Social psychology studies how the presence of other people and groups influences an individual's thoughts, feelings and behavior.
Correct Answer
True
True. Social psychology examines how people affect one another, including how groups and social situations shape what individuals think, feel and do.
Category: Social Thinking
Question 2
The actor-observer bias is the tendency to explain our own behavior by our traits and other people's behavior by their situations.
Correct Answer
False
False. The actor-observer bias runs the other way: we explain our own behavior by situational factors and other people's behavior by their traits, partly because we know more about our own circumstances.
Category: Social Thinking
Question 3
People raised in collectivistic cultures are less prone to the fundamental attribution error than people raised in individualistic cultures.
Correct Answer
True
True. Collectivistic cultures emphasize relationships and context, so people there more often consider situational causes of behavior, while people in individualistic cultures lean toward trait explanations.
Category: Social Thinking
Question 4
The Stanford prison experiment ran for its full planned length before it was ended.
Correct Answer
False
False. The study was planned to run considerably longer but was stopped after only six days because the guards' treatment of prisoners and the prisoners' distress had become so severe.
Category: Self-Presentation
Question 5
A social norm is a group's expectation about what behavior is appropriate and acceptable for its members.
Correct Answer
True
True. Social norms set expectations for how members of a group, such as a family, workplace or campus, should act, dress and speak, and people tend to follow them to fit in.
Category: Self-Presentation
Question 6
Aronson and Mills found that students who went through a difficult initiation to join a group rated the group less favorably than students with an easy initiation.
Correct Answer
False
False. Students with the difficult initiation rated the dull group more favorably, an example of justification of effort: people value what they worked hard for, which reduces the dissonance of having suffered for little.
Category: Attitudes and Persuasion
Question 7
An attitude has affective, behavioral and cognitive components.
Correct Answer
True
True. The affective component is how we feel about something, the behavioral component is how the attitude shows up in action, and the cognitive component is what we believe or know about it.
Category: Attitudes and Persuasion
Question 8
Attitude changes produced through the peripheral route of persuasion tend to last longer than those produced through the central route.
Correct Answer
False
False. Central route persuasion, which relies on careful processing of strong arguments, produces more lasting change. The peripheral route relies on surface cues and usually produces only temporary change.
Category: Attitudes and Persuasion
Question 9
Normative social influence occurs when people go along with a group in order to be liked and accepted.
Correct Answer
True
True. Normative social influence is driven by the wish to fit in. Participants in Asch's line studies showed it, since the correct answer was obvious yet many still went along with the group.
Category: Conformity and Group Behavior
Question 10
In Milgram's studies, obedience increased when the learner was in the same room as the participant.
Correct Answer
False
False. Obedience decreased when the learner was in the same room, and it dropped further when participants had to physically touch the learner. Making the victim more present and human reduced obedience.
Category: Conformity and Group Behavior
Question 11
Group polarization is the tendency for discussion to strengthen the attitude a group already leaned toward.
Correct Answer
True
True. After discussion, a group that mildly favored a view tends to favor it more strongly, and a group that mildly opposed it tends to oppose it more strongly.
Category: Conformity and Group Behavior
Question 12
Social loafing is more common among people from collectivistic cultures than among people from individualistic cultures.
Correct Answer
False
False. Social loafing is less common among people from collectivistic cultures, and it is also less common among women. It tends to increase as group size grows.
Category: Conformity and Group Behavior
Question 13
People can be well aware of a cultural stereotype even when they do not personally endorse it.
Correct Answer
True
True. Stereotypes are widely known within a culture, so people who reject them still recognize them. Such knowledge can influence quick, automatic judgments even when a person's stated views are egalitarian.
Category: Prejudice and Discrimination
Question 14
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that contradicts one's existing beliefs.
Correct Answer
False
False. Confirmation bias is the tendency to notice and favor information that supports one's existing beliefs, including stereotypes, while overlooking information that contradicts them.
Category: Prejudice and Discrimination
Question 15
In Sherif's Robbers Cave study, hostility between two rival groups of boys was reduced when they worked together toward shared goals.
Correct Answer
True
True. Competition had made the groups hostile, but goals that required both groups to cooperate, called superordinate goals, reduced the conflict between them.
Category: Prejudice and Discrimination
Question 16
The more bystanders who are present at an emergency, the more likely any one of them is to help.
Correct Answer
False
False. Because of diffusion of responsibility, each person feels less obligated to act as the number of bystanders grows, so any one person becomes less likely to help.
Category: Aggression and Helping
Question 17
Bullying involves repeated negative treatment of another person over time along with an imbalance of power.
Correct Answer
True
True. A single incident is not considered bullying. Bullying is repeated, can be physical, verbal or psychological, and involves a more powerful person targeting a less powerful one.
Category: Aggression and Helping
Question 18
Research finds that women are more likely than men to engage in direct physical aggression.
Correct Answer
False
False. Men are more likely to engage in direct physical aggression. Women more often use indirect aggression, such as spreading rumors or excluding someone to damage their social standing.
Category: Aggression and Helping
Question 19
Social exchange theory proposes that relationships tend to last when their perceived benefits outweigh their costs.
Correct Answer
True
True. Social exchange theory views people as weighing the rewards and costs of a relationship, much like an economic exchange, and predicts that relationships with more benefits than costs will endure.
Category: Attraction and Love
Question 20
Research on attraction shows that people are most strongly drawn to partners whose attitudes and backgrounds are opposite to their own.
Correct Answer
False
False. People tend to be attracted to others who are similar to them in background, attitudes and lifestyle. There is little evidence that opposites attract.
Category: Attraction and Love