Note: In the past, students have reported that the questions here are easier than the exam questions
Click what you believe to be the best answer for each question. Once you have clicked an answer, you will be given an explanation as to why your answer was correct or incorrect. If the answer is incorrect, you will be given a chance to go back to the question, or go back to the home page. If the answer is correct, you will be given the chance to either go to the next question or go back to the home page. It may be helpful to look at the links that you think are wrong too. They have valuable information about WHY those choices are wrong.
Note: All questions are interactive. 1-17 have reasons why each selection is correct or incorrect, and 18-24 only have whether the answer you choose was correct or incorrect
Good luck.
1: Which of the following does NOT occur in the self-serving bias?
A: we are motivated to enhance our
self-esteem
B: we attribute our good behaviors
to the situation
C: we attribute our bad behaviors
to the situation
D: we make internal attributions
for our good behaviors
2: Why is it easier to think of words that start with
the letter K than
words that have the letter K as the third letter?
A: availability heuristic
B: representativeness
heuristic
C: false consensus bias
D: illusory correlation
3: A store was robbed last night. Witnesses said
that they saw a group of
teenagers standing on the corner of that same
street yesterday
afternoon. What factor in the attributional
process might cause people
to blame the teenagers for the robbery?
A: perceptual salience
B: proximity
C: cognitive busyness
D: motivational bias
4: A group of people were told that red M&M's caused
cancer. Later they
were told that they had received incorrect information
and that red
M&M's were absolutely safe. According
to research on belief
perseverance, the people
A: believed the new information
and felt safe eating the M&Ms
B: continued to believe
that red M&M's were harmful
C: decided they would
eat only the red M&M's and avoid the rest
D: bought stock in the
company that makes M&M's
5: I like you. You and I have an argument
in a night club, and I hit you,
which neither of us likes. According to
balance theory, what are the
options I have for restoring balance to our situation?
A: I might decide that
I like you less than I thought I did.
B: I might decide that
I didn't really hit you very hard.
C: I might offer you
a toaster.
D: a and b only
6: The relationship between how many violent TV programs
children watch in their homes,
and high levels of aggression, is an example of:
A: a causal relationship
B: a correlational relationship
C: a demand characteristic
D: an experimental relationship
7: When you phone one of your friends, she is cold
and distant toward you.
After hanging up, you consider the possible causes
for her behavior.
According to Kelley's covariation model of attribution,
you would
consider three kinds of information. Which
is NOT one of them?
A: how your friend acts
toward other people on the telephone
B: how your friend acted
toward you the last few times you called
C: how other friends
of yours have been acting toward you when you
phone them
D: how you acted toward
your friend during the phone call
8: The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of
one's beliefs, termed the
overconfidence phenomenon, can be remedied by
A: receiving prompt feedback
about the accuracy of one's judgments
B: instructing people
to think of a good reason why one's beliefs may
be wrong
C. Learning about the
base-rate fallacy.
D: A and B
9: In which of the following cases is a person most
likely to maintain
attitude change?
A: Johnny is threatened
with severe punishment if he does not clean up his room.
B: Students are paid
$300 for writing an essay that goes against their
beliefs.
C: A college student
goes through severe initiation to get into a
sorority.
D: A student is assigned
to a campus group that later proves to be
unrewarding.
10: The goal of attributional retraining is to encourage
students to
persist in school by changing their attributions
regarding the cause of
academic failure from ______________ causes to
__________________
causes.
