Deck 4: Development and Socialization: How Do We Come to Learn a Culture

Question 1

What is a strategy for avoiding problems with the reference group effect?

A) standardizing people's responses
B) combining the cultures' respective reference groups
C) asking participants not to use a reference group
D) asking participants to compare themselves to a standard nonhuman group (such as gorillas)
E) using more concrete items that call for less subjective judgments

Answer 1

using more concrete items that call for less subjective judgments

Question 2

You find that people's responses tend to gather toward the center of your scale.This phenomenon is known as the ________ bias.This bias tends to be shown more by ________.

A) acquiescence; people from East Asian cultures
B) moderacy; people from North American cultures
C) moderacy; people from East Asian cultures
D) acquiescence; people from honor cultures
E) extremity; people from honor cultures

Answer 2

moderacy; people from East Asian cultures

Question 3

After examining the surveys you collected from people in Culture A, you find that people tend to answer "yes" to all the questions, regardless of the content.This is called ________ bias.

A) leniency
B) halo
C) acquiescence
D) ubiquity
E) hypoanalytic

Answer 3

acquiescence

Question 4

Your cross-cultural study on the effect of individualism on self-control does not have enough statistical power.To maximally increase power in your study, which of the following should you do?

A) Compare two cultures that are similar to each other in their level of individualism.
B) Compare two cultures that are very different from one another in their level of individualism.
C) Use statistical tests that have fewer assumptions.
D) Use a self-report measure of self-control.
E) Keep the study design as is-it's not possible to increase the statistical power.

Question 5

Reference group effects in cross-cultural research occur because

A) people use social comparison to evaluate themselves.
B) people do not really know how they feel.
C) people from different cultures have different response styles.
D) people value what they are most in need of.
E) some words do not translate well into other languages.

Question 6

After examining surveys that you collected from Culture X, you notice that everyone's responses tend toward the mid-points of the response scale (e.g., "Neither agree nor disagree").How can you correct for this?

A) Give respondents forced-choice response options (e.g., "Agree/Disagree").
B) Reverse-score half the items.
C) Ensure that the items are thoroughly back-translated.
D) Ask respondents not to show response biases.
E) Specify a reference group for comparison.

Question 7

The tendency for people who live in isolating conditions to report valuing social connection more than those living in close-knit communities is an example of

A) the reference group effect.
B) social desirability norms.
C) acquiescence bias.
D) debiasing effects.
E) deprivation effects.

Question 8

Recall the study described in the previous question, in which Dr.G made participants think about themselves in independent or interdependent ways and then measured their belief in Chinese values.A sample dataset for the study follows. Participant
Belief in Chinese Values
1
Similar to friends and family
3
2
Different from friends and family
4
3
Similar to friends and family
3
4
Different from friends and family
3
What type of method of studying culture does this study employ?

A) situation sampling
B) replication
C) cultural priming
D) unpackaging
E) survey method

Question 9

While helping your colleague analyze data, you realize that she has turned the participants' responses into z scores.Based on the response biases described in the textbook, for what is she most likely trying to account?

A) prestige bias
B) the deprivation effect
C) moderacy bias
D) the reference group effect
E) ingroup bias

Question 10

Which of the following is one problem especially associated with studies using WEIRD samples?

A) Researchers cannot use effective independent variables.
B) It is difficult to find powerful dependent variables.
C) They are very difficult to unpackage.
D) They have very low generalizability.
E) They make it especially impractical to use multiple methods.

Question 11

Leticia is concerned about having acquiescence bias in a survey she is giving to a group of participants.To reduce this bias, she might include which pair of items?

A) "I support raising taxes" and "I support lowering taxes."
B) "What is your bias?" and "Why might you acquiesce?"
C) "I like pizza" and "I like burgers."
D) "I am similar to my friend" and "My friend is similar to me."
E) "I often give in during arguments with family" and "I often give in during arguments with friends."

Question 12

The process of back-translation

A) involves the researcher asking participants to translate the question back into their own words.
B) is used primarily in face-to-face interviews.
C) should only be attempted by people who are fluent in at least three languages.
D) requires translators to work independently before meeting to resolve discrepancies.
E) requires translators to work together from the very start of the translation process.

