Deck 8: Social Cognition

Question 1

In Hess and Pullen's (1994) study of impression formation it was found that when positive information was provided after an initial negative portrayal of a person, older adults

A) were more likely to change their impression than younger adults.
B) were less likely to change their impression than younger adults.
C) only paid attention to the positive information.
D) and younger adults were unwilling to change their initial impressions.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

It is possible to explain when and why there are age differences in social judgments (or when older adults hold different beliefs from other age groups) when

A) we examine the specific content of social beliefs.
B) we consider the strength of social beliefs.
C) we know how likely social beliefs are to be activated automatically.
D) all of these.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

When you draw on prior experiences at restaurants to guide your behavior at a new restaurant you are using your

A) knowledge base.
B) social context base.
C) social knowledge.
D) implicit memory

Answer 3

C

Question 4

It is the first day of class and the instructor tells you this is going to be your only meeting all semester. You begin to look around as if to ask the other students, is this real? Finally, you ask the instructor directly if she is serious because you have never been to a class like this before. Realizing this is not how things normally go on the first day of class requires well developed

A) memory.
B) social knowledge structures.
C) social beliefs.
D) personal observations.

Question 5

"John is such a good person" is an example of a

A) situational attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) dispositional attribution.

Question 6

Your grandmother was raised to believe marriage is more important than a career for women. The fact that her granddaughter, who is a lawyer, is not married at 32 is of great concern to her. The social judgment of your grandmother that her granddaughter should be married reflects her

A) social beliefs.
B) her own personal experience.
C) source judgments.
D) all of these.

Question 7

In Hess and Pullen's (1994) study of impression formation it was found that when negative information was provided after an initial positive portrayal of a person, older adults

A) were likely to change their initial impression.
B) were not likely to change their initial impression.
C) only paid attention to the positive information.
D) only paid attention to the negative information.

Question 8

Younger and older adults were asked to form impressions of a target person based on six positive and three negative behaviors. The participants were then presented a list of descriptive traits and asked to judge the extent to which each of the traits characterized the target person. It was found that younger adults were able to distinguish between the traits that referred to the original behaviors and those that did not, while older adults could not. This was suggested to be due to

A) decreased social knowledge base in older adults.
B) increases in stereotypes with age.
C) decreases in processing resources in older adults.
D) increased correspondence biases in younger adults.

Question 9

When encountering a situation, your belief system is triggered. Your belief system draws on both your and .

A) social knowledge; cognitive interpretation of the situation
B) emotional reaction; cognitive interpretation of the situation
C) social knowledge ; personal experiences
D) emotional reaction; personal experiences

Question 10

Your overall feeling about what person is like based on what you learned from your first meeting is called

A) initial impression.
B) judgment impression.
C) judgment formation.
D) impression formation.

Question 11

is an important factor in understanding how older adults process and access social information.

A) Processing resources
B) Memory
C) General intelligence
D) Social beliefs

Question 12

The likelihood that information in memory will be used to guide social judgments is related to

A) how easily the information can be accessed.
B) one's social context base.
C) how quickly the information is processed.
D) one's implicit memory.

Question 13

Social judgments based on first impressions is known as

A) initial impression.
B) judgment impression.
C) judgment formation.
D) impression formation.

Question 14

When people develop explanations of behavior, this is known as a

A) situational attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) dispositional attribution.

Question 15

Older adults pay attention to and seek out emotional information more than do younger adults. This probably helps explain why older adults have a bias.

A) positivity
B) negativity
C) first impression
D) age

Question 16

Deciding that you did poorly on an exam because you did not study is called a

A) effort attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) situational attribution.

Question 17

When people develop explanations of behavior based on things inside themselves or others, this is know as a

A) situational attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) dispositional attribution.

Question 18

When you are determining where particular pieces of information originated you have made a(n)

A) social context judgment.
B) source judgment.
C) implicit source judgment.
D) impression formation.

Question 19

When in a new situation, you draw on prior experiences. This is known as

A) knowledge base.
B) social context base.
C) social knowledge.
D) implicit memory.

