Deck 17: Personality Development and Prejudice: Gordon Allport

Question 1

Which is a big difference between Allport and the other trait theorists, Murray, Cattell, and Eysenck?

A) Allport was the only one to come from poverty.
B) Allport was only one to rely on research.
C) Allport was humble.
D) Allport was the only one not to have a schema for classifying traits.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Allport's father was all except one of the following. Which was NOT true of Allport's father?

A) a physician
B) a politician
C) a humanitarian
D) a businessman

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Whose home life was Allport's most like?

A) Maslow
B) Murray
C) Horney
D) Rogers

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which was the Allport's family outlook?

A) broadly humanitarian
B) radically religious
C) atheist

Question 5

In whose footsteps was young Allport destined to tread?

A) Murray
B) Thorndike
C) Titchener
D) Floyd Allport

Question 6

Jenny, the mother of young Allport's friend Ross

A) aroused Allport's sympathy because she was retarded
B) practically adopted Allport and later his wife Ada
C) often flirted with Allport
D) was uneasy around Allport

Question 7

Allport, like Maslow, had a bad experience with

A) Lashley
B) Burt
C) Titchener
D) Rainey

Question 8

When Allport visited Freud in Vienna, and related a story about his ride to Freud's house, how did Freud react?

A) He laughed, much to Allport's embarrassment.
B) He immediately offered an elaborate interpretation.
C) He asked whether the little boy in the story was Allport.
D) He related a story of his own.

Question 9

Allport's dissertation

A) was justly criticized by Titchener
B) was one of the first on record about personality
C) was at first rejected, but finally accepted
D) was on a topic in visual perception

Question 10

All except one of the following were true of Allport's career. Which was NOT true about his career?

A) Before graduate school, he taught chemistry at Simpson College.
B) He was a president of the American Psychological Association.
C) He consistently condemned oppression and praised social consciousness.
D) He participated in successful efforts to establish a multi-disciplinary department at Harvard.

Question 11

All except one of the following was true of Allport's view of humanism and existentialism. Which was NOT true?

A) He took a dim view of dark and dismal outlook of Europe's existentialists.
B) He was more concerned about the self than about self-actualism.
C) He accepted some aspects of both points of view.
D) He found nothing worthy about existentialists' concerns about death.

Question 12

Nomothetic theorists

A) are inclined to derive general laws concerning how a relatively few traits apply to all people
B) emphasize the experimental rather than the factor analytic approach
C) are inclined to study each individual's unique traits without attempting to find a place for each along a relative few trait dimensions
D) emphasize the discovery of the maximum number of trait dimensions needed to account for personality

Question 13

Idiographic theorists

A) are inclined to derive general laws concerning how a relatively few traits apply to all people
B) emphasize the experimental rather than the factor analytic approach
C) are inclined to study each individual's unique traits without attempting to find a place for each along a relatively few trait dimensions
D) emphasize the discovery of the maximum number of trait dimensions needed to account for personality

Question 14

How did Allport feel about the importance of cross-situational consistency in relation to traits?

A) He felt it to be very important, just as do other trait theorists.
B) Unlike other trait theorists, he felt it to be very important.
C) Like Mischel, he saw the evidence as not supporting cross-situational consistency.
D) He found it to be of less concern than other trait theorists.

Question 15

Allport was a pioneer

A) factor analyst
B) nomothetic theorist
C) interactionist
D) chaos theory researcher

Question 16

How did Allport feel about the unconscious?

A) He agreed with Murray on its importance.
B) He dismissed it entirely.
C) He considered it to be of primary importance.
D) He felt that depth psychology may plunge too deep.

Question 17

What has been the fate of the idiographic approach, since Allport's time?

A) It has faded into oblivion.
B) Although still a minority orientation, it is gaining advocates among contemporary psychologists.
C) It is now the orientation of choice among most personality psychologists.
D) It has the same status as in Allport's time: it is being rather completely ignored.

