Applied Social Psychology

Question 1

When people feel that they are unable to deal with the demands from their environment, they experience negative feelings and beliefs known as ______.

Answer 1

Stress

Question 2

__________ stress tends to be more harmful than objective stress.

Answer 2

Subjective

Question 3

A variety of situations can be stressful. However, an _____ tends to be stressful only when a person interprets it as stressful.

Answer 3

Event

Explanation:

For example, while some people find getting a speeding ticket a very stressful event, others consider it only slightly annoying.

Question 4

_________ control refers to the belief that a person has control over determining whether they experience positive or negative outcomes in their environment.

Answer 4

Perceived

Question 5

People can gain a sense of control by believing that they have control over their ___________ even if they do not actually have control. A perceived sense of control is thought to be beneficial for a person and to reduce the extent to which a person experiences stress.

Answer 5

environment

Question 6

Studies have shown that a sense of _______ is beneficial to a person’s health.

Answer 6

Control

Explanation:

Several studies have shown that a sense of control, even control over something relatively unimportant, can benefit a person’s health. In contrast, a loss of control tends to be detrimental to a person’s health.

Question 7

When a person explains the occurrence of a negative event as being a result of stable, internal factors or stable ______ factors, they tend to become pessimistic and enter a state known as learned helplessness.

Answer 7

global

Question 8

Learned ___________ refers to a state where people believe that negative events will happen and that trying to prevent them is futile.

Answer 8

helplessness

Question 9

People suffering from learned helplessness tend to become depressed, reduce their efforts, and experience __________ learning new material.

Answer 9

Difficulty

Question 10

______ attribution refers to when people believe the cause of an event is due to factors that will not change over time as opposed to factors that will change over time.

Answer 10

Stable

Explanation:

An example of stable attribution is when people believe that the reason they failed an exam was because of their intelligence, a stable factor, as opposed to the amount of effort they put into the task, a factor that changes over time.

Question 11

____ attribution refers to when people believe the cause of an event is due to factors which relate to many parts of their life as opposed to factors which only apply to a small part of their life.

Answer 11

Global

Explanation:

An example of global attribution is when people believe that the reason they failed a music exam was because of their overall intelligence, which influences their performance in many areas, as opposed to their musical ability, which is just one aspect of their intelligence.

Question 12

________ attribution refers to when people believe the cause of an event is due to factors which relate directly to themselves as opposed to factors that do not relate directly to themselves.

Answer 12

Internal

Explanation:

An example of internal attribution is when people believe that the reason they failed an exam was due to their own ability or effort, which is an internal factor, as opposed to the difficulty of the exam, which is an external factor.

Question 13

The fear of affirming a cultural stereotype can influence a person to explain a negative event in a pessimistic way. This fear is known as stereotype _____________.

Answer 13

Vulnerability

Explanation:

Some minority groups experience extra stress under certain conditions due to stereotype vulnerability. They worry that their individual performance not only expresses their ability, but the ability of their race.

Question 14

People deal with stress in different ways due to their personality, the influence of society, and also whether or not they express their feelings. These different ways are all styles of ______ with stress.

Answer 14

Coping

Question 15

___________ traits have been found to relate to how well a person deals with stress. Optimistic people tend to deal with stress better and tend to be healthier.

Answer 15

Personality

Explanation:

Optimistic people tend to expect the best out of life and evidence suggests that they react better to stress and are healthier than pessimistic people.

Question 16

Type A versus Type B personality refers to the way in which people deal with stress in their environment. Type _ personality refers to individuals who are hard-working, competitive, impatient, aggressive, and hostile.

Answer 16

A

Question 17

Type _ personality people tend to be relaxed, patient, and non-hostile, while Type A personality people are impatient and hostile. Various factors such as gender, environment, and genetics have been found to influence personality types.

Answer 17

B

Question 18

________ up refers to discussing or writing about a traumatic or stressful event. Research has found that opening up tends to improve a person’s health in the long term.

Answer 18

Opening

Question 19

In the short term, opening up about a stressful or traumatic event can be _________ to a person. However, evidence suggests that in the long term, people who opened up tended to have better health than those who did not.

Answer 19

detrimental

Question 20

When people think that other people are responsive and receptive to their needs, they tend to cope better with stress. This perception is known as ___________.

Answer 20

social support

Question 21

Getting help from other people has been found to be one way to cope with ______. This is known as social support. Social support includes emotional support such as listening and sympathizing, and it also includes direct aid, such as offering advice.

Answer 21

stress

Question 22

In addition to reducing people’s stress, social psychology can also be used to get people to change their ______ habits directly. This is done by changing people’s attitudes towards dangerous habits such as smoking and overeating.

Answer 22

Health

Question 23

Social psychology contains much information concerning social influence and social interaction. Therefore, it is a useful tool for changing the way people think about certain things, including dangerous _____.

Answer 23

habits

Question 24

A person’s _________ can be a source of stress. For example, sitting in traffic, being surrounded by noise, or being crowded can all be construed as stressful.

Answer 24

environment

Explanation:

There are a number of different sources of stress within the environment and this tends to be influenced by how people interpret the source. Sometimes a stimulus, such as loud music may be enjoyable, while at other times it can be stressful.

Question 25

Noise can be a source of stress. When people feel they have _______ over noise they tend to be less stressed than people who feel as though they have no control.

Answer 25

control

Explanation:

However, when people experience noise which they have no control over for long periods of time, they tend to experience learned helplessness, which leads to detrimental effects to their health and performance.

Question 26

_______ refers to the number of people present in a specific space. When it is high, a person can experience feelings of stress.

Answer 26

Density

Explanation:

An area containing 20 people has a lower density than the same area containing 50 people.

Question 27

When people feel stressed by the presence of others, they are experiencing ________.

