Describe what’s involved in critical thinking.
Answer: Evaluating evidence, assessing conclusions, and examining our own assumptions are essential parts of critical thinking.
What event defined the start of modern scientific psychology?
Answer: Scientific psychology began in Germany in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory.
Why did introspection fail as a method for understanding how the mind works?
Answer: People’s self-reports varied, depending on the experience and the person’s intelligence and verbal ability, and because we often don’t know why we think or feel the way we do!
The school of _____________ used introspection to define the mind’s makeup; _____________ focused on how mental processes enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish.
Answer: structuralism; functionalism
From the 1920s to the 1960s, the two major forces in psychology were _____________ and _____________ psychology.
Answer: behaviorism; Freudian
How did the cognitive revolution affect the field of psychology?
Answer: It recaptured the field’s early interest in mental processes and made them legitimate topics for scientific study.
What is natural selection?
Answer: This is the process by which nature selects from chance variations the traits that best enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment.
What is contemporary psychology’s position on the nature–nurture issue?
Answer: Psychological events stem from the interaction of nature and nurture, rather than from either of them acting alone.
What advantage do we gain by using the biopsychosocial approach in studying psychological events?
Answer: By incorporating these three key viewpoints, the biopsychosocial approach can provide a more complete view than any one perspective could offer.
The_____________-_____________ perspective in psychology focuses on how behavior and thought differ from situation to situation and from culture to culture, while the _____________ perspective emphasizes observation of how we respond to and learn in different situations.
Answer: social-cultural; behavioral
The _____________ _____________ describes the enhanced memory that results from repeated retrieval (as in self-testing) rather than from simple rereading of new information.
Answer: testing effect
What does the acronym SQ3R stand for?
Answer: Survey, Question, Read, Retrieve, Review
Match the specialty on the left with the description on the right.
1. Clinical psychology a. Works to create social and physical environments that are healthy for all.
2. Psychiatry b. Studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders but usually does not provide medical therapy.
3. Community psychology c. Branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders.
Answer: 1, b; 2, c; 3, a
Name each of these subfields: (a) focuses on people and their work environments; (b) studies how people change over the life span; (c) considers the human thinking involved in perceiving, remembering, speaking, and decision making; and (d) focuses on diagnosing and treating psychological disorders.
Answer: These subfields are (a) industrial-organizational psychology, (b) developmental psychology, (c) cognitive psychology, and (d) clinical psychology.
Why, after friends start dating, do we often feel that we knew they were meant to be together?
Answer: We often suffer from hindsight bias—after we’ve learned a situation’s outcome, that outcome seems familiar and therefore obvious.
What does a good theory do?
Answer: (1) It organizes observed facts. (2) It implies hypotheses that offer testable predictions and, sometimes, practical applications. (3) It often stimulates further research.
Why is replication important?
Answer: When other investigators are able to replicate an experiment with the same (or stronger) results, scientists can confirm the result and become more confident of its reliability.
We cannot assume that case studies always reveal general principles that apply to all of us. Why not?
Answer: Case studies involve only one individual or group, so we can’t know for sure whether the principles observed would apply to a larger population.
What is an unrepresentative sample, and how do researchers avoid it?
Answer: An unrepresentative sample is a group that does not represent the population being studied. Random sampling helps researchers form a representative sample, because each member of the population has an equal chance of being included.
What are some strengths and weaknesses of the three different methods psychologists use to describe behavior—case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys?
Answer: Case studies offer in-depth insights that may offer clues to what’s true of others—or may, if the case is atypical, mislead. Naturalistic observation enables the study of behavior undisturbed by researchers. But the lack of control may leave cause and effect ambiguous. Surveys can accurately reveal the tendencies of large populations. But if the questions are leading, or if non-random samples are queried, the results can again mislead us.
You hear the school basketball coach telling her friend that she rescued her team’s winning streak by yelling at the players after an unusually bad first half. What is another explanation of why the team’s performance improved?
Answer: The team’s poor performance was not their typical behavior. The return to their normal—their winning streak—may just have been a case of regression toward the mean.
What measures do researchers use to prevent the placebo effect from confusing their results?
Answer: Research designed to prevent the placebo effect randomly assigns participants to an experimental group (which receives the real treatment) or to a control group (which receives a placebo). A double-blind procedure prevents participants’ and researchers’ beliefs and hopes from affecting the results, because neither the participants nor those collecting the data know who receives the placebo. A comparison of the results will demonstrate whether the real treatment produces better results than belief in that treatment.
By using random assignment, researchers are able to control for _____________ _____________, which are other factors besides the independent variable(s) that may influence research results.
Answer: confounding variables
Match the term on the left with the description on the right.
1. double-blind procedure a. helps researchers generalize from a small set of survey responses to a larger population
2. random sampling b. helps minimize preexisting differences between experimental and control groups
3. random assignment c. controls for the placebo effect; neither researchers nor participants know who receives the real treatment
Answer: 1, c; 2, a; 3, b
How are animal subjects and human research participants protected?
Answer: Animal protection legislation, laboratory regulation and inspection, and local and university ethics committees (which screen research proposals) work to safeguard animal welfare. International psychological organizations urge researchers involving human participants to obtain informed consent, protect them from greater-than-usual harm and discomfort, treat their personal information confidentially, and debrief them fully at the end of the experiment.
The arithmetic average of a distribution of scores is the _____________. The score that shows up most often is the _____________. The score right in the middle of a distribution (half the scores above it; half below) is the _____________. We determine how much scores vary around the average in a way that includes information about the _____________ of scores (difference between highest and lowest) by using the _____________ _____________ formula.
Answer: mean; mode; median; range; standard deviation
Can you solve this puzzle? The registrar’s office at the University of Michigan has found that usually about 100 students in Arts and Sciences have perfect grades at the end of their first term at the university. However, only about 10 to 15 students graduate with perfect grades. What do you think is the most likely explanation for the fact that there are more perfect grades after one term than at graduation (Jepson et al., 1983)?
Answer: Averages based on fewer courses are more variable, which guarantees a greater number of extremely low and high grades at the end of the first term.
_____________ statistics summarize data, while _____________ statistics determine if data can be generalized to other populations.
Answer: Descriptive; inferential
What do phrenology and biological psychology have in common?
Answer: They share a focus on the links between the brain and behavior. Phrenology faded because it had no scientific basis—skull bumps don’t reveal mental traits and abilities.
When a neuron fires an action potential, the information travels through the axon, the dendrites, and the cell body, but not in that order. Place these three structures in the correct order.
Answer: dendrites, cell body, axon
How does our nervous system allow us to experience the difference between a slap and a tap on the back?
Answer: Stronger stimuli (the slap) cause more neurons to fire and to fire more frequently than happens with weaker stimuli (the tap).
What happens in the synaptic gap?
Answer: Neurons send neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) across this tiny space between one neuron’s terminal branch and the next neuron’s dendrite or cell body.
What is reuptake? What two other things can happen to excess neurotransmitters after a neuron reacts?
Answer: Reuptake occurs when excess neurotransmitters are reabsorbed by the sending neuron. They can also drift away or be broken down by enzymes.
Serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins are all chemical messengers called _____________.
Answer: neurotransmitters
Match the type of neuron to its description.
1. Motor neurons a. carry incoming messages from sensory receptors to the CNS.
3. Sensory neurons b. communicate within the CNS and process information between incoming and outgