Deck 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Question 1

Nathaniel is designing an experiment: He wants to learn how much time other students at his college spend studying for their art history exams. He decides to use a self-report survey, but he knows that people might over- or under-report their study time due to

A) the hindsight bias.
B) random assignment.
C) placebo effects.
D) the social desirability bias.

Answer 1

the social desirability bias.

Question 2

Nahele has agreed to participate in a survey so he can receive extra credit in his psychology class. When he arrives, he is given a questionnaire that contains questions like, "I enjoy playing team sports,""I often worry about getting things done,""I prefer to try new ways of doing things,"and "I sometimes find it hard to trust other people."He is most likely taking a/an __________ test.

A) intelligence
B) neuropsychological
C) achievement
D) personality

Answer 2

personality

Question 3

After the serial killer Ted Bundy was captured, he participated in a number of interviews and took various psychological tests. The interviews with him were particularly valuable to researchers, because his level of sociopathy is rare, and perpetrators are often unwilling to assist researchers. Therefore, his case was ideal for a/an

A) case study.
B) naturalistic observation.
C) operationalization.
D) correlational study.

Answer 3

case study.

Question 4

If scientific research shows that there is a positive correlation between the number of bars in a city and the number of churches in a city, we know that

A) churchgoing people are more likely to go to bars.
B) drinking makes people feel like going to church.
C) A and B
D) We can't make any assumptions, because correlation doesn't tell us about cause and effect.

Question 5

Melissa conducts an experiment to learn if brunettes have more fun. She has three brunette female friends and three blonde female friends who go to the same party and record how many times they are asked to dance. In her experiment, Melissa has defined her __________ as the number of times thefriends were asked to dance, and her __________ as hair color.

A) independent variable; extraneous variable
B) extraneous variable; dependent variable
C) independent variable; dependent variable
D) dependent variable; independent variable

Question 6

Dr. Sesay is testing a new antidepressant. He carefully screens his subjects and assigns them to either the control group or the experimental group. He gives one group the new medication and gives the other group sugar pills that look exactly the same as the real medication. By doing this, he is hoping to control for __________ effects.

A) correlational
B) placebo
C) scatterplot
D) meta-analytical

Question 7

Dr. Sesay is testing a new antidepressant. He gives the experimental group the new medication and the control group sugar pills that look exactly the same as the real medication. However, some of the people who are taking the sugar pills start to feel less depressed. What is the most likely explanation?

A) Sugar relieves depression to some extent.
B) They expect to feel better, which makes them feel better.
C) Dr. Sesay accidentally gave them the real antidepressants.
D) The subjects are secretly taking other antidepressants on the side.

Question 8

Dr. Sesay is testing a new antidepressant. He gives the experimental group the new medication and the control group sugar pills that look exactly the same as the real medication. He is excited about all the good he believes this new medication will do for people. When he gives his control group the sugar pills, he shows little emotion, but when he hands out the antidepressants, he grins at his participants. To control for ___________, Dr. Sesay should use a __________ design instead.

A) demand characteristics; double-blind
B) placebo effects; correlational
C) demand characteristics; correlational
D) placebo effects; double-blind

Question 9

Samantha conducts an experiment on her college campus. She learns that more women than men talk to their fathers on the phone daily. Samantha may not be able to generalize her findings to the larger population of all college women, because most of the students at her college come from extremely patriarchical surrounding towns. Samantha's problem is a lack of

A) internal validity.
B) specific variables.
C) external validity.
D) a control group.

Question 10

Dr. Hakim has tested a new antipsychotic medication. He followed all the procedures to be sure his data are valid. He uses inferential statistics to see if his results are statistically significant, and he learns that they are in fact significant at the .05 level. This means that the results could have occurred by chance alone only __________ of the time.

A) 5 percent
B) 10 percent
C) 50 percent
D) 99 percent

Question 11

On the most popular test of adult intelligence, the WAIS-III, the average IQ is 100. One hundred is also the score at the exact middle of the possible distribution of IQ scores. This means that 100 is both the __________ and the

A) standard deviation; mean.
B) median; mean.
C) median; standard deviation.
D) mode; standard deviation.