Deck 3: Social Cognition

Question 1

Social cognition is the study of how people

A) feel about relationships
B) think about society
C) form inferences from social information
D) engage in introspection

Answer 1

form inferences from social information

Question 2

Which is NOT a step in the social inference process?

A) gathering information
B) communicating information
C) deciding what information to use
D) integrating information

Answer 2

communicating information

Question 3

Prior expectations about a situation are problematic because

A) they are sometimes wrong
B) perceivers don't always recognize that expectations can bias their thinking
C) they can overrule consideration of other information
D) all of the above

Answer 3

all of the above

Question 4

Hamill, Wilson, and Nisbett (1980) conducted a study in which people viewed a videotaped interview with a prison guard and were asked to draw an inference about what type of people become prison guards. The researchers found that

A) subjects believed that all prison guards are inhumane
B) subjects' beliefs were unaffected by the videotapes
C) subjects ignored information about whether the guard was typical or not
D) subjects felt they could not draw accurate inferences about prison guards on the basis of one example

Question 5

Tom believes that "opposites attract"Because his parents have very different personalities and are happily married. Tom is guilty of which type of informational bias?

A) prior expectations
B) small sample
C) overuse of statistical information
D) mood congruent memory

Question 6

People often ignore or undervalue statistical information in comparison with

A) visual information
B) positive information
C) unusual information
D) case history information

Question 7

Which type of information is weighted more heavily in people's judgments?

A) negative information
B) positive information
C) neutral information
D) statistical information

Question 8

Computers typically outperform human judges when making decisions because computers are better at

A) gathering information
B) evaluating information
C) communicating information
D) integrating information

Question 9

Judgments about what things go together are called judgments of

A) covariation
B) cause and effect
C) relevance
D) inference

Question 10

Which of the following is a judgment of covariation?

A) Jack went to the store.
B) Carmine is very easy to talk to.
C) Athletes are competitive.
D) Murder is wrong.

Question 11

When a person overestimates the degree of relationship that exists between two variables, this is called

A) self-fulfilling prophecy
B) illusory correlation
C) schema-driven affect
D) schematic processing

Question 12

Paired distinctiveness and ________ are two factors that can produce an illusory correlation.

A) implicit personality theory
B) prior expectations
C) associative meaning
D) logical error

Question 13

Religious groups that dress differently from most people are likely to evoke more distinctive stereotypes than groups that dress more typically. This is an example of

A) associative meaning
B) the power of case-history information
C) counterfactual thinking
D) paired distinctiveness

Question 14

The framing effect is the tendency for people to be more ________ when decisions are discussed in terms of losses rather than in terms of gains.

A) risk-averse
B) pessimistic
C) rational
D) efficient

Question 15

If you want Andrea to take a trip to Pakistan with you, your best bet is to

A) phrase your request in terms of risks involved
B) remind her of how sad the children sometimes look in pictures from Pakistan
C) tell her, "It's not really life-threatening anymore."
D) phrase your request in terms of possible gains/rewards

Question 16

________ has a less reliable impact on judgments than does ________.

A) negative mood; positive mood
B) positive mood; neutral mood
C) temporary mood; negative mood
D) stable mood; temporary mood

Question 17

Which statement about the effects of positive moods is NOT true?

A) People tend to recall positive information better when they're in a positive mood.
B) Happy people think in a more careful and less stereotyped fashion.
C) Happy people are more helpful and altruistic.
D) Happy people avoid losses and risks.

