Practice Exam for Midterm #1
Most social-psychological research is conducted
either in the field or in the _____ and is either
correlational or ______. (1)
a. clinic; survey
b. laboratory; survey
c. laboratory; experimental
d. clinic; experimental
The author of the text suggests that adjectives
such as "self-actualized," "collateral damage,"
and "ambitious" demonstrate (1)
a. how psychological concepts have hidden values.
b. how psychological concepts are individualistic.
c. an inordinate concern with mental health.
d. how personality psychologists are more influential than social
psychologists.
The self-handicapping strategy enables us to
(2)
a. accept greater responsibility for our failures.
b. take greater credit for our successes.
c. avoid the fundamental attribution error.
d. circumvent the ill effects of the Peter Principle.
When people are asked whether they would comply
with demands to deliver cruel shocks or
would be hesitant to help a victim if several other people were
present, (2)
a. they overwhelmingly deny their vulnerability to such influences.
b. they admit they might be influenced but in their actual behavior
are not.
c. males deny they would be influenced, but females admit they
would.
d. they accurately predict their future behavior on such significant
matters.
Studies of experimenter bias and teacher expectations
have revealed the presence of (3)
a. hindsight bias.
b. illusory correlation.
c. self-fulfilling prophecy.
d. a fundamental attribution error.
People from collectivist cultures are more
likely than Americans to (3)
a. offer situational explanations for someone's actions.
b. offer dispositional explanations for someone's actions.
c. engage in self-handicapping.
d. offer self-serving explanations for their own behavior.
Research suggests that to change health habits
through persuasion, we should alter people's
attitudes towards (4)
a. specific health practices.
b. the general concept of "health fitness."
c. health authorities.
d. the value of life itself.
Self-perception theory is to _____ as dissonance
theory is to _____. (4)
a. impression formation; self-monitoring
b. self-monitoring; impression formation
c. attitude change; attitude formation
d. attitude formation; attitude change
The Anderson and Pichert (1977) study on asking
people to use a "burglar" or "home buyer"
schema in order to recall facts about a house demonstrated (L)
a. that schemas are important for encoding information.
b. how schemas can be used to retrieve information.
c. why schemas can block information.
d. how schemas often distort information.
Kahneman and Tversky did not feel that Bayesian
statistical inference was a good way of
characterizing how we reason because we (L)
a. tend to be susceptible to heuristics.
b. are far too logical to combine probabilities in such a manner.
c. seem to bay at the moon in a nonstatistical manner.
d. compare our estimates with base-rate information.
Essay Questions
Owens, Bower, and Black (1979) conducted a
series of experiments they called "The Soap
Opera Effect." What happened when people knew the overall
script (schema) as opposed to
those who didn't know the overall script?
Dr. Mio discussed two different ways in which
we can learn helplessness. What were these two
different perspectives? How might the effects of learned helplessness
help explain violence in inner cities?