Introduction to Social Psychology Final Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Introduction to Social Psychology explores the scientific study of how people think, feel, and behave in social contexts. The course examines key concepts such as attitudes, social perception, conformity, group dynamics, prejudice, and interpersonal relationships. Students learn how social influences shape individual decision-making and behavior, drawing from classic and contemporary research. Throughout, the course connects theoretical frameworks to real-world applications, offering insights into topics like persuasion, aggression, cooperation, and cultural differences in social behavior.
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Social Psychology 4th Edition by Tom Gilovich
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Chapter 1: An Invitation to Social Psychology
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Q1) Describe the benefits of a social psychological approach to understanding why people behave the way they do. That is, how does social psychology go beyond basic human intuition? Why is this important?
Answer: Social psychology goes beyond basic human intuition by testing research questions and theories using the scientific method. This is important because without testing our intuitions empirically, we are unable to know whether they are accurate.
Q2) Compare and contrast the evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human behavior.
Answer: Both evolutionary and cultural psychologists evaluate influences on human behavior. The evolutionary perspective argues that many aspects of human behavior are the result of natural selection, behavioral tendencies that became ingrained in our genes because they enhance our ability to survive and reproduce. Evolutionary psychologists argue that the universality we see in human behavior across cultures (e.g., facial expressions, group living) lends support to their perspective. The cultural perspective, in contrast, argues that many aspects of human behavior are determined by the culture in which one finds himself or herself. Cultural psychologists argue that the differences in human behavior across cultures (e.g., social relations, self-understanding) lend support to their perspective.
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Chapter 2: The Methods of Social Psychology
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Q1) One of the primary reasons field experiments are conducted is that they A) are logistically very easy to carry out.
B) are very high in external validity.
C) incorporate a high degree of consistency across conditions.
D) usually result in statistically significant results.
Answer: B
Q2) Debriefing participants after an experiment is completed is always an important step in the experimental procedure. However, debriefing is particularly important when A) deception is used.
B) an institutional review board has not reviewed the study.
C) a monetary reward is given.
D) informed consent has not been obtained.
Answer: A
Q3) All of the following are examples of resources used in archival research EXCEPT A) police records.
B) newspaper articles.
C) firsthand observations of behavior.
D) databases.
Answer: C
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Page 4
Chapter 3: The Social Self
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Q1) Imagine that you are a social psychologist and a parent comes to you because he is worried that his child has low self-esteem. Based on your reading, design an intervention to boost the child's self-esteem. Describe the research/theory that supports your proposed plan.
Answer: Various interventions and supporting research/theories are acceptable. For example, students may consider helping the child notice or build social relationships that involve a high degree of acceptance (e.g., sociometer hypothesis), helping the child to succeed in important life domains or shifting which domains are seen as important (e.g., contingencies of self-worth account), inducing a more interdependent mind-set in the child that is concerned with self-improvement rather than self-esteem, affirming the child is in domains that are not under threat (self-affirmation theory), and directing the child to engage in more downward social comparison (self-evaluation maintenance model).
Q2) How are self-monitoring and self-handicapping related?
A) They are both forms of social comparison.
B) They are both forms of impression management.
C) They are both forms of self-affirmation.
D) They are both forms of self-verification.
Answer: B
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Social Cognition: Thinking About People and Situations
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Q1) You think of Jan as a very introverted person. The confirmation bias predicts that you will
A) look for examples of introverted behaviors in Jan.
B) look for examples of extroverted behaviors in Jan.
C) be likely to form a strong relationship with her.
D) be unlikely to form a strong relationship with her.
Q2) Which of the following instances of "common sense" may be due to the representativeness heuristic?
A) Handwriting analysis cannot reveal certain things about your personality.
B) Eating turtle meat makes you a worse swimmer.
C) You should avoid potato chips if you suffer from greasy skin and acne.
D) You should drink milk when you have a cold.
Q3) ________ processes consist of observing and remembering relevant stimuli from the outside world, and ________ processes filter and interpret stimuli in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations.
A) Deductive; inductive
B) Attentive; elaborative
C) Bottom-up; top-down
D) Perceptual; constructive
Q4) Describe top-down processing and bottom-up processing.
