Psychology exam #2

Question 1

Objective statements

Answer 1

Free of bias, often contain statistics that can be verified if needed. Are falsifiable. For example, 47% of citizens underpay their tax bills.

Question 2

Subjective Statements

Answer 2

Contains personal opinions, assumptions, and beliefs. Often found in newspapers, editorials, blogs, and internet comments. Unfalsifiable, an example is “Dogs are better than cats”

Question 3

Are lies subjective or objective?

Answer 3

BOTH, an example of subjective “I like your shoes”, objective example “the dog is in a field” when in reality the dog is in the cemetery dead.

Question 4

Fact

Answer 4

Objective, is something that is measured, observed, and proven to be true by means of scientific methods. Falsifiable.

Question 5

Opinion

Answer 5

Subjective judgment, unverifiable, opinions can be based on facts since they are how we perceive facts.

Question 6

Beliefs

Answer 6

Involve convictions an individual can have, not based on facts but rather on religious faith, morals, or cultural values. Unverifiable in logical or rational manners.

Question 7

Hard-won beliefs

Answer 7

People may be reluctant to critically examine hard-won beliefs, since doing so brings with it that possibility that they will have to give them up. Beliefs with immense devotion and effort.

Question 8

Belief Perseverance

Answer 8

Tendency to continue to believe things even after our reasons to believe have them undetermined. This is thought to occur to protect our egos.

Question 9

Inherited beliefs

Answer 9

We often adopt the beliefs of those around us often subconsciously and often without ourselves thinking we believe in it, accepted without critical evaluation. Goes hand in hand with confirmation bias and belief perseverance. Examples: gender roles, religion, superstitions.

Question 10

Psychological reactants

Answer 10

When we are told what to or think, we perceive that as having some our freedoms or rights taken away and so we react by doing the opposite. Often referred to as reverse psychology.

Question 11

Cults

Answer 11

A social group is defined by its unconventional religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Examples: Keep Sweet, Obey and Pray, Heavens Gate.

Question 12

Alien Abductions

Answer 12

Often mistaken from sleep paralysis.

Question 13

Ghosts

Answer 13

An overwhelming conscious of science is that there is no proof that ghosts exist. Ghost hunting is classified as pseudoscience. Examples: Seeing ghosts or being haunted, confirmation bias, inherited beliefs, (carbon monoxide poisoning)

Question 14

differences between a belief and a opinion

Answer 14

Opinions are based on facts or information therefore beliefs are outside those and are not opinions.

Question 15

Cognitive Bias

Answer 15

Repeating or basic missteps in thinking assessing, recollecting, or another cognitive process, is a pattern of deviation from standards and judgment, whereby inferences maybe be created unreasonably.

Question 16

Heuristics

Answer 16

They are any approach to problem-solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optional, perfect, or rational, but it is nevertheless sufficient for reacting or immediate, short-term goal or approximation.

Question 17

Prospect theory

Answer 17

It loses weight on our thinking more so than equivalent gains. And we assign greater value than initial gains then losses than subsequent ones.

Question 18

Linear gains

Answer 18

100 million dollars and 1hundred and one million. A 1-million-dollar difference doesn’t make much of an emotional difference. It might be exciting to see someone with 1 million, but it isn’t 1000x as exciting as seeing someone with $2 billion

Question 19

Post Hockery

Answer 19

The explanation cannot make predictions of future events with the connected statement. Example: the rooster always crows before the sun rises; therefore, the crowing rooster causes the sun to rise.

Question 20

Hindsight bias

Answer 20

The tendency after an event has occurred to overestimate the extent to which the outcome could have been foreseen, for example: “I knew that was the killer!” which causes us to be overconfident.

Question 21

Gamblers Fallacy

Answer 21

The mistaken belief that is an event occurred more frequently than expected in the past then its less likely to occur in the future, and vice versa. Example: “Due for a win”

Question 22

Sunk cost fallacy

Answer 22

Tendency to stick with a decision we invested time, money, or energy into, even if the current cost outweighs the benefits. Example: “This movie is terrible, might as well finish it”

Question 23

More about Heuristics

Answer 23

Mental shortcuts that be short cuts based on past experiences and thus tend to be generally accurate, however, since heuristics are short cuts, they are not guaranteed to be accurate all the time.

Question 24

Representative Heuristic

Answer 24

the degree to which A is representative of B, that is, by the degree to which A resembles B. We utilize representativeness heuristics to judge the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent or match a particular stereotype. Example: “You don’t look like a doctor”

Question 25

Implicit association test

Answer 25

Speed difference between saying a color when the ink matches the word and when it doesn’t. IAT shows more on what media you have been exposed to recently, rather then personal beliefs.