Question 18

How did Allport contribute to the development of the Adjective Generation Technique (AGT)?

A) He was the first to attach values to generated words.
B) He did a classroom demonstration that suggested it.
C) He launched a research program using a form of the AGT, but eventually abandoned it.
D) He used a version of the technique in a famous study that attracted a lot of attention.

Question 19

To Allport, personality is

A) a pattern of traits that interact to produce behavior
B) that which predicts what a person will do in a situation
C) the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought
D) the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life

Question 20

Dynamic organization refers to (Allport)

A) the interplay of forces within an integrated system of tightly connected components
B) the neo-Freudian instinctoids that guide the personality of the individual in directions that will yield satisfactions
C) unconscious motivations
D) the observation that personality is neither exclusively mental nor neural (physical)

Question 21

Psychophysical refers to (Allport)

A) the interplay of forces within an integrated system of tightly connected components
B) the neo-Freudian instinctoids that guide the personality of the individual in direction that will yield satisfactions
C) unconscious motivations
D) the observation that personality is neither exclusively mental nor neural (physical)

Question 22

According to Allport, different people are hostile

A) in a complex combination of ways
B) in exactly the same ways
C) in different ways
D) in ways that differ only according to physical size and gender

Question 23

Trait (Allport)

A) is a permanent entity that does not fade in and out like state; it is inborn or develops during the life course and regularly directs behavior
B) is represented as a statistical factor and defined as a theoretical construct based on observed intercorrelations between a number of different habitual responses
C) is a construct referring to processes that convert an unsatisfying situation into a satisfying one though activations of appropriate actones
D) is a neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide equivalent (meaningfully consistent) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior

Question 24

Allport recognized that

A) traits cause people to behave in much the same manner in many different situations
B) a different environmental context would call forth a different response to functionally equivalent stimuli
C) in terms of traits "all people are created equal"

Question 25

All of the following are among Allport's characteristics of traits, except one. Which is NOT one of his characteristics of traits?

A) They can be established empirically.
B) They are less generalized than a habit.
C) They are not synonymous with moral or social judgment.
D) Acts that are inconsistent with a trait are not proof of the nonexistence of the trait.

Question 26

Why would a "kind" person be inconsistently kind?

A) because the person really does not have the kindness trait; she or he just behaves in a kind fashion sometimes
B) because some settings in which the individual acts do not call forth the kindness trait
C) because the individual consciously sometimes turns kindness off so as to not look like "goodie two shoes"
D) because the individual consciously sometimes turns kindness off so as not to violate the norm "don't be too consistent"

Question 27

Common traits (Allport)

A) are traits that a group of people who all have something in common (same ethnic background) share with one another
B) can be measured for all people by the same battery of tests on which the people differ in degree rather than in form
C) are those aspects of personality in respect to which most people within a given culture can be profitably compared
D) are traits that are so common that they have been of little interest to personologists

Question 28

A personal disposition is

A) a trait that is unique to a particular individual
B) is a trait that, while held in common with other people, is manifested only similarly, not identically, in each person
C) is a propensity to behave in a certain way toward some social stimulus
D) is an internal entity that guides social behavior directed toward entire groups of people

Question 29

How did Allport handle the dilemma created by using the same labels for both common and unique traits?

A) Unfortunately, he didn't; apparently he was never aware of the problem.
B) He suggested that a label for a trait be redefined for each person.
C) He indicated that a trait label has a different flavor when referring to particular person than when the reference is to people in general.
D) He was aware of the problem but ignored it, claiming that it rarely caused interpretative problems.