Question 13

Dr.G is conducting a study to see whether people can be made to think of themselves in independent versus interdependent ways.Using college students from two different cultures as participants, she had people think about how they are similar to family and friends or how they are different from them.Dr.G then measured how much they believe in traditional Chinese values.This study employs a ________ manipulation, and the way people are made to think about themselves is classified as a(n) ________ variable.

A) between-groups; independent
B) between-groups; dependent
C) within-groups; independent
D) within-groups; dependent
E) within-groups; measured

Question 14

In the study conducted by Scandinavian researchers to observe a family meal in rural India, the researchers misunderstood what they had observed because

A) the back-translation from Hindi was poor.
B) the dinner they observed was put on by trained actors.
C) the researchers failed to use quantitative measures.
D) the researchers forgot to bring a video camera and suffered from memory biases.
E) they did not know that the practice of having family meals does not occur in that part of India.

Question 15

If an independent variable has more variance, is it more difficult or easier to detect an effect on the dependent variable?

A) more difficult, but only if the dependent variable also has lots of variance
B) easier, but only if the dependent variable has much less variance
C) more difficult
D) easier
E) The answer cannot be determined.

Question 16

Steven is a new English-speaking cultural psychologist who only uses questionnaires.He wants to establish methodological equivalence when studying cultural differences in happiness between rural Nigerians and urban South Koreans.To do that, he will likely

A) use only questions that can be answered as true or false.
B) translate his questionnaires from English into the languages spoken in the target countries.
C) use statistical techniques to see if participants from the two cultures understand the questions in the same way.
D) ensure that participants from both countries answer the questionnaires in English.
E) reverse-code half of the items on his questionnaires.

Question 17

In Culture A, people are known to be talkative.In Culture B, they are known to be very quiet.Yet when Reggie gives out questionnaires, he finds that those from Culture A are more likely than those from Culture B to agree with the statement."I don't talk that much." What is a plausible explanation for this?

A) politeness bias
B) reference group effect
C) extremity bias
D) social desirability bias
E) counting bias

Question 18

All else being equal, which of the following studies will have the most statistical power in a comparison of tight and loose cultures?

A) a study comparing Switzerland and Austria
B) a study comparing China and South Korea
C) a study comparing regions within the country of Sweden
D) a study comparing Canada and North Korea
E) a study comparing Canada and the United States

Question 19

In your initial study, you noticed that your participants tended to say they strongly agreed with of the items on your questionnaire.When doing a follow-up study, how would you tell whether your original participants suffered from acquiescence bias?

A) Use concrete as opposed to subjective response options.
B) Use a scale with an odd number of response options.
C) Ensure that the items are thoroughly back-translated.
D) Reverse-score half the items.
E) None of these choices will detect the problem.

Question 20

Janae is interested in looking at cultural differences in how Mexicans and Americans respond to criticism from authority figures.She is considering using an experimental design instead of a survey.One advantage for Janae in using an experiment is that experimental methods

A) allow her to manipulate cultural background.
B) allow her to randomly assign people to different conditions and thus make firmer inferences about causality.
C) allow her to use random sampling of the population and avoid various response biases.
D) avoid response biases by focusing on comparing the magnitude of means between cultures.
E) are more easily understood than survey methods.

Question 21

Agent-based modeling is useful for

A) understanding the conditions under which cultures develop.
B) measuring how agentic a culture is.
C) measuring the closeness of agents to their base culture.
D) employing cultural priming.
E) collecting physiological data.

Question 22

Dr.H wants to unpackage the cultural difference between Japanese and American horror movies.What is Dr.H trying to find out?

A) Japanese and American opinions about Japanese and American horror movies
B) what the Japanese think about American horror movies and vice versa
C) how much statistical power this difference has
D) the underlying reasons for this difference
E) the generalizability of this difference

Question 23

Your new research project is to examine the extent to which a culture values freedom.You have decided that the simplest way to measure this is to use culture-level measures.As such, which of the following would you do?

A) Sample a group of students from a single culture and then give them a cultural prime to see how it affects their valuing of freedom.
B) Add up the frequency with which the word "freedom" appears in magazines.
C) Ask people to rate how much other people around them value freedom.
D) Give people several scenarios and have them rate the extent to which they represent freedom.
E) Conduct an online survey to gather data from as many people as possible regarding how much they value freedom.

Question 24

Which type of experiment is most likely to lead participants to guess the hypothesis?

