Deck 3: Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind

Question 1

Jumping out of your seat as a result of an unexpected scene in a movie is what type of thinking?

A) controlled processing
B) automatic processing
C) internal processing
D) intentional processing

Answer 1

automatic processing

Question 2

While waiting to cross the street, you witness a man running a red light-causing a three-car accident. Just after it happens, the man who ran the stoplight gets out of the car to talk to you. He tells you that the light was yellow. Later you tell police that you remembered the light being yellow, not red, when the man went through the intersection. This scenario illustrates

A) the priming effect.
B) the confirmation bias.
C) belief perseverance.
D) the misinformation effect.

Answer 2

the misinformation effect.

Question 3

You have a tendency to assume someone is still a good friend even after a person acts otherwise. This tendency is known as the

A) belief perseverance phenomenon.
B) belief continuity phenomenon.
C) correspondence bias.
D) belief disconfirmation bias.

Answer 3

belief perseverance phenomenon.

Question 4

Activating particular associations in memory is called

A) triggering.
B) initiation.
C) galvanization.
D) priming.

Question 5

Despite reading numerous research studies that report the association of fast food consumption with heart disease and diabetes, Rachel continues to eat fast food and thinks that it is harmless. Rachel's thinking is an example of

A) belief assimilation.
B) belief consolidation.
C) belief perseverance.
D) operation of the availability heuristic.

Question 6

Mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations are called

A) schemas.
B) hypotheses.
C) ethics.
D) theories.

Question 7

Your immediate recognition of your friend's face or her voice on the phone is an example of

A) controlled processing.
B) illusory correlation.
C) automatic processing.
D) attribution error.

Question 8

Researchers provided study participants with evidence that either risk-prone or cautious people make better firefighters. When participants wrote an explanation for the findings, they were particularly susceptible to

A) the fundamental attribution error.
B) the hindsight bias.
C) behavioral confirmation.
D) belief perseverance.

Question 9

In the context of political perceptions, people everywhere perceive mediators and the media as

A) biased in favor of their position.
B) objective in their decisions and coverage.
C) biased against their position.
D) favoring the ruling party.

Question 10

Persistence of one's initial conceptions is called

A) hindsight bias.
B) cognitive dissonance.
C) belief perseverance.
D) counterfactual thinking.

Question 11

Sometimes the basis for one's belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives. Social psychologists refer to this as

A) rationalization.
B) cognitive dissonance.
C) attitude consistency.
D) belief perseverance.

Question 12

Incorporating inaccurate information into one's memory of an event, after witnessing the event and receiving misleading information about it is called

A) the priming effect.
B) the confirmation bias.
C) the information processing fallacy.
D) the misinformation effect.

Question 13

Your best friend is a master chess player and has won numerous awards. When you play chess with her, you notice that she seems to be aware of strategies almost immediately after your move. Her awareness of these strategies reflects what type of thinking?

A) controlled processing
B) automatic processing
C) internal processing
D) intentional processing

Question 14

"Implicit" thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness is called

A) controlled processing.
B) automatic processing.
C) internal processing.
D) intentional processing.

Question 15

Your summer vacation was perhaps not an overwhelmingly positive event, but during the final week of August, you remember it as being a fantastic time. This is an example of

A) perseverance bias.
B) fundamental attribution error.
C) correspondence bias.
D) rosy retrospection.

Question 16

In the context of reconstructing past attitudes, researchers had students write essays opposing student control over university curricula. When asked to recall how they had felt about the same issue a week earlier most of the students

A) remembered having held a very different attitude.
B) could not remember how they had felt.
C) mistakenly "remembered" having felt the same as they do now.
D) admitted they had always supported student control of university curricula but pretended to oppose it in their essays.

Question 17

"Explicit" thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious is called

A) controlled processing.
B) automatic processing.
C) external processing.
D) intentional processing.

Question 18

In the context of perceiving and interpreting events, which of the following statements is true of beliefs?

A) Beliefs don't influence how information is perceived.
B) Beliefs influence how information is perceived.
C) Beliefs are unrelated to information processing.
D) Beliefs are always changed by new information.

Question 19

To retrieve a memory of where your date told you she wanted to go for dinner tomorrow, you need to activate one of the strands that leads to this memory, such as thinking about what types of food she does and does not like. This process is known as

A) belief perseverance.
B) reconstruction.
C) priming.
D) induction.

Question 20

Jack works as a software engineer in a multinational company. He finds that the company is training employees to develop their leadership skills. Jack, who values self-development, thinks this is a good opportunity to improve his skills. In the context of perceiving and interpreting events, which of the following statements is true?

