Deck 2: Social Perception and Cognition

Question 1

What is the dual-systems model of social cognition?

A) conscious and unconscious
B) rapid automatic and slow deliberative
C) internal and external
D) attribution and perception
E) mindful and mindless

Answer 1

B

Question 2

According to the discounting principle of attribution:

A) we tend to accept the most dominant/likely explanation if there is more than one plausible cause
B) we reject the first explanation that comes to mind
C) we accept one explanation but always recognize that it may be wrong
D) we rely more on the situation in making attributions
E) we rely more on dispositional factors in making attributions

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Teachers use available memories of a similar student or sibling in predicting the performance of a current student. This is an example of:

A) an illusory correlation
B) negativity bias
C) the availability heuristic
D) positivity bias
E) the representativeness heuristic

Answer 3

C

Question 4

You have a mental image of someone as an ideal or typical example of a category. You have used a(n):

A) stereotype
B) schema
C) illusory correlation
D) prototype
E) script

Question 5

In a prison, inmates attribute their actions to the situations inside the prison and social workers attribute those actions to the inmates themselves. This illustrates the:

A) fundamental attribution error
B) actor/observer bias
C) self-serving bias
D) defensive attribution
E) negativity bias

Question 6

John dresses rather clumsily, but is kind, honest, and helpful. He is, however, described by his mates as an unattractive person. This impression signifies:

A) the cynicism of human nature
B) the fundamental attribution error
C) the misuse of peripheral traits in impression formation
D) the weakness in human judgment
E) negativity effect

Question 7

Kelley's covariation model concerns:

A) a single source of variation
B) a relationship over time
C) situations involving success and failure
D) two unrelated events
E) situations involving dispositional optimism and pessimism

Question 8

Nalini thinks that divorce is very common now. Her opinion is based on her recalling that quite a number of the couples she has known well over the years have recently split up. This is an example of:

A) the false consensus effect
B) an illusory correlation
C) the representativeness heuristic
D) the availability heuristic
E) the simulation heuristic

Question 9

In genetic counselling it is found that parents who have had one abnormal child overestimate the probability of their having another. This is an example of:

A) the false consensus effect
B) an illusory correlation
C) the illusion of control
D) the just world phenomenon
E) the representativeness heuristic

Question 10

What determines how readily one can identify a person as belonging to some category?

A) extent to which person resembles prototype
B) nature of stereotype about that category
C) extent to which perceiver allows for variation from the prototype
D) both a and b
E) both a and c

Question 11

Implicit personality theories:

A) guide us in what to expect about different types of people
B) cause us to misjudge others if they are inaccurate
C) tend to persist even in the face of contradictory evidence
D) serve as person schemas
E) all of the above

Question 12

Although stereotypes may not always be accurate, they are useful to us because:

A) they give us a basis on which to avoid prejudice against others
B) all of us must develop some schemata and stereotypes are necessary for this purpose
C) more stereotypes are true than they are false
D) stereotypes are useful for the resolution of dissonance
E) they aid our capacity to make sense of the social world

Question 13

Which cues do we use to make a correspondent inference?

A) was behavior freely chosen?
B) was behavior contrary to the usual social norms?
C) was behavior directed towards us rather than someone else?
D) all of the above
E) both a and b, not c

Question 14

Rape and incest victims often are blamed for their victimization and sometimes blame themselves because of what bias?

A) illusion of control
B) positivity
C) negativity
D) discounting principle
E) ignoring consensus information

Question 15

Josh smiles at Mary but rarely at other women. Many other people smile at Mary. The covariation model would suggest that:

A) Josh is a very friendly person
B) most people are friendly to Josh
C) Mary is a very likable person
D) Josh and his friends love smiling at people
E) Mary loves to smile at Josh

Question 16

The covariation model presupposes that:

A) we know how a person has acted at other times
B) we know how others are acting in the same situation
C) we do not know how others are acting in the same situation
D) both a and b above
E) both a and c above

Question 17

Accounting for a poor final grade in psychology by saying that one was disrupted by another student during the final exam is an example of an attribution which is:

A) internal, unstable, and controllable
B) external, stable, and controllable
C) internal, stable, and uncontrollable
D) internal, stable, and controllable
E) external, unstable, and controllable

Question 18

Students were asked to imagine that they had received an A or an F in a required course. Then they were asked to rank various possible causes for that mark. Among those who imagined an excellent mark, men attributed their success to ability while women emphasized effort. What happened when they imagined a failing mark?

