Deck 6: Section 1 : Attribution Processes

Question 1

Steven has a problem. He is on a strict diet to try and lose weight, but he also wants to make a favorable impression on his girlfriend's mother, who just offered him a slice of homemade cheesecake. Which of the following neural networks would be most likely to be involved in resolving these conflicting motivations?
a. The C system
b. The basal ganglia
c. The reticular formation system
d. The reflexive system

Answer 1

The C system

Question 2

According to Kelley's covariation model, which of the following would be least helpful in making a causal attribution?
a. Consensus
b. Prosociality
c. Modality
d. Distinctiveness

Answer 2

Prosociality

Question 3

Explicit causal reasoning is most likely to occur during which of the following situations?
a. Walking in on a surprise birthday party that your friends threw for you
b. Learning of an unexpected tragedy while watching the news
c. Receiving a high score on an exam that you studied very hard for
d. Both A and B

Answer 3

Learning of an unexpected tragedy while watching the news

Question 4

After badly losing a card game, a person accuses the winner, "You just got lucky." This is an example of which of the following?
a. Self-image maintenance
b. Social projection
c. Self-serving attributional bias
d. Diffusion of responsibility

Question 5

Which of the following best describes what is meant by the "subtractive rule" of inference?
a. Situational expectancies lessen the degree to which a behavior is inferred as indicating a dispositional trait
b. Antisocial behaviors are weighted more heavily than prosocial behaviors, and so an antisocial action greatly decreases estimations of the target's character
c. Ambiguous situations lessen the extent to which a person is able to determine causality
d. None of the above

Question 6

When drawing inferences about a person's behavior, which of the following best describes what is meant by "hedonic relevance"?
a. Whether the behavior promotes or obstructs the actor's own interests
b. The degree to which a behavior was intended to benefit others
c. The relevance of the perceiver's goals to the observed behavior
d. The perceiver's perception of whether the actor intended to harm or benefit the perceiver in some way

Question 7

Which of the following best describes "social desirability"?
a. The degree to which a behavior conforms to social norms
b. The extent to which a person seeks or avoids interpersonal contact
c. The total benefit provided by a particular social role
d. A measurement of the social esteem associated with membership in a particular group

Question 8

Which of the following does the social perceiver most often call on to explain someone's action?
a. External, situational factors
b. Temporary qualities of the person, such as emotions, intentions and desires
c. Enduring dispositions, such as beliefs, traits, and abilities
d. Cognitive capability, such as cognitive resources or time available for deliberation

Question 9

Which of the following best describes what is meant by the "actor-observer effect"?
a. It is easier to make inferences when observing a behavior, rather than performing it
b. We make more dispositional inferences for others' behaviors, but more situational attributions for our own behavior
c. People take more personal responsibility for their own successes, but attribute more personal responsibility for others' failures
d. We assume that others have more insight into our mental states than they actually do

Question 10

Which of the following is likely to underlie causal influence?
a. Explicit causal reasoning
b. Mental representations accessed in long-term memory
c. None of the above
d. All of the above

Question 11

Which of the following behaviors would best fit with Bem's self-perception theory?
a. You notice that you have donated $200 to charity over the last year; you infer that you must be a good person
b. You see another person behaving in a way that is similar to you, and infer characteristics about yourself based on this reflected behavior
c. You look into your refrigerator and realize that you have purchased three six-packs of soda over the last month. You therefore assume that you really like soda.
d. You see someone behaving strangely in a particular situation, so you imagine yourself in that situation to better understand what the target might be thinking and feeling.