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Chapter 5: Social Attribution: Explaining Behavior
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Q1) When we engage in a self-serving bias, we attribute failure and other bad events that happen to us to ________, but we attribute success and other good events to ________.
A) distinctive factors; global factors
B) permanent circumstances; temporary circumstances
C) controllable circumstances; uncontrollable circumstances
D) external circumstances; ourselves
Q2) Someone with an optimistic explanatory style is likely to make which types of attributions for success?
A) internal, stable, specific
B) internal, stable, global
C) internal, unstable, global
D) external, unstable, specific
Q3) What is the just world hypothesis? In addition, explain how this hypothesis is relevant to the fundamental attribution error.
Q4) What are the advantages of having an optimistic explanatory style?
Q5) Hannah and Damian disagree on the cause of Damian's recent automobile accident. Describe how the actor-observer difference might explain the disagreement between the two.
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Chapter 6: Emotion
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Q1) What happens when montane voles are given an injection of oxytocin?
A) They become less dominant in their social groups.
B) They become more dominant in their social groups.
C) They stay close to one sexual partner.
D) They become more promiscuous.
Q2) Emotions such as sympathy, concern, or compassion are triggered by appraisals of ________ and motivate prosocial behavior toward people who are vulnerable.
A) fairness
B) harm
C) loyalty/betrayal
D) purity
Q3) Darwin's principle of serviceable habits suggests that facial expressions of emotion
A) arose randomly as a result of genetic mutations.
B) reliably solve challenges in contemporary society.
C) derived from behaviors that proved useful and adaptive to our ancestors.
D) are present only in humans because only humans experience emotions.
Q4) Challenge the view that money buys happiness. When might this perspective hold and when does it fall short? Use research to support your position.
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Attitudes, Behavior, and Rationalization
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Q1) Describe three ways that researchers measure attitudes.
Q2) Dissonance theory suggests that people ________ their attitudes as a result of dissonance, whereas self-perception theory suggests that people ________ their attitudes from observing their behaviors.
A) infer; change
B) change; infer
C) strengthen; weaken
D) change; change
Q3) Many people who choose not to have children suspect that homebound, sleep-deprived, and financially strapped parents are fooling themselves when they say that nothing in life brings them more pleasure. In other words, these childless people suggest that parents put a lot of energy into ________ in order to decrease cognitive dissonance.
A) peripheral processing
B) effort justification
C) balancing
D) arousing thoughts
Q4) Challenge the widely held belief that attitudes do a good job of predicting a person's behavior.
Q5) Define attitude and describe the components of an attitude.
Page 9
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Chapter 8: Persuasion
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Q1) Describe a real or imagined situation in which public commitments increase resistance to persuasion, and explain why public commitments have this effect.
Q2) Some residents in your town want to build a new elementary school, but others do not. You are leaning toward the pro-school camp. One day, you receive a flyer from the pro-school camp that warns you that the anti-school camp is going to hold a demonstration at a local park. The flyer briefly summarizes how the anti-school camp will attack the pro-school position. Further, the flyer asks you to think about how you can refute the attack before the demonstration occurs. The pro-school camp's strategy is an example of ________. It should ________ your resistance to stronger, more detailed attacks if you end up attending the demonstration.
A) attitude inoculation; decrease B) attitude inoculation; increase C) thought polarization; increase D) thought polarization; decrease
Q3) Give two examples of how you could apply research on message characteristics to persuade more people to donate to an international disaster relief effort.
Q4) Define metacognition and describe how it influences persuasion.
Q5) Give three examples of how the media can shape our conception of social reality.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Social Influence
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Q1) Define conformity, compliance, and obedience and provide an example of each.
Q2) Imagine that you are developing an antilittering billboard. One of the members of your team suggests that the billboard should include statistics about the high prevalence of littering in order to convince people that it is a major problem. Drawing on your knowledge of descriptive and prescriptive norms, explain why this may not work and propose a more effective alternative.
Q3) Describe three specific strategies a person could use to resist social influence in a situation where he or she has a minority opinion.
