffusion of responsibility

Question 9

Having recently moved to the United States from Guatemala to attend college, Jose notices that people often back up a couple of steps when he is talking to them. As he is eating lunch in the student cafeteria, he casually watches the interactions of Americans who are standing. Suddenly it dawns on him: When people in the United States converse, they don't stand as close as they do in Guatemala. Jose's observation seems to indicate that the personal space people feel comfortable with while conversing is governed by:

A) ethnocentrism.
B) cultural stereotypes.
C) different cultural social norms.
D) normative social influence.

Question 10

Even though it was billed as "one of the most delightfully funny Broadway plays every produced," Michael thought the jokes were corny, the actors were too mechanical, and the singing was mediocre. However, at the conclusion of the play, Michael reluctantly stood up with the rest of the audience to join in the standing ovation. Michael's behavior clearly illustrates:

A) obedience.
B) prosocial behavior.
C) the stereotype threat.
D) conformity.

Question 11

Joey and Ross were good friends. Joey was a very handsome guy and Ross was a homely, nerdy-looking guy. Joey is likely to be perceived by other people as being _____ than Ross.

A) more intelligent, happier, and better adjusted
B) less intelligent, less happy, and less well adjusted
C) more lonely, less popular, and more socially anxious
D) more intelligent, more popular, but less happy

Question 12

The tendency to blame oneself for one's failures, attributing them to internal, personal causes, while downplaying one's successes by attributing them to external, situational causes, is called:

A) the self-serving bias.
B) the fundamental attribution bias.
C) hindsight bias.
D) the self-effacing, or modesty, bias.

Question 13

As you slowly inch your way toward the intersection, you finally see the auto accident that was stalling traffic. As you look at the two drivers standing by their crumpled cars, you think to yourself, "They probably had the accident because they're careless drivers." Your thinking reflects which of the following concepts?

A) hindsight bias
B) implicit cognition
C) the self-serving bias
D) the fundamental attribution error

Question 14

The front page of the newspaper has a story about a man wearing a clerical collar who robbed several people in their homes and escaped. That the victims readily allowed this trustworthy-looking man to enter their home shows the potential disadvantages of relying on:

A) informational social influence.
B) the rule of reciprocity.
C) normative social influence.
D) social categorization.

Question 15

Because of his deep concerns about the effects of global warming, Riley took part in a protest demonstration in front of the hotel where the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was making a speech to an annual meeting of coal producers. This example best illustrates the _____ component of attitudes.

A) behavioral
B) emotional
C) biological
D) cognitive

Question 16

Your text discussed several factors that seem to have contributed to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Which of the following was NOT a factor that contributed to the mistreatment of prisoners?

A) conformity
B) prejudice and stereotyping
C) altruism
D) cognitive dissonance

Question 17

Informational social influence results from people's desire to:

A) be correct and gain accurate information.
B) be liked and accepted by the group.
C) reduce cognitive dissonance.
D) avoid hindsight bias.

Question 18

A technique used to promote cooperation that involves students working together in small, ethnically diverse groups on a mutual project is called the:

A) foot-in-the-door technique.
B) jigsaw classroom technique.
C) conform-to-the-norm technique.
D) the in-group bias effect.

Question 19

As Nina and Erin were eating lunch in the Central High School student cafeteria, they were discussing the news coverage about the girls' athletic coach being arrested for selling steroids to student athletes. "I think the guy just did it because they don't pay teachers enough money," Nina suggested. "I bet the guy had some other kind of drug addiction he was trying to pay for," Erin countered. Nina and Erin's ideas about the cause of the coach's drug-selling behavior are examples of:

A) attributions.
B) the hindsight bias.
C) the stereotype threat.
D) implicit cognitions.

Question 20

Researchers Michael Morris and Kaiping Peng compared Chinese to American newspaper reports of two mass murders. Morris and Peng found that:

A) the Chinese reporters were more likely than the American reporters to emphasize personal, internal attributes in explaining the actions of the murderer, such as the person's "bad temper" or "history of being mentally unstable."
B) Chinese and American reporters both tended to emphasize situational, external factors in explaining the behavior of each murderer.
C) if the murderer was of the same nationality as the reporter, the reporter was much more likely to blame the victim because of hindsight bias.
D) American reporters were more likely than the Chinese reporters to emphasize personal, internal attributes in explaining the actions of the murderer, such as the person's "bad temper" or "history of being mentally unstable."

Question 21

An area of social psychology that studies the mental processes people use to make sense of their social environment is called social cognition.

A) True
B) False

Question 22

An area of social psychology that studies the effect that situational factors and other people have on an individual's behavior is called social influence.

A) True
B) False

Question 23

In Milgram's original obedience experiment, how many of the participants remained obedient to the very end of the experiment, administering the full 450 volts to the "learner"?

A) none (0 percent)
B) 14 out of 40 (35 percent)
C) 6 out of 40 (15 percent)
D) 26 out of 40 (65 percent)

Question 24

Person perception refers to the mental processes we use to form judgments and draw conclusions about the characteristics and motives of other people.

