Exam 1: The Mission and the Method

According to the textbook, "common sense" theories about social psychology are ____.

Compare and contrast social psychology with two other branches of psychology (e.g., cognitive psychology, personality psychology).

Outline the scientific method, describing each of the different steps involved.

In social psychology, the "ABC triad" consists of ____.

In the 1950s and 1960s, mainstream psychology was divided between ____.

Correlation coefficients are used to describe the relationship between two variables. They are usually denoted using the letter ____.

Dr. Khanmohamed is conducting a research project with young children to examine the effect of the exposure to different cultural groups on the development of empathy. The independent variable in this research is ____.

When a researcher conducts an experiment and is fairly certain that changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable, that experiment is said to be high in ____.

When did social psychology begin to come into its own as a field?

In an experiment on the effects of communication on cooperation, researchers observed higher rates of cooperation if members were able to communicate with each other prior to doing the cooperative task than if they were not allowed prior communication. This illustrates a(n) ____ effect of communication on cooperation.

As a rule, social psychologists are MOST interested in ____.

Suppose that you participate in an experiment that is designed to examine the effects of sadness on creativity. Even though the sadness manipulation used by the experimenters is very artificial, you nonetheless experience deep sadness during the study. Thus, the study was apparently high in ____________________.

The term "experimental realism" refers to whether the physical setting of a research study resembles the "real world."

Suppose that you are working as a research assistant for a social psychologist. To assist her with a research study, the social psychologist asks you to stand in a laboratory waiting room with research participants, act as though you are a research participant yourself, and then pretend to have an epileptic seizure. (The social psychologist is interested in how many people will try to help you.) In other words, your task is to be a ____ in the research.

In the 1950s and 1960s, mainstream psychology was divided between two main theoretical camps: ____.

In social psychology, the "ABC triad" refers to ____________________, ____________________, and____________________.

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

The first social psychological experiments and the publication of the first book to bear the title Social Psychology both occurred around ____.

In the context of research, an operational definition of a variable is a precise description of ____.

Social psychologists typically derive ____ based on ____.