A) a between-groups study
B) a within-groups study
C) experiments with forced-choice materials
D) fMRI decision studies
E) agent-based decision studies

Question 25

A strength of Nisbett and Cohen's research program into the impact of a culture of honor on regional differences in violence between the U.S.South and U.S.North is that

A) they accounted for biases between the two groups.
B) they were able to manipulate all of their independent variables.
C) they were able to cause northerners to respond like southerners.
D) there are no response bias differences between these two groups.
E) they used multiple methods across their studies.

Question 26

An advantage of the situation-sampling method is that it

A) can be used with more than one culture at a time.
B) does not require the experimenter to translate any materials.
C) controls for cultural differences in response biases.
D) allows researchers to see how people in different cultures would respond if they were in the other groups' cultural worlds.
E) equates the reference group across cultures.

Question 27

Which of the following is most suitable for an agent-based model study?

A) Dan's study of Asian Canadian and European Canadian attitudes toward cooperation
B) Leila's study of how Latin American and North American children respond to cooperation
C) Jorge's qualitative study of how Cuban mothers socialize their children to cooperate
D) Shonda's study of what environmental conditions might lead to the evolution of cooperation
E) Chip's study of different cooperation practices in Ghana

Question 28

Which of the following is the most frequently used dimension in culture research?

A) agreeableness-disagreeableness
B) extroversion-introversion
C) individualism-collectivism
D) farmer-herder-urbanite
E) tightness-looseness

Question 29

Zhang wants to run an experiment on cultural priming.Reasoning that language can be used as a cultural prime, he asks all participants whether they prefer he ran their experimental session in English or in Chinese.Zhang tells his participants that either language is fine because he is bilingual.Zhang's crucial mistake is

A) thinking of language as a cultural prime when it is not.
B) using only a male experimenter.
C) telling participants that he is bilingual.
D) giving participants oral (versus written) instructions.
E) letting participants choose which language to use in the study.

Question 30

A failure to replicate a psychological phenomenon

A) is usually due to a mistake by the original researcher.
B) is usually due to a mistake by the researcher conducting the replication study.
C) may suggest that there are cultural factors affecting the phenomenon.
D) is frequently a result of poor back-translation in cross-cultural studies.
E) is much more likely when the study and the replication have a high degree of statistical power.

Question 31

You want to do a study to examine whether Greek participants are likely to experience more frequent and more severe threats to their honor than Chinese respondents, or vice versa.What is the most appropriate methodology for testing this?

A) Ask both for explicit cross-cultural comparisons.
B) Sample Greeks who grew up in China or Chinese who grew up in Greece.
C) Ask Americans who have lived in both countries.
D) Use employable reference group effects.
E) Use situation sampling.

Question 32

________ is better for revealing the location of activation in the brain, whereas ________ is better for understanding the timing of activation.

A) fMRI; MRI
B) EEG; fMRI
C) MRI; EKG
D) fMRI; EEG
E) EEG; EKG

Question 33

Abdul wants to study the culture of honor in the Southern versus Northern United States.He wants to see how fighting is portrayed in children's books from the two regions.He should

A) keep the coders blind to whether the book is written by a northerner or southerner.
B) not tell the coders his definition of violence.
C) not tell the coders he is interested in examining violence.
D) misdirect the coders by telling them he expects northern books to show more violence.
E) train the coders by having them read Nisbett and Cohen's collective studies on the culture of honor.

Question 34

You are having trouble publishing results from your latest study, but you remember reading that people are more easily convinced if there is neuroscientific evidence.To add neuroscience to your study, you decide to

A) use situational sampling.
B) run a replication.
C) measure cortisol secretions.
D) get fMRI data from new participants.
E) test the reactions of respondents' nerves.

Question 35

Nisbett and Cohen's explanation for North-South differences in the United States is most persuasive because

A) they made physiological measurements.
B) all participants were from the same country.
C) they used multiple methods to test their hypothesis.
D) the explanation is backed up by folk wisdom.
E) the experimental data is conclusive.

Question 36

If you wanted to do a study using a within-groups manipulation to examine whether European Canadians can be made to think either like European Canadian or like Chinese respondents, which of the following would be the most relevant and appropriate methodology?

A) situation sampling
B) standardization
C) between-groups manipulation
D) acculturation
E) priming independence or interdependence

Question 37

As a cultural dimension, tightness-looseness refers to the degree

A) to which members of the group are emotionally attached.
B) of military versus civilian control of the government.
C) to which people are expected to conform to norms.
D) to which people value modesty.
E) to which people live stressful lives.