Question 18

Louis is in a negative mood. We ask him if he wants to go skydiving with us next weekend. Louis is likely to

A) say no very quickly
B) say yes very quickly
C) make the decision very slowly
D) tell us we're crazy for going skydiving

Question 19

Zeke expects the movie "The Village" to be great because he loves the director's other movies. After viewing the movie, Zeke is not too impressed and believes that the movie was worse than it was. This reaction can be attributed to

A) positive information
B) the affective expectation model
C) dual processing
D) negativity bias

Question 20

In recent years, social psychologists have discovered that many social cognition processes occur

A) less frequently than was once believed
B) with a high degree of accuracy
C) unpredictably and without any discernible pattern
D) automatically and without awareness

Question 21

People often generate and evaluate information in a self-serving manner, constructing theories that are consistent with the belief that

A) good things will happen to them
B) bad things will not happen to them
C) they're smarter than everyone else
D) a and b

Question 22

Pelham and Neter (1995) found that higher levels of motivation increased the accuracy of judgments when judgments were ________, but decreased accuracy when judgments were ________.

A) important; unimportant
B) shared; made alone
C) easy; difficult
D) made slowly; made quickly

Question 23

Upon learning that jobs in his chosen field are very difficult to find, what is David likely to think about his own chances of finding a job, according to research on motivation and inference?

A) "I'll never find a good job."
B) "I'll have to look extra hard if I want to find a good job."
C) "I'll find a job, but it may take me longer than I thought."
D) "I have more experience than most people, so I'll have no trouble finding a job."

Question 24

Research by Radecki and Jaccard (1995) found that

A) people know less than they think
B) the incorrect beliefs that people have about their level of knowledge can hurt Them
C) people who perceived themselves to be knowledgeable gathered less information
D) all of the above

Question 25

Research on the planning fallacy demonstrates that one important determinant of when we accomplish a task is

A) self-esteem
B) when the deadline is
C) whether we consider ourselves experts on the task
D) intelligence

Question 26

Buehler, Griffin, & Ross (1994) asked college students to estimate when they would complete an academic project they had been assigned. The researchers found that

A) all but a few of the students completed the projects on time
B) students without a deadline completed the projects faster than those with a
Deadline
C) more than half of the projects were uncompleted in the time estimated
D) most students believed that they would accomplish tasks faster with a deadline

Question 27

Which is NOT a reason why rational models of inference may be inappropriate for evaluating social cognition?

A) There are no good rational models of thought available to us.
B) The conditions necessary for rational processing seldom occur in real life.
C) Some of the errors produced by faulty inference don't matter much.
D) Efficiency may be more important for most people than accuracy.

Question 28

Many pitfalls in the inference process probably occur because

A) people's thought processes are not affected by their emotional states
B) attention is limited but memory is not
C) we spend too much time weighing and evaluating alternatives
D) we have few expectations to guide our inferences

Question 29

A structured set of cognitions, including some knowledge about the object and some specific examples, is called a(n)

A) illusory correlation
B) role
C) norm
D) schema

Question 30

Schemas about common events are called

A) scripts
B) exemplars
C) roles
D) norms

Question 31

If asked to think of a flower, most people will think of a rose or a daisy, rather than a poppy or a hyacinth. A rose is therefore a(n)

A) schema
B) script
C) exemplar
D) stereotype

Question 32

Which image best represents the structure of a schema?

A) a strict hierarchy of associations
B) a tangled web of associations
C) a slippery slope of associations
D) a jigsaw puzzle of associations

Question 33

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of schemas?

A) Schemas help us think more thoroughly and rationally.
B) Schemas speed up processing.
C) Schemas help us fill in missing information.
D) Schemas help us to remember information.

Question 34

When is a person likely to recall information that contradicts a schema better than schema-consistent information?

A) when the person is in a hurry
B) when the person has an extremely well-developed schema
C) when the information is unusual or interesting
D) when the information is emotional rather than factual

Question 35

Schemas:

A) contain affect
B) provide expectations
C) add information
D) all of the above

Question 36

Which situation is likely to be due to schema-driven affect?

A) I like my classmate because she is a Democrat and I like Democrats.
B) I am angry with my mother because she insulted me.
C) I feel upset when my professor gives me a D because a D is a bad grade.
D) I laugh at my friend's joke because everyone else in the room is laughing.

Question 37

Which of the following is a disadvantage of schemas?

A) They make recall more difficult.
B) They make us more flexible in our responses to new situations.
C) They can cause us to be misled by oversimplification.
D) They make processing large amounts of information virtually impossible.

