C8035
THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX
BSc SECOND YEAR EXAMINATION 2015
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
SAMPLE PAPER
XX 2015
DO NOT TURN OVER UNTIL INSTRUCTED
TO BY THE CHIEF INVIGILATOR
INSTRUCTIONS
Answer ALL parts of Section A and TWO further questions
from Section B.
Section A carries 40% and Section B carries 60% of the marks.
Time allowed: 2 hours
SECTION A
The answers to this section, one to each question, should be
marked on the answer sheet provided
[40 multiple choice questions each with 4 alternatives]
SECTION B
Answer TWO questions from this section in the answer books provided. Please
use a separate answer book for each essay question.
[8 choices of essay question]
1. Do not write your name on the question paper or answer sheet/book.
2. Do not tear off any part of this question paper.
3. At the end of the examination the question paper and answer sheet/book, used or
unused, will be collected from you before you leave the examination room.
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
SECTION A
One answer to each question should be marked on the answer sheet provided
1. The Prisoners' Dilemma is an example of:
a) Free riding
b) A social dilemma
c) A solution to a social dilemma
d) The opposite of a social dilemma
2. Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons scenario is concerned with a problem of:
a) Ambivalent attitudes
b) Finite resources
c) Multiple identities
d) Collective guilt
3. In the Snyder and Swann (1978) behavioural confirmation study, did the 'labelling
perceivers' in fact:
a) Act more aggressively towards the target who was expected to be
aggressive
b) Act less aggressively towards the target who was expected to be
aggressive
b) Expect the labelled target to achieve higher IQ gains
c) Expect the labelled target to achieve no IQ gains
4. What has, according to an eminent social psychologist, been ‘treated like a rude
bastard relative at a family gathering’?
a) Downward comparison
b) Impression management
c) Civility
d) Stereotyping
2
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
5. Why is it generally felt that members of some societies might develop a stronger
preference for dispositional explanations?
a) Many western societies are characterized by a culture of individualism,
and this makes people lean more towards understanding the actor than
the situation
b) Many western societies are characterized by a culture of collectivism,
and this makes people lean more towards understanding the situation
than the actor
c) Many non-western societies are characterized by a culture of
individualism, and this makes people lean more towards understanding
the actor than the situation
d) Many non-western societies are characterized by a culture of
collectivism, and this makes people lean more towards understanding
the situation than the actor
6. In Heider’s (1948) balance theory, which of the following would represent an
unbalanced triad?
a) Agreeing with someone you like
b) Agreeing with someone you dislike
c) Disagreeing with someone you dislike
d) Agreeing with a friend of a friend
7. In Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) study on induced compliance, which
participants rated the experimental tasks as the most interesting in the postexperimental interviews?
a) Participants who had been offered $1 to describe the task in negative
terms
b) Participants who had been offered $20 to describe the task in negative
terms
c) Participants who had been offered $1 to describe the task in positive
terms
d) Participants who had been offered $20 to describe the task in positive
terms
3
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
8. Completing a task which requires self-control may make it:
a) Easier to self-regulate on a following task
b) Harder to self-regulate on a following task
c) Impossible to self-regulate on a following task
d) Neither easier nor harder to self-regulate on a following task
9. You decide to train for a marathon, and for a month you force yourself to get up
at 6am every day to go running. At the end of the month, you notice that you
have also been more successful recently at resisting the temptation to eat junk
food. How would the strength model explain this:
a) Succeeding at a goal has increased your self-efficacy
b) Practicing self-control has increased your self-control resources
c) Forming a goal has increased your motivation to overcome obstacles
d) Similar goals facilitate each other
10. You are in a bad mood. A friend asks you about your week, and all the
things that come to mind are negative. Which theory provides the simplest
explanation for this?
a) Bower’s network theory
b) Forgas’ affect infusion model
c) Schwarz’s feelings as information model
d) Van Kleef’s emotions as social information model
11. According to Ajzen and Fishbein (1977), measures of attitude and behaviour
need to correspond in four key ways. But which of the following is NOT one of
these?
a) Action
b) Content
c) Target
d) Time
4
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
12. According to Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) expectancy-value approach:
a) An attitude towards an object is described as the sum of 'expectancy +
value' products
b) Beliefs range from -3 to +3 in strength, and evaluations range from 0 to 1
in strength
c) Expectancies are beliefs that the object possesses a certain attribute
d) All beliefs (salient and non-salient) count towards the overall attitude
13. Which of the following makes heuristic processing of a message more likely?
a) Good knowledge of the subject area
b) A clear message
c) Low personal interest
d) High need for cognition
14. Which of the following phrases does NOT correctly describe systematic
processing?