Question 30

A cardinal p.d. is

A) a personal disposition that, like the cardinal (bird), can alight anywhere in the hierarchy of personality factors
B) a disposition that is less conspicuous, less generalized, less consistent, less often called into play, and more peripheral
C) is one of the entries on the relatively large list of traits we use to summarize an individual's personality
D) is pervasive and outstanding in the life of a person

Question 31

A central p.d. is

A) a personal disposition that, like the cardinal (bird), can alight anywhere in the hierarchy of personality factors
B) a disposition that is less conspicuous, less generalized, less consistent, less often called into play, and more peripheral
C) is one of the entries on the relatively large list of traits we use to summarize an individual's personality
D) is pervasive and outstanding in the life of a person

Question 32

A secondary p.d. is

A) a personal disposition that, like the cardinal (bird), can alight anywhere in the hierarchy of personality factors
B) a disposition that is less conspicuous, less generalized, and less consistent
C) one of the entries on the relatively large list of traits we use to summarize an individual's personality
D) pervasive and outstanding in the life of a person

Question 33

Why did Allport create a theory of personality development?

A) to correct all the problems of other such theories
B) to show how the self evolves during development
C) to show how the unconscious evolves during development
D) to address the "critical periods" during which traits must develop or they will not appear

Question 34

"Proprium" refers to

A) me as felt and known by the self as "object" of knowledge and feeling
B) the center or fulcrum of the personality
C) the organized, consistent, conceptual whole composed of perceptions of the characteristics of the "I" or "me"
D) is the total personality, the unifying core of the psyche that ensures a balance of conscious and unconscious forces

Question 35

During early infancy, Allport's first stage,

A) a self develops that is fused with the mothering one's self
B) a self that is dominated by what Freud would call id forces develops
C) there no sense of self
D) a self develops that is vague, nebulous, and generally ill-defined

Question 36

Allport's bodily self is

A) a self that is confined to the central core of the body
B) developing during Allport's fourth stage
C) of little value in structuring the child's world
D) a set of sensations that emanate from the muscles, joints, tendons, eyes, ears, and so on

Question 37

Self-identity (Allport) refers to

A) expanding oneself to include all those significant aspects of one's environment, including people
B) the continuity of self over, past, present, and future that results from the operation of memory
C) pride in one's pursuits and accomplishments
D) opes and aspirations that develop from the perceptions and expectations that others have of oneself

Question 38

Self-esteem (Allport) refers to

A) expanding oneself to include all those significant aspects of one's environment, including people
B) the continuity of self over, past, present, and future that results from the operation of memory
C) pride in one's pursuits and accomplishments
D) hopes and aspirations that develop from self-perceptions

Question 39

Extension of self refers to

A) expanding oneself to include all those significant aspects of one's environment, including people
B) the continuity of self over, past, present, and future that results from the operation of memory
C) pride in one's pursuits and accomplishments;
D) hopes and aspirations that develop from self-perceptions

Question 40

Self-image refers to

A) expanding oneself to include all those significant aspects of one's environment, including people
B) the continuity of self over, past, present, and future that results from the operation of memory
C) pride in one's pursuits and accomplishments
D) hopes and aspirations that develop from the perceptions and expectations that others have of oneself

Question 41

Rational coper refers to

A) the sense of selfhood that is not merely able to solve problems, but also can reason them through "in the head"
B) a late in childhood mechanism that arises in response to environment stress; its job is to reduce stress
C) a personality trait equivalent to Freud's intellectualization;
D) planning for the future by setting long-range goals

Question 42

Which is NOT likely to occur during adolescence?

A) an identity crisis
B) Teens try to cast off the conscience of the parents.
C) Teens inevitably perform some anti-social behavior, such as breaking a minor law.
D) Conscience shifts from outside the self to within.

Question 43

Which begins during adolescence?

A) rational coping
B) self-identity
C) propriate striving
D) self-image

Question 44

According to Allport, what happens when the individual leaps the gap between adolescence and adulthood?

A) The individual waxes and wanes with regard to having a sense of identity, sometimes looking like a three year old.
B) The boundaries of the self become contracted.
C) Withdrawal from relations with others occurs.
D) The individual does not know what experiences and roles to grasp for the self and which to cast aside.