Q4) A study conducted by Sanchez-Burks and his colleagues (2009) found that Hispanic American and Anglo-American participants differed in their responses to mimicry during a mock job interview. Describe these differences and interpret them in light of cultural differences in the importance of attunement to the emotions and behavior of others.
Q5) People who hold a minority view tend to change the majority opinion through A) normative social influence.
B) informational social influence.
C) public compliance.
D) guilt and shame.
Q6) Describe the phenomenon of automatic mimicry and give two reasons why it occurs.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Relationships and Attraction
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Q1) In a series of experiments, Harry Harlow (1958) raised baby rhesus monkeys without contact with other rhesus monkeys but with access to two "mother surrogates," one made of cloth and the other made of wire and able to provide milk. Which of the following statements best describes the results of these experiments?
A) The monkeys who spent more time with the cloth mothers developed normally, whereas the monkeys who spent more time with the wire mothers developed abnormally.
B) The monkeys who spent more time with the wire mothers developed normally, whereas the monkeys who spent more time with the cloth mothers developed abnormally.
C) Both groups of monkeys displayed inappropriate and aggressive behaviors in adolescence.
D) Both groups of monkeys displayed appropriate and prosocial behaviors in adolescence.
Q2) Describe how comparison level and comparison level for alternatives influence people's evaluations of the costs and rewards in their relationships, according to social exchange theory.
Q3) Describe how a teacher might take advantage of proximity to encourage interracial friendships in her classroom.
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
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Q1) Research suggests that stereotyping can sometimes be ________ because it can ________ our social environment.
A) justified; increase our attention to the details of B) useful; decrease the time and effort needed to deal with C) destructive; lead us to introspect too much about D) harmful; decrease the predictability of
Q2) While sitting in a restaurant with a friend, John looks across the street and sees a black man and a white man fighting. Research suggests that if John is white, he is likely to assume that the
A) white man made a racist remark.
B) black man made a racist remark.
C) white man was behaving aggressively.
D) black man was behaving aggressively.
Q3) According to the economic perspective, intergroup hostility is particularly likely to occur when
A) groups must work together to meet a superordinate goal.
B) material resources are scarce.
C) the economy is thriving.
D) groups value different types of material resources.
Q4) Give an example of the outgroup homogeneity effect and explain why it occurs.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Groups
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Q1) Early studies showed that decisions made in groups were riskier than decisions made on one's own. Later research, however, showed that group decisions are not always riskier than individual decisions but do tend to be more extreme. This phenomenon is captured by the concept of
A) risky shift.
B) group polarization.
C) social inoculation.
D) groupthink.
Q2) According to the textbook, what is the definition of a group? Give an example from your own life that captures the key features of this definition.
Q3) Are decisions made in groups more likely to be risky or cautious? Justify your answer on the basis of social psychological research and theory.
Q4) Describe a real-world event that illustrates the phenomenon of groupthink. In addition, explain how its occurrence could have been avoided.
Q5) Define the phenomenon of social facilitation and explain Robert Zajonc's three-component theory of when and why it occurs.
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Chapter 13: Aggression
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT one of the characteristics of rape-prone cultures, as described in research by Peggy Reeves Sanday?
A) Rape is used as an act of war against enemy women.
B) Rape is portrayed in movies, television, or other cultural products.
C) Rape is part of a ritual act, such as a rite of passage to adulthood.
D) Rape is used as a threat against women to keep them subservient.
Q2) Distinguish between hostile and instrumental aggression and provide one example for each.
Q3) Tim is a child with attention deficit disorder. According to research conducted by Frances Kuo, which of the following activities would be most helpful in helping Tim feel calmer and concentrate better?
A) walking around a green park
B) walking around a quiet neighborhood
C) walking around a bustling downtown area
D) walking on an indoor track
Q4) Explain the connection between social rejection and aggression from an evolutionary perspective.
Q5) Describe two characteristics of rape-prone cultures.
Q6) Define culture of honor and describe its influence on aggression.
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Altruism and Cooperation
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Q1) In many industrialized nations, strong social norms dictate efforts to behave in a cool, calm, and collected manner in public, especially during emergencies. Unfortunately, this norm can promote
A) reciprocal indifference.
B) altruism.
C) pluralistic ignorance.
D) bystander intervention.
