Question 1

A child observed an attack of someone on the street by a man in a yellow jacket. Now he is afraid of any man in a yellow jacket he encounters. What is this phenomenon known as?

Accepted Answer

This is known as second-order conditioning. When a conditioned stimulus acts like or presents similarly to an unconditioned stimulus, the elicited response to the non-threatening conditioned stimulus is the same as to the threatening unconditioned stimulus.

Question 2

Object relations theory dealt with interpersonal relations, particularly those between parent and child. In a theoretical situation where a woman frustrated with a friend imagines herself yelling, but in reality remains quiet, what personality theory is being portrayed?

Accepted Answer

The object introject personality maintains a mental representation of the self that is not expressed in the external world; pathology results when this pattern remains at an infantile level.

Question 3

The ideas of Carl Jung's analytic psychology are similar to psychoanalytic techniques involving dream analysis and free associations. Which of the following ideas does NOT represent Jungian theory?

Accepted Answer

Jungian psychology states that we all turn from the extroversion of youth to the introversion of adulthood; that children are naturally more extroverted than adults.

Question 4

William Glasser developed reality therapy based on the idea that all people have five basic, innate needs. This method of therapy focuses on developing awareness of what we want or need at all times and behaving in a way to effectively receive those things. Which of the following is NOT one of the five basic needs Glasser identified?

Accepted Answer

Responsibility is not one of Glasser's five basic needs. They are: survival (the only physiological need), connection/love, freedom, fun, and power.

Question 5

Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), developed by Ellis, is based on the belief that irrational beliefs are the cause of emotional disturbances. This method of therapy is based on the ABC model (activating events, beliefs about events, and consequences of events). Ellis suggests three main insights of REBT. Which of the following statements does NOT belong to one of those insights?

Accepted Answer

Ellis does not suggest that emotional disturbance can be resolved or cured, so to speak. Rather, he posits that overcoming such problems requires continual and energetic work on replacing unhealthy thoughts with healthy thoughts, confronting and disputing irrational beliefs, and maintaining insight.

Question 6

Systems theory, as it applies to family therapy, maintains that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that families must be studied as a system, rather than a group of individuals. One idea of family systems theory posits that the same outcome can be reached through many different methods. What is this idea called?

Accepted Answer

Equifinality suggests that one outcome can be reached through many different methods and that one beginning can have many different outcomes. This idea suggests that family systems are flexible and need not be constrained by specific environmental factors to achieve certain shared goals.

Question 7

Murray Bowen developed extended family systems therapy to address his belief that levels of differentiation between family members lower from one generation to the next, causing severe stress in family units. His theory is based on eight interlocking concepts. Which of the following is NOT one of those concepts?

Accepted Answer

Metacommunication is not one of the eight concepts of extended family systems theory. They are: differentiation of self, emotional cutoff, sibling position, triangles, family projection process, multigenerational process, nuclear family emotional system, and societal emotional process.

Question 8

Carl Rogers, a humanist psychologist, developed a theory of the self based on nineteen original propositions. Which of the following statements is not in line with those propositions?

Accepted Answer

Rogers did not believe that the experiences and awareness of individuals were without meaning; that is a more existentialist approach to psychology. His theory focuses on the connection between the self, experiences, connection with the outside reality, and the way one interprets those experiences.

Question 9

Client-centered therapy, a humanistic method developed by Carl Rogers, is based on the idea that all people have the innate capacity to develop into positive, healthy beings. What does this model attribute pathology and behavioral problems to?

Accepted Answer

This therapy model assumes that pathology and problems are the result of incongruence between the self-one's true feelings-and experience, defined as the ability to be aware of and express those feelings. Client-centered therapy focuses on the internal processes of the individual rather than environmental factors that shape those processes.

Question 10

Gestalt therapy, based on Gestalt theory, focuses on a patient becoming aware of the whole personality by connecting to aspects of personality that are currently blocked. Polster and Polster identified five disturbances to that contact. Which of the following is NOT one of those disturbances?

Accepted Answer

Rejection is not one of the disturbances identified by Polster and Polster. The five include introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, and confluence.