Question 45

Functional autonomy refers to

A) a process by which a new system of motivation evolves from an older one, but stems from tensions different from those of the original
B) when the functions of the body become autonomous from those of the personality
C) the person's intention to remake the personality in a unique image, separate from the images of significant others
D) when the cognitive functions of the person separate the emotions

Question 46

Which is an example of functional autonomy?

A) A person does something over and over; finally that person is compelled to do whatever is done repeatedly.
B) A person becomes a physician because her mother wants her to be, but during her residency she becomes intensely interested in research, and devotes her life to medical discovery.
C) A person becomes a nurse because he wants to help people heal and as he progresses in his profession he becomes more and more involved with his patients, experiencing more and more fulfillment.
D) A person decides to do something for some reason and continues to do it for that same reason during the rest of her or his life.

Question 47

According to Allport, what is the "problem of maturity"?

A) to forget the past
B) to orient to the future
C) to continually re-evaluate oneself according to consistent criteria
D) to extend oneself into the spheres of ones' life

Question 48

All except one of the following are ways of extending oneself in the process of maturing. Which is NOT one of those ways of extending oneself?

A) plan a spiritual excursion (it does not have to be to Mecca, but it could be to the top of a moderate mountain)
B) cultivate warm relating of self to others
C) develop emotional security or self-acceptance
D) develop realistic perceptions of self and skills (intelligence helps to achieve maturity, but it does not guarantee it)

Question 49

Frustration tolerance refers to (Allport)

A) helping others to deal with the inevitable frustrations in their lives
B) being tolerant of other groups (ethnic, religious, etc.) regardless of how frustrating they may be
C) when things go wrong, not pitching a tantrum, blaming others, or wallowing in self-pity
D) tolerating frustrations, even if it would be reasonable to become upset

Question 50

Which is a problem that most people have, according to Allport?

A) We all spend much of our time wallowing in self-pity.
B) We think that we have insight into ourselves, but we do not.
C) We tend to believe that we have others figured out, but we do not.
D) We talk of being more tolerant of other people, but the more we talk, the less tolerant be become.

Question 51

"A genuine sense of humor" is

A) being able to laugh at other people's jokes, even when we think they are not funny
B) being open enough to laugh at jokes about sexual and aggressive matter
C) being able to laugh along with others, even if we do not feel like it
D) being able to laugh at the things we love, including ourselves and all that pertains to us, and still to love them

Question 52

Why are people who are able to laugh at themselves generally liked?

A) They can tolerate self-humiliation.
B) A person with a good sense of humor communicates a match between perceptions of self by self and by others.
C) People who laugh at themselves are regarded as clever, because we know that they have chosen only their trivial foibles to laugh at.
D) They are versatile and flexible.

Question 53

Directedness (Allport) refers to

A) having a goal or goals in life toward which one strives
B) being adept at directing the lives of others with whom we are intimate
C) looking to the future, not the past
D) looking to the future, not the present

Question 54

Which of the following is NOT a benefit of religion or spirituality?

A) Being prayed improves recovery from acute illness.
B) It protects against cardiovascular disease.
C) It improves recovery from cancer.
D) Regular church attendees show a 25% lower death rate.

Question 55

All of the following are characteristics of intrinsically religious people, except one. Which is NOT characteristic of intrinsically religious people?

A) optimistic
B) self-deceptive
C) tend to manipulate the impressions they make on others
D) tend to be prejudiced

Question 56

All except one of the following are among Allport's conceptions of religion and religious experience. Which is NOT one of those conceptions?

A) He was fascinated with the possibility of a higher power that is the center of human experience.
B) Religious sentiment can be immature: a deity is adopted who favors the person's immediate interests.
C) Although there are exceptions to the rule, few people have achieved true religious fulfillment outside organized religion.
D) Religious motivation can be extrinsicπin the interest of self-esteem maintenanceπor intrinsic--an end in itself, something that one surrenders to, not something to use.

Question 57

All except one of the following are true concerning generic conscience. Which is NOT true?

