Question 1

At 20 years of age, Joe is the life of the of the party, hanging off of the chandelier and leading everyone at the party in a rousing chorus of the latest hit song.Later in life, he most likely will be the senior citizen

Accepted Answer

A)  who encourages everyone in the senior citizen home to have a shuffleboard tournament.
B)  most likely to sneak out to the local college bar to have a drink with students.
C)  who will stubbornly refuse to be admitted to a retirement community.
D)  most likely to be the loneliest member of his peer group. A

Question 2

A baseball player's statistical batting average is an example of

Accepted Answer

A)  aggregation.
B)  reliability.
C)  validity.
D)  variance. A

Question 3

The concept of rank order consistency suggests that

Accepted Answer

A)  traits are not consistent over time within an individual.
B)  trait levels in an individual may decrease with age when compared to the general population.
C)  a person with more of a trait at one time will have a different trait score at another time.
D)  trait levels are unaffected by the chronological age of an individual. D

Question 4

Mischel has pointed out that personality psychologists are NOT very good at predicting

Accepted Answer

A)  the effects of important situations on most individuals.
B)  how a particular individual will behave in a specific situation.
C)  how personality traits direct individuals to specific situations.
D)  the effects of personality test scores on an individual.

Question 5

The history of integrity testing has included all of the following EXCEPT

Accepted Answer

A)  questionnaires.
B)  interrogation.
C)  polygraphs.
D)  rice powder.

Question 6

A person who intentionally charms others to get what he or she wants demonstrates the concept of

Accepted Answer

A)  situational selection.
B)  evocation.
C)  manipulation.
D)  aggregation.

Question 7

Aggregation usually results in a

Accepted Answer

A)  more reliable measure than single behaviors.
B)  less reliable measure than single behaviors.
C)  measure that does a good job of predicting individual behaviors.
D)  measure that predicts group behaviors

Question 8

Trait psychology is sometimes also called _____ psychology.

Accepted Answer

A)  social
B)  differential
C)  cognitive
D)  developmental

Question 9

The idea that personality traits influence which situations people put themselves in is known as

Accepted Answer

A)  situational selection.
B)  evocation.
C)  manipulation.
D)  aggregation.

Question 10

Whenever Ling walks into a room everyone always smiles and seeks him out for conversation.He does not understand why people react to him that that way.Most likely Ling is demonstrating the idea of

Accepted Answer

A)  evocation.
B)  equivocation.
C)  elocution.
D)  elation.

Question 11

Because trait psychology focuses on the amounts of various traits, it tends to focus on

Accepted Answer

A)  psychopathology.
B)  measurement.
C)  situational selection.
D)  integrity testing.

Question 12

If a trait changes over time, test-retest correlations

Accepted Answer

A)  will always be low.
B)  will always be high.
C)  are high if rank order remains the same.
D)  are low if rank order remains the same.

Question 13

Federal regulations prohibit many uses of polygraph tests in the private sector because

Accepted Answer

A)  integrity tests are an invasion of privacy.
B)  polygraph tests cannot be faked.
C)  polygraph tests often lead to employment discrimination.
D)  polygraph tests may unfairly affect federally protected groups.

Question 14

A study by Diener et al.discussed in the text did NOT find that

Accepted Answer

A)  people who scored high on the need for achievement spent more time working.
B)  extraverts spent more time engaging in social forms of recreation.
C)  individuals' personalities were related to the situations they were in.
D)  people selected different situations when wearing pagers then they usually selected.

Question 15

_____ challenged the idea that traits are consistent across situations.

Accepted Answer

A)  Cattell
B)  Eysenck
C)  Mischel
D)  Larson

Question 16

_____ refers to adding up or averaging several single observations of behavior to assess personality.

Accepted Answer

A)  Situational selection
B)  Evocation
C)  Manipulation
D)  Aggregation

Question 17

_____ is the concept that refers to the idea that a person may act in a certain way only in particular circumstances.

Accepted Answer

A)  Faking response
B)  Situational specificity
C)  Extreme responding
D)  Aggregation

Question 18

The idea that traits are less important than immediate circumstances in determining behavior is known as

Accepted Answer

A)  aggregation.
B)  situationism.
C)  acquiescence.
D)  social desirability.

Question 19

You call your parents and tell them about a terrific opportunity you have been given by your university to go to an important conference.You tell your parents about all of the opportunities for career development and networking that the conference will offer.Then, you tell your parents that you need only $500 from them to make the trip.You are demonstrating the concept of

Accepted Answer

A)  situational selection.
B)  evocation.
C)  manipulation.
D)  guilt initiation.

Question 20

One result of Mischel's critique of trait approaches has been

Accepted Answer

A)  an increased interest in person-situation interactions.
B)  a decreased interest in person-situation interactions.
C)  a decrease in the practice of aggregation.
D)  that personality traits are no longer studied.

Exam 4: Theoretical and Measurement Issues in Trait Psychology