Question 20

Before you are told the details about a car accident your friend was in, you are told that the other person involved in the accident was an older man who is hard of hearing. Whether this information will influence your interpretation of the events is related to your

A) social context effect.
B) implicit priming.
C) implicit theories.
D) impression formation.

Question 21

The explanations that people create to account for behavior vary depending on

A) the type of situation.
B) the age of the person.
C) the strength of the social beliefs and whether they have been violated.
D) all of these.

Question 22

One day you walk past your adult development professor and say "hi," but the instructor does not respond. You decide that she is rude, but what you failed to notice is that she was in deep conversation with the chair of her department and other faculty and did not hear you. This is an example of a

A) correspondence bias.
B) causal attribution.
C) implicit bias.
D) explicit bias.

Question 23

Blanchard-Fields and colleagues found that when participants were presented with different situations with positive or negative outcomes, older adults were more likely to make about the main character.

A) situational attributions
B) causal attributions
C) interactive attributions
D) dispositional attributions

Question 24

When older adults' forgetfulness is rated as more serious than memory failures of younger adults, this is known as

A) an age-based double standard.
B) an age-based stereotype.
C) age-based attribution.
D) dispositional stereotype.

Question 25

Deciding that you did poorly on an exam because you did not study is which type of attribution

A) effort attribution.
B) personality attribution.
C) dispositional attribution
D) situational attribution.

Question 26

The belief that older adults are wiser than younger adults is an example of a

A) stereotype.
B) false belief.
C) dispositional attribution.
D) social script.

Question 27

Which theory posits that as we grow older, emotional goals become more important and motivating?

A) socioemotional attributional theory
B) socioemotional selectivity theory
C) emotional control theory
D) emotional integrity theory

Question 28

How we approach problems is known as our

A) personal control.
B) cognitive style.
C) attributional style.
D) processing goal.

Question 29

Hess and colleagues argue that changes in may lead to an increase in a need for closure with age.

A) personal control
B) possible selves
C) emotional selectivity
D) processing resources

Question 30

Referring to older adults as "golden agers" or "senile" are examples of

A) social scripts.
B) stereotypes.
C) situational attributions.
D) causal attributions.

Question 31

When people develop explanations of behavior based on things outside the control of a person, this is know as a

A) situational attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) dispositional attribution.

Question 32

Recent research of Hummert shows that African American adults hold age stereotypes as/than European Americans.

A) more
B) fewer
C) similar
D) different

Question 33

are social beliefs about a group of people, that are based on prior knowledge and affect how we interpret new information.

A) Implicit stereotypes
B) Stereotypes
C) Situational attributions
D) Social frames

Question 34

The fact that young adults tend to rely more on dispositional information and ignore compelling situational information is an example of

A) correspondence bias.
B) causal attribution.
C) implicit bias.
D) explicit bias.

Question 35

The need for results in a desire for predictability, being uncomfortable with ambiguity, and a preference for quick and decisive answers.

A) personal control
B) closure
C) emotional selectivity
D) ego integrity

Question 36

According to research by Blanchard-Fields and colleagues, which age group is most likely to take into account situational and dispositional factors when assessing one's behavior?

A) adolescents
B) young adults
C) middle-aged adults
D) older adults

Question 37

Hummert (1999) found that compared to younger adults, older adults hold age-related stereotypes.

A) more
B) fewer
C) similar
D) different

Question 38

"I didn't do well on that exam because the teacher is unfair" is an example of a

A) situational attribution.
B) causal attribution.
C) causation.
D) dispositional attribution.

Question 39

In an interesting study done by Carstensen and Turk-Charles (1994) in which older and younger adults were asked to recall a passage from a popular novel, older adults remembered

A) more than younger adults.
B) less than younger adults.
C) more nonemotional information than younger adults.
D) more emotional information than younger adults.

Question 40

Older adults produce age stereotypes then younger adults.

A) more
B) fewer
C) similar
D) different

Question 41

Bargh and colleagues have found that subliminal messages about older persons made young adults walk down a hall slower. This is evidence for

A) implicit social beliefs.
B) implicit stereotyping.
C) implicit attributions.
D) explicit stereotyping.