A) It is different from the must sayer of childhood.
B) It basically is "there" to tell us when we do wrong that we should feel bad.
C) It is not troubled by a knee-jerk need to avoid any transgression.
D) Minor slips and sins are not its concern.

Question 58

According to Allport, prejudice is

A) rejecting another group because members of your own group expect you to do so
B) felt or expressed antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization and may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of the group
C) a negative sentiment reserved for those who do not fit the image one has of "acceptable persons"; this image is in a continual state of flux so that new "unacceptable persons" can periodically be taken in under its umbrella
D) an intolerant attitude toward anyone other than oneself

Question 59

All except one of the one of the following are levels on the Social Distance Scale. Which is NOT one of those levels? I would admit (members of this group)

A) to kin by marriage
B) to my country
C) to my club
D) to my religious denomination

Question 60

Towbs-Schwen and Fazio (2001) found which of the following to be the type of motivation for controlling prejudice that was related to parents being prejudice and lack of contact with blacks?

A) to look like a "good person"
B) to be concerned about acting prejudice
C) to fool black people with a liberal facade
D) to avoid disputes

Question 61

What did Allen (1975) find when he had white subjects who were classified as prejudiced, ambivalent, or unprejudiced react to African-American targets using items on the Social Distance Scale?

A) Only prejudiced subjects discriminated against targets.
B) Both prejudiced and ambivalent subjects discriminated against targets.
C) All categories of subjects, even those who claimed not to discriminate against targets, did discriminate
D) Contrary to predictions, none of the three categories of subjects discriminated against targets.

Question 62

The reverse discrimination effect is

A) reversing one's discriminations from time to time
B) discriminating against groups that discriminate against your own group
C) vacillating between accepting and rejecting a group
D) showing more positivity toward some other group than toward your own group

Question 63

Racism is

A) the orientation of extremist, like members of the Klan, not other people
B) widespread negative sentiment directed toward people of color, possibly including high individualism
C) a propensity to reject people who are not "white"
D) a reference to the behavior of people who are full of hate and intolerance, and openly express those feelings

Question 64

When or under what circumstances is racism likely to show itself?

A) in just about any circumstance
B) when "whites" or people of color happen to be near one another
C) when choices of others for intimate, committed, permanent relations are made
D) whenever there are social cues in the environment that suggest that racial rejection is appropriate

Question 65

Regarding the relationship between prejudice and racism, Figure 17.1 in the text (separate graphs for prejudice and racism) shows all except one of the following. Which does it NOT show?

A) There are large individual differences in prejudice.
B) Individual differences in the incorporation of racism are quite small.
C) Racism shows up even in the choice/reactions of people who claim to harbor little of no prejudice.
D) Racism shows up only in the choice-reactions of high prejudiced people.

Question 66

In Payne et al. (2002) as time available to respond became shorter and shorter, what kind of mistake became more likely?

A) A black man holding a tool was mistakenly seen holding a gun.
B) A white man holding a tool was mistakenly seen holding a gun.
C) Tools and guns were confused regardless of race of holder.
D) What men held in their hands-silver can, black cell phone, or black wallet-determined whether they were shot.

Question 67

In the Park et al. (2002) study, who was more quickly "shot"?

A) an armed Black man, but only by White participants
B) an unarmed White man
C) an armed Black man
D) a Black man by White participants and a White man by Black participants

Question 68

Dovidio, Gaertner, and Kawakami (2002) showed that participants responded faster to negative than positive words when primed with a Black face. What relationship did they find between this and other subtle-implicit measures and explicit measures of prejudice?

A) The two types of measures were highly related.
B) Whether they were related depended on which of the several measures were the focus.
C) They tended to be unrelated.
D) Only the priming task results (implicit) and the explicit friendliness were related.

Question 69

What did Mitchell et al (2003) find when they looked at reactions to liked Black athletes and disliked White politicians?