A) True
B) False

Question 25

The branch of psychology that studies how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment is called social psychology.

A) True
B) False

Question 26

One of the principles guiding person perception is that our reactions to others are determined not by our perceptions of them, but by who or what those other people really are.

A) True
B) False

Question 27

When Susan learned that infants in Mayan families in Guatemala often sleep in their mother's bed until the child is two or three years old, she expressed her surprise that the Mayan culture was so "backward" compared to American culture. Susan's views are a good example of:

A) hindsight bias.
B) blaming the victim.
C) ethnocentrism.
D) an implicit personality theory.

Question 28

Cognitive dissonance occurs when:

A) conflicting implicit cognition and explicit cognition occur at the same time.
B) two thoughts or perceptions are inconsistent, and an unpleasant psychological tension results.
C) we use internal, personal attributions, rather than external, situational attributions, to explain our own behavior.
D) we overestimate the extent to which we could have predicted or foreseen the outcome of an event after it occurred.

Question 29

Your sense of self involves your unique sense of identity that has been influenced by social, cultural, and psychological experiences.

A) True
B) False

Question 30

Social psychologists will often use insights from evolutionary psychology, which is based on the assumption that certain psychological processes and behavioral patterns evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, to understand how behavior is adaptive.

A) True
B) False

Question 31

Which of the following factors seemed to help explain why no one helped Kitty Genovese?

A) Each bystander thought that he or she was the only witness to the crime that was occurring.
B) Some of the bystanders interpreted the situation as a lovers' quarrel or a domestic dispute.
C) The bystanders were experiencing apathy, a phenomenon that happens due to the alienation and depersonalization of life in a big city.
D) The bystanders were displaying a form of ethnocentrism.

Question 32

Many fundraising organizations send free personalized return address labels to people as part of their strategy to get people to donate money to their particular organization. This persuasion strategy is an example of _____.

A) the rule of commitment
B) the foot-in-the-door technique
C) the rule of reciprocity
D) the "feel good, do good" effect

Question 33

Diffusion of responsibility:

A) contributes to an explanatory pattern called blaming the victim.
B) is one of the key reasons that bystanders will help a stranger.
C) was the tactic used to reduce the hostility between the two groups of boys at Robbers Cave State Park.
D) plays a key role in explaining the bystander effect.

Question 34

Person perception is the conscious mental process of categorizing people into groups or social categories on the basis of their shared characteristics.

A) True
B) False

Question 35

In Milgram's original experiment:

A) the "learner" was given actual electric shocks, some of them very severe, by the "teacher" during the course of the experiment.
B) the teacher was allowed to decide which level of shock, if any, to administer to the learner.
C) the subject assigned to the teacher role was given a sample electric shock at the 45-volt level.
D) the learner was allowed to leave once the level of shock administered by the teacher became too painful.

Question 36

Normative social influence results from people's desire to:

A) reduce cognitive dissonance.
B) be correct and have accurate information.
C) be liked and accepted by others.
D) avoid the fundamental attribution error.

Question 37

An area of social psychology called social cognition studies the effect that situational factors and other people have on an individual's behavior.

A) True
B) False

Question 38

The Robbers Cave Experiment showed that an effective way to reduce prejudice and tension between members of different groups was to:

A) create a situation in which members of different groups cooperate to achieve a common goal.
B) set up competitive situations in which members of different groups can demonstrate their expertise.
C) provide opportunities for members of different groups to socialize.
D) force members of different groups to have contact with one another in a stressful situation, in this case being trapped in a cave.

Question 39

Jeff strongly believes that endangered species should be protected. After conducting a job search, he is offered a job with a company that intends to develop a parcel of land, destroying one of the few remaining habitats of an endangered species of earthworm. Which of the following circumstances would make it more likely that Jeff would behave in accordance with his attitude and refuse the job offer?

A) Jeff's parents tell him to take the job.
B) The job pays a high salary and offers valuable experience.
C) Jeff knows a great deal about the endangered earthworm species.
D) Jeff does not feel very strongly about earthworms, endangered or otherwise.

Question 40

An area of social psychology called social influence studies the mental processes people use to make sense of their social environment and includes the study of person perception, attribution, and attitudes.

A) True
B) False

Question 41

In relation to person perception, relegating someone to a social category on the basis of superficial information is a maladaptive process and usually leads to the wrong conclusions about the person.

A) True
B) False

Question 42

Physical appearance cues play an important role in person perception, and the implicit personality theory that most people have for attractive people is particularly influential.

A) True
B) False

Question 43

The automatic, nonconscious mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning are called implicit cognition.

A) True
B) False

Question 44

We are most likely to rely on automatic mental processes to categorize other people when it is important to our personal goals that we accurately perceive the other people.

A) True
B) False

Question 45

Schemas are the mental frameworks we hold about traits and behaviors associated with different types of people.

A) True
B) False

Question 46

Relying on social categories is a natural, adaptive, and efficient cognitive process that may have had survival advantages in our evolutionary past.