A) both men and women attributed failure to bad luck
B) men blamed it on bad luck and women on lack of ability
C) men blamed it on lack of effort, and women to lack of ability
D) men blamed it on lack of ability and women on lack of effort
E) both men and women blamed it on lack of effort

Question 19

Where might we apply Weiner's attribution model of achievement attribution?

A) someone acting friendly to you
B) results in an Olympic event
C) covariation of actor, entity and situation
D) someone gives you a compliment
E) none of the above

Question 20

Fiske and Taylor (1984) describe human beings as 'cognitive misers'. By this they meant that:

A) we try hard not to reveal to others what we are thinking
B) we expend as little effort as necessary to make judgments about people
C) we give very little thought about the existence of others
D) we try to make decisions about issues as quickly as possible
E) we would rather not waste time thinking about trivial issues

Question 21

Which of the following represents the fundamental attribution error?

A) you attribute your own behaviour at the party to the situation
B) you attribute the behaviour of someone at a party to their strange personality traits
C) you attribute success to yourself and failure to bad luck
D) you attribute your failure in an exam to the unfairness of the exam
E) you attribute an accident to the carelessness of the driver because it was such a bad accident

Question 22

According to results from studies using Kelley's covariation model, which of the following is underused by many people?

A) consistency
B) consensus
C) correspondent inference
D) distinctiveness
E) entity

Question 23

When we use unstated rules and assumptions as short cuts to guide our decisions, we are using:

A) stereotypes
B) heuristics
C) prototypes
D) attributions
E) anchoring

Question 24

The principle of figure-ground in perception is illustrated by:

A) an overreliance on unusual or extreme traits and behaviours in forming impressions
B) paying more attention to the situation than the person in forming an impression
C) paying more attention to positive than negative traits in forming an impression
D) rating both people and objects negatively
E) making impressions on the basis of facts and figures

Question 25

The actor/observer difference in perception is reversed when:

A) the actor views a videotape from the observer's perspective
B) judgments are made about criminal behaviour
C) actors and observers are high in self-efficacy
D) judgments are made about academic performance
E) actors are experienced at the roles they play

Question 26

The actor/observer difference describes the fact that people are more likely to make __________ attributions about others than about themselves.

A) correct
B) dispositional
C) cognitively consistent
D) situational
E) both c and d

Question 27

You like her looks (8) but admire her intelligence less (4). You value looks twice as much as intelligence, thus your rating of her is 10. You have used:

A) the averaging model
B) the additive model
C) the weighted averaging model
D) the weighted additive model
E) a and b

Question 28

You overhear the owner of a car dealership tell the salesperson to raise the price on a car that a customer is interested in buying. The salesperson later successfully convinces the customer to buy the car at the inflated price. You decide that the salesperson is a cheat and attribute his behaviour to his disposition. This is an example of:

A) the fundamental attribution error
B) the covariation principle
C) negativity bias
D) egocentric bias
E) the discounting principle

Question 29

In an experiment in which subjects listened to an interview with a job applicant, subjects felt that they knew what the person was 'really like' when the applicant acted out-of-role, illustrating:

A) the covariation principle
B) a correspondent inference
C) the discounting principle
D) the actor/observer bias
E) schematic processing

Question 30

We are using an availability heuristic if:

A) we ignore base rate information
B) we exaggerate the extent to which two things go together
C) we are influenced by certain incidents that readily come to mind
D) we overemphasize extreme cases
E) both c and d

Question 31

You have a schema about political leaders in general, and you also have specific ideas and notions about your own country's leader. This is known as a(n):

A) role schema
B) event schema
C) person schema
D) script
E) both a and c

Question 32

Classic economic theory posits that people make decisions in their own self-interest. Other economists and psychologists challenge this assumption. What discipline reflects this?

