Psych/Soci

Question 1

Primacy effect

Answer 1

the objects are presented to the participants one at a time, which might result in better memory for events at the beginning of the series

Question 2

Spreading activation

Answer 2

when a concept is activated, the activation spreads to concepts that are semantically or associatively related to it. Thus, people often retrieve unpresented members of a category when tested on their memory for a series of presented concepts from that category.

Question 3

Actor­–observer bias

Answer 3

Actors attribute their own behavior to situational factors (not feeling well) whereas observers attribute actors’ behavior to dispositional factors (social awkwardness).

Question 4

A researcher replicates the experiment with the addition of a physical stressor to the first phase of the experiment. According to Selye’s general adaptation syndrome, this change is:

A.necessary, because humans respond differently to different types of stressors.
B.necessary, because physical stressors cause avoidance–avoidance conflict, whereas social stressors cause approach–approach conflict.
C.unnecessary, because the human stress response is not specific to the type of stressor.
D.unnecessary, because both physical stressors and social stressors cause avoidance–avoidance conflict.

Answer 4

The answer to this question is C because, according to Selye’s general adaptation syndrome, people’s response to various stressors is similar. Selye’s theory does not make claims about avoidance–avoidance or approach–approach conflicts.

Question 5

Nativist hypothesis

Answer 5

…language is an innate fundamental part of the human genetic make-up and that language acquisition occurs as a natural part of the human experience

Question 6

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis/ Linguistic relativity

Answer 6

structure of a language affects its speakers’ world view or cognition, and thus people’s perceptions are relative to their spoken language

Question 7

If adults performed the block tapping task as a measure of working memory capacity, they would most likely replicate sequences of what length correctly?

A.9 plus or minus 1
B.7 plus or minus 2
C.10 plus or minus 1
D.16 plus or minus 2

Answer 7

The answer to this question is B because early memory research with adults led to the belief that the capacity of working memory was between 5 and 9 items. The so-called “magic number 7 ± 2” was the name George Miller (1956) gave to this estimate.

Question 8

Conflict theory emphasizes…

Answer 8

the competition between groups over the allocation of societal resources. It assumes that power and authority are unequally distributed across a society, and that groups attempt to maintain their advantages.

Question 9

Caste systems describe…

Answer 9

closed stratification systems that do not allow for social mobility

Question 10

Shadow

Answer 10

Pay attention to only one ear, and repeat the numbers they hear immediately. As soon as they hear a number in the attended ear, they say it. This is a standard definition of shadowing in psychology.