Question 42

According to Brandtstädter, a person who engages in activities to alleviate declines is said to be engaging in

A) primary control.
B) accommodations.
C) assimilative activities.
D) emotion-focused coping.

Question 43

John has added five minutes to his goal running time after he began noticing it is taking him longer to finish his morning run. According to Brandtstädter, John is said to be engaging in

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) assimilative activities.
D) accommodative activities.

Question 44

Hummert and colleagues found that when primed with the subliminal message "old", adults respond faster to the word "ugly", and when primed with the subliminal message "young", adults respond faster to the word "pretty." This is evidence for

A) implicit social beliefs.
B) implicit stereotyping.
C) implicit attributions.
D) explicit stereotyping.

Question 45

According to Brandtstädter, a person who uses all sorts of memory aids (e.g., a PDA and a Franklin planner) because they pride themselves on not forgetting appointments is said to be engaging in

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) assimilative activities.
D) emotion-focused coping.

Question 46

According to Brandtstädter, a person who readjusts his/her goals to lessen the impact of declines is said to be engaging in

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) assimilative activities.
D) accommodations.

Question 47

When Tina talks to her mother she talks very slowly while exaggerating the intonation of her voice. This is an example of

A) stereotyped speech.
B) age-based language.
C) patronizing speech.
D) infantile speech.

Question 48

According to Brandtstädter, a person who ignores evidence of declines or blames it on something else is said to be engaging in

A) immunizing mechanisms.
B) secondary control.
C) assimilative activities.
D) accommodative activities.

Question 49

When presented with tapes of older and younger adults who are forgetful or not forgetful, both younger and older adults

A) judge the older forgetful person more harshly.
B) were more likely to have confidence in younger people, both forgetful and not forgetful.
C) were more likely to have confidence in young and older people who were not forgetful.
D) showed an age-based double standard.

Question 50

Alice has misplaced her keys (which rarely happens), but her grandchildren are very worried that something might be wrong with grandma. Never mind that her granddaughter has done the same thing three times this week. The above is an example of

A) an age-based double standard.
B) an age-based stereotype.
C) the beginning signs of Alzheimer's disease.
D) senility.

Question 51

One way in which implicit stereotypes are often observed is in how

A) people communicate with each other.
B) people think of each other.
C) people rate other peoples' behaviors toward older adults.
D) threatened a person feels.

Question 52

Personal control is thought to play a role in

A) memory.
B) intelligence.
C) depression.
D) all of these.

Question 53

Which of the following psychological constructs refers to the belief that one's performance in a situation depends on something that one personally does?

A) personal control
B) locus of control
C) internal locus of control
D) external locus of control

Question 54

In a study of African Americans at Stanford University who had scored very high on the SAT verbal subtest, half were told they would take a test that would predict their verbal ability and the other half took the same test but did not hear the test was predictive. Those who heard the predictive statement did worse than those who did not. This is likely to due to

A) negative personal control.
B) internal attributions.
C) stereotype threat.
D) implicit social beliefs.

Question 55

Brandtstädter proposes that a positive view of self in later life requires

A) accomodations.
B) immunizing mechanisms.
C) assimilative activities.
D) all of these.

Question 56

When older adults were told they were going to take a memory test they performed more poorly than younger adults on a task. However, when they were told the task emphasized learning about new information they performed similarly to younger adults. This provides and example of

A) negative personal control.
B) internal attributions.
C) implicit social beliefs.
D) stereotype threat.

Question 57

The results of Bargh, et al. and Hummert et al. reveal that

A) causal attributions of older adults are more likely to be dispositional in nature.
B) negative stereotypes are activated when we are unaware of them.
C) patronizing speech is common among nursing home workers.
D) personal control is related to memory performance.

Question 58

Grob and colleagues found that personal control over the life span

A) increases in all domains.
B) decreases in all domains.
C) is highly stable in all domains.
D) varies greatly depending on domain.

