Human Behavior in Social Contexts
Practice Questions
Course Introduction
This course explores the fundamental principles governing human behavior within various social contexts, examining how individuals think, feel, and act in relation to others and within group settings. Topics include socialization processes, group dynamics, social roles, attitudes, conformity, prejudice, interpersonal relationships, and cultural influences on behavior. Through an interdisciplinary approach, students analyze theories and research from psychology, sociology, and related fields to deepen their understanding of how societal structures and cultural norms shape individual and collective behaviors. The course emphasizes critical thinking, self-reflection, and practical applications to real-world social issues.
Recommended Textbook
Social Psychology 4th Edition by Tom Gilovich
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1080 Verified Questions
1080 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: An Invitation to Social Psychology
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Sample Questions
Q1) You are driving home from school and suddenly realize that you have not noticed anything you have driven past for the last few minutes. This experience of driving without paying attention to your route is an example of ________ processing.
A) automatic
B) explicit
C) biased
D) controlled
Answer: A
Q2) Which of the following is LEAST characteristic of the goals of social psychology?
A) understanding how people in different cultures think, feel, and behave
B) understanding how people control each other's behaviors
C) evaluating the accuracy of folk theories about how situations influence behavior
D) understanding how personality traits predispose people to respond to major events in their lives
Answer: D
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3
Chapter 2: The Methods of Social Psychology
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Sample Questions
Q1) In an experiment, a statistically significant result depends the most on which two factors?
A) the size of the difference between groups and the validity of the experiment
B) the size of the difference between groups and the number of cases on which it is based
C) the validity of the experiment and the number of cases on which it is based
D) the validity of the experiment and the number of dependent variables the study used
Answer: B
Q2) When random sampling is used, it means that
A) participants are equally likely to be assigned to one condition or another.
B) every member of a population has an equal chance of being selected.
C) some members of a population are more likely than others to be selected.
D) participants are assigned to different conditions based on a particular trait or variable.
Answer: B
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4
Chapter 3: The Social Self
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Sample Questions
Q1) Different theories make different predictions about the source of a person's self-esteem. For example, sociometer theory argues that self-esteem depends on ________, whereas the contingencies of self-worth account argues that self-esteem depends on ________.
A) social acceptances versus social rejection; success versus failure in important life domains
B) success versus failure in important life domains; social acceptance versus social rejection
C) being independent; maintaining social harmony
D) maintaining social harmony; being independent
Answer: A
Q2) Explain the concept of ego depletion, and give two examples of situations in which this could occur.
Answer: Ego depletion is a state produced by acts of self-regulation, in which people lack the energy or resources to engage in further acts of self-regulation. Several examples of situations that produce ego depletion are acceptable, including physical exercise, emotion regulation, and squeezing a hand grip.
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5
Chapter 4: Social Cognition: Thinking About People and Situations
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Sample Questions
Q1) Give two examples of variables that influence the accuracy of secondhand information. Then, for each, describe a situation in everyday life where it could occur.
Q2) The textbook describes research by Todorov and colleagues in which participants rated a large number of faces along different personality dimensions. Which two dimensions stood out as the main dimensions used in these ratings?
A) happiness/sadness and fear
B) trustworthiness and physical attractiveness
C) trustworthiness and dominance
D) happiness and physical attractiveness
Q3) Recall that Norbert Schwarz and colleagues conducted an experiment to explain why the availability heuristic occurs. Their results showed clear support for a(n) ________ explanation.
A) ease of retrieval
B) ease of encoding
C) affective primacy
D) planning fallacy
Q4) Describe the confirmation bias and explain how it can affect people's decision making. Make sure to indicate when people will make good decisions.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Social Attribution: Explaining Behavior
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is FALSE regarding the findings from research on culture and social perception? Relative to
A) Asians, Americans are less likely to assume that people are trustworthy.
B) the Japanese, Americans' judgments of faces tend to be less influenced by context.
C) the Japanese, Americans are less attentive to background elements of visual scenes.
D) Americans, Hindu East Indians are less likely to attribute others' behaviors to presumed personality traits.
Q2) Generate an example of a time when you or someone you know committed the fundamental attribution error. Considering the causes of the fundamental attribution error that you learned about in this chapter, how might you explain this particular situation?
Q3) According to your textbook, all of the following are potential causes of the fundamental attribution error EXCEPT
A) people more readily capture our attention than aspects of the environment.
B) it is more effortful to make a situational attribution.
C) we have more access to information about ourselves than others.
D) dispositional inferences contribute to our belief in a just world.
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Page 7
Chapter 6: Emotion
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Sample Questions
Q1) Patterns of construal for evaluating events and objects in the environment based on their relation to current goals are known as ________ processes.
A) display
B) affective
C) emotional
D) appraisal
Q2) Which hormone promotes closeness and commitment?
A) estrogen
B) oxytocin
C) testosterone
D) serotonin
Q3) Which of the following approaches to understanding emotion assumes that emotions are strongly influenced by values, roles, institutions, and socialization practices?