Answer 27

crowding

Explanation:

This term refers to when a person experiences a subjective feeling that there are too many people in a given space. A lower density may actually produce a crowding effect, while a higher density may not, depending on how the person interprets the situation.

Question 28

People are more likely to experience stress due to a crowd when their sense of _______ is lowered.

Answer 28

control

Question 29

Similar to the effects of noise, a sense of control is important in __________ stress. People who feel they have control over crowding tend to be less stressed in crowded situations, while people who do not have control can cope for the short term, but if the crowding continues, they become stressed.

Answer 29

alleviating

Question 30

When people experience too much ___________ from their environment and are unable to pay attention or process it all, they experience sensory overload.

Answer 30

stimulation

Explanation:

One example is during crowding, as there are too many people to pay attention to.

Question 31

A social _______ occurs when people act in a way which is beneficial to themselves but harmful to the group if multiple people act that way.

Answer 31

Dilemma

Explanation:

An example of a social dilemma is when a community is experiencing a water shortage and to save water, people are meant to have short showers. While one person breaking this rule and having a long shower will not make a large difference, if many people in the community break the rule and have long showers, the effect will be detrimental.

Question 32

The _________ procedure has been found to be an effective way to influence people to change their behavior. This has been found to alter people’s behavior in areas such as water conservation and recycling.

Answer 32

hypocrisy

Question 33

When people are made to feel they are being hypocritical, they tend to _______ their behavior to suit what they are saying to alleviate the feeling of hypocrisy. The hypocrisy procedure involves having people state their beliefs and then making people aware that their behavior is not consistent with the stated beliefs.

Answer 33

change

Question 34

People tend to pay attention to things in their environment which are vivid. Therefore, in order to break old habits, it is necessary to use vivid ___________ which will get through established opinions and attitudes which people hold about certain habits.

Answer 34

communication

Question 35

__________ norms refer to behaviors which people think other people approve of.

Answer 35

Injunctive

Question 36

Injunctive norms are behaviors which people believe are socially approved of, despite whether the behavior is actually being ________. For example, while many people in a society may litter, there is an injunctive norm against littering.

Answer 36

performed

Question 37

_________ norms refer to behaviors which people think other people are actually performing regardless of what behaviors are socially sanctioned.

Answer 37

Descriptive

Explanation:

For example, regardless of whether littering was disapproved in a society, if people notice that other people are not littering, they may be reluctant to litter as no one else is.

Question 38

An effective method of reducing behaviors such as littering is to draw people’s _________ to the norms surrounding this behavior.

Answer 38

Attention

Explanation:

Therefore, to stop people littering, drawing their attention to norms which favor no littering tends to encourage that behavior.

Question 39

An eyewitness ________ is when a witness states that they saw a suspect commit a crime.

Answer 39

testimony

Question 40

____________ is part of three stages of memory processing. It involves noticing and paying attention to information in the surrounding environment. However, people cannot perceive everything in the surrounding environment, and thus acquire only a subset of information.

Answer 40

Acquisition

Question 41

_______ refers to a process during which people save certain bits of information previously acquired from the environment.

Answer 41

Storage

Explanation:

Sometimes these memories can be adjusted while in storage, which distorts what a person remembers about an event.

Question 42

People have the capacity to recall information which is stored in their memories. This process is known as _________.

Answer 42

Retrieval

Question 43

Retrieval of information can be influenced by other memories stored in the mind. Therefore, the information that is retrieved may be ________.

Answer 43

distorted

Question 44

People tend to recognize individuals from their own race more easily than they recognize people from other races. This phenomenon is known as ________ bias.

Answer 44

own-race

Explanation:

For example, a Caucasian tends to be best at recognizing fellow Caucasians, but may have difficulty recognizing Asians.

Question 45

______________ memory refers to when a person’s memory about an event is distorted due to information they find out after the event occurs.

Answer 45

Reconstructive

Question 46

The process used by a person to try and determine where they got their memory from is known as ______________.

Answer 46

source monitoring

Explanation:

People sometimes become mixed up about where they got their information from. For example, a witness for a crime may say a man looks familiar as they believe he was present at the scene of a crime, whereas, in reality, he may look familiar because they saw his picture in a newspaper

Question 47

A polygraph, or lie-detector, is a machine which is used to determine whether a person is lying or not. It works by observing a person’s _____________ responses while answering questions.

Answer 47

Physiological

Question 48

A __________ measures a person’s physiological responses such as their heart rate and perspiration rate. Certain physiological responses are associated with lying.

Answer 48

polygraph

Question 49

A jury is a group of people who determine whether a person is ______ or not of committing a crime.

Answer 49

Guilty

Question 50

_____ are used in many court cases to decide whether the suspect being tried is guilty of a crime. _____ are presented with evidence for and against the suspect, and are then left alone, as a group, to decide their verdict.

Answer 50

Juries

Question 51

Pretrial _________ can bias the decision made by jurors in a courtroom. To avoid this, judges and lawyers use a variety of solutions, such as questioning prospective jurors prior to a trial.

Answer 51

Publicity

Explanation:

An example of pretrial publicity could be the information a juror sees in the media about a case prior to the trial starting. Often the media presents a negative view of a suspect, and thus a juror may develop a negative viewpoint prior to listening to the evidence. This viewpoint is then likely to influence how they view the case, and thus their overall verdict of the suspect’s guilt.

Question 52

Following presentation of evidence during a trial, the jurors are left to deliberate on whether or not the suspect is guilty. Juries often go with the opinion of the ________, as people tend to conform.

Answer 52

Majority

Question 53

In the majority of cases in which a jury decides the conviction, a jury’s final decision tends to be the same as the initial decision of the majority of the jurors. Therefore, the ________ opinion tends to influence the opinion of the minority.

Answer 53

majority