Chapter 2

Question 1

Professor Germ has just released a study reporting that the more often people washed their hands, the less likely they were to become ill with viral infections. Which type of correlation has most likely been discovered?

Answer 1

Negative correlation

Question 2

In a sample of five scores with values of 20, 35, 10, 5, and 95, what is the score of 95?

Answer 2

an outlier

Question 3

What does the mode measure?

Answer 3

Central tendency

Question 4

Jamie met a woman at a medical conference and assumed she was a nurse; however, she was a doctor. Which term best reflects this error in thinking?

Answer 4

representativeness heuristic

Question 5

Which term best reflects our tendency to overestimate how well we could have forecasted known outcomes?

Answer 5

hindsight bias

Question 6

For psychologists, what is the central question concerning the use of polygraphs?

Answer 6

Do they have high validity?

Question 7

In a sample of six scores with values of 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, and 10, what is the mean?

Answer 7

6

Question 8

Dr. Wheeler conducted an experiment to explore whether the age of a driver’s education instructor affected the confidence level of new drivers. Dr. Wheeler divided students into two groups by flipping a coin. One group’s instructor was 45 years old; the other group’s instructor was 25 years old. In this experiment, what was the instructor’s age?

Answer 8

Independent variable

Question 9

Professor Lehrer was interested in knowing whether humorous lectures would result in better student performance on the Introductory Psychology final exam. Professor Lehrer told several jokes in each lecture to her 9 a.m. class, and told no jokes in her lecture to her 7:30 p.m. class. At the end of the term, she compared the grades in her 9 a.m. class with those in her 7:30 p.m. class. In this experiment, what are the class times?

Answer 9

Confounding variable

Question 10

Suppose that your town’s mayor made a statement to the effect that, of the 5000 people in the town living below the poverty line, 4000 are of Scottish ancestry. To interpret this statistic, what would be important for the citizens to keep in mind with respect to the people of Scottish ancestry living in the town?

Answer 10

Base rate

Question 11

Kim assumed that because two things are correlated, one must cause the other. Which term best characterizes Kim’s error in thinking?

Answer 11

the correlation versus causation fallacy

Question 12

Which term refers to the extent to which one can generalize research findings to the real world?

Answer 12

external validity

Question 13

Which term is a measure of where the group tends to cluster in a data set?

Answer 13

central tendency

Question 14

If athletic ability is negatively correlated with mathematical ability, what does this mean?

Answer 14

As one ability increases, the other decreases.

Question 15

In Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments, he informed participants that he was investigating learning. By so doing, what did Milgram use?

Answer 15

Deception

Question 16

Pete believes he has a pair of lucky socks. He notices that good things often happen when he wears these socks and happen less often when he doesn’t wear these socks. Which term best reflects this phenomenon?

Answer 16

illusory correlation

Question 17

Which term refers to the tendency to exaggerate the central message of a study?

Answer 17

Sharpening

Question 18

With their studies of heuristics, which researchers fundamentally changed how psychologists think about thinking?

Answer 18

Kahneman and Tversky

Question 19

In order to conduct his classic research on obedience, Milgram used which of the following?

Answer 19

a confederate

Question 20

An unmeasured variable causes an observed correlation between two other variables. Which term best characterizes this phenomenon?

Answer 20

third variable problem

Question 21

Which term refers to the measure of dispersion that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean?

Answer 21

Standard deviation

Question 22

The “scientific breakthrough” of prefrontal lobotomies was really a widespread example of what phenomenon?

Answer 22

Confirmation bias

Question 23

Which statement about animal research is accepted as TRUE by the text’s authors?

Answer 23

It has yielded a significant amount of information to benefit humans

Question 24

Which term coined by cognitive psychologists means that we are mentally lazy and try to conserve our mental energies by simplifying the world?

Answer 24

cognitive misers

Question 25

What is one benefit of the case study method of research?

Answer 25

It provides existence proofs.

Question 26

n psychology, an experiment depends on two components: manipulation of an independent variable and _______.

Answer 26

random assignment of participants

Question 27

What is represented by a single point on a scatterplot?

Answer 27

the data for one person

Question 28

Which research method is high in internal validity, but is sometimes low in external validity?

Answer 28

experimental designs

Question 29

We need ____, or rules of thumb, to help us make sense of the world; without them we would be overwhelmed by the information we receive day in and day out.

Answer 29

Heuristics

Question 30

Barbara is a highly intelligent and motivated employee, far exceeding the output of most employees in the department. However, Barbara dresses sloppily and lacks the interpersonal skills to deal with company politics. On her yearly review, Barbara’s supervisor consistently rates her performance “below expectations.” He has fallen prey to the ________.

Answer 30

horns, or pitchfork, effect

Question 31

When attempting to draw conclusions about the applicability of a research finding from a sample to the full population, we would use _______.

Answer 31

inferential statistics

Question 32

Scientists would say that the best explanation for the lunar lunacy effect is _______

Answer 32

illusory correlation

Question 33

If two psychologists observing the same patient group disagree on their findings, their research is low in what measure?

Answer 33

interrater reliability

Question 34

Reliability is necessary for:

Answer 34

validity

Question 35

1.0 is a

Answer 35

positive correlation coefficient

Question 36

naturalistic observation has a high rate of

Answer 36

external validity

Question 37

Kelsey, a manager at a clothing store, gave more favourable performance reviews to employees who were exceptionally attractive, regardless of their actual job performance. Kelsey fell prey to ________.

Answer 37

the halo effect