Social Psych Exam 1 Review

Which group is more vulnerable to the fundamental attribution error?

• People from Western culture
• People high in neuroticism
• College students
• None of the above

After Lyla’s husband was injured in a car accident, she said, “I woke up with a bad feeling in my stomach—I knew something was off about that day.” Lyla is exhibiting __________.

• accessibility
• thought suppression
• counterfactual thinking
• the hindsight bias

In many respects, reality television shows are similar to observational research in social psychology. In what crucial respect are reality TV shows most different from observational research?

• They do not use a representative sample of people who confronted strange situations.
• The people filmed did not provide informed consent.
• The observations were not conducted in a systematic, scientific manner.
• The kind of situations that are filmed are not relevant to social psychologists

A researcher hired by a department store wants to examine whether manipulating the room temperature to be hotter as opposed to cooler affects sales of air conditioners. The best method for answering this question would be __________.

• Experimental
• Correlational
• Observational
• Archival Analysis

If two variables have no correlation with each other, this means that __________.

• you can only predict one of the two variables
• when one is higher, the other is lower
• they are probably very similar
• you cannot predict one from the other

Carlos, the president of a fraternity on campus, randomly sampled 500 students, asked them if they belonged to a fraternity or sorority, and asked them about their current GPA. He discovered that the GPAs of those people in fraternities and sororities were higher than those of people who were not involved in the Greek system. Gleefully, he presented his findings to the dean, saying that being involved in a fraternity or sorority leads to higher grades. What rule of research methods is Carlos breaking?

• Correlation does not prove causation.
• College students are not representative of the whole sample of people in the world.
• His sample size of 500 is too small to make such a generalization.
• Correlational data do not provide any practical information on a topic.

In a study of group dynamics, participants were placed in groups consisting of either three or ten people. During the study, group members worked together trying to solve a puzzle. After completing the task, participants reported how satisfied they were with the other members of their group. __________ is the independent variable in this study.

• Group dynamics
• The puzzle
• Group size
• Satisfaction

In a study of frustration and aggression, some participants were exposed to an accomplice who insulted them, and others were exposed to no such insult. Participants were then allowed to recommend whether the accomplice should be fired. Those who were insulted were more likely to retaliate by recommending that the accomplice lose his job. In this experiment, the __________ was the dependent variable.

• presence or absence of an insult
• accomplice
• participants’ recommendations
• difference between the groups

By controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions, an experimenter can achieve high __________.

• Interjudge reliability
• Generalizability
• Replicability
• Interal validity

Which of the following represents a confounding variable in an experiment?

• Failure to randomly assign participants
• Assigning participants based on gender
• Randomly changing several aspects of the study in addition to the independent variable
• Changing only the independent variable