Deck 8: Social Behavior

Question 1

The term "disposition" refers to an internal characteristic of a person that does not change much over time.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

A cognate is an idea or concept that comes to mind easily and quickly when a person enters a specific cultural setting.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The approach that says an individual's traits and personal characteristics combine with settings and circumstances to produce behavior is called ________________.

A) the sociopersonality approach
B) the situational approach
C) holism
D) interactionism

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which of these measurement technologies would be most useful for describing and comparing marriage ceremonies in different cultures?

A) the Thematic Apperception Test
B) the Cultural Distance Scale
C) the Riverside Situational Q-Sort
D) Rotter's Locus of Control Scale

Question 5

In 2016, Esther Guillaume and her colleagues asked 5,400 university students in 20 countries to describe what they were doing at 7:00 the evening before. What were the findings of their study? Be specific.

Question 6

What is the Riverside Situational Q-Sort (RSQ)? What is its purpose? How does it operate?

Question 7

In Asch's original studies of conformity in the 1950s, participants almost always went along with the group majority, even when the majority was clearly incorrect.

Question 8

According to Triandis, individuals conform more when their collective self is richly developed and easily comes to mind.

Question 9

Using a modified version of Asch's procedure, Canadian researcher John Berry found higher rates of conformity ___________________________________.

A) among collectivistic hunters and gatherers in Papua New Guinea
B) among individualistic buyers and sellers at a marketplace in Mexico
C) among high-food-accumulating farmers in Sierra Leone, West Africa
D) among low-food-accumulating Inuit hunters and fishers in Canada

Question 10

Which of these is NOT a finding from Bond and Smith's meta-analysis of 133 Asch-style conformity studies in 17 countries?

A) Across all studies, women and men conformed at about the same level.
B) Larger majorities consistently produced more conformity than smaller majorities.
C) Stimuli that were perceptually ambiguous produced more conformity than less ambiguous stimuli.
D) Levels of conformity were much lower in individualistic societies than in collectivistic societies.

Question 11

In their meta-analysis of Asch-style conformity studies, Bond and Smith recorded key pieces of information about 133 studies in 17 countries. For each study, they noted its publication date, the ambiguity of the perceptual stimulus, the size of the majority, the gender of participants, and the percentage of conforming responses. Identify four findings from Bond and Smith's meta-analysis.

Question 12

Use Markus and Kitayama's concepts of the independent self and interdependent self to explain why Westerners, as a group, are less likely to conform and East Asians, as a group, are more likely to conform.

Question 13

According to Cohen and Nisbett's analysis of honor cultures, people who grow up in societies that have a tradition of herding are especially courteous and polite to strangers.

Question 14

In the United States, people who live in so-called honor states commit suicide at an unusually low rate because they do not want to bring shame upon their family.

Question 15

According to researchers, which of these is NOT associated with honor cultures?

A) a history of farming
B) an emphasis on being polite and courteous
C) a heightened concern about one's reputation for toughness
D) a "stand your ground" law

Question 16

According to one study, the higher rates of suicide in honor states cannot be attributed to higher rates of depression, but they can be attributed to ________________________.

A) lower levels of religiosity and church attendance
B) a tendency to blame oneself for personal and professional failures
C) lower rates of antidepressant drug prescriptions
D) the easy availability of poisons (insecticides and herbicides)

Question 17

According to social psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen, why are Southerners in the United States-and members of other honor cultures-especially polite and courteous?

Question 18

How do researchers explain the unusually high suicide rate in honor states in the U.S.?

Question 19

A meta-analysis by Nancy Steblay found that people living in small towns were generally more helpful than people living in medium-sized cities and large cities.

Question 20

In their study of low-cost helping in 23 nations, Robert Levine and his colleagues discovered that people living in simpatía cultures were especially helpful. True.)

Question 21

Stanley Milgram's urban overload hypothesis states that _________________________.

A) crime rates are higher in big cities because the number of police officers per capita is relatively low, compared to small cities
B) residents of big cities adapt to exceptionally high levels of cognitive stimulation by filtering out anything that is not essential
C) people in heavily populated urban areas are less likely to help because they assume someone else will help
D) none of the above

Question 22

In Levine's study of large cities in 23 nations, what did the research assistant do to give people an opportunity to either help or not help?

A) The assistant dropped a pen while walking in the city center.
B) The assistant wore a leg brace, dropped a pile of magazines, and struggled to pick them up.
C) The assistant wore dark glasses and carried a cane, pretending to be a blind person who needed help to cross the street.
D) all of the above

Question 23

Imagine you are walking alone in a large city, injure yourself, and need help. How could you use your knowledge of Latané and Darley's five-step model of helping behavior to increase the likelihood of receiving help? Be specific.

Question 24

How did Levine and his colleagues investigate low-cost helping in 23 different nations? What were the major findings of the study?

Question 25

Milgram measured levels of obedience among American subjects because he wanted to test the "Germans are different" hypothesis.

Question 26

A review of 19 Milgram-type studies in nine countries found that levels of obedience were consistently higher in tight, collectivistic societies.

Question 27

A ________________________ tests the same underlying hypothesis but in a different setting using a different method.

A) field experiment
B) population segment survey
C) conceptual replication of a study
D) direct replication of a study

Question 28

What happened when a man posing as a doctor called 22 nurses at two hospitals and told them to administer a phony drug called Astroten to a patient?

A) All but one of the nurses obeyed the doctor's illegitimate order.
B) Eleven nurses obeyed the doctor's illegitimate order.
C) Only three nurses obeyed the doctor's illegitimate order.
D) None of the nurses obeyed the doctor's illegitimate order.

Question 29

Many of Milgram's subjects showed clear signs of distress and anxiety, yet only a few of them later regretted participating in the study. Was Milgram's study ethical or unethical? Explain your reasoning. Be sure to address the issue of informed consent in your answer.

Question 30

Thomas Blass, an expert on Milgram-type studies around the world, believes obedience to authority is a pan-cultural universal. The author of Culture Conscious agrees. What is the evidence to support their conclusion?
In the 10 studies conducted in the United States, the average rate of full obedience (administering the most intense shock available) was 61%. In the nine studies conducted in eight other countries, the average rate of full obedience was very similar, 66%.
High and low rates of obedience were found in individualistic, moderately loose societies. High and low rates were found in tight, collectivistic societies. The lack of a pattern suggests that levels of obedience are not affected by two cultural dimensions, individualism-collectivism and tightness-looseness.
Some situations are so strong they override almost everything else that affects human behavior. Milgram-type studies place subjects in a powerful situation that makes it psychologically difficult to withdraw from the experiment. They are asked to administer shocks gradually. They are physically and psychologically distant from the learner. The experimenter repeats the commands and says he will take responsibility for whatever happens. Because Milgram-type studies create a powerful situation, most people obey, regardless of their individual personality or cultural background.