Deck 4: Social Cognition: Thinking About People and Situations

Question 1

Construal level theory predicts that we think about events distant in time or space in ____________ terms, and that we think about events nearer in time or space in ______________ terms.

A) abstract; concrete
B) concrete; abstract
C) abstract; abstract
D) concrete; concrete

Answer 1

abstract; concrete

Question 2

Liam, the photography editor of a national magazine, is looking through a series of pictures to find a model who seems strong and competent.Given research findings on physical appearance and snap judgments, Liam should select a model whose face has

A) large eyes.
B) high eyebrows.
C) an angular chin.
D) a high forehead.

Answer 2

an angular chin.

Question 3

In 1992, Ross Perot asked voters, "Should the president have the line-item veto to eliminate waste?" Ninety-seven percent said yes.When the question was asked in more neutral terms-"Should the president have the line item veto or not?"-only 57 percent agreed.This example best illustrates

A) the availability heuristic.
B) spin framing.
C) an order effect.
D) feature matching.

Answer 3

spin framing.

Question 4

According to construal level theory, if you're imagining working on your thesis in graduate school in several years, you are most likely to be thinking about

A) the specific details of how you'll conduct the research.
B) how you will block out your time each day to get the work done.
C) the overall goal of how your thesis will help you to finish graduate school.
D) the type of computer you will use to write your thesis.

Question 5

The phenomenon of ____________ occurs when people are reluctant to express their misgivings about a perceived group norm.Unfortunately, their reluctance reinforces a false norm.

A) group apprehension
B) normative consensus
C) pluralistic ignorance
D) nonrepresentativeness heuristic

Question 6

According to the textbook, all of the following factors can decrease the accuracy of secondhand information EXCEPT

A) the desire to entertain.
B) ideological distortions.
C) distortion in the media.
D) base-rate information.

Question 7

The textbook describes research by Todorov and colleagues in which participants rated a large number of faces along different personality dimensions.Which two dimensions stood out as the main dimensions used in these ratings?

A) happiness/sadness and fear
B) trustworthiness and physical attractiveness
C) trustworthiness and dominance
D) happiness and physical attractiveness

Question 8

According to the textbook, one of the most pervasive sources of distortion in secondhand accounts is

A) schematic vigilance.
B) the human capacity for recovered memories.
C) the desire to entertain.
D) a shortage of accurate information.

Question 9

Which of the following is the best example of a positively framed statement?

A) How much would you pay to replace all the trees that have been lost?
B) Only 10 out of 100 people who have this surgery are likely to die within a year.
C) This meat is only 25 percent fat.
D) This brand of condom has an overall 75 percent success rate.

Question 10

Janet means well when she tells her daughter, "Please don't ever date a boy with a tattoo.A girl down the street dated a boy with a huge tattoo and he ended up assaulting her." If this story is a deceptive exaggeration, Janet is engaging in

A) secondhand extremism.
B) ideological distortion.
C) the embellishment fallacy.
D) heuristic processing.

Question 11

Information-processing limitations help explain why our judgments can depend on the order in which information is presented.For example, primacy effects often result from

A) a tendency to pay great attention to information presented early on.
B) strong emotions that disrupt the memory of information presented early on.
C) the belief that information encountered early on is particularly accurate.
D) a failure to engage in schematic processing.

Question 12

If students' heavy drinking habits are driven by pluralistic ignorance, then what-according to research-should university administrators do to decrease student drinking?

A) They should tell students about the dangerous effects of alcohol.
B) They should encourage students to think about why they drink so much.
C) They should make students aware of their mistaken belief that "everyone" approves of heavy drinking.
D) They should adopt more lenient policies about alcohol consumption on campus.

Question 13

Which of the following news headlines would be most likely to make a lasting impression on readers?

A) Baby Elephant Takes First Steps!
B) Stocks Plummet on Release of Dire Economic Forecast!
C) Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself!
D) Navy Helps Giant Sea Turtles!

Question 14

The confirmation bias makes what prediction about human behavior?

A) People will seek out supporting evidence for their beliefs.
B) People judge the probability of an event by how closely it matches their schemas.
C) People will prefer sure wins over gambles.
D) People will prefer gambles over sure losses.

Question 15

When information ____________ has the most influence on people, the primacy effect has occurred.When information ____________ has the most influence on people, the recency effect has occurred.

A) experienced secondhand; experienced firsthand
B) experience firsthand; experienced secondhand
C) presented last; presented first
D) presented first; presented last

Question 16

When judgments or decisions are influenced by the way in which information is presented, this is called a(n)

A) effect of pluralistic ignorance.
B) biased information effect.
C) framing effect.
D) processing failure.

Question 17

Many members of a street gang believe privately that their initiation process is too harsh and dangerous.However, they do not express these beliefs because they assume that everyone else thinks the initiation process is just fine.This scenario exemplifies

A) pluralistic ignorance.
B) group rationalization.
C) counterfactual conformity.
D) the framing effect.

Question 18

William hosted a dinner party for his coworkers.The next day, five coworkers complimented William on the wonderful meal.However, one coworker criticized the meal.William is

A) more likely to think about the compliments than the critical remark.
B) equally likely to think about the compliments and the critical remark.
C) more likely to think about the critical remark than the compliments.
D) unlikely to respond negatively to the critical remark.