a) It is thorough
b) It is heuristic
c) It relies on ability
d) It relies on effort
15. Which of the following would suggest that a person has low implicit self-esteem?
a) They associate positive words more quickly than negative words with the
self
b) They associate negative words more quickly with the self than with
others
c) They show a greater than average liking for letters that are in their name
d) They show a cautious style of self-presentation
5
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
16. When Strauman et al. (1993) primed dysphoric patients with content from their
ideal selves, what did they find?
a) Participants showed increased levels of anxiety but no change in cortisol
levels
b) Participants showed increased levels of anxiety and higher cortisol levels
c) Participants showed no change in anxiety but increased cortisol levels
d) Participants showed increased levels of dysphoria and reduced natural
killer cell activity
17. Which of the following claims was made by Taylor and Brown (1994)?
a) Positive illusions are necessary for mental health
b) Positive illusions foster happiness and growth
c) All positive illusions are a good thing
d) Positive illusions can sometimes cure people of illnesses
18. Which of these statements about conformity is correct?
a) The more members of the majority there are, the more dramatically
conformity increases
b) Genuine social support has a stronger influence over conformity than
does broken unanimity
c) Group size has a greater impact on conformity than any other moderator
of group influence
d) People in Western cultures find greater acceptance of others'
judgements than those in Eastern cultures
19. According to Moscovici (1976, 1980), what process of influence do minorities
induce?
a) Validation
b) Conversion
c) Compliance
d) Comparison
6
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
20. Below are three strongly-held views over which source condition (minority or
majority) elicits the highest cognitive scrutiny of a message. But which one have
studies shown to be correct?
a) "Superior message processing is associated with a minority."
b) "Superior message processing is associated with a majority."
c) "Both a majority and minority can lead to superior message processing
under different conditions."
d) None of these
21. In Gottman and Levenson’s study of married couples’ social interactions, what
was the strongest predictor of divorce?
a) Criticism
b) Contempt
c) Anger
d) Infidelity
22. At what age do children reach an understanding of pride?
a) 3-4
b) 5-6
c) 7-9
d) 10-12
23. Self-categorisation theory suggests that social category salience is a function of:
a) Fit x perceiver readiness
b) Perceiver readiness x accessibility
c) Identification x normative fit
d) Identification x comparative fit
7
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
24. In Reicher’s study of the St Pauls riot, which of the following were typically
targeted by the crowd?
a) Anything (they were indiscriminate)
b) Local houses
c) The police
d) Fans of a rival football team
25. A cognitive miser is a person who:
a) Hoards good ideas that should be shared with others
b) Gives little time to thinking about personal matters
c) Is good at disguising thoughts from other people
d) Uses little effort in making judgments about other people
26. Being in a good mood does not reduce our_______, but reduces our________.
a) Motivation to do hard cognitive work, incentive for doing hard cognitive
work
b) Incentive to do hard cognitive work, motivation for doing hard cognitive
work
c) Motivation to do hard cognitive work, capacity for doing hard cognitive
work
d) Capacity to do hard cognitive work, motivation for doing hard cognitive
work
27. Prejudice is:
a) The affective component of an attitude
b) A genetically-controlled emotional response to people
c) A belief usually acquired by contact with the attitude object
d) A pre-judgement based on a persons’ group membership
8
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
28. Which stereotype-participant combination is likely to result in the weakest
rebound effect?
a) Skinheads stereotype; High prejudice participant
b) Gay stereotype; Low prejudice participant
c) Skinheads stereotype; Low prejudice participant
d)
Gay stereotype; High prejudice participant
29. Which of the conditions below is MOST likely to produce stereotype change
following the bookkeeping model?
a) Disconfirming information is concentrated on a few atypical group
members
b) Disconfirming information is concentrated on a few typical group
members
c) Disconfirming information is dispersed across many typical group
members
d) The stereotype is dramatically disconfirmed
30. According to social identity theory, which of the following strategies is LEAST
likely to improve relations between social groups in an intergroup contact
situation?
