Psychology Exam #2

Exam#2 1. Which of the following statements about the effects of subliminal stimuli is most accurate? a. Subliminal exposure to thirst-related words can lead thirsty people to drink more. 2. Bradley narrowly escapes a head-on collision while driving from home. Once he arrives, he turns on the television and sees a political ad for the challenger in the local mayoral race, which focuses on how the challenger will change city policies if elected. According to research on terror management, how will he evaluate this ad? a. He will reject the candidate more emphatically. 3. Janet has a minority opinion about dorm curfew and is afraid she will feel pressured to conform to the majority opinion at an upcoming dorm meeting. To resist conformity pressures, Janet should a. bring an ally to the meeting. 4. Although Quan believes that child safety is important, he often forgets to use a car seat when taking his toddler to day care. What does this best illustrate about the relationship between atÝtudes and behavior? a. AtÝtudes are sometimes poor predictors of behavior. 5. How have norm-based approaches been used to curb binge drinking on college campuses? What explains the effectiveness of these approaches? a. It has been shown to be successful in reducing drinking behaviors when college students are given appropriate information about social norms in the area of social drinking and binge drinking. Students tend to assume that drinking is more common than it actually is, which is pluralistic ignorance. This idea may lead students to drink more than they are comfortable with in order to obtain social approval and/or avoid social disapproval from their peers. When students are educated that drinking social norms are less favorable than they previously imagined, the pressure to drink is lowered. 6. Although you want to chat with your friend during class, you're worried that the professor or other students would notice. You choose not to talk to your friend. This illustrates that a. powerful social norms can override the influence of atÝtude on behavior. 7. Some residents in your town want to build a new elementary school, but others do not. You are leaning toward the pro-school camp. One day, you receive a flyer from the pro-school camp that warns you that the anti-school camp is going to hold a demonstration at a local park. The flyer briefly summarizes how the anti-school camp will attack the pro-school position. Further, the flyer asks you to think about how you can refute the attack before the demonstration occurs. The pro-school camp's strategy is an example of ________. It should ________ your resistance to stronger, more detailed attacks if you end up attending the demonstration. a. atÝtude inoculation; increase 8. Joanna does not think carefully and deliberately about what a politician says during a debate. Instead, she attends to the politician's winning smile and boyish good looks. Joanna is attending to the ________ route to persuasion. a. Peripheral 9. Which of the following advertising strategies BEST illustrates an attempt to persuade people through the central route? a. Research is presented demonstrating that a particular moisturizing lotion is more effective than other products. 10. According to the self-validation hypothesis, under what circumstances can greater source credibility, which might prompt recipients of a message to be more confident, lead to less persuasion? a. when arguments are weak 11. You are asked to design an antismoking pamphlet. You decide to put a frightening photograph of a lung-cancer victim on the cover. According to Howard Leventhal and his colleagues' (1967) research, your message will be more likely to reduce smoking if you also provide a. suggestions for how to quit smoking. 12. Dave's roommates call him a "moocher," a "parasite," and a "leech." These names suggest that Dave a. violates the norm of reciprocity. 13. A prison warden has instructed his prison guards to hose down the prisoners with icy cold water as punishment, despite the fact that this is likely illegal. When one of the guards protests, the warden informs the guards that he himself will take personal responsibility for any negative consequences. This will make the guards more likely to obey because it a. reduces the guards' stress about what they are doing. 14. Recall that Muzafer Sherif (1936) showed participants a point of light in a completely darkened room and participants were asked to judge the light's movement. The results from this study suggest that people a. often change their own judgments in accordance with others' judgments. 15. What are self-afÏrmations and how can they be used to ward off cognitive dissonance? a. Self-afÏrmations are an effort to evaluate one's strengths and core values. Inconsistencies between atÝtudes and behaviors are more likely to cause cognitive dissonance, especially when they involve a person's essential self or values. People might engage in self-afÏrmation rather than feeling better about themselves by modifying their views to match their conduct. This should restore self-esteem and eliminate the need for dissonance-reduction techniques. 16. Give three examples of how the media can shape our conception of social reality. a. First the media presents an oversimplified version of events, or they show a journalistic bias that changes the way the events are viewed. Second, the media can shape what events are considered important. The media causes people to compare their lives to the lives of those depicted within the media. 17. Molly knows the history of her home city of Philadelphia. There are three landmarks downtown that she always shows to friends who visit. This knowledge of Philadelphia is the ________ component of her atÝtude toward her city. a. Cognitive 18. Compared with people who grow up in independent cultures, people who grow up in interdependent cultures are ________ susceptible to ________ social influence. a. more; informational and normative 19. "Tight" cultures differ from "loose" cultures in that they a. have strong norms about how people should behave. 20. Minorities influence majority opinion primarily through a. informational social influence. 21. The main difference between compliance and obedience is that obedience occurs in response to a. A more powerful person or group. 22. Lenora's parents always taught her that she ought to "put on a happy face" even when she is not. According to research on self-perception theory, what effect does this behavior have on her corresponding internal state? a. It works—behaving as if she is happy can actually make Lenora feel happier. 23. Research on cognitive dissonance teaches a broad and important lesson about how to influence someone else's atÝtudes. Specifically, if you want people to ________ the broader value or message behind what you got them to do, then you should use the ________ amount of incentive or coercion necessary to induce compliance. a. accept; smallest 24. After doing poorly on his biology exam, Jim reminds himself that he is a good artist and a loving boyfriend. Thus, Jim is using ________ to cope with a potential threat to his self-esteem. a. self-afÏrmation 25. As you drive in to school, you hear a random radio-show caller arguing that sun exposure really has not been shown to cause skin cancer and that some research suggests that skin cancer is completely genetic and not related to sun exposure at all. At the time, you think that this is a silly argument and that the caller does not know what she is talking about. However, two months later, you are outside without wearing sunscreen, and you find yourself remembering that you had read something about how the sun actually does not cause skin cancer. This process is evidence that ________ has influenced your atÝtude. a. the sleeper effect