Question 59

The activation of an automatic, unconscious stereotype is known as

A) implicit social beliefs.
B) implicit stereotyping.
C) implicit attributions.
D) explicit stereotyping.

Question 60

Soederberg, Miller, and Lachman (1999) found with regard to intelligence.

A) personal control increases with age
B) personal control decreases with age
C) personal control is has not been measured
D) personal control is highly stable

Question 61

The results of Dixon and Gould (1998) on married couples and collaborative cognition illustrates

A) older couples perform better than singles, but not as well as young married couples.
B) older couples perform worse than younger couples.
C) older couples perform as well as younger couples.
D) older couples performed as well as younger singles.

Question 62

The results of Adams and colleagues on adults storytelling illustrate the importance of

A) considering social context when examining age-related performance.
B) considering processing demands when examining age-related performance.
C) considering causal attributions when examining age-related performance.
D) considering gender when examining age-related performance.

Question 63

The most appropriate conclusion to draw from research on personal control is

A) personal control increases with age.
B) personal control decreases with age.
C) personal control is multidimensional and complex.
D) personal control is highly stable across domains.

Question 64

Older adults are more likely to change their initial impressions when information follows initially information.

Question 65

The way people create initial impressions is called .

Question 66

Sixty-eight-year-old twins Mary and Tina are trying to solve a crossword puzzle by working together. This is an example of

A) metacognition.
B) mnemonics.
C) collaborative cognition.
D) external strategy.

Question 67

In the theory of personal control developed by Heckhausen and Schulz, changing one's goals is referred to as

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) possible selves.
D) problem-focused coping mechanisms.

Question 68

Jessica has forgotten a few appointments. However she doesn't think it is her fault. Instead she blames her secretary for forgetting to mark her calendar and remind her. According to Brandtstädter, Jessica is said to be engaging in

A) immunizing mechanisms.
B) secondary control.
C) assimilative activities.
D) accommodations

Question 69

. is when we draw on experience to tell us how to behave.

Question 70

What control strategies are related to preserving a positive perspective as we age?

A) minimizing
B) accommodations
C) assimilative activities
D) all of these

Question 71

When older adults do not correct their initial impression because negative information is more striking and affects them more strongly, they are exhibiting a .

Question 72

Dixon and colleagues found that when older adults worked together to recall a story

A) they confused each other.
B) their performance was better than as individuals working alone.
C) they each remembered different aspects of the story.
D) they only remembered certain aspects of the story and completely forgot other aspects.

Question 73

When a person ignores evidence of declines or blames it on something else he or she is said to be engaging in .

Question 74

A 35-year-old man loses his job and is now actively searching for a new job. According to Heckhausen and Schulz this is an example of

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) possible selves.
D) problem-focused coping mechanisms.

Question 75

The theory of personal control developed by Heckhausen and Schulz proposes that as people get older, they are more likely to exert control in their lives by using

A) primary control strategies in which they change their environment.
B) secondary control strategies in which they change their goals.
C) possible selves in which they try to remember their past behaviors.
D) problem-focused coping mechanisms.

Question 76

When two or more people work together to solve a problem or task, they are engaging in

A) primary control.
B) collaborative cognition.
C) metacognition.
D) problem-focused coping.

Question 77

In the theory of personal control developed by Heckhausen and Schulz, changing the environment to achieve one's goals is referred to as

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) possible selves.
D) problem-focused coping mechanisms.

Question 78

An 82-year-old women decides she is not able to drive on the interstate any more so she decides this is not necessary because she can get to most locations by driving on streets. According to Heckhausen and Schulz this is an example of

A) primary control.
B) secondary control.
C) possible selves.
D) problem-focused coping mechanisms.

Question 79

When older adults were asked to learn a story so they could retell it later to a group of young children, their stories

A) were less detailed than younger adults.
B) were similar to that of younger adults.
C) contained a number of errors.
D) were more detailed than younger adults.

Question 80

In the theory of personal control developed by Heckhausen and Schulz, control is viewed as

A) a motivational system that regulates human behavior.
B) the give and take of mechanisms that regulate human behavior.
C) minimizing the impact of failures in performance.
D) none of these.