Q2) If you want to increase the odds that you will get help when you are in need, which of the following actions should you take?
A) single out a specific person and ask him or her for help
B) move to a big city
C) do not explain your problem
D) remain quiet and calm
Q3) Of the following individuals, who is most likely to behave in a cooperative way?
A) Avery, who is an economics major
B) Carlos, who is in a hurry
C) Lillian, who has just observed someone else being cooperative
D) Rashid, who has just observed someone else being competitive
Q4) Give an example of how construal processes can influence cooperation.
Q5) Describe the tit-for-tat strategy and evaluate its effectiveness.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Application Module-Social Psychology and Health
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Q1) Explain how rumination may contribute to chronic stress and then describe one way that rumination can be reduced.
Q2) Psychologist Shelley Taylor proposed that we can reduce stress and improve our own health by connecting with and providing support to others. The term she used for this approach is
A) tend-and-befriend.
B) seek-and-assist.
C) self-distancing.
D) tit-for-tat.
Q3) In psychology, the term rumination refers to the
A) tendency to eat food thoroughly to aid digestion.
B) tendency to think about a stressful event over and over again.
C) digestive system dysfunction associated with exposure to multiple stressors.
D) illusion that we are in control of events.
Q4) Imagine that you are designing a comprehensive stress reduction intervention for college students who are suffering from chronic health conditions. List two specific approaches that could be included in this intervention and describe how you would implement them. For each approach, provide one piece of evidence from the textbook that supports its role in reducing stress.
Page 17
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Chapter 16: Application Module- Social Psychology and Personal Finance
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Q1) Decision paralysis is best illustrated by
A) Martha's inability to decide on a college because she has a low sense of control.
B) Jose's difficulty in deciding whether to break up with his girlfriend because he does not want to hurt her feelings.
C) Carla's difficulty in selecting a road bike to purchase out of the seventy-five different bikes for sale.
D) Charles's inability to decide whether to practice yoga or meditation, because they both have great health benefits.
Q2) Jerome's investment performance has not been very good. He studies behavioral economics to get a better understanding of his poor performance and finds that, like many other people, he was more likely to buy stocks (contributing to market performance)
A) on sunny days.
B) when his favorite sports team lost.
C) on weekdays.
D) when his family visited.
Q3) Define sunk cost fallacy and describe one research finding that demonstrates this phenomenon.
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Chapter 17: Application Module- Social Psychology and Education
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Q1) Mr. McLean, a fourth grade teacher, finds that the students whom he expects to perform well generally do perform well. Which of the following are possible explanations for this correlation?
A) Mr. McLean's expectations lead him to treat certain students differently than others.
B) Mr. McLean's perception of his students' abilities is accurate.
C) Mr. McLean's expectations are biased in favor of white middle-class children.
D) All of the above are true.
Q2) Which of the following best summarizes the effects of airing telenovelas?
A) The programs changed people's attitudes but not their behaviors.
B) The programs did not influence people's attitudes or behaviors.
C) The programs changed behaviors only in people who already agreed with the values being portrayed.
D) The programs changed people's attitudes and behaviors.
Q3) Drawing on research described in the textbook, evaluate the claim that teacher expectations influence student performance. What study designs provide the most rigorous test of this hypothesis? For what groups of students is the influence of teacher expectations likely to be strongest?
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Chapter 18: Application Module- Social Psychology and the Law
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Q1) Tina is a defense attorney working on a grand larceny (i.e., stealing a large amount of money) case. Given what you know about jury selection concerns, who does Tina NOT want to be placed on the jury?
A) Laura, a mother of three
B) Dung, a social worker
C) Marco, a physical therapist
D) Lyn, a wealthy executive
Q2) Eyewitness errors have been found to be involved in more than ________ percent of cases of wrongful convictions.
A) 50
B) 25
C) 75
D) 90
Q3) Explain how stereotypes can lead to biases in our criminal justice system.
Q4) Are there problems with the procedures used by police interrogators to obtain confessions, and if so, how might these problems negatively impact defendants?
Q5) Compare the just desserts and deterrence motives for punishment. In addition, explain how these motives are related to cultural variations in punishment.
Page 20
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