A: external unstable;
internal stable
B: internal stable;
internal unstable
C: internal unstable;
internal stable
D: external unstable;
internal stable
11: During discussion section, a debate was held
regarding the ethics of
the Stanford Prison Study. Results of the
demonstration generally
showed that
A: observers successfully
identified the debaters' true attitudes every
time
B: observers said they
were unable to identify the debates' true
attitudes because
the debaters had been randomly assigned to argue a certain position
C: observers tended
to disregard the random assignment to argue a
certain position
and identified the debaters' true attitudes to be
those they expressed
during the debate
D: observers own beliefs
influenced their ratings of the debaters,
regardless of
the positions taken in the debate
12: Self-perception theory differs from dissonance theory in that
A: self-perception theory
doesn't address the effects that our
behaviors have
on our expressed opinions
B: self-perception
theory doesn't maintain that an uncomfortable state of tension is aroused
when attitudes and actions are inconsistent
C: self-perception
theory predicts that small rewards for behavior will
produce larger
changes in expressed opinions than will large
rewards, whereas
dissonance theory predicts that large rewards will have more effect on
opinions
D: self-perception
theory emphasizes more than does dissonance theory the effects that our
attitudes have on behavior
13: Self-perception theory states that we
A: work to see ourselves
in the most positive light
B: consider how other
people would act in our place
C: are aware of our
attitudes and focus attention on any discrepancies among them
D: have no special
access to our own attitudes
14: The overjustification effect states that
A: rewarding children
is always harmful
B: rewards are harmful
only when they are given as a surprise
C: rewarding a child
after an activity he enjoys may create too many
reasons to enjoy
the activity
D: rewarding a child
after an activity he enjoys will increase his
enjoyment of
the activity
15: According to "Aronson's first law," people who do crazy things
A: are, by definition,
crazy
B: may not be crazy,
but are different from normal people
C: may be crazy, but
also may be normal people trying to adjust to
unusual social
circumstances
D: are perceived as
crazy by people with rigid standards for social
behavior
16: An example of an internal attribution for someone's behavior is
A: the weather is rainy
and depressing today
B: she was lucky
C: she is a certain
type of person
D: she was pressured
by others to behave that way
17: One of Nancy's professors requires her to write
an essay favoring
additional tuition increases for the spring.
Despite his education and
the fact the he required her to write the essay,
research on the
fundamental attribution error suggests that the
professor is likely to
infer
A: that Nancy actually
does favor the tuition increase
B: that because Nancy
was required to write the essay, it could not
possibly reflect
her real opinions
C: that Nancy's attitude
cannot be inferred from the essay on account
of the conditions
under which it was written
D: that because Nancy
is a student, she will not favor the tuition
increase
18: The fundamental attribution error occurs when
A: we perceive others
to be more similar to ourselves than they really
are
B: observers fail to
augment the effects of the dispositional qualities
of the actor
C: observers overestimate
situational influences on behavior and
underestimate
dispositional influences on behavior
D: observers underestimate
situational influences and overestimate
dispositional
influences on an actor's behavior
19: Athletes receive enormous amounts of money for
their services to
professional teams. If, as their salary
increases, their enjoyment of
playing decreases, this change is best explained
by
A: balance theory
B: cognitive dissonance
theory
C: Kelley's covariation
model
D: the overjustification
effect
20: A significant correlation between the incidence
of mental illness and
the incidence of divorce among middle class people
is likely to mean
A: the mentally ill
have difficulty maintaining a successful marriage
B: getting divorced
leads to mental illness
C: divorce and mental
illness are both caused by other factors, such as a difficult childhood
D: all of the above
may be true
21: According to Bem's self-perception theory, participants
in the $1 and
$20 experiment who told a lie for $1 changed their
attitudes more than
participants who told a lie fo $20 because the
participants
A: wanted to reduce
the unpleasant psychological tension they
experienced from
telling a lie for so little money
B: inferred that they
must have liked the task because they said they
did for so little
money
C: inferred that their
self-concept could be affirmed by changing their
attitudes
D: wanted to increase
their self-esteem
NEW QUESTIONS (note: these answers do not have rationales)
22. One of the students who was given the role of playing
guard in the
Stanford Prison Study said that in the beginning he felt
really bad being
so mean and controlling towards the students who were
playing the
prisoners. However, by the end of the study, he
had succeeded in
convincing himself that that they were inferior to him
and deserved the
treatment that he was giving them. This is an example
of:
(credit Rebecca Engelhart, Spring 99)
A. Over Justification
Effect
B. Self-Efficacy
C. Cognitive Dissonance
D. Self-Handicapping
23. Many cult leaders gain followers by having them make
many small
sacrifices one after the other, which eventually get
bigger and bigger and
bigger until the followers are willing to do anything--even
take their own
lives. This is an example of:
A. Foot-in-the-door
Principle
B. Fundamental Attribution
Error
C. Counterfactual Thinking
D. Over Justification
Effect
(credit Rebecca Engelhart, Spring 99)
Thanks for the questions Rebecca!
24. Recall the video of Daniel Gilbert's lecture that
we showed in section.
Gilbert described a situation we have probably all encountered
before:
a rude server at a restaurant. Generally, we do
not consider that the
server may be having a bad day, or has to work long hours,
or has to work in a
bad environment. Rather, most people attribute
her rudeness to her
disposition. This is known as_____________
A) Overjustification effect
B) Correspondence bias
C) Self-serving bias
D) Empathy