Question 11

The Big Five model of personality is the result of years of research into the nature and development of personality. Which set of researchers published the most recent description of this theory?

Accepted Answer

Costa and McCrae published the NEO five-factor personality inventory, which closely mirrored the Pentagon model and earlier research in the field. Each set of researchers concluded that personality could be measured by five common factors.

Question 12

Instincts are characteristics of one species that are innate and organized. A fixed action pattern (FAP) is a description of certain instinctive behavior. What is the best description of a fixed action pattern?

Accepted Answer

A fixed action pattern is an instinctive behavioral sequence that is innate, indivisible, and runs to completion. Mating dances of birds are FAPs; a yawn that triggers observers to yawn is a human FAP.

Question 13

Social psychology studies the way individual behavior and social contexts influence each other. Attribution theory focuses on the explanations individuals generate to explain specific events or outcomes. Harold Kelley discussed types of information people consider when they make attributions. According to Kelley, people tend to make internal attributions when behavior has what qualities?

Accepted Answer

Kelley believed that people tend to make internal attributions for behavior that is low in distinctiveness and consensus and high in consistency-behavior that the individual engages in consistently over time and that other people do not engage in when in the same situation.

Question 14

In social psychology, heuristics refers to short or efficient cognitive methods of categorizing people or events and making decisions. These methods are simple, but often incorrect. What common heuristic refers to judgments made based on the capability of forming a mental image about a situation?

Accepted Answer

The simulation heuristic refers to making judgments based on the capability of forming a mental image about a situation or of having imagined the situation already prior to encountering it in real life.

Question 15

Social psychology studies the way individual behavior and social contexts influence each other. George Kelley's personal construct theory discussed how people develop and maintain views of the external world. Which of the following ideas is NOT part of his theory?

Accepted Answer

Personal construct theory is based on the idea that perceptions and experiences are shaped by expectations and past experiences. It does not posit that specific memories contribute to judgments of events (that is known as the availability heuristic).

Question 16

It has been observed that cyclists tend to have faster racing times when practicing with a team as compared to practicing alone. What is this phenomenon known as?

Accepted Answer

Social facilitation refers to the tendency for people to perform better when they are working with others or being watched; a cyclist practicing in a group will tend to be faster than when practicing alone.

Question 17

In social psychology, an attitude refers to a predisposition to respond to certain stimuli or situations. Friend T and friend X have a strong relationship with each other and T dislikes a political candidate, while X likes that candidate. According to Osgood's congruity theory, what is the likely outcome of this situation?

Accepted Answer

Congruity theory claims that when imbalance exists between attitudes, an individual will favor the object he feels most strongly about. In this situation, the two friends have high affinity, so X is likely to change his attitude towards the candidate in order to achieve balance.

Question 18

A number of social psychology theories have been proposed to explain how people maintain and adjust self-conceptions. Which theory explains the following situation? Someone with low self-esteem seeks out or encourages negative feedback.

Accepted Answer

The self-verification theory posits that people are motivated to confirm self-conceptions whether they are negative or positive and will filter feedback accordingly. So someone who is depressed will ignore positive feedback and focus on negative feedback that seems to confirm their distorted self-perceptions.

Question 19

Prejudice has roots in a number of psychological and environmental factors. Theodore Adorno designed a test known as the F-scale to measure a certain personality trait that contributes to prejudice. What does the F-scale measure?

Accepted Answer

The F-scale measures authoritarianism, which is considered to be the personality trait most related to prejudice. Sexism is a type of prejudice, not a personality trait.

Question 20

Person perception refers to ways people form impressions of others. Rosenhan conducted a pseudopatient experiment in 1973 to explore the social context of forming impressions. In that experiment, who recognized that patients were simply pretending to be psychotic rather than actually experiencing psychosis?

Accepted Answer

Rosenhan had seven undisturbed individuals make appointments at different hospitals, claiming they heard voices during their intakes. Once admitted, each person acted normally and did not repeat their initial statements. However, all but one was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This experiment demonstrated the power of social context on person perceptions.

Quiz 9: Theory