Question 19

Barbara mostly chooses to watch news programs that support her political beliefs while avoiding news programs that may disagree with her views.What is this an example of?

A) information bias
B) hindsight bias
C) misinformation effect
D) motivated confirmation bias

Question 20

According to the textbook's description of positive and negative framing, which of the following statements would be most influential on a decision to undergo a risky surgery?

A) Ninety out of 100 people who have this surgery survive.
B) Ten out of 100 people who have this surgery die.
C) The odds are very high that you will survive this surgery.
D) Of 100 people who have had this surgery, 68 were still alive after a year.

Question 21

Psychologists have discovered that people store information in coherent configurations called

A) information nodes.
B) schemas.
C) conceptual frames.
D) flashbulb memories.

Question 22

The research in which participants who were primed to think of elderly people later walked more slowly down a hallway best shows

A) the influence of schemas on memory.
B) that bottom-up processing can have a strong influence on our behaviors.
C) that schemas lead us to notice more information in our environments.
D) the influence of schemas on behavior.

Question 23

Which of the following examples best shows how schemas can be self-fulfilling prophecies?

A) Participants primed to think of the elderly actually walk slower down a hallway.
B) Teachers who expect that some children will do well in school actually lead those children to perform better.
C) People are more likely to apply the trait of' dependence to a female character in a novel compared to a male character.
D) A schema that is frequently activated will be more likely to be applied to a new stimulus.

Question 24

____________ processes consist of observing and remembering relevant stimuli from the outside world, and ____________ processes filter and interpret stimuli in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations.

A) Deductive; inductive
B) Attentive; elaborative
C) Bottom-up; top-down
D) Perceptual; constructive

Question 25

Top-down processing is most useful ____________.

A) in clearly defined situations with very little ambiguity.
B) in situations where we have very little prior knowledge.
C) in ambiguous situations where we have at least some prior knowledge.
D) rarely, because top-down processing is rarely useful.

Question 26

Judgments are particularly likely to result from top-down processes when people

A) have access to accurate information.
B) must perform a well-defined task.
C) are not physiologically aroused.
D) encounter an event that is ambiguous.

Question 27

Having prior knowledge about a situation can influence how we construe ambiguous situations.This is a result of a heavy reliance on ____________.

A) bottom up processing.
B) top-down processing.
C) pluralistic ignorance.
D) the recency effect.

Question 28

Because schemas have been shown to influence _____________, participants who are told to watch a video of a basketball game and count the number of times people in white shirts pass the ball might completely miss seeing a person in a black gorilla suit walk through the game.

A) behaviors
B) attention
C) bottom-up processes
D) priming

Question 29

According to the textbook, all of the following can activate schemas EXCEPT

A) subliminal stimuli.
B) recent activation of a schema.
C) expectations.
D) All of the above are correct.

Question 30

You think of your friend Jan as a very introverted person.Confirmation bias would predict that you will

A) look for examples of introverted behaviors in Jan.
B) look for examples of extroverted behaviors in Jan.
C) be very likely to form a strong relationship with her.
D) be very unlikely to form a strong relationship with her.

Question 31

The textbook describes a study in which one group of participants was asked to determine whether working out a day before a tennis match made the player more likely to win, and another group of participants was asked to determine whether working out a day before a tennis match made a player more likely to lose.Consistent with the confirmation bias, participants in the group examining a connection between working out and winning were most likely to search for

A) information about how many players did not work out, and then lost their match.
B) information about how many players did not work out, and then won their match.
C) information about how many players worked out, and then lost their match.
D) information about how many players worked out, and then won their match.

Question 32

The planning fallacy refers to the tendency to

A) be unrealistically pessimistic about someone else's ability to perform a task.
B) be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly you can complete a project.
C) overestimate how much time you need to complete a project.
D) overestimate how much time another person needs to complete a project.

Question 33

Recall that the Chapmans studied how experienced clinical psychologists and college students would interpret individuals' responses to the Draw-a-Person test, which often is used to diagnose psychiatric disorders.Results showed that ____________ perceived illusory correlations between individuals' mental disorders and their drawings.

A) only the students
B) only the clinicians
C) both the students and the clinicians
D) neither the students nor the clinicians

Question 34

Procedures that momentarily activate a particular schema are referred to as

A) bottom-up procedures.
B) encoding.
C) top-down procedures.
D) priming.

Question 35

According to the text, which of the following instances of "common sense" may be due to the representativeness heuristic?

A) Handwriting analysis cannot reveal certain things about your personality.
B) Eating turtle meat makes you a worse swimmer.
C) You should avoid potato chips if you suffer from greasy skin and acne.
D) You should drink milk when you have a cold.

Question 36

When people form judgments about everyday events, the feature-matching process

A) usually leads to inaccurate perceptions of a given event.
B) usually leads people to select the right schema to encode a given event.
C) usually creates a mismatch between the features of a schema and a given event.
D) ensures that irrelevant or superficial features of a given event will not influence a person's schema.