A) Jack's beliefs do not influence how he sees new information.
B) Jack's beliefs influence how he sees new information.
C) Jack's beliefs are unrelated to how he sees new information.
D) Jack's beliefs are changed with new information.

Question 21

Which of the following is a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments?

A) an implicit attitude
B) an explicit attitude
C) a heuristic
D) a confirmation bias

Question 22

You did not study for your psychology exam. However, you imagine yourself earning a better grade than the one you actually earned. This is an example of

A) implicit thinking.
B) explicit thinking.
C) counterfactual thinking.
D) the fundamental attribution error.

Question 23

One reason people are overconfident is that they are not inclined to seek out information

A) from experts.
B) that is objective and factual.
C) that involves judging estimates and comparisons.
D) that might disprove what they believe.

Question 24

The tendency to imagine alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened but did not is called

A) the base-rate fallacy.
B) automatic thinking.
C) reflective bias.
D) counterfactual thinking.

Question 25

Sharon typically watches televised news stations that support her existing political beliefs. She is less inclined to watch the news on other stations, as it may disprove her preconceptions. Sharon's approach illustrates the

A) confirmation bias.
B) misinformation effect.
C) base-rate fallacy.
D) I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon.

Question 26

The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling a typical member is referred to as the _____ heuristic.

A) availability
B) representativeness
C) vividness
D) matching

Question 27

Which of the following strategies will NOT be helpful in reducing the overconfidence bias?

A) Give prompt feedback to them about their decisions.
B) Have them consider disconfirming information.
C) Have them think about why they could be wrong.
D) Give them feedback about others' performance.

Question 28

On the first day of class, we see a middle-aged man at the front of the room, talking to a younger man. If we assume the older man is the professor and the younger man is the student, we are relying on _____.

A) overconfidence phenomenon
B) representativeness heuristic
C) belief perseverance
D) misinformation effect

Question 29

You used to envy your brother because he was always so self-assured when talking to others. Yet the older you become, the more you realize that your brother is more often convinced of things rather than accurate about things. Your brother's behavior can be explained by the

A) perseverance bias.
B) fundamental attribution error.
C) correspondence bias.
D) overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 30

When we are eager to seek information that verifies our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence that might disprove our beliefs, the _____ has occurred.

A) hindsight bias
B) confirmation bias
C) overconfidence phenomenon
D) fundamental attribution error

Question 31

The process of judging something by intuitively comparing it to our mental representation of a category uses the _____ heuristic.

A) availability
B) representativeness
C) vividness
D) matching

Question 32

Assuming most crimes involve violence because the news generally reports on rapes, robberies, and beatings is an example of the _____ heuristic.

A) availability
B) representativeness
C) vividness
D) matching

Question 33

Kruger and Dunning (1999) found that those students who scored lowest on tests of grammar and logic were _____ to overestimating their abilities.

A) least prone
B) most prone
C) sometimes prone
D) never prone

Question 34

After 9/11, many people abandoned air travel most likely because of the

A) availability heuristic.
B) representativeness heuristic.
C) confirmation bias.
D) planning fallacy.

Question 35

Each semester, you repeatedly underestimate how long it will take you to complete a research paper that is due at the end of the term. Your behavior is an example of the

A) perseverance bias.
B) fundamental attribution error.
C) correspondence bias.
D) overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 36

Which of the following strategies might be helpful in reducing the overconfidence bias?

A) Get people to think about why their judgments might be wrong.
B) Delay feedback regarding the accuracy of their judgments.
C) Inform people about the overconfidence bias.
D) Tell people that there is no remedy for the overconfidence bias.

Question 37

Although travelers in the United States are more likely to die in an automobile crash than on a commercial flight covering the same distance, people often assume that flying is more dangerous than driving. What type of heuristic are people using when they make this assumption?

A) availability heuristic
B) representativeness heuristic
C) vividness heuristic
D) matching heuristic

Question 38

Once during a hospital stay, you observed a man and a woman (both in health professional attire) talking. You assumed that the man was a physician and that the woman was a nurse. Later, you found out the opposite was true. What type of heuristic did you use during your initial reaction to the two individuals?

A) availability heuristic
B) representativeness heuristic
C) vividness heuristic
D) matching heuristic

Question 39

The cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their accessibility in memory is called the _____ heuristic.

A) availability
B) representativeness
C) vividness
D) matching

Question 40

The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs is called the

A) perseverance bias.
B) fundamental attribution error.
C) correspondence bias.
D) overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 41

Which statement is NOT correct as it relates to mood and judgment?

A) Happy people are more trusting and loving.
B) Unhappy people tend to be more self-focused and brooding.
C) A bad mood primes our recollection of aggressive events.
D) Our moods don't influence our judgments.

