Exam 1: The Mission and the Method

When people work on a task jointly with someone else (e.g., putting together a large bookcase), each person tends to put in less effort than he or she would if working alone.

Explain how psychology was divided into two camps during the 1950s and 1960s.

Reliability is to ____ as validity is to ____.

Who among the following psychologists was the first to publish a social psychology textbook titled Social Psychology in the 1900s?

Dr. Shar wants to test her theory that people feel less stressed after exercising. She measures students' stress levels and then has them perform 30 minutes of moderate exercise on a treadmill. After the treadmill segment, she measures their stress levels again. This is an example of a(n)____ design.

Dr. Zink and Dr. Vasquez are designing a new study. They have come up with a good hypothesis for the study, but they are having trouble thinking of operational definitions for their variables. In other words, they are concerned that their research might be low in ____.

Based on early research by Norman Triplett, we should expect that children who work on math problems alone will ____ than children who work on math problems side by side with their classmates.

"Common sense" theories about social psychology are ____.

Researchers tend to use quasi-experimental research designs when they are able to manipulate an independent variable but NOT able to ____.

Applied researchers are BEST defined as social scientists who ____.

While social psychologists are interested in a wide variety of topics, three themes that have become increasingly important during the last 30 years are ____.

Social scientists who focus on concrete problems-such as how to boost literacy rates in schools or how to increase energy conservation-are known as ____.

In which of the following situations is political science most helpful for social psychology?

Which of the following best represents a similarity between social psychology and economics?

Dr. Kay researches the effectiveness of different therapies for treating severe anxiety disorders. He is MOST likely a ____.

The term "reactance" is used to refer to the tendency for people to

Based on early research by Norman Triplett with racing cyclists, we should expect that people who exercise on rowing machines at gyms are more likely to ____ than people who exercise on the same machines in the privacy of their homes.

Suppose you are a research participant in a laboratory study that is examining fear and social support. The researcher shows you an extremely scary movie and then asks you whether you feel like talking to anyone (and if so, who)once the movie is over. Although you are in a laboratory setting the whole time, which does not resemble "real life" at all, you become engrossed in the procedures of the study and almost forget that you are in a study. Thus, in your experience, this study is:

Martin believes that his blue coat is warmer than his red coat. Ted thinks that he might want to have kids sometime in the next few years. Yesi remembers playing baseball with her friends as a child. These are all examples of ____.

A hypothesis is described by nonscientists  as a(n)____.