A) social cognition
B) attribution theory
C) behavioural economics
D) macro-economics
E) cognitive heuristics and biases

Question 33

According to research findings, which of the following are included in the core beliefs of gamblers?

A) through persistence and skill I can make money from gambling
B) while many may fail I have what it takes to win
C) persistence will eventually bring rewards
D) if I lose on this turn I am increasingly likely to win
E) all of the above

Question 34

Olympic medal winners were observed as to how satisfied they were with their outcomes. Surprisingly, bronze medal winners (third place) were more satisfied than silver medal (second) winners. Why?

A) attributional biases
B) counterfactual thinking
C) illusory correlation
D) achievement attribution
E) biased judges

Question 35

You attribute your failure in an exam to the unfairness of the exam. According to Weiner's model, this achievement attribution is:

A) internal, unstable
B) internal, stable
C) external, stable
D) situational, dispositional
E) external, unstable

Question 36

You go to buy a lottery ticket and decide to carefully select your own combination of numbers. This is a good example of a(n):

A) self-serving bias
B) illusion of control
C) fundamental attribution error
D) correspondent inference
E) positivity bias

Question 37

The actor/observer bias is the tendency to exaggerate the influence of ______ factors in the actor, and ___ factors on the observer.

A) situational, situational
B) dispositional, dispositional
C) situational, dispositional
D) dispositional, situational
E) all of the above

Question 38

In a prison, Saulnier and Periman found that prisoners tended to attribute their actions to __________ factors while social workers attributed those actions to __________ factors.

A) dispositional, situational
B) dispositional, dispositional
C) situational, situational
D) situational, dispositional
E) internal, external

Question 39

The explanations for people being influenced by self-serving biases in attributions include:

A) ego-defensive motives
B) self-presentation motives
C) the fundamental attribution error
D) both a and b
E) all of the above

Question 40

Subjects were instructed to imagine either J. Carter or G. Ford as the winner of the 1976 US election. When later asked to predict who would actually win, subjects tended to predict the candidate that they had been asked to imagine earlier. This demonstrates the effects of:

A) priming
B) an illusory correlation
C) ignoring baserate information
D) the actor/observer bias
E) schematic processing

Question 41

In an experiment by Tversky and Kahneman (1973), subjects were given a description of a young man, Steve, who closely resembles a typical librarian, and were told that the description was drawn from a pool of 100 men, 10 of whom were librarians. Subjects assumed that Steve is a librarian. This is an example of:

A) the availability heuristic
B) the representativeness heuristic
C) an illusory correlation
D) the false consensus effect
E) the simulation heuristic

Question 42

Team members attribute winning to internal factors and losing to unstable external factors. This is an example of:

A) a positivity bias
B) a self-serving bias
C) the fundamental attribution error
D) a negativity bias
E) hedonic relevance

Question 43

When we make assumptions about certain types of people or about people in general, we are making use of:

A) our central traits
B) our attributional biases
C) the pollyanna principle
D) implicit personality theory
E) all of the above

Question 44

Research has shown that implicit personality theories:

A) are used only when there is no objective basis on which to form an impression
B) do not guide us in what to expect about different types of people
C) are commonly used, but their effects are short-lived
D) tend to persist even in the face of contradictory information
E) tend to be homogeneous within cultures or sub-groups

Question 45

When we see people of another ethnic group as 'all alike' we are using:

A) an illusory correlation
B) stereotyping
C) prototyping
D) external attributions
E) all of the above

Question 46

Suedfeld studied the writings of famous revolutionary leaders, before and after the revolution. Those who were successful in the post-revolution period shoed what change?

