I will select about 6 of the following 12 questions to comprise the “shortessay” part of Exam 3. Key points to include to earn full marks are listed
below each answer.
CHAPTER 7
1. Why would a dog salivate when it sees a light bulb or hears a buzzer, even
though it can’t eat these things? (p. 224-226) [4 marks]
Key points:

this is a classic case of classical conditioning

classical conditioning is a 3-step process:
1. an unconditioned stimulus (US) elicits a unconditioned response
(UR); this is a unlearned relation that occurs automatically
2. a neutral stimulus (NS) is paired with the US
3. because of #2, the NS becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) that
elicits a conditioned response (CR)

in this example:
1. US (food) elicits UR (salivation)
2. NS (light bulb) is paired with US (food)
3. CS (light bulb) elicits CR (salivation)
12. Why do efforts to “crack down” on wrongdoers often go awry? Using the
example of parents severely reprimanding their child for drawing on walls,
describe four problems with punishment. (pp. 245-247 & Class Notes) [6 marks]
Key points:
A (mom): B (draw on walls)  C (severe reprimand)
[provide at least 4 of the points below]
1. the aversive stimuli used to punish may also evoke anxiety, fear, rage, escape

E.g. the severe reprimand is an unconditional stimulus (US) that elicits the
unconditional response (UR) of fear
2. stimuli paired with the aversive stimulus used to punish can come to evoke
anxiety, fear, rage, & escape through classical conditioning

E.g., because the mother is reliably paired with the severe reprimand (US)
she becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) that elicits the conditioned
response (CR) of fear
3. stimulus control—the behavior may decrease due to its punishing
consequence but only when there is a cue for punishment

E.g., when mom is home, drawing on the walls produces a severe reprimand;
so, drawing on the walls stops when mom is home; but, drawing on the walls
continues when mom is not home
4. failure to consider factors influencing its effectiveness

E.g., punishment is most effective when applied immediately after the
undesirable behavior
o in the “Wait until your father gets home!” scenario, a delayed
severe reprimand delivered by the father will have an effect on the
behavior that immediately precedes it (e.g., approaching the father)
but little effect on the misdeed committed earlier in the day
5. punishment conveys little information—punishment does not establish new
behavior; it only suppresses old behavior

E.g., if the parents don’t specify and reinforce a desired behavior (e.g.,
drawing on paper) as an alternative to drawing on the walls, even if the
misdeed stops it may be replaced by an equally undesirable behavior (e.g.,
teasing little brother)
6. failure to consider effect on behavior

E.g., the parents’ reprimand may be done out of anger with little attention paid
to whether or not it actually decreases behavior; it may not
7. punishment can become addictive

E.g., it doesn’t require much effort (“Stop that!”) and typically results in an
immediate short-term gain (drawing on walls stops right away)
8. failure to consider what’s causing the undesirable behavior—a proper analysis
will likely reveal a reinforcing consequence for it

E.g., the reactions of the boy’s big sister may reinforce drawing on walls; the
parents may be able to avoid punishment altogether by arranging for his
sister not to react in this way (extinction)
10. What is the best way to discourage a friend from interrupting you while you’re
studying? (p. 241) [6 marks]
Key points:

first, we assume our friend’s behavior of interrupting us is being reinforced

in reinforcement:
1. a behavior (B) produces a consequence (C)
2. B becomes more likely because it produced C

in our example:
1. B (interrupt) produces C (conversation)
2. B (interrupt) becomes more likely because it produced C
(conversation)

if our assumption is correct, then we can discourage him by not engaging him
in conversation when he interrupts us
technically, this procedure is called extinction, and it is defined as the
discontinuation of a reinforcing consequence for a behavior


in our example:
1. B (interrupt) no longer produces C (conversation)
2. B (interrupt) will become less likely

but we must make sure that we never to give in when he interrupts us and
engage him in conversation
if we do, then his behavior will be intermittently reinforced (i.e., reinforced
sometimes)
this would make it even more difficult to discourage him, as increasing the
intermittency of reinforcement increases the resistance of the behavior to
extinction


17. Does watching violence of TV make people more aggressive? (pp. 253-254)
[5 marks]
Key points:
Evidence for:
 meta-analyses show that the greater the exposure to violence in movies and
on TV, the stronger the likelihood of a person behaving aggressively, even
after controlling for social class, intelligence, and other factors
o correlation between media violence and aggression is high, only
superceded by the correlation between smoking and lung cancer

when grade-school children cut back on their time watching TV or playing
video games, which are often violent in nature, their aggressiveness declines
Critics: [provide at least two point below]
 children watch many nonviolent shows and have many other influences
 for every violent teenager there are dozens more who regard the game as
just fun and go off and do their homework
 although the number of violent video games increased throughout the 1990s,
overall rates of teenage violence actually declined
 cause-effect may work in opposite direction: habitually aggressive people are
drawn to violent shows
 troubled persons may find justification for acts based upon anything they see
(e.g., Ten Commandments)
Conclusion
 both sides are right
o does have an influence and influence is neither strong nor universal
CHAPTER 9
11. Why will a terrible hazing make you more loyal to the group that hazed you?
(p. 319) [4 marks]
Key points:

we appeal to the notion of cognitive dissonance:
o state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds
two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent, or when a
person’s belief is inconsistent with his or her behavior
o this leads to an effort to reduce dissonance

the example entails a common form of dissonance reduction called
justification of effort
o the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something
they have worked hard or suffered to attain

the person’s thought “I went through a lot of awful stuff to join this group..” is
dissonant with the cognition “…only to find I hate this group”
to reduce the tension, person must decide that the hazing was not so bad or
that they really like the group