Question 26

Conjunction fallacy

Answer 26

Error in decision making where people judge that a conjunction of two possible events is more likely than one or both conjunctions, and lines up with the representativeness heuristic. Example: “Is it more likely to be an artist or an artist and a person who gambles”. Basically meaning, the more details it has the less likely it is to be true.

Question 27

Hot hand fallacy

Answer 27

The irrational belief that if you win or lose several chance game sin arow, you are either hot or cold, respectively, meaning that the streak is likely to continue and has to do with something other than that pure probability.

Question 28

Things to consider

Answer 28

None of us have a complete picture of the world, just because someone has a different way of thinking than you, does not mean they are wrong, it just means they were exposed to different information.

Question 29

Change blindness

Answer 29

We are really bad at detecting changes that occur when we don’t know where to look or where to direct our attention. People think they are perceptive. We can’t pay attention to everything.

Question 30

Attention

Answer 30

“The taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several stimuli, possible objects, or trains of thought… it implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others”- William James, involves multiple regions, mostly frontal lobe and we have a limited amount of attention.

Question 31

ADHD

Answer 31

Associated with weaker function and structure of the pro frontal cortex.

Question 32

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 32

When we attend to one thing, we often miss other things. especially if they are unexpected. we believe we see everything, especially unexpected things. occurs when an individual fails to perceive a changing or an expected stimulus in plain sight. This happens because we can’t pay attention to everything, and the change occurred while our attention was elsewhere.

Question 33

Habbian Learning

Answer 33

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Question 34

Taste Aversion

Answer 34

Caused by the brain’s association between the taste of a certain food with a negative experience such as nausea or vomiting. Can occur with food that doesn’t actively “cause” sickness. Example: Drinking too many cranberry vodkas until you get sick.

Question 35

Spotlight

Answer 35

We do not have the mental capacity to process the entirety of any scene, and so we must continuously shift our attention around the scene to process everything.

Question 36

More about spotlight

Answer 36

If any changes occur, especially out of the regions of the spotlight, we are terrible at registering them. Attention can be divided between tasks, the harder the task the more attention it needs.

Question 37

Tracking speed

Answer 37

How fast the attended objects are moving and how fast your eyes must move to keep up.

Question 38

Capacity

Answer 38

The number of objects you can process at the same time.

Question 39

Crowding

Answer 39

The closer objects are to each other, the harder it is to identify them. As stimulus complexity increases, reaction time increases.

Question 40

Stroop Test

Answer 40

Color names with different colored texts.

Question 41

Dunning-Kruger effect

Answer 41

Thinking we know more than we actually do. Technology effects our sleep cycle with artificial light.

Question 42

Sensory memory

Answer 42

Brief impressions from any of our senses, example: glancing at window.

Question 43

Short term memory

Answer 43

Memory will hold temporarily and will disappear after about 15-20 seconds if not rehearsed or otherwise passed into long-term memory.

Question 44

transience

Answer 44

refers to how our memories fade over time. If we do not frequently activate (recall) a given memory, our brain allows those connections between neurons to atrophy.
- ex) learning foreign languages in high school and forgetting them later in life, due do not practicing

Question 45

Active manipulation

Answer 45

Engaging and rehearsing your short-term memory to not forget, also known as working memory.

Question 46

Long-term memory

Answer 46

Is used to store information from past experiences, as well as able to be transferred to short-term memory to be applied to novel situations. Formed through hobbies learning, more important memories are encoded quicker.

Question 47

flashbulb memories

Answer 47

memory for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged important events. Details will be less accurate over time (the rate of decay for regular and flashbulb memories are the same, but the confidence for flashbulb stays the same). where you were, what you were doing.
- ex) Steve Erwin, queen of England

Question 48

recitation

Answer 48

active retrieval from long-term memory strengthens the neuronal connections (Hebbian learning)

Question 49

Alzheimer’s

Answer 49

Involves a buildup of amyloid plaques and the formation of neurofibrillary tangles. Often the first areas affected are the hippocampus and surrounding regions. Order of affection: Short-term, episodic, semantic, procedural. (Short term, explicit to implicit)

Question 50

things to consider

Answer 50

waking brain: optimized for encoding memories

Question 51

things to consider

Answer 51

sleep: optimization of memory consolidation

Question 52

Priming

Answer 52

The facilitation of responding occurs as a result of the presentation of a semantically or phonetically repeated word, as when the presentation of the word “nurse” facilitates access to our decisions regarding “doctor”. “Tip of the tongue” phenomenon, short-term y working memory is extremely limited in capacity.

Question 53

Absent mindedness

Answer 53

Involves the mobility to properly encode the information we wish to remeber.

Question 54

mnemonic devices

Answer 54

learning techniques that aid information retention or retrieval in the human memory for better understanding. Use elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval.