Exam 1: The Mission and the Method

Basic research is to applied research as ____ is to ____.

Milgram's famous studies of obedience to authority were motivated by which historical event?

Many areas of study in social psychology evoke a lot of passion from the researchers invested in that arena. Although doing research to make the world a better place is great motivation, one of the hazards of this motive is that ____.

Social psychology has been more influenced by history than by any other social science.

The construct "need for cognition" measures how much a person likes to think deeply, evaluate arguments, and analyze ideas. Let us assume that people who are confident about their self-worth also have a higher "need for cognition." Therefore, one would expect "need for cognition" to correlate positively with "self-esteem." A study finding this to be the case MOST illustrates ____ validity.

As discussed in the textbook, the main weakness with correlational research (as opposed to experimental research) is that the researcher cannot draw conclusions about ____________________.

Dr. Otten studies the relationship between crime rates and childrearing practices. Dr. Otten is MOST likely a(n) ____.

Which of the following fields is BEST defined as "the study of human societies and the groups that form those societies"?

Mirena wants is interested in the effects of gender on aggression. She collects all the studies she can find that have been conducted on this topic, and averages their results to generate a big picture of what the findings in that area reveal. Mirena has conducted a ____.

Early research in social psychology conducted by Max Ringlemann revealed that people ____ when they work as part of a group (e.g., pushing a car off of the road with two other people) compared to when they work alone at the same task.

When attempting to explain a person's behavior, what do social psychologists tend to assess first?

In one of the first social psychological experiments ever conducted, researcher Norman Triplett built a "competition machine," in which children wind up a fishing reel. He found that the children were able to wind more quickly when ____.

According to the textbook, human intuition is typically an excellent guide to understanding human behavior.

Which topic has been of the MOST interest to social psychologists during the last 30 years?

A literature review that averages together the statistical results from different studies conducted on the same topic is called a ____.

Suppose that there is a perfect negative correlation between the amount of money that Jane spends and the amount of money that she has in her bank account: for every dollar that she spends, she has exactly one less dollar in her bank account (assuming no interest, fees, or credits). Thus the correlation between Jane's spending and savings can be represented as ____.

Which of the following fields is best defined as "the study of human culture-the shared values, beliefs, and practices of a group of people"?

The "ABC triad" in social psychology refers to social psychology's focus on attribution, behavior, and culture, respectively.

Which of the following elements is particularly critical to include in a deception study, but is not usually required in other types of studies?

Anthropologists would posit that social psychologists cannot understand human behavior fully unless they understand the ____.