A) greater integrative complexity
B) more direct communication (lower integrative complexity)
C) more situational attributions
D) more dispositional attributions
E) none of the above

Question 47

Rating professors higher than their courses is an example of:

A) a positivity bias
B) a negativity bias
C) an attributional bias
D) the fallacy of impression formation
E) the fundamental attribution error

Question 48

Because of a self-improvement schema, students who completed a study skills program:

A) showed improved grades
B) believed that they had improved
C) recalled their ability prior to the program as worse than it was
D) all of the above
E) both a and c

Question 49

Schemas have important effects on:

A) what we will pay attention to
B) memory
C) how we interpret events
D) all of the above
E) both a and c

Question 50

A famous actor dies of a drug overdose. Many people blame this on a character flaw in the unfortunate actor, ignoring situational factors. This is an example of:

A) the correspondence bias
B) fundamental attribution error
C) attribution of responsibility
D) the endowment effect
E) all of the above

Question 51

Which of the following is not cited as a relevant critique of attribution theories?

A) attribution theory is peculiar to a particular culture
B) attribution studies within cultures reveal some different patterns
C) much of what people do is 'mindless'
D) attribution research is an artifact of what people are asked
E) all of the above

Question 52

Which of the following is an example of the endowment effect?

A) difficulty in discarding a pair of worn-out jeans
B) assuming a causal relationship between two events that occur at the same time
C) ordinary people may be capable of extraordinary evil acts
D) while more people die in automobile accidents than airplane crashes, most people consider flying to be more dangerous
E) parents who have one abnormal baby overestimate the probability of having another abnormal baby

Question 53

Research has found that compared to people with weaker just world beliefs, those with strong just world beliefs:

A) are less likely to see negative outcomes such as poor grades on an exam as unfair
B) are not as likely to view negative outcomes such as job dissatisfaction with anger and resentment
C) may blame themselves when they experience traumatic events
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Question 54

Which of the following is not an external attribution?

A) the weather
B) peer group pressure
C) the situation
D) good luck
E) mood

Question 55

According to the principle of correspondent inferences, we are more likely to infer that a person's action corresponds to his/her disposition if we believe that:

A) the person's action was freely chosen
B) the person's action is very unpopular
C) the person had been ordered to act in the way he did
D) most people would have acted the same under similar circumstances
E) both a and b

Question 56

When we learn positive information about a person first, and later learn negative information, we are likely to:

A) search for negative information to counteract the positive
B) let the positive information outweigh later negative information
C) discount the positive information
D) suspend judgment until we have sufficient information to make a decision
E) both c and d

Question 57

Attribution theory is concerned with:

A) how people assign causes to events
B) the formation of person prototypes
C) ascribing one's positive characteristics to learning experience
D) the difference between actors' and observers' ideas about the cause of an event
E) both c and d

Question 58

The experiment in which people responded favourably to a request to use the photocopy machine to 'make some copies' demonstrates:

A) the endowment effect
B) system 1 (rapid automatic) thinking
C) system 2 (conscious deliberative) thinking
D) fundamental attribution error
E) system 3 (mindful) thinking

Question 59

Which of the following best describes the fundamental attribution error?

A) people discount other possible causes of an action
B) people exaggerate the importance of negative information
C) people exaggerate the importance of positive information
D) people disregard the importance of personal dispositions and overestimate situational causes
E) people exaggerate the importance of dispositional factors and underestimate the influence of the situation

Question 60

One of the main criticisms against the attribution theory is:

A) the existence of self-serving biases
B) the existence of the fundamental attribution error
C) that much of what people do is 'mindless'
D) the consistent differences between actors and observers
E) that there are too many types of attributions

Question 61

According to Weiner's model of achievement attribution intelligence is seen as ________ and _________.

A) stable, external
B) stable, internal
C) unstable, internal
D) unstable, external
E) situational, dispositional

Question 62

According to Asch, a central trait is:

A) one that is more important than other traits
B) one which influences impressions on other traits
C) one defined by our culture as most important
D) one which is far from the periphery
E) all of the above

Question 63

Which of the following represents the actor/observer bias?