Question 37

Jenny has just read a novel about a husband who treats his wife badly.She then meets her new boyfriend for a dinner date.According to research on schemas, Jenny is likely to

A) break up with her boyfriend.
B) view her boyfriend's actions in a negative light.
C) tell her boyfriend how much she loves him.
D) talk about how they should get married.

Question 38

The textbook describes an experiment conducted by Bargh and Pietromonaco (1982)in which participants viewed a list composed mainly of hostile words or a list composed mainly of nonhostile words.Consistent with the argument that ______________ stimuli influence schemas, results showed that those exposed to the hostile list ________________.

A) subliminal; subsequently rated a target person more negatively.
B) consciously experienced; were friendlier during a subsequent conversation.
C) subliminal; remembered fewer hostile words on a memory test.
D) consciously experienced; enjoyed the experiment to a greater degree.

Question 39

Recall that Kahneman and Tversky conducted an experiment to explain why the availability heuristic occurs.Their results showed clear support for a(n)____________ explanation.

A) ease of retrieval
B) ease of encoding
C) affective primacy
D) planning fallacy

Question 40

Jim watched a videotape of a woman talking about her life.Throughout the tape, the woman said many things that are stereotypical of a professor.She also said many things that are stereotypical of a waitress.Before watching the video, Jim was told that the woman was employed as a waitress.According to schema research, Jim will probably remember more

A) of her later utterances than her initial utterances.
B) of her initial utterances than her later utterances.
C) waitress-consistent utterances than professor-consistent utterances.
D) professor-consistent utterances than waitress-consistent utterances.

Question 41

Pluralistic ignorance arises when people's behavior is consistent with their beliefs.

Question 42

Lola visits Trish in Weston, CT.At some point, Lola asks Trish whether there is a lot of crime in Weston.Although crime rarely occurs there, Trish recalls a recent news story about a Weston drug store robbery.On the basis of this memory, she then tells Lola that there is a lot of crime in Weston.This scenario illustrates reliance on the ____________ heuristic.

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

Question 43

People sometimes work together on a project and later decide who should get the most credit.This decision, according to research by Michael Ross, often entails ____________ one's own contributions to joint projects.Moreover, this tendency arises from ____________.

A) overestimating; self-enhancement motives.
B) overestimating; the availability heuristic.
C) underestimating; self-enhancement motives.
D) underestimating; the availability heuristic.

Question 44

Research has shown a positive correlation between the amount of time spent watching television and the fear of victimization.

Question 45

People rely on the ____________ heuristic when they judge the frequency or probability of some event by the readiness with which similar events come to mind.

A) encoding
B) representativeness
C) accessibility
D) availability

Question 46

People use the representativeness heuristic when they judge the frequency or probability of some event by the readiness with which similar events come to mind.

Question 47

When forming judgments about others, people often rely on the representativeness heuristic.Unfortunately, this can lead people to

A) ignore how much a person resembles a prototypical group member.
B) use information that is causally relevant.
C) rely too heavily on base-rate frequency information.
D) ignore base-rate information.

Question 48

Confirmation bias predicts that people will look for evidence that contradicts their preconceptions.

Question 49

According to the textbook, schemas might influence the encoding of information but not the retrieval of information.

Question 50

People tend to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project.

Question 51

The availability and representativeness heuristics sometimes can operate in tandem.The joint effect of these two heuristics can create a(n)

A) unmemorable association.
B) co-occurrence fallacy.
C) statistical association.
D) illusory correlation.

Question 52

According to Tversky and Kahneman, when an initial intuitive assessment of a situation is not modified or overridden by a more deliberative analysis,

A) the intuitive system always produces inaccurate judgments.
B) important factors may be ignored and our judgments may be systematically biased.
C) more efficient and accurate information processing occurs.
D) the rational system takes over to produce accurate judgments.

Question 53

Research on framing effects has shown that positive information tends to attract more attention and have a greater effect on judgments.

Question 54

People sometimes have to assess whether someone is a member of a particular group.In assessing whether someone is gay or a Republican, for example, we often rely on the ____________ heuristic, which entails figuring out the degree to which ____________.

A) availability; someone resembles a category prototype.
B) availability; someone can be categorized quickly.
C) representativeness; someone resembles a category prototype.
D) representativeness; someone can be categorized quickly.

Question 55

According to the textbook, ____________ are mental shortcuts that provide serviceable but often inexact answers to common judgmental problems.

A) pluralistic judgments
B) base rates
C) mental deliberations
D) heuristics

Question 56

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that provide serviceable but often inexact answers to common judgmental problems.

Question 57

People use the ____________ heuristic when they try to categorize something by judging how similar the object is to their conception of the typical member of the relevant category.

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

Question 58

Because of the availability heuristic, people can be more likely to

A) underestimate the frequency of dramatic natural disasters.
B) overestimate the frequency of dramatic natural disasters.
C) overestimate the frequency of common illnesses that can become fatal, such as diabetes or asthma.
D) underestimate the frequency of dramatic accidents that lead to death.

Question 59

An illusory correlation refers to the belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.

Question 60

The primacy effect predicts that information included first in a list will have a greater effect on judgment than information included later in the list.