A) True
B) False

Question 47

In almost any situation, how we perceive ourselves has little or no influence on how we perceive other people and form impressions of them.

A) True
B) False

Question 48

Both deliberate and automatic thought processes influence our impressions, especially our first impression, of other people.

A) True
B) False

Question 49

From an evolutionary perspective, the process of making rapid judgments about other people on the basis of superficial information would have been maladaptive because our social categorizations would have been wrong in most cases.

A) True
B) False

Question 50

In almost any situation, we tend to size up other people and form impressions of them based on whether their behavior conforms to the social norms in that particular situation.

A) True
B) False

Question 51

Social categorization refers to the mental process of classifying people into groups (or categories) on the basis of their shared characteristics.

A) True
B) False

Question 52

The classification of people into social categories always involves a great deal of deliberate and conscious mental effort.

A) True
B) False

Question 53

The "rules," or expectations, for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation are called social norms.

A) True
B) False

Question 54

The deliberate, conscious mental processes involved in perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning are called explicit cognition.

A) True
B) False

Question 55

An implicit personality theory is a network of assumptions or beliefs about the relationships among various types of people, traits, and behaviors.

A) True
B) False

Question 56

Psychologists use the term implicit cognition to refer to the deliberate, conscious mental processes involved in perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning.

A) True
B) False

Question 57

Psychologists use the term explicit cognition to refer to the automatic, nonconscious mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning.

A) True
B) False

Question 58

The automatic, nonconscious mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning are called schemas.

A) True
B) False

Question 59

In almost any situation, we tend to size up other people and form impressions of them based on the goals we have in that particular situation.

A) True
B) False

Question 60

To quickly evaluate others we rely on automatic, nonconscious thought processes and rarely, if ever, do we use explicit cognition.

A) True
B) False

Question 61

The fundamental attribution error, hindsight bias, and the just-world hypothesis are biases that contribute to a common explanatory pattern called blaming the victim.

A) True
B) False

Question 62

According to research described in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," there is significantly reduced activity in both the orbital frontal cortex and the amygdala when we view attractive faces.

A) True
B) False

Question 63

Blaming the victim is the tendency to overestimate one's ability to have foreseen or predicted the outcome of an event.

A) True
B) False

Question 64

In the fMRI study discussed in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," researchers found that when we make direct eye contact with an attractive person, activity levels in a brain area called the ventral striatum decrease.

A) True
B) False

Question 65

"We get what we deserve, and we deserve what we get" reflects a belief called the just-world hypothesis.

A) True
B) False

Question 66

Neuroscience research using fMRI brain imaging has shown that making direct eye contact with an attractive person activates a brain area called the ventral striatum.

A) True
B) False

Question 67

The "what is beautiful is good" myth is an implicit personality theory reflecting the tendency of people to associate beauty with goodness and evil with ugliness.

A) True
B) False

Question 68

Although many people believe otherwise, physical attractiveness is not correlated with intelligence, happiness, or self-esteem.

A) True
B) False

Question 69

The fundamental attribution error refers to the strong and automatic tendency to attribute the behavior of other people to internal, personal characteristics while ignoring or underestimating the effects of external, situational factors.

A) True
B) False

Question 70

According to the fMRI study described in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," if we see an attractive person, a brain area called the ventral striatum is activated, and this is the same brain area that predicts reward.

A) True
B) False

Question 71

According to the fMRI study described in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," if we see an attractive person but cannot make eye contact with the person, there is decreased activity in a brain area called the ventral striatum.

A) True
B) False

Question 72

Blaming the victims of misfortune for causing their own problems or for not taking steps to prevent or avoid them reflects a belief called the just-world hypothesis.

A) True
B) False

Question 73

Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate one's ability to have foreseen or predicted the outcome of an event.

A) True
B) False

Question 74

According to research described in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," there is significantly increased activity in both the orbital frontal cortex and the amygdala when the attractive person's eye gaze is shifted away from the viewer (the non-eye-contact condition).

A) True
B) False

Question 75

Psychologists use the term attribution to refer to the mental process of explaining or determining the causes of someone's behavior, including our own.

A) True
B) False

Question 76

When the student in front of her bumped the edge of the doorway and dropped most of her books in the classroom doorway, Vanessa immediately thought to herself, "What a klutz!" Vanessa's response illustrates the fundamental attribution error.

A) True
B) False

Question 77

According to research described in the Focus on Neuroscience box "Brain Reward When Making Eye Contact with Attractive People," the orbital frontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens, and the amygdala are selectively responsive to the reward value of attractive faces.

A) True
B) False

Question 78

When it comes to explaining our own behavior, we tend to use external, situational attributions rather than internal, personal attributions.

A) True
B) False

Question 79

As a general rule, we tend to perceive good-looking people as self-centered, less intelligent, and less well-adjusted than most people.

A) True
B) False

Question 80

The ability to make rapid judgments about strangers on the basis of very limited information is probably an evolved characteristic that conferred survival value in our evolutionary past.

A) True
B) False