Question 38

Mental shortcuts that reduce complex problem solving to more simple judgments are called

A) schemas
B) heuristics
C) roles
D) exemplars

Question 39

Sharon is well groomed, intelligent, articulate, and is usually seen wearing suits. If asked to guess whether she was a lawyer or a factory worker, you decide she is a lawyer by using the

A) representativeness heuristic
B) base-rate fallacy
C) anchoring heuristic
D) conjunction error

Question 40

Sharon is well groomed, intelligent, articulate, and is usually seen wearing suits. If you believe that it is more likely that Sharon was once a factory worker and then became a lawyer than it is that she is (and was always) a factory worker, you have fallen victim to

A) the logical error
B) the priming effect
C) the conjunction error
D) counterfactual reasoning

Question 41

To judge the frequency of some event based on how easy it is to recall examples of that event is to use the ______ heuristic.

A) availability
B) representativeness
C) simulation
D) anchoring

Question 42

If you make an inference on the basis of the ease with which particular endings to a situation come to mind, you are using the ________ heuristic.

A) simulation
B) anchoring
C) representativeness
D) availability

Question 43

________ can be used to help understand the psychology of "near misses"
And the frustration or regret that people feel when they narrowly miss out on some positive situation or opportunity.

A) schematic processing
B) breakpoints
C) the conjunction error
D) the simulation heuristic

Question 44

Counterfactual thinking led role-playing jurors to decide to give a robbery victim more compensation when they believed

A) the victim was shopping at a hardware store rather than a grocery store
B) the victim had no money in his wallet rather than having a lot of money
C) the victim was shopping at a store where he didn't usually shop rather than his Usual store
D) the victim was attacked by a stranger rather than an acquaintance

Question 45

In a study on the effects of mental simulation, Pham and Taylor (1999) showed that the students who scored highest on an exam were those who

A) envisioned themselves celebrating receiving a good grade on the exam
B) envisioned how unhappy they would be after receiving a bad grade on the exam
C) envisioned themselves studying in a way that would produce a good grade on The exam
D) envisioned how others would react upon hearing that they had received a bad Grade

Question 46

When people are attempting to form judgments from ambiguous information, they will often begin from a known departure point and adjust their judgment from there. This is known as

A) counterfactual thinking
B) the anchoring heuristic
C) the conjunction error
D) the logical error

Question 47

Someone asks you to estimate the number of people in your social psychology class. You don't know the answer, but if you were to use the anchoring heuristic you would

A) think of how many people are in most of your classes and increase your estimate,Since it is a large class
B) count all the people whose names or faces you can remember
C) think of how many people sit in the front row and multiply by the number of Rows
D) think of the last number you remember hearing

Question 48

At a meeting of their book club, Susan, the only red-headed member of the group, gets angry when another member disagrees with her. The others in the group interpret her reaction as due to her "hot temper," A trait assumed to be typical of redheads. This is an example of the effects of

A) priming
B) salience
C) outcome dependency
D) action identification

Question 49

Which of the following does NOT influence which schemas people use to interpret information?

A) salience
B) recency
C) priming
D) goals

Question 50

When watching a baseball game, our schema tells us that the pitch, the batter's swing, and the outfielder catching the ball all "go together" to form a unified sequence within the game. This reflects the influence of ________ on which schemas are used.

A) salience
B) the priming effect
C) natural contours
D) primacy

Question 51

Information presented very early in a situation may determine which schema is used to analyze the situation. This is known as

A) the priming effect
B) primacy
C) the hindsight bias
D) associative meaning

Question 52

Kevin has just read an article about the dangers of alcohol abuse when his friend calls and asks him to go out for a few beers. Kevin's reluctance to drink with his friend might be due to

A) the anchoring heuristic
B) the self-fulfilling prophecy
C) illusory correlation
D) the priming effect

Question 53

Which of the following is NOT a source of individual differences in peoples' use of schemas?

