Exam 4: Choices and Actions: The Self in Control

Two main reasons that people engage in self-defeating behaviors are because of ____ and ____.

According to ____, when it comes to dating members of the opposite sex and mating with them, men will take advantage of every opportunity to pass along their genes.

The certainty effect in decision making refers to the tendency for people to give greater weight to ____ than to ____.

Research suggests that when athletes who prepare for an important game visualize themselves training really hard for the game, they ____; when they visualize themselves actually winning the game, they ____.

Children's capacity to delay gratification is increased when ____.

Assume that you have to choose between two apartments. You can afford both of them, and they are both adequate for your needs. Which feature should you pay the MOST attention to if you want to maximize your satisfaction with the apartment a year after you have moved in?

Which statement MOST accurately describes how humans differ from other animals in terms of goals?

Thanh despises his job. His co-workers are, at best, annoying and more often, obnoxious and offensive. His supervisor is a narcissistic bully, and the pay does not begin to make up for how terrible the workplace conditions are. Thanh is comforted by the fact that he can quit this job and work as a freelance website designer if he wants to. This scenario is consistent with ____.

The acronym TOTE-which stands for "Test, Operate, Test, Exit"-is shorthand for the processes involved in ____.

Much of the time, people are interested in keeping their options open rather than making restrictive, final decisions. Two forms of decision avoidance that help people postpone decisions are ____.

Pranav was the sole breadwinner of his family for many years. As he ages, he develops a degenerative illness that renders him bedridden and leaves him dependent on his family members. As an act of kindness toward his family, Pranav commits suicide. Pranav MOST likely committed suicide in order to ____.

____ occurs when people think that they will fail and therefore quit trying to succeed.

The panic button effect refers to the tendency for people ____.

The capacity for change is one of the key ingredients for successful self-regulation and is essentially the same as ____.

Suppose that Sergej has just asked Georgia whether she would like to study with him for an upcoming English exam. Georgia is struggling in the class, and she knows that Sergej is an excellent English student. She therefore enthusiastically agrees and says that she is excited to study with him. According to error management theory, it is likely that Sergej will view Georgia's enthusiasm as a sign that ____.

Gisele has applied to an extremely competitive graduate program. She knows that a faculty committee meets for several days to make decisions about whom to admit into the program. Based on research, the members of the faculty committee will MOST likely be making their best decisions ____.

The tendency to give more weight to possible losses than to possible gains when making decisions that require tradeoffs is known as ____.

The so-called Zeigarnik effect helps us to ____.

In social psychology, people who regard traits and abilities as fixed and stable are known as ____, while people who believe that it is possible to change and improve traits and abilities are known as ____.

MOST studies have found that the primary emotional state of suicidal people is ____.