8. Why do people worry about dying in an airplane crash but ignore dangers that
are far more likely? (p. 314) [3 marks]

we appeal to the notion of the availability heuristic:
o the tendency to judge the probability of a type of event by how easy it
is to think of examples or instances

catastrophes and shocking accidents (e.g., airplane crashes) stand out in our
minds and are therefore more “available” mentally than are other kinds of
mental events

the danger with the availability heuristic is that people irrationally ignore
dangers that are less “available” mentally, such as death from cigarette
smoking or a rise in skin cancer rates due to depletion of the earth’s ozone
layer
15. Why do some psychologists defend traditional intelligence testing and other
oppose it? (p. 327) [5 marks]
Key points:
Advocates
 tests predict school performance fairly well
 tests identify the mentally retarded and gifted students who had not previously
considered higher education
 when tests reveal group differences, the solution is to give special help to
children who need it so they can do better—Binet’s original goal
Critics
 standardized tests tell us nothing about how a person goes about answering
questions and solving problems
 doesn’t explain why people with low scores on IQ tests often behave
intelligently in real life
o E.g., making smart consumer choices, winning at the racetrack,
making wise personal choices
18. Why do Asian children perform so much better in school than North American
students do? (pp. 332-333) [6 marks]
Key points:
1. beliefs about intelligence (Figure 9.5)
 Asian parents, teachers, and children are far more likely than North
Americans to believe that mathematical ability results from studying
 North Americans believe it is innate: “If you have it you don’t have to work
hard; and if you don’t have it there’s no point in trying”
 [bonus mark if you remember these statistics]:
o over 90% of Japanese schoolteachers say studying hard is most
important for math performance compared to about 25% of North
American teacher
o over 70% of Japanese students say studying hard is most
important for math performance compared to under 30% of North
American students
2. standards
 North American parents have far lower standards for their children’s
performance—satisfied with scores barely above average
 Chinese and Japanese parents are happy only with very high scores
3. values
 North American students do not value education as much as Asian students
and are more complacent about mediocre work
 when asked what they would wish for if a wizard could give them anything
they wanted, more than 60% of Chinese 5th graders named something related
to their education; most North American students wanted money or
possessions
CHAPTER 10
1. What’s wrong with thinking of memory as a mental movie camera? (pp. 346347) [4 marks]
Key points:
Memory is selective
 not everything that happens to us or impinges on our senses in tucked away
for later use
o E.g., the color of the shirt of the person sitting next to you in class
yesterday
Memory is a reconstructive process
 it is like watching a few unconnected frames and then figuring out what the
rest of the scene must have been like
 draws on many sources
o E.g., information from family stories, photographs, home videos,
accounts of other people’s birthdays
 when people were asked to read lengthy, unfamiliar stories from other
cultures and then retell the stories, they often eliminated or changed details
that did not make sense to them, and added details to make the story more
coherent, sometimes even adding a moral
2. Why do “flashbulb” memories of surprising or shocking events sometimes
have less wattage than we think? (p. 347) [3 marks]
Key points:

research suggests that flashbulb memories are not always accurate
o people usually remember the gist of the event
Example
 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger
 on the morning after the tragedy university students reported how they had
heard the news
 3 years later, when they again recalled how they had learned of the incident,
not one student was entirely correct and 1/3 of them were completely wrong,
although they felt confident that they were remembering accurately
 thus, even flashbulb memories are subject to distortions
 remembering is an active process that involves not only dredging up sorted
information but also putting two and two together to reconstruct the past
5. Can children’s testimony about sexual abuse always be trustworthy? (pp. 350353) [6 marks]
Key points:



preschoolers’ memories are more vulnerable to suggestive questions than are
those of school-age children and adults
they’re more likely to experience source amnesia
they’re more likely to be influenced by emotionally charged situation
Garven et al. (1998) (Figure 10.2)
 young man visited children at preschool, read them a story, and handed out
treats






week later, children were questioned about man’s visit
in both groups, children were asked leading questions: “Did he shove the
teacher?”; Did he throw a crayon at the student who was talking?”
in second group, employed techniques that interrogators use: telling children
what “other kids” had supposedly said; expressing disappointment if the
answers were negative, and praising children for making allegations
1st group: said yes to about 15% of false accusations
2nd group: 3-year old said yes to over 80% of false accusations; 4-6 year olds
to about 50% [you needn’t state the exact statistics but you should be
able to state the general result]
interview in study lasted only 5-10 minutes; in actual investigations
interviewers often questions children repeatedly over many weeks
20. Why are many researchers skeptical about claims of “repressed” and
“recovered” memories? (pp. 374-375) [5 marks]
Key points:
Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the selective, involuntary pushing of threatening or
upsetting information into the unconscious
o an explanation for psychogenic amnesia
Other explanations [provide at least two points below]
 people may intentionally avoid unpleasant memories by distracting
themselves with pleasant memories
 people avoid retrieval cues having to do with unhappy memories
 thus, people don’t rehearse unhappy memories, and so they fade
Critics [provide at least two points below]
 therapists are naively unaware of the power of suggestion and the dangers of
confabulation
 repeated experiences of trauma are more likely to be remembered than
forgotten, even when the victims wish they could forget
 only rarely have “recovered” memories been corroborated by objective
evidence
 term is vague and ill-defined