a) Providing information about similarities between groups
b) Providing information about differences between groups
c) Acknowledging particpants’ group memberships
d) Recategorising participants into a common group
31. Many findings suggest that intergroup contact improves attitudes among the
people actually involved, but it does not generalise to the groups from which they
were drawn. This is likely to follow from the fact that:
a) Participants are affected by the acquiescent response bias
b) Most intergroup contact is actually interpersonal contact
c) Questionnaire measures are mostly used in this research
d) An insufficient number of cross-cultural studies have been carried out
9
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
32. Which of the following is an example of using a ‘derived etic’ approach to crosscultural research?
a) Research that examines a single culture in its own terms
b) Research that compares members of thirty cultures on a measure that
has been well validated in one of the cultures
c) Research that compares members of two cultures on a task that was
developed jointly by researchers from both cultures
d) None of the above
33. What is the ‘ecological fallacy’?
a)
b)
c)
d)
Interpreting an individual-level finding as if it were at the ecological-level
Interpreting an ecological-level finding as if it were at the individual level
Failing to look after the environment
Disbelief in global warming
34. According to Hofstede’s findings, which of the following nations has the least
individualistic culture
a)
b)
c)
d)
USA
Japan
China
Panama
35. Which of the following statements about the prevalence of independent and
interdependent self-construals across cultures is most accurate?
a) People in individualistic cultures always report independent selfconstruals
b) People in individualistic cultures sometimes report interdependent selfconstruals
c) People in collectivist cultures always report interdependent selfconstruals
d) People in collectivist cultures always report independent self-construals
10
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
36. In Friesen’s (1972) study of display rules, what was observed when participants
of different nationalities watched a film about bodily mutilation on their own?
a) US participants showed facial expressions of disgust, but Japanese
participants did not.
b) Japanese participants showed facial expressions of disgust, but US
participants did not.
c) Both US and Japanese participants showed facial expressions of disgust
d) Neither US nor Japanese participants showed facial expressions of
disgust.
37. According to Semin and Rubini, which of the following insults is especially likely
to be used in a collectivist culture?
a)
b)
c)
d)
“You stupid idiot!”
“Fuck off!”
“You shithead!”
“Your sister is a cow!”
38. According to Inglehart and Baker (2000), how are people’s values likely to
change as their country shifts from a manufacturing to a service economy?
a) There will be a shift from survival towards self-expression values
b) There will be a shift from self-expression towards survival values
c) There will be a shift from traditional towards secular-rational values
d) There will be a shift from survival towards secular-rational values
39. What does the term ‘ideal affect’ refer to?
a) The affective states that are most common within a person’s culture
b) The affective states that people want to feel
c) The affective states that are most consistent with how people usually feel
d) The affective states that promote effective decision making in a given
situation
11
/Turn over
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
40. Sam is negotiating a business contract with two companies, one in Japan and
one in America. She is frustrated by their slow replies, and wonders whether to
express her anger. What does previous research suggest about the effects of
expressing anger in negotiations in these two cultures?
a) Expressions of anger induce larger concessions from negotiators in both
Western and East Asian cultures
b) Expressions of anger induce smaller concessions from negotiators in
Western cultures, but larger concessions from negotiators in East Asian
cultures
c) Expressions of anger induce smaller concessions from negotiators in
East Asian cultures, but larger concessions from negotiators in Western
cultures
d) Expressions of anger induce smaller concessions from negotiators in
both Western and East Asian cultures
12
/Turn over
Two answers from the following section should be written in the answer books
provided. Please use a separate book for each question.
SECTION B
41. Critically evaluate the role of the fundamental attribution error in social
psychology.
42. When might attitudes be expected to predict behaviour and when might they
not?
43. What is self-esteem, and why do people ‘need’ it? Critically evaluate the
evidence for at least two theoretical perspectives.
44. Discuss some of the reasons why people might fail at self-regulation, and
consider how these might be overcome
45. Can conformity be explained as a function of normative and informational
influence?
46. What contributions has the social cognition approach made to our
understanding of prejudice?
47. Are love marriages always adaptive? Discuss with reference to cross-cultural
studies of interpersonal attraction and relationship formation.
48. Why might an emotional experience be expressed and perceived differently
across cultures?
End of paper
13
C8035
Social Psychology SAMPLE
___________________________________________________________________
Answers to Section A questions:
Question number
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Answer
b
b
a
b
a
b
c
b
b
a
b
c
c
b
b
d
b
b
a
c
b
c
a
c
d
d
d
b
c
a
b
c
b
d
b
c
d
a
b
c
14