Question 42

A fellow student is consistently late for class. You assume this is because he is lazy and unorganized. What type of attribution are you making for his behavior?

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) illusory

Question 43

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or behaviors to return toward average is called

A) the regression heuristic.
B) regression toward the extreme.
C) regression toward the average.
D) reversion.

Question 44

Research on gambling has found that throwing the dice or spinning the wheel increases people's confidence. This illustrates the

A) illusory correlation.
B) illusion of control.
C) representative heuristic.
D) availability heuristic.

Question 45

After breaking up with your boyfriend, you imagine that you would still be with him if you had treated him more considerately. This is an example of

A) implicit thinking.
B) explicit thinking.
C) counterfactual thinking.
D) the fundamental attribution error.

Question 46

Antonia Abbey and colleagues (1987, 1991, 2011) found that _____ are more likely to attribute a _____ friendliness to sexual interest.

A) women; man's
B) men; woman's
C) both women and men; man's
D) both women and men; woman's

Question 47

The theory of how people explain others' behavior by ascribing it either to internal dispositions or to external situations is called

A) dispositional theory.
B) motivational theory.
C) situational theory.
D) attribution theory.

Question 48

The perception of a relationship where none actually exists, or the perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists, is called

A) a representative heuristic.
B) an availability heuristic.
C) an illusory correlation.
D) the overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 49

You are consistently late to your psychology class, because the biology class you have immediately before it is in a building on the other side of campus. You are concerned that your professor does not think you are a serious student because of your chronic tardiness. If this were true, what type of attribution would your professor be making about your behavior?

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) external

Question 50

Although you once earned a 100 on your physics exam, you have subsequently been unable to earn a perfect score again. Your experience may be understood in terms of

A) the illusory correlation.
B) regression toward the average.
C) the representativeness heuristic.
D) counterfactual thinking.

Question 51

Jim who scored less in a subject regretted for not having studied sufficiently and wished he could have been more serious during his exams. This is an example of

A) a representative heuristic.
B) counterfactual thinking.
C) an illusory correlation.
D) the overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 52

Attributing behavior to a person's traits is called _____ attribution.

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) epigenetic

Question 53

Thinking that our premonitions correlate with events represents

A) a representative heuristic.
B) an availability heuristic.
C) an illusory correlation.
D) the overconfidence phenomenon.

Question 54

According to the text, many men assume women are flattered by repeated requests for dates, which women more often see as harassing. This is an example of

A) arrogance.
B) a lack of intuition.
C) misattribution.
D) miscommunication.

Question 55

Which statement is NOT correct as it relates to mood and judgment?

A) Our moods color how we judge our worlds partly by bringing to mind past experiences associated with the mood.
B) Mood-related thoughts may distract us from complex thinking processes.
C) When emotionally aroused, we are less likely to make System 1 snap judgments.
D) When watching a videotape of their behavior, subjects in a bad mood detected far fewer positive behaviors.

Question 56

Your boss is always cranky. You assume this is because he has not had a raise in 10 years. What type of attribution are you making to explain his behavior?

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) personal

Question 57

The idea that chance events are subject to our influence describes

A) an illusory correlation.
B) an illusion of control.
C) a representative heuristic.
D) an availability heuristic.

Question 58

Your boss is always cranky. You assume this is because she is an unhappy person. What type of attribution are you making to explain her behavior?

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) illusory

Question 59

Counterfactual thinking is more likely when

A) we are not expecting a favorable outcome.
B) we are surprised by favorable results.
C) we can easily picture an alternative outcome.
D) the event is insignificant.

Question 60

You are consistently late to your psychology class, because the biology class you have immediately before it is in a building on the other side of campus. You are concerned that your professor does not think you are a serious student because of your chronic tardiness, so you inform her of why you are always late. You can now safely conclude that your professor will make what type of attribution about your behavior?

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) internal

Question 61

In _____ cultures, people are less likely to perceive others in terms of personal dispositions.

A) individualistic
B) collectivistic
C) religious
D) secular

Question 62

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on other people's behavior is called the

A) false consensus bias.
B) misinformation effect.
C) fundamental attribution error.
D) dispositional bias.

Question 63

People in Western cultures are more inclined to assume that others' behaviors

A) reflect inner traits.
B) are caused by the situation.
C) do not reflect inner traits.
D) do not cause events.

Question 64

Those who make dispositional attributions regarding poverty and unemployment tend to adopt political positions that

A) offer more direct support to the poor.
B) are unsympathetic to the poor.
C) tend to blame the environment for their problems.
D) are more neutral regarding poverty and unemployment.

Question 65

Attributing behavior to a person's environment is called _____ attribution.