A) the physiological approach
B) the evolutionary approach
C) the universality approach
D) the cultural approach
Q4) Describe the four components of emotional intelligence and give an example of each.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Attitudes, Behavior, and Rationalization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Claude Steele's research suggests that people given the opportunity to engage in ________ are ________ likely to experience cognitive dissonance.
A) self-affirmation; more
B) self-affirmation; less
C) self-perception; more
D) self-perception; less
Q2) 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 attitude toward her city.
A) cognitive
B) affective
C) behavioral
D) knowledge
Q3) What are self-affirmations and how can they be used to ward off cognitive dissonance?
Q4) Attitudes often fail to predict behavior with the accuracy we might expect. Explain how this failure could result from the level of specificity in which the attitudes and behaviors are measured.
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Chapter 8: Persuasion
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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) attitude inoculation; decrease
B) attitude inoculation; increase
C) thought polarization; increase
D) thought polarization; decrease
Q2) Research on mood and persuasion suggests that people may be persuaded differently depending on their mood. Explain how a positive or a negative mood can influence persuasion and why. Give an example demonstrating how a politician might alter audience members' moods in order to make them more susceptible to persuasion.
Q3) Does consumer advertising have strong or weak effects on behavior? Use research to justify your answer.
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Chapter 9: Social Influence
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Sample Questions
Q1) All of the following are examples of social influence EXCEPT a
A) woman choosing not to participate in an event that goes against her moral beliefs.
B) college student buying the same brand of jeans that her friends wear.
C) soldier obeying orders.
D) child cleaning his room because he knows it will make his parents happy.
Q2) Evaluate the claim that participants in the Milgram experiments who delivered the maximum level of shock must have been uncaring or sadistic by nature.
Q3) Normative social influence often has a greater impact on ________ than on________.
A) public compliance; private acceptance
B) private acceptance; public compliance
C) private acceptance; internalization
D) internalization; private acceptance
Q4) ________ is the first step in the foot-in-the-door technique.
A) Giving people a small gift
B) Giving people a large gift
C) Making a small request
D) Making a large request
Q5) Define conformity, compliance, and obedience and provide an example of each.
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Chapter 10: Relationships and Attraction
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to social exchange theory, people
A) seek out rewards in their interactions with others, but they are not willing to incur certain costs in order to obtain them.
B) seek out rewards in their interactions with others, and they are willing to incur certain costs in order to obtain them.
C) tend to pursue those interactions that require the least effort.
D) tend to pursue those interactions that require the most effort.
Q2) Janet often encounters John at school. Because of this, they end up becoming friends. This scenario illustrates how ________ influences interpersonal attraction.
A) equity
B) physical attractiveness
C) reciprocity
D) proximity
Q3) Some historians believe that the idea that romantic love should precede marriage
A) results in transactional marriages.
B) is not a recipe for long-term marital satisfaction.
C) has a long history in Western culture.
D) is relatively recent, emerging only in the past five hundred years or so.
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Chapter 11: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
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Sample Questions
Q1) Research shows that even if schools are integrated, if children's parents do not encourage and support that integration, children will be less likely to meet and play with children from different backgrounds. In this case, which condition for reducing prejudice is NOT met?
A) clear penalties if group members show prejudice toward each other
B) one-on-one interactions between members of equal status
C) cooperative pursuit of superordinate goals
D) contact supported by social norms
Q2) A class is divided randomly into two teams for a game of Jeopardy. Tamara, the captain of the winning team, is informed that as a prize she can either get twenty pieces of candy for her team, with the losing team getting ten pieces, or she can get fifteen pieces while the losing team gets none. Based on research using the minimal group paradigm, what prize is Tamara most likely to select?
A) twenty pieces for her team and ten for the losing team
B) fifteen pieces for her team and zero for the losing team
C) She is likely to request that the two teams split the candy evenly.
D) She will have no preference between the two prize options.
Q3) Give a real-world example of ethnocentrism and describe how it affects behavior toward ingroup and outgroup members.
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Page 13
Chapter 12: Groups
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Sample Questions
Q1) Describe the persuasive arguments and social comparison explanations for why group polarization occurs.
Q2) Norman Triplett conducted what is widely regarded as social psychology's first experiment. He found that children tended to perform a relatively easy task better while in the presence of another child doing the same task. This finding set the stage for research on
A) social facilitation.
B) social loafing.
C) groupthink.
D) dissonance.
Q3) Describe the physiological and behavioral effects of assuming high-power physical poses. How might you use this knowledge to design an intervention aimed at increasing confidence in people who are preparing for a job interview?
Q4) All of the following are characteristics of people who are likely to rise to leadership positions EXCEPT
A) group-relevant expertise.
B) strong social skills.
C) a lack of inhibition.
D) generosity.
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Chapter 13: Aggression
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Q1) Drawing on research described in the textbook, evaluate the claim that playing violent video games leads to aggression.
