[To the online textbook Psychology: An Introduction (2017) by Russ Dewey]
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Revised 11/23/2016. Welcome to the self-quiz on the Human Nervous System. These questions accompany Chapter 15 (Social Psychology) of the online textbook Psychology: An Introduction). They are general enough to be useful for students using other textbooks as well.
Read the question and click on an answer. You will jump to a correction or (if the answer is correct) a confirmation.
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[The remainder of the page is not meant to be read sequentially; it consists of answers and explanations separated by stretches of nothing. You will jump back and forth to these as you click on possible answers of the questions.]
You picked...
he was "shunned"
No, the subjects in the Asch conformity experiment did not interact in this way.
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the group was more likely to vote to punish him
No, the subjects in the Asch experiment were not asked to do anything to each other.
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other subjects tried to persuade him
No, in the Asch experiment every subject had a free choice.
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it actually strengthened the beliefs of other subjects
No, the "other subjects" were confederates of the experimenter, so they didn't have any false beliefs; they knew what they were doing.
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most subjects were "freed" from the conformity effect
Yes; if the experimenter arranged for only one other person in the group to give the correct answer, this made it much less likely that the naïve subject would go along with all the other people who were deliberately giving a wrong answer.
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indifferent toward
No, the people playing the teacher role did show strong reactions.
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calmly curious about
No, the people playing the teacher role were not calm in their reactions.
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distressed by
Yes. All the teachers were distressed by the sounds of the learner's suffering. However, 60% of them obeyed the experimenter anyway.
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skeptical about
No, the teachers seemed completely taken in by the deception of the experiment. They all believed the learner was really suffering.
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glad about
No, the teachers were not happy about the suffering of the learner, although all the teachers showed some nervous laughter.
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gradual disbelief in a leader
No, source degradation does not necessarily involve a leader.
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forgetting where a message came from
No, that is another classic social psychology phenomenon, not source degradation.
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attacking the source of a message
Yes. Source degradation is a tactic used to counter a persuasive message by attacking the credibility of the source. It is commonly used in court, for example, when a lawyer tries to undermine the credibility of an opposing witness.
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a gradual weakening of a message stimulus
No, source degradation is not necessarily gradual.
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"playing down" to mass consumer tastes
No, that has nothing to do with source degradation.
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remember more of it the next day
No, the sleeper effect is not a memory strengthening principle.
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say that you had dreamed the information
No, the sleeper effect does not involve attributing a memory to a dream.
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buy a product mentioned 4 or 5 times in the article
No, this has nothing to do with the sleeper effect.
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forget where you read it, while remembering the information
Yes. The "sleeper effect" occurs when information from a dubious source is remembered, but the source is forgotten, so the message is given more credibility than it would be if the source was recalled.
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dismiss it as "lies"
No, the sleeper effect generally increases the credibility of a message.
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planting an idea which will be built upon later to create attitude change
No, innoculation is aimed more at helping somebody resist attitude change.
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having people rehearse resistance to an idea
Yes. To "inoculate" people against an idea, they are offered a weak version of it and encouraged to resist it. For example, children in an anti-drug program may perform a skit in which a child is offered drugs but "just says no."
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attacking a communicator's credibility
No, innoculation could involve logical arguments without such attacks.
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a high-fear technique
No, innoculation does not necessarily involve frightening warnings.
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violating group norms
No, innoculation is more often used to support group norms.
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historical factors
No, the fundamental attribution error can involve things which are occurring in the present.
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an evil leader
No, a person committing the fundamental attribution error would not blame a leader.
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their personal qualities
Yes. The fundamental attribution error is said to occur when we attribute a person's behavior (wrongly) to personal qualities while underestimating the influence of situational factors.
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factors beyond their control
No, just the opposite.
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ourselves
No, people do not normally attribute other people's problems to themselves...at least, that is not the "fundamental attribution error."
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corrupt
No, they are more likely to be judged honest.
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better in a variety of ways
Yes. People act as though "what is beautiful is good."
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immoral
No, good looking people are more likely to be judged morally upright.
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less intelligent
No, good looking people are usually assumed to be more intelligent.
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divorced
No, students filling out a rating scale are more likely to predict that an attractive person has a good marriage.
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the teachers were disappointed when students did not achieve more
No, the teachers were not disappointed...
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the students actually did gain more
Yes. The teachers engaged in "self-fulfilling prophecy." They expected certain children to do better, they interacted differently with those children, and the children (who were randomly selected) did do better.
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the students were placed in a "gifted" class
No, the famous "Pygmalion Effect" occurred in a regular classroom.
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the students actually gained less
No, the students were not negatively affected by the teachers positive expectations.
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the teachers "rebelled"
No, the teachers carried on as usual...or so they thought.
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alienation in modern life
No, psychologists have sought more specific hypotheses.
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modern city life
No, many bystander apathy studies were conducted on non-urban college campuses, and similar effects occurred.
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less feeling of responsibility when there are many witnesses
Yes. This is the so-called "diffusion of responsibility" theory. If there are many witnesses to a victim's distress, no single person feels as much obligation to respond, or so it seems. This effect has been demonstrated in many settings.
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hostility toward strangers
No, even the people who failed to respond to the famous Kitty Genovese attack (which started the research on bystander apathy) were not hostile toward her, and some eventually tried to help her.
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people being afraid a criminal will find out they reported him and strike back
No, this has never been cited as a factor in bystander apathy, although it could be a factor in preventing witnesses of a crime from stepping forward to aid prosecution of a criminal.
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sadism in people who were not ordinarily sadistic
Yes. Zimbardo said it was striking how nice students turned into sadistic prison guards. Although they were not asked to be unpleasant to the prisoners, just to "keep order," they apparently felt that abusive behavior was part of the prison guard stereotype, and they acted it out with gusto.
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the "weakness" of modern students
No...it is true that Zimbardo's subjects crumbled rather quickly, but he never criticizes them for that...and they were supposedly screened for their psychological stability.
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the discomfort of the "prison guards"
No, the prison guards seemed to enjoy acting the part.
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the importance of physical fitness in reducing stress
No, the "prisoners" were made to do many push-ups (!) but they showed stress reactions anyway...
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the lack of realism
No, the conditions were very realistic for an experiment; Zimbardo even had the student "prisoners" arrested at home unexpectedly, then handcuffed and fingerprinted at a police station, before putting them in the psychology department "prison."
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