Exam 12: Groups

Imagine you are playing a video game when five strangers arrive to watch you.According to Zajonc's work on social facilitation, the ____________ created by the presence of these strangers would impair your performance if you ____________ this particular video game.

The approach/inhibition theory suggests that _________________ individuals are more inclined to pursue their goals, whereas ________________ individuals are more inclined to constrain their behavior.

Bob and Will are arguing about capital punishment and end up adapting more extreme attitudes on the topic than they had previously.According to the social comparison interpretation, why did Bob's and Will's attitudes become more extreme?

Several military officials meet to plan battle strategy.Captain Biggs thinks that General Olsen's strategy will be ineffective and deadly for American soldiers, but Biggs does not speak out.He is worried that others will see him as an ignorant coward.Biggs's response in this situation best illustrates how the concept of ____________ applies to groupthink.

Which of the following events BEST illustrates the disastrous effects of groupthink?

Paige ran out of clean laundry and had to wear her mother's Barry Manilow T-shirt to school.According to the spotlight effect, Paige will overestimate the extent to which others will notice her appearance and behavior.

Imagine you are just learning how to play the piano, so you are not very good.You are practicing by yourself when suddenly your mother and her friends walk into the room to listen.You notice that your performance has changed.Research on ____________ is most relevant to predicting how your performance will change in this situation.Specifically, this research suggests that your performance will ____________.

Researchers have manipulated how powerful participants felt during an experiment.Consistent with the approach/inhibition theory of power, study results suggest that ____________ were more likely to ____________.

Social comparison is one explanation for why group polarization occurs.

According to ____________, being aware of another person's presence divides our attention between this person and the task at hand.This division of attention is arousing, which explains why people perform better on well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Zajonc argued that the mere presence of others tends to ____________ performance ____________, but to ____________ performance ____________.

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the phenomenon of social loafing?

According to the textbook, groupthink occurs because people feel anonymous in groups.

Which of the following statements captures the risky shift phenomenon?

People tend to perform complex tasks better in the presence of others than when alone, but they tend to perform simple tasks better when alone than in the presence of others.

With his roommates, Jason participates in a group discussion on the merits of gun control.Once the discussion is over, Jason finds that he and his roommates have all adopted similar pro-gun control attitudes.This is an example of

What (or who)determines whether sorority group members will engage in self-censorship?

Research on social facilitation warrants some practical advice.All of the following recommendations are supported by this research except for one.Which one?

John wants to show that social comparison processes help explain why the group polarization effect occurs.He decides to conduct an experiment.Which of the following strategies should John employ?

As discussed in the textbook, social psychological research on culture and valuing risk shows that