A) Athletes were always preferred to politicians.
B) Blacks were always preferred to Whites.
C) For the race classification task, disliked White politicians were preferred over liked Black athletes.
D) For the occupation classification task disliked White politicians were preferred over liked Black athletes.

Question 70

All except one of the following is a finding Devine and colleagues regarding Whites who show no racial bias on subtle-implicit measures. Which is NOT a finding?

A) High Internal Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice (IMS)/low External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice (EMS) subjects showed no bias when either faces or names were associated with pleasant and unpleasant words.
B) For the eyeblink startle reaction, even high IMS-low EMS subjects showed bias.
C) Only for high IMS-low EMS subjects was a brain wave index of control higher for the Black face/tool combination than for the Black face/gun combination.
D) For the eyeblink startle reaction, only high IMS-low EMS subjects showed no bias.

Question 71

When Phelps et al. (2003) related the names and pleasant/unpleasant words measure (IAT) and the eyeblink startle reaction measures (ESRM), both subtle/Implicit bias measures, as well as the explicit bias Modern Racism measure to recordings in the amygdala (emotional center) what did they find?

A) None of them positively correlated with recordings in the amydgala.
B) Only the explicit measure positively correlated with recordings in the amydgala.
C) Only the ESRM measure positively correlated with recordings in the amygdala.
D) Only the IAT and ESRM measures positively correlated with recordings in the amygdala.

Question 72

All but one of the following was found by Plant and Devine (2003) who studied Whites' interactions with Blacks. Which was NOT a finding? The more positive the previous contact with Blacks,

A) the less the anxiety about interactions with Blacks
B) the less the hostility regarding interactions with Blacks
C) the less the confidence that they could avoid prejudiced displays during interactions with Blacks
D) the less the need to avoid interactions with Blacks

Question 73

What did Maddox and Gray (2002) find when Blacks and Whites observed discussions involving three Whites and three Blacks as well as three dark skinned Blacks and three light Skinned Blacks? Subjects confused who said what if the speakers were?

A) members of different skin color groups
B) members of different racial groups
C) members of the same racial group
D) either members different racial or different skin color groups

Question 74

All except one of the following are stereotypes of African-Americans held by European Americans as revealed in the study by Allen (1996)? Which is NOT one of those stereotypes?

A) arrogant
B) friendly
C) loud
D) lazy

Question 75

Though there may be a grain of truth to a stereotype, what is always false about them?

A) There are no traits that are more common among one group than another.
B) Only large groups will have members who all share a trait.
C) Stereotypes come in contradictory pairs: for each stereotype of a group (they are all religious fanatics) there is a contradictory stereotype (they are all superficially religious).
D) It is almost always false to assume that most of any large group possess any trait one can conjure up, except traits that define them.

Question 76

According to Allport, the traits of highly prejudiced people can be summarized in which of the following terms?

A) selfish
B) ignorant
C) threat oriented
D) mean spirited

Question 77

All of the following are characteristics of prejudiced people, except one (Allport). Which is not one of those characteristics?

A) ambivalent about parents
B) moralistic
C) tending to dichotomize
D) superficially friendly

Question 78

All except one of the following are characteristics Allport attributed to prejudiced persons. Which is NOT one of those characteristics?

A) high in need for definiteness
B) tending to externalize
C) tending to find safety in institutional memberships
D) tending to prefer abstractness to concreteness

Question 79

Low tolerance for ambiguity is related to which of the following?

A) intrinsic religiosity
B) a tendency to see others as falling into many categories
C) seeing illusory movement to be highly variable trial to trial both in terms of direction and in terms of extent
D) seeing illusory movement to be constant in extent trial to trial, and constant in direction trial to trial

Question 80

All except one of the following accurately describes authoritarians. Which is NOT an accurate description of authoritarians?

A) tending to have low grade point averages if they majored in the liberal arts
B) tending to admire dictators
C) tending to be conservative and anti-gay
D) preferring a disorderly, weak society so they can exert their "superiority"