Question 12

Which of the following best describes what is meant by "emotional lability"?
a. In times of stress, people often seek companionship
b. People's emotional states can be malleable and subject to multiple interpretations
c. The degree to which a person is able to accurately identify another's emotions
d. All of the above

Question 13

Which of the following brain regions is not typically associated with perceptions of others' mental states?
a. Posterior superior temporal sulcus at the temporoparietal junction
b. Anterior paracingulate cortex
c. Temporal pole
d. Rostral medial accumbens

Question 14

Which of the following brain regions is not likely to be activated during routine, automatic processing of information?
a. Amygdala
b. Rostral anterior cingulate
c. Basal ganglia
d. Lateral temporal cortex

Question 15

Which of the following researchers was the first to write about attribution theory?
a. Sigmund Freud
b. Hermann Ebbinghaus
c. Fritz Heider
d. Gordon Allport

Question 16

Which of the following pairs of authors wrote one of the seminal papers on dispositional attributions?
a. Kelley & Wegner
b. Darley & Milgram
c. Jones & Harris
d. Schacter & Asch

Question 17

Which of the following best describes what is meant by "theory of mind"?
a. The process in which a person can perceive a mind, or agency, even in inanimate objects
b. The ability to understand that the contents of another person's mind might be different from those of one's own
c. The degree to which a person attributes behaviors to thoughtful, intentional decisions
d. None of the above

Question 18

Research examining which of the following group's attribution processes has revealed some basic processes of causation in understanding case-effect relations?
a. Monkeys
b. Adults
c. Children
d. All of the above

Question 19

At what stage to people develop theory of mind, the ability to recognize and understand another person's characteristics, goals and motivations?
a. Pre-adolescence
b. Preschool age
c. Middle school age
d. Adolescence

Question 20

Which of the following best describes what is meant by a "normative model of inference"?
a. A formal, idealized set of rules for validating attributions
b. People analyze the degree to which an actor's behavior might be influenced by social norms; socially-desirable behaviors are seen as less dispositionally-informative
c. Observers are more likely to infer an actor's behavior as situationally-influenced when it is a common, routine behavior
d. A model for inferring social norms based on the behavior of a number of people

Question 21

According to a meta-analysis of 172 studies, the actor-observer asymmetry holds primarily under which of the following condition?
a. When the actor seems idiosyncratic or unequal
b. When measured by free responses rather than ratings
c. For hypothetical events
d. All of the above

Question 22

According to John and Davis's Correspondent Inference Theory, which of the following would NOT be informative in identifying intentions that underlie actions?
a. Behavior that is situationally constrained
b. Behavior that is low in social desirability
c. Behavior that changes from situation to situation
d. All of the above

Question 23

If you make the voluntary action of unlocking your bike and riding it down the street, which situation would make this an endogenous act?
a. You are riding your bike because you need to go class
b. You are riding your bike because you wish to reduce your carbon footprint
c. You are riding your bike because you hope to burn calories
d. You are riding your bike because you enjoy bike rides

Question 24

According to Heider, if a person takes action, then that person action is driven by which of the following?
a. Capacity to succeed
b. Motivation to succeed
c. Both A and B
d. None of the above

Question 25

Gilbert suggests that dispositional attribution follows several stages integrated into a synthetic model. Which of the following stages involves perceiving the stimulus configuration?
a. Perception stage
b. Categorization stage
c. Correction stage
d. None of the above

Question 26

Bem's self-perception theory contributed which of the following to early attributional research?
a. Developed a normative model of inference
b. Articulated how people infer the causes of their own behavior
c. Posited a simple model of self-perception
d. Both B and C

Question 27

Which of the following best explains the difficulty that warring groups or nations have in trying to understand others' vantage points, lacking the ability to see another's position as credible?
a. Group serving bias
b. Self-centered bias
c. Naïve realism
d. Self-serving attributional bias

Question 28

Which of the following rules as part of Trope's two-stage model states that an inhibiting situation augments and a facilitating situation attenuates the diagnostic value of the identified behavior regarding the corresponding disposition?
a. Subtractive rule
b. Additive rule
c. Law of immediacy
d. None of the above

Question 29

What neural system characterizes deliberate processing and is engaged by signaling from the anterior cingulate?
a. The X system
b. The C system
c. The D system
d. None of the above

Question 30

Which of the following theoretical traditions is NOT part of the foundation of early attribution theory?
a. Bem's self-perception theory
b. Kelley's ANOVA model
c. Heider's analysis of commonsense psychology
d. None of the above