Q2) Clara, a French citizen, is deciding whether to take a job in Ireland, a country with relatively low income inequality, or the United States, a country with relatively high income inequality. Clara feels strongly that she wants to live in a place where her children are less likely to be bullied. Which country might be a better choice for her in that regard?
A) the United States
B) Ireland
C) Neither country would be a good choice: her children would be likely to be bullied in both.
D) Either country would be a good choice: her children would not likely be bullied in either.
Q3) Explain the connection between social rejection and aggression from an evolutionary perspective.
Q4) Define culture of honor and describe its influence on aggression.
Q5) Distinguish between the role of understanding others' emotions and responding emotionally to the suffering of others when it comes to explaining the behavior of psychopaths.
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Chapter 14: Altruism and Cooperation
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Q1) Describe the three motives for altruism proposed by Daniel Batson and explain how empathic concern can be distinguished from the other two motives.
Q2) Imagine that you have lost your wallet. Where would you be more likely to receive help-in a large city or in a small rural town? Justify your answer on the basis of research and theory.
Q3) Give an example of how construal processes can influence cooperation.
Q4) Sometimes eyewitnesses fail to help someone because (a) they are uncertain about what is happening and (b) they assume that nothing is wrong because no one else seems to be alarmed. This phenomenon is called
A) pluralistic ignorance.
B) diffusion of responsibility.
C) a social responsibility violation.
D) social loafing.
Q5) Describe a hypothetical scenario in which a person needs help but is unlikely to receive it due to diffusion of responsibility. Next, list two things that the person could say or do to increase his or her odds of receiving help.
Q6) Is the altruism toward non-kin consistent with evolutionary theory? Why or why not?
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Page 16
Chapter 15: Application Module-Social Psychology and Health
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Q1) What does research suggest about the relationship between close social connections and health outcomes? What factors are believed to explain this relationship?
Q2) Which of the following was NOT among the findings of Shelley Taylor's research on women with breast cancer?
A) Most women passively accepted their condition.
B) Older women felt grateful that they had been diagnosed as older rather than younger women.
C) Younger women felt grateful that they had more physical robustness to fight the disease.
D) Most women felt that they could control the course of the disease through diet and exercise.
Q3) Gabriel is experiencing psychosocial stress during a job interview. Which area of Gabriel's brain is responsible for initially processing information related to this threat?
A) the amygdala
B) the basal ganglia
C) the fusiform gyrus
D) the pineal gland
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Chapter 16: Application Module- Social Psychology and Personal Finance
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Q1) Imagine that a friend is thinking of opening up a shop and asks you how many different products she should sell. Explain the concept of decision paralysis and design a product plan for your friend's new store.
Q2) ________ is the tendency to treat money differently depending on how it is acquired and the psychological category to which it is attached.
A) Money categorization
B) Risk categorization
C) Sunk cost accounting
D) Mental accounting
Q3) Challenge the long-held assumption that people make rational financial decisions. Provide two pieces of evidence in support of your position.
Q4) Individuals tend to have a negative reaction to losing an amount of money-a reaction that is stronger in magnitude than the positive reaction associated with gaining the same amount of money. This is referred to as
A) risk tolerance.
B) market irrationality.
C) loss aversion.
D) risk avoidance.
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Chapter 17: Application Module- Social Psychology and Education
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Q1) The belief that intelligence is something one is born with and cannot change is referred to as the
A) entity theory of intelligence.
B) evolutionary theory of intelligence.
C) incremental theory of intelligence.
D) attributional fallacy.
Q2) Alicia is an African American high school senior who will be attending a prestigious private university in the fall. Imagine that you are Alicia's guidance counselor and she has approached you about her concerns about fitting in socially. Based on the findings from Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen's (2007) study, which of the following statements would be most likely to help Alicia with her adjustment to college?
A) "Worries about social acceptance are common for students of all ethnicities."
B) "Worries about social acceptance are common for African American students in particular."
C) "Don't worry-you'll make friends easily because you are a woman."
D) "Maybe you should consider attending a college where you'll fit in better."
Q3) How do incremental and entity theories of intelligence differ? How can a person's theory of intelligence impact his or her behavior?
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Chapter 18: Application Module- Social Psychology and the Law
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Q1) The social psychologist Tom Tyler identified three factors that shape our sense of procedural justice. Which of the following is NOT one of those three factors?
A) the neutrality of the authority figure
B) trust in the system
C) being treated with respect
D) the magnitude of the punishment
Q2) Describe the three components that contribute to one's sense of procedural justice and provide an example of each.
Q3) We should be careful about trusting eyewitness accounts, because memory is A) an active, constructive process that can be affected by all kinds of information. B) often incorrect, particularly in children.
C) a registry of the information that a person has encountered. D) usually reliable, except in people with mental illness.
Q4) Challenge the idea that eyewitness testimony is accurate and reliable. Describe two research findings that support your argument.
Q5) Explain how stereotypes can lead to biases in our criminal justice system.
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