Sample test questions for Psych 360, Chapters 1-3
The purpose of this test is to give you experience completing multiple choice questions on the
course material. It does NOT cover all of the material for the exam. For information on what to
study for the exam, see the study guide on the course website.
First, try to answer the following questions. Then, score your answers using the answer key (in a
separate file).
Chapter 1
1. Sheila notices that whenever her mother-in-law is around, her husband begins to speak and
act in more formal, socially desirable ways. Sheila’s observation would be interesting to a _____,
who studies how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are affected by others.
A.
environmental psychologist
B.
clinical psychologist
C.
social psychologist
D.
personality psychologist
2. When individuals and groups affect the behavior of others, _____ has occurred.
A.
persuasion
B.
social influence
C.
cognitive dissonance
D.
schematic behavior
3. Individuals differ in the extent to which they enjoy and participate in effortful cognitive
activities or, as personality psychologists call it, the need for the cognition. The need for
cognition is an example of ______ in people’s personalities.
A.
individual differences
B.
social differences
C.
cognitive differences
D.
none of the above
4. Maria, a Puerto Rican woman, notices that the closer to the front of the classroom she sits, the
more she likes the professor of that class. Which type of psychologist be most likely to examine
whether physical distance affects liking?
A.
clinical
B.
cross-cultural
C.
social
D.
personality
5. You attend a play in which a fellow student plays the role of a mayor in a small town. After
the performance, you encourage the student to run for a position on your school’s student
government. Your assumption that this student would be a good leader based on his role in a play
reflects the
A.
halo effect
B.
assumed-similarity bias
C.
fundamental attribution error
D.
self-serving bias
Chapter 2
6. Which of the following is not a component of the scientific method?
A.
Identifying important questions to study
B.
Developing a theory to explain some phenomenon
C.
Conducting research to support or refute explanations of phenomena
D.
Interviewing people you know to find out what they think about a topic
7. A marketing team failed to submit a proposal before the deadline expired. Members later said
that they thought someone else on the team was going to submit the proposal, so no individual
made sure the proposal was completed. This team may have experienced
A.
the bystander effect.
B.
free-riding.
C.
misattribution hypothesis.
D.
diffusion of responsibility.
8. From a scientific point of view, one of the key features of a hypothesis is that it is
A.
consistent with commonsense explanations.
B.
consistent with current viewpoints in psychology.
C.
testable with scientific methods.
D.
loosely connected to a theory.
9. A psychologist believes that people like others who are attractive. She shows men a variety of
pictures of women who vary in their physical attractiveness. She records the amount of time the
men spend looking at each picture as a measure of how much the men like the women in each
picture. Which of the following statements is true?
A.
The psychologist is using observational methods to study her hypothesis.
B.
The psychologist has not developed a testable hypothesis.
C.
Liking is operationalized as the amount of time spent looking at each picture.
D.
A negative correlation is predicted between physical attractiveness and liking.
10. Dr. Armstrong finds that the correlation between a person’s self-esteem and the amount of
food she eats is –.90. This correlation coefficient indicates a _____ association between selfesteem and eating behavior.
A.
B.
C.
D.
strong
moderate
neutral
weak
11. One weakness of correlational studies is that they provide little information about
A.
how variables are related to each other.
B.
how strongly variables are related to each other.
C.
whether one variable causes another.
D.
whether the observed relationship exists in the real world.
12. The purpose of random assignment is to
A.
prevent participants from guessing a researcher’s hypotheses.
B.
ensure that participants in the experimental groups are similar to each other.
C.
enable researchers to conduct complex statistical analyses on their data.
D.
make sure that only people with certain features are able to participate.
Chapter 3
13. Which of the following is a function of schemas?
A.
They only organize information in memory
B.
They organize information in memory and guarantee that we will find correct solutions to
problems.
C.
They organize information in memory, represent the way we believe the social world
works, and help us to recognize and recall information about social stimuli.
D.
They organize information in memory, represent the way we believe the social world
works, and guarantee that we will find correct solutions to problems.
14. Sara won a silver medal, and Andrea won a bronze medal in the Olympics. According to
research discussed in the text and in lecture, which concept best explains why Sara (silver
medalist) is likely to feel worse than Andrea (bronze medalist)?
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
representativeness heuristic
availability heuristic
self-fullfilling prophecy
failure to use base-rate information
counterfactual thinking
15. The more often a country is in the news, the more people say that they know it – and the
higher are their estimates of its population. This is an example of a cognitive heuristic called the
A.
framing heuristic
B.
judgmental heuristic
C.
D.
representativeness heuristic
availability heuristic
16. In a study by Dov Eden (1990), twenty-nine platoons that consisted of a thousand men in the
Israeli Defense Forces led some platoon leaders to expect that the group of trainees they were
about to receive had great potential, but in reality these groups were of average ability. After ten
weeks, the trainees who were assigned to the high-expectation platoons obtained higher scores
than the others on written exams and on the ability operate a weapon. This phenomenon at work
is called a
A.
perseverance effect
B.
self-fulfilling prophecy
C.
thought activation
D
thought suppression
17. When people read about a conservative person who enjoys math puzzles and has no interest
in politics, they guess that he’s an engineer rather than a lawyer – even if randomly chosen from
a group of one hundred lawyers and fifty engineers. This is an example of a cognitive heuristic
called the
A.
framing heuristic
B.
judgmental heuristic
C.
representativeness heuristic
D.
availability heuristic
18. A study by Gilbert and Hixon (1991) showed that when White Americans encounter an
Asian American person, the Asian American stereotype may come to their mind spontaneously,
without any intention on their part. This is an example of
A.
controlled thinking
B.
automatic thinking
C.
external thinking
D.
internal thinking