Exam 1: The Science of Psychology

Professor Holden gives a psychology exam on the origins of intelligence. She gives a short answer question based on the IQ scores of a parent-child pair. In order to answer the question correctly, her students need to remember that ________.

Systematically collecting data in real-world environments is the essence of which descriptive research method?

The school of psychology called structuralism used a technique called ________, which involved reporting the contents of consciousness to study a person's experiences.

A variable that the experimenter manipulates is called a(n) ________.

Who claimed that behavior is affected by reinforcement?

The magazine Desperate Wives publishes a survey of its female readers called "The Sex Life of the American Wife." It reports that 87 percent of all wives like to make love in rubber boots. The critical flaw in this research would be ________.

Each day in class, Dr. Helms explains to his students that they are wonderful whether they are academic successes or failures. He also points out that each individual consciously chooses to attend class and study and that these choices dramatically affect whether one is academically successful. Dr. Helms is most likely a ________ psychologist.

Experimenter bias can best be controlled using ________.

The CEO of a large automobile company says the cars the company makes are safe regardless of the fact that they lead the country in accidents due to faulty equipment. This discrepancy highlights which of the following critical thinking principles?

Anything that follows a response, making that response more likely to recur, is ________.

A researcher tests the hypothesis that students who study in the room where they take their tests will perform better on the tests than students who study in other rooms. She requires one group to study in the classroom where the exam is given and another group to study in the library. All students take the test in the classroom, and their test performance is compared. In this example, where students study is the:

Wilhelm Wundt used the method of objective introspection.

Skinner is associated with ________.

Critical thinking requires making judgments that are well-reasoned and well-thought out.

Pavlov's research demonstrated that ________.

In an experiment to test the effects of anxiety on performance, the dependent variable is the ________.

Kerri wanted to study the effects of having the oldest child in a family go off to college. She decided to use her own family after her brother went off to a college in France. She took notes each day on her parents' behavior and kept a diary on her own reactions. Kerri was using the technique called ________.

A researcher tests the hypothesis that students who study in the room where they take their tests will perform better on the tests than students who study in other rooms. She requires one group to study in the classroom where the exam is given and another group to study in the library. All students take the test in the classroom, and their test performance is compared. In this example, test performance is:

In a laboratory, smokers are asked to "drive" using a computerized driving simulator equipped with a stick shift and a gas pedal. The object is to maximize the distance covered by driving as fast as possible on a winding road while avoiding rear-end collisions. Some of the participants smoke a real cigarette immediately before climbing into the driver's seat. Others smoke a fake cigarette without nicotine. You are interested in comparing how many collisions the two groups have. In this study, the independent variable is ________.

The psychologist John Watson is associated with the ________ school of psychology and argued that psychology must concern itself only with ________.