A) you attribute your own behaviour at a party to the situation
B) you attribute the behaviour of someone at a party to their strange personality traits
C) you attribute your failure in an exam to the unfairness of the exam
D) you attribute an accident to the carelessness of the driver because it was such a bad accident
E) both a and b

Question 64

Social desirability is an important component of:

A) the covariation model
B) the discounting principle
C) personalism
D) correspondent inferences
E) positivity bias

Question 65

After receiving a schema about a hypothetical group of men, participants are presented with a list of 50 behaviours. They subsequently remember those behaviours from the list which were consistent with their induced schema. This effect of schema is called:

A) social representation
B) self-monitoring
C) dual representation
D) priming
E) heuristic processing

Question 66

According to Kelley's covariation model, if behaviour is described as __________, it may be attributed to the actor.

A) high consensus, low distinctiveness and low consistency
B) high distinctiveness, low consensus and low consistency
C) low consensus, high consistency and low distinctiveness
D) low consensus, high distinctiveness and high consistency
E) none of the above

Question 67

Which of the following represents the illusion of control?

A) carefully choosing numbers at a lottery
B) believing that good things happen to good people
C) blaming the victim of a rape for being at the wrong place
D) praising your wise decision for standing at the right spot and thereby escaping injury at an air show accident
E) all of the above

Question 68

Students enrol in a study skills program at their university. What happened?

A) their grades improved on subsequent exams
B) their grades did not improve on subsequent exams
C) they exaggerated how poor their study skills were before the programme
D) Both a and c
E) both b and c

Question 69

You visit another country as a tourist and meet a very friendly guide. You then conclude that citizens of that country are very friendly. You are guilty of:

A) an availability heuristic
B) an illusory correlation
C) ignoring base rate information
D) representativeness heuristic
E) overemphasizing extreme cases

Question 70

Miller and Porter (1983) found that:

A) victims often exaggerate their responsibility for the event and its consequences
B) victims usually blame someone else for the event
C) self-blame is related to effectiveness of coping strategies
D) a and b
E) a and c

Question 71

What is an important correlate of the illusion of control?

A) cognitive complexity
B) just world beliefs
C) fundamental attribution error
D) implicit personality theory
E) endowment effect

Question 72

Explanations of the actor/observer differences include the fact that:

A) people know themselves better than they know others
B) people cannot literally see themselves in social situations
C) actors and observers have access to different information
D) attribution theory only applies to judging other people
E) both b and c

Question 73

You have seen a person behave in a certain manner and have suggested an explanation for that behaviour. Essentially, you have:

A) formed an impression
B) made an attribution
C) used your implicit personality theory
D) made a lucky guess
E) none of the above

Question 74

Which of the following is not part of the covariation model?

A) an entity attribution
B) consensus across actors
C) consistency across situations
D) hedonic relevance of the action
E) distinctiveness of the entity

Question 75

A supervisor who considers that a worker is working hard because he or she is being supervised rather than because he or she is motivated to do a good job is an example of:

A) the discounting principle of attribution
B) the covariation principle
C) a negativity bias
D) the fundamental attribution error
E) a positivity bias

Question 76

Which of the following is influenced by schemata?

A) our interpretation of events
B) our future preparations and expectations
C) social memory
D) what we do or do not pay attention to
E) all of the above

Question 77

A serious accident has left a person with a debilitating injury. This person is blaming him/herself for the injury. This kind of self-blame is a product of the:

A) positivity bias
B) negativity bias
C) discounting principle
D) illusion of control
E) ignoring consensus information

Question 78

According to the textbook, the illusion of control leads logically to:

A) self-serving bias
B) belief in a just world
C) fundamental attribution error
D) tendency to make situational attributions
E) correspondent inferences

Question 79

Knowing that Mike's behaviour to Anne is consistent would tell us that it was caused by the:

A) actor
B) entity
C) situation
D) either a or b
E) either a or c

Question 80

Two processes by which social representations emerge and evolve in society are:

A) objectification and verification
B) objectification and anchoring
C) anchoring and assimilation
D) verification and anchoring
E) none of the above