Question 38

A group of researchers wants to learn about the characteristics of home-cooking recipes in Culture X.What is this type of method an example of?

A) within-groups manipulation
B) between-groups manipulation
C) culture-level measuring
D) situation sampling
E) cultural priming

Question 39

Which of the following is NOT an example of a culture-level measure?

A) song lyrics
B) a journal entry
C) television programs
D) school books
E) magazine advertisements

Question 40

The Human Relations Area Files

A) cover most cultures of the modern world.
B) were compiled by surveying IBM workers across the world.
C) were compiled by psychologists using standardized questionnaires.
D) are a database of religious practices in Europe, Asia, and North America.
E) are a database of ethnographic data from small-scale societies.

Question 41

Why would herding lead to the development of a culture of honor?

A) Dealing with animals gets people used to being dominant.
B) In herding cultures, wealth is portable.
C) Herding cultures tend to be in hotter climates.
D) In herding cultures, people have less formal education.
E) Herding cultures have more guns.

Question 42

Explain how the principle of Occam's razor applies to multi-method research.

Question 43

Tom comes from a family of cattle herders, while Jack comes from a rice-farming family.They are both recruited to participate in a study that uses a within-subjects manipulation.In the study, the researchers want to see how angry they would get if they were insulted versus if they were not insulted.Anger was measured by measuring blood pressure.Based on Nisbett and Cohen's research on the culture of honor, draw a graph of what you would expect the data to look like.Be sure to label what the independent and dependent variables are in this graph.

Question 44

The argument that differences in violence between the North and South of the U.S.are due to differences in the importance of honor is

A) strengthened by data showing that homicides of all types are higher in the South.
B) strengthened by data showing that North-South differences tend to be bigger in rural towns than in large cities.
C) strengthened by data showing that the South is hotter than the North.
D) weakened by data showing that differences remain after rates of poverty are controlled for.
E) weakened by researchers stating in advance what their hypothesis was.

Question 45

Using cultural priming, come up with a within-groups study design involving American and Japanese participants that examines whether independent or interdependent mind-sets affect their feelings of connectedness with their friends (ignore response biases as a consideration for this question).

Question 46

As described in the textbook, finding that U.S.Southerners respond aggressively to insults more than Northerners because of underlying differences in measures of honor would be an example of

A) unpackaging a cultural difference.
B) a within-groups experimental design.
C) a situation-sampling study.
D) a quasi-experimental finding.
E) None of these terms describe the finding.

Question 47

Nisbett and Cohen's archival studies in the United States found that

A) the homicide rate within the rural U.S.South is larger in the moist plains than in the hills and dry plains.
B) prior to the Civil War, there were more slaves in the hills and dry plains than in the moist plains.
C) the difference in argument-related homicide rates between the U.S.South and U.S.North is more pronounced between large cities in the South and North than it is between rural areas within the South and North.
D) all kinds of homicide rates are higher in the U.S.South than in the U.S.North.
E) None of these statements are correct.

Question 48

Using an example from the textbook, explain why researchers should have some knowledge about the cultures they are examining.

Question 49

Canada and the United States are two countries that, in many ways, are very similar to each other, particularly in terms of the personality trait called extraversion.A researcher wants to study whether there is a cultural difference between Canada and the United States in terms of how much the people like to socialize with friends, which is related to extraversion.From the information provided, determine what the independent variable(s) and dependent variable(s) are, write about whether you think this study is high or low in power, and justify why you would ascribe high or low power to this study.

Question 50

Explain whether cross-cultural comparisons of the magnitude of means or cross-cultural comparisons of patterns of means is better for cross-cultural comparison, and why.

Question 51

Create a six-item questionnaire about "happiness" designed such that it counters the acquiescence bias.Then, discuss how you would analyze the data to make it less susceptible to the extremity bias.

Question 52

All else being equal, you would expect a culture of honor to most likely develop among which of the following groups?

A) people who farm seasonal crops
B) people who engage in physically exhausting occupations
C) people whose livelihood depends on skills they have mastered
D) people who transport diamonds
E) people engaged in service occupations

Question 53

You are hoping to study how people from Denmark and people from Russia differ on levels of happiness.You are concerned about your study being susceptible to the reference group effect.What is one way of measuring happiness that lessens your study's susceptibility?