Question 1

Across many different contexts and settings, people prefer to attribute their successes to ability and effort but tend to attribute their failures to bad luck or task difficulty. This is known as ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  the self-serving bias 
B)  correspondence bias 
C)  a fundamental attribution 
D)  the heuristic effect

Question 2

Joe takes on his sister's view that all people from "up north" are snobs. Later, Joe learns that his sister's opinion was based on the fact that her boyfriend from "up north" recently dumped her. Yet Joe persists in his belief that people from "up north" are snobby. This best illustrates the ____ effect.

Accepted Answer

A)  theory perseverance 
B)  availability heuristic 
C)  false consensus 
D)  false uniqueness

Question 3

Even though stomach cancer kills more people than plane crashes do, most people tend to assume that plane crashes cause more deaths. This misconception seems to arise from ____, since plane crash fatalities tend to be widely publicized and are therefore relatively easy for people to recall.

Accepted Answer

A)  the representativeness heuristic 
B)  the availability heuristic 
C)  the anchoring and adjustment heuristic 
D)  information overload

Question 4

People apply the ____ exclusively to their own desirable behaviors.

Accepted Answer

A)  gain-loss effect 
B)  fundamental attribution error 
C)  false uniqueness effect 
D)  self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 5

In Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996), participants who were in the "rude" priming condition were more likely to ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  wait patiently for the experimenter to speak to them 
B)  interrupt the experimenter to get instructions 
C)  view the experimenter as conceited and aloof 
D)  view the experimenter as modest and warm

Question 6

Suppose that Mr. Yipol gives 100 students a reading exam. He then selects the five students with the highest scores for a special reading program. At the end of the reading program, he administers the same reading exam again. To Mr. Yipol's astonishment, though, the students actually perform worse this time. While it might well be the case that the reading program actually negatively impacted the students' reading ability, Mr. Yipol would be wise to consider that the decrease could be due to ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  false consensus 
B)  false uniqueness 
C)  statistical regression 
D)  illusion of control

Question 7

People who receive extremely low scores on IQ tests almost always perform better the second time around. This pattern can be attributed to ____________________.

Accepted Answer

The answer of People who receive extremely low scores on...

Question 8

Research demonstrates that, in counterfactual thinking, people engage in far more ____ than ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  upward counterfactuals; downward counterfactuals 
B)  downward counterfactuals; upward counterfactuals 
C)  counterfactuals about past events; counterfactuals about future events 
D)  counterfactuals about future events; counterfactuals about past events

Question 9

The false consensus effect refers to the tendency for people to ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  overestimate the number of people who agree with them 
B)  underestimate the number of people who agree with them 
C)  rely too heavily on the primacy effect 
D)  not rely heavily enough on the primacy effect

Question 10

A well-known test used in psychological research plays on the distinction between automatic and controlled processing. The test requires people to look at the written names of several colors ("green," "red," "blue," etc.)-names which are in all cases written in "non-matching" colors of ink (e.g., the word "green" might be written in red ink, while the word "red" might be written in yellow ink)-and to identify, as quickly as possible, the color in which each word is written. This test is known as the ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  Stroop test 
B)  Myers-Briggs test 
C)  Rorschach Inkblots 
D)  Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Question 11

Polina is three years old. She is just beginning to understand concepts such as "dog," "cat," "chair," and "sofa," and to understand how these concepts differ from one another. In other words, she is just beginning to develop ____________________.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Polina is three years old. She is...

Question 12

Schemas and scripts are both examples of ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  intentions 
B)  knowledge structures 
C)  heuristics 
D)  counterfactuals

Question 13

Suppose that you meet an old man named Al. You have no idea how old he is. To try to guess his age you start with your grandfather's age (80), and then add on a few years since Al seems to be a little older. That is, you make use of ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  priming 
B)  counterfactual thinking 
C)  the anchoring and adjustment heuristic 
D)  the simulation heuristic

Question 14

Suppose that a coin is flipped 20 times. The first 19 flips are all heads. Is the last flip more likely to be heads, more likely to be tails, or equally likely to be heads or tails? When people engage in the gambler's fallacy, they ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  say that the last flip is more likely to be heads 
B)  say that the last flip is more likely to be tails 
C)  say that the last flip is more likely to be heads OR say that the last flip is more likely to be tails. 
D)  say that the last flip is equally likely to be heads or tails

Question 15

The opposite of a cognitive miser would be someone who ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  does not care what other people think 
B)  tends to share his or her ideas freely with others 
C)  carefully and rationally thinks about each and every decision 
D)  rarely compares himself or herself with peers

Question 16

In informal surveys, people always overestimate the number of lesbians who have AIDS. Lesbians actually have extremely low rates of AIDS, but people tend to associate lesbians with gay men (who have relatively high rates). Thus, people tend to think that they see a lesbian-AIDS relationship when in fact there is no such relationship. This is a good example of the ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  false consensus effect 
B)  illusory correlation 
C)  belief in a just world hypothesis 
D)  contrast effect

Question 17

As discussed in the textbook, research participants who read a story about a character named "Donald"-a character who engages in skydiving, demolition derby driving, and other similar activities-tend to think that Donald is especially reckless when they have been ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  primed with words like "dangerous" and "risky" 
B)  primed with words like "fun" and "adventurous" 
C)  asked to avoid the fundamental attribution error 
D)  asked to avoid the ultimate attribution error

Question 18

The belief that one should not change an answer on a test, even if additional consideration has led one to believe another answer might be the correct one, is called the ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  false consensus effect 
B)  magical thinking 
C)  contamination 
D)  first instinct fallacy

Question 19

Mr. X thinks that Barack Obama became president of the U.S. because-even though he is not that brilliant or talented-he made a real effort to campaign well in 2008. But Mr. Y thinks that Barack Obama only became president because he was "in the right place at the right time," and had good luck. Social psychologists would say that Mr. X is making ____ attributions for Obama's success, while Mr. Y is making ____ attributions.

Accepted Answer

A)  internal and unstable; external and unstable 
B)  external and unstable; external and stable 
C)  internal and stable; external and unstable 
D)  external and unstable; external and stable.

Question 20

Research shows that people tend to engage in fewer cognitive errors and biases in everyday thinking ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  as a result of having had graduate training involving statistical reasoning, but not when they are simply encouraged to carefully consider different alternatives. 
B)  when they are encouraged to carefully consider different alternatives, but not as a result of having had graduate training involving statistical reasoning. 
C)  both as a result of graduate training involving statistical reasoning, and when they are encouraged to carefully consider different alternatives. 
D)  neither as a result of having had graduate training involving statistical reasoning, nor when they are encouraged to carefully consider different alternatives.

Exam 5: Social Cognition