A) motivational
B) dispositional
C) situational
D) genetic

Question 66

In a study conducted by Lassiter and his colleagues (2005), participants observed a suspect confessing during a police interview. The results indicated that participants were more likely to perceive the confession as coerced when they viewed the confession

A) live.
B) through a two-way mirror.
C) with a camera focused on the suspect.
D) with a camera focused on the detective.

Question 67

According to a study by Burger and Pavelich (1994), voters were more likely to attribute the outcome of an election to the _____ the day after a presidential election, and to the _____ a year after the election.

A) poor weather on election day; candidate's oral presentation skills
B) candidate's oral presentation skills; poor weather on election day
C) candidate's personal traits and positions; nation's economy
D) nation's economy; candidate's personal traits and positions

Question 68

Fundamental attribution error is the tendency for observers to _____ situational influences and _____dispositional influences on behavior.

A) overestimate; underestimate
B) underestimate; overestimate
C) underestimate; ignore
D) overestimate; ignore

Question 69

Inferring that Cinderella is truly meek as she cowers in her oppressive home is an example of how we often

A) focus on internal traits.
B) ignore temporary moods.
C) forget about situational influences.
D) notice public and private behavior.

Question 70

In an experiment, Lee Ross set up a simulated quiz game. He randomly assigned some Stanford University students to play the role of questioner, some to play the role of contestant, and others to observe. Results indicated that

A) both contestants and observers thought the questioners were more knowledgeable than the contestants.
B) both contestants and observers thought the contestants were more knowledgeable than the questioners.
C) observers thought the questioners were more knowledgeable, but contestants attributed the outcomes to the situation.
D) questioners thought themselves more knowledgeable, but contestants attributed the outcomes to the situation.

Question 71

During his project presentation, Bob falls sick and performs poorly. However, his colleague, Dan, concludes that Bob is timid and lacks confidence. Dan's tendency to ignore Bob's sickness and focus on his traits as a reason for his poor performance exemplifies

A) false consensus bias.
B) misinformation effect.
C) fundamental attribution error.
D) dispositional bias.

Question 72

Researchers Edward Jones and Victor Harris (1967) had Duke University students read debaters' speeches either supporting or attacking Cuban leader Fidel Castro. When the students were later told that each debater's position had been assigned, they

A) assumed the debater's position merely reflected the demands of the assignment.
B) described the speaker's position as poorly developed.
C) concluded that to some extent the speech reflected the speaker's true beliefs.
D) concluded that the debating coach was an effective persuader.

Question 73

In the context of fundamental attribution error, observers tend to attribute a person's behavior to _____ with the passage of time.

A) the situation
B) his or her traits
C) internal beliefs and preconceptions
D) his or her dispositions

Question 74

Those who make situational attributions regarding poverty and unemployment tend to adopt political positions that

A) offer more direct support to the poor.
B) are unsympathetic to the poor.
C) tend to blame the poor for their problems.
D) are more neutral regarding poverty and unemployment.

Question 75

According to the fundamental attribution error, observers

A) underestimate situational influences.
B) emphasize social circumstances.
C) underestimate internal causes.
D) engage in situational attribution.

Question 76

After reading a newspaper article about teenagers who illegally download music from the Internet, you conclude that those who engage in such behavior are morally bankrupt. It never occurs to you that the reason teenagers download music from the Internet is because they are not able to afford the price of a compact disc, or the temptation to download, coupled with the peer pressure to do so, is often great. Your thinking on this matter can be characterized by the

A) false consensus bias.
B) misinformation effect.
C) fundamental attribution error.
D) dispositional bias.

Question 77

We tend to underestimate the situational determinants of others' behavior but not our own because we perceive others in a different manner than our own selves. This is known as the

A) actor-observer perspective.
B) camera perspective bias.
C) false uniqueness effect.
D) self-awareness phenomenon.

Question 78

A belief that leads to its own accomplishment is called

A) a self-fulfilling prophecy.
B) a belief confirmation.
C) self-confirming validity.
D) behavioral perseverance.

Question 79

In a study conducted by Lassiter and his colleagues (2005), participants observed a suspect confessing during a police interview. The results indicated that participants were more likely to perceive the confession as genuine when they viewed the confession

A) live.
B) through a two-way mirror.
C) with a camera focused on the suspect.
D) with a camera focused on the detective.

Question 80

Burger and Pavelich (1994) found that voters were more likely to attribute the outcome of an election to the candidate's personal traits and positions the day after a presidential election, and to the nation's economy a year after the election. This represents which of the following explanations for the fundamental attribution error?

A) Misattribution is particularly less likely when men are in positions of power.
B) We observe others from a perspective that is similar to the way we observe ourselves.
C) The passage of time decreases the tendency toward the attribution error.
D) When explaining someone's behavior, we often overestimate the impact of the situation.