Exam 7: Attitudes, Beliefs and Consistency

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) performed a famous experiment on cognitive dissonance in which subjects were asked to lie to a fellow student (about how fun a psychology experiment was) for either $1 or $20. For subjects in the $1 condition, dissonance was created because these subjects thought to themselves: "I am a nice, ethical person, but I have just been mean and told a lie." It appears that the $1 subjects were ultimately able to reduce this dissonance by thinking to themselves: ____.

According to balance theory (P-O-X theory), if Greg likes Tom and Tom likes Ximena, then Greg must also like Ximena.

The ease with which an attitude comes to mind is called ____________________.

The tendency for people to hold on to their beliefs-even when their beliefs are discredited by compelling evidence-is known as ____.

Social learning is also sometimes referred to as observational learning or ____.

Suppose that Janine-who volunteers for a variety of environmental causes and frequently speaks on campus about the importance of recycling-decided to buy a gas-guzzling SUV last week. When is she most likely to try to rationalize her behavior?

According to cognitive dissonance theory, if Selena has just volunteered to give a presentation to her classmates about the importance of practicing safe sex at all times, then-at least in the immediate future-what best describes her likely behavior?

Which of the following is NOT a proposed solution to the problem of attitude-behavior inconsistency?

Which of the following is NOT one of the benefits of religious belief discussed in your text?

As discussed in the text, there are three types of beliefs that help people to function effectively in the social world, and that are often cast into doubt when people experience violent crimes or other traumas. Which of the following is NOT one of them?

Suppose that Sam disliked reggaeton the very first time he heard it. How should we expect his attitude to change (if at all) if he hears it several more times?

A study (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977) conducted to defend attitudes as a construct predictive of behavior found that if you want to predict who will give blood, you should place which of the following statements on your attitude measure? (Assume a five-point Likert scale anchored by strongly disagree to strongly agree.)

The fact that the gap between pro-condom attitudes and non-condom-using behaviors is larger among women than men best demonstrates ____.

If you want to cope better with tragedy, you should engage in ____________________comparisons with others.

In general, people do not like to suffer, work hard, or make sacrifices. If and when they do these things, they want to feel that their efforts were worthwhile. Thus, even when people's efforts do not actually seem to have paid off, people will nonetheless try to convince themselves that they suffered for a good reason. This tendency is known as ____.

Operant conditioning is also sometimes referred to as ____.

Last summer, Fabia applied for three jobs. The first required a resume, but nothing else. The second required both a resume and a long personal statement. The third required a resume and indicated that a long personal statement was optional (recommended but not required; Fabia went ahead and wrote one anyway). Suppose that Fabia was turned down by all three jobs. Which rejection was she probably MOST upset about?

Which statement about humans and animals is most correct?

"The world is perfect" is one of the assumptive worlds identified by Janoff-Bulman (1992).

Early research on classical conditioning was performed with dogs. In certain variations of this research, experimenters repeatedly presented dogs with meat powder just after ringing a bell. The dogs (who would naturally salivate after being exposed to meat powder) learned to associate the bell with the meat powder, and began to salivate as soon as they heard the bell. In this research, the dogs' salivation was ____.