A) self-esteem
B) need for structure
C) differences in the content of people's schemas
D) need for closure

Question 54

The ________ model of inference argues that we sometimes process information effortlessly and automatically, while at other times we think in a systematic, effortful way.

A) rational
B) dual-process
C) action identification
D) reasoned action

Question 55

How would you get Jenn to remember information about Brandon?

A) tell Jenn that Brandon's smart
B) tell Jenn she's going to meet Brandon later
C) tell Jenn that Brandon's famous
D) tell Jenn that Brandon's in your class

Question 56

Your bosses ask you to write a report for them about last month's sales. When you're done, they ask you if your numbers are right because they're showing the report to the company president, and the report will have your name on it. Your first response is to go back over the report thoroughly because of ____________.

A) time pressure
B) accountability
C) dual processing
D) extroversion

Question 57

Which of the following is NOT a factor that affects whether people will use schemas?

A) outcome dependency
B) accountability
C) personal control
D) time pressure

Question 58

In a study of sex discrimination in hiring, researchers found that women were more likely to be discriminated against when

A) the evaluators were female
B) the decisions were made under time pressure
C) the evaluators were given statistical information about each candidate
D) the evaluators were in a good mood

Question 59

If told to find out whether a new acquaintance is outgoing, which question would most people be likely to ask?

A) What would you do to liven things up at a party?
B) When do you feel most introverted and shy?
C) What situations make you feel angry?
D) What factors make it hard for you to open up to people?

Question 60

Which of the following has been found to reduce the likelihood that people will engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing?

A) having low self-esteem
B) having a need for valid, accurate information
C) being in a hurry
D) being a member of an individualistic culture

Question 61

When our expectations about another person lead us to treat him or her in ways that elicit the behavior we expect, this is known as

A) confirmatory hypothesis testing
B) the priming effect
C) self-fulfilling prophecy
D) the availability heuristic

Question 62

Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid (1977) had men call women they believed to be either attractive or unattractive. The men's behavior induced the ________ women to talk in ways that ________.

A) "unattractive"; the men considered aggressive
B) "unattractive"; were judged to be friendly and likable
C) "attractive"; were judged to be friendly and likable
D) "attractive"; made them sound insecure and shy

Question 63

When is a self-fulfilling prophecy most likely to occur?

A) when the perceiver has certain expectations
B) when the target is certain about his own self-conception
C) when the perceiver has no expectations
D) none of the above

Question 64

According to research on the self-fulfilling prophecy, when a person has an expectation about a target person that differs from the target's self-perception, whose beliefs will usually prevail?

A) the perceiver's
B) the target's
C) it depends on whether the expectation is positive or negative
D) it depends on the perceiver's certainty about the expectation

Question 65

Research on social cognition explores how people make social judgments about other individuals in social groups, about social roles, and about their own experiences in social settings.

Question 66

People are more likely to be influenced by case history information than by statistical evidence.

Question 67

If a case history does not lead us to a strong conclusion, we are more likely to rely on the statistical evidence.

Question 68

In general, people pay more attention to positive information than negative information when making a judgment.

Question 69

When people are making judgments of covariation, they do not usually follow a rational model of judgment.

Question 70

How decision alternatives are framed often will not strongly influence people's judgments.

Question 71

Emotion is not a vital part of decision making.

Question 72

People who are in a good mood are less likely to be altruistic than people in a bad mood.

Question 73

Happy people are more likely than unhappy people to make impulsive decisions.

Question 74

People who are in a negative mood tend to be accurate in predicting positive events.

Question 75

Many of our emotions, thoughts, and actions occur as automatic responses to cues that are rapidly, effortlessly, and unconsciously processed.

Question 76

People generally overpredict how long their emotional reactions to events will last.

Question 77

It is often more important for people to be accurate in their judgments than to be efficient in their judgments.

Question 78

Social categories are usually hierarchical and neat.

Question 79

Schemas are important because they help us process an enormous amount of information swiftly and economically.

Question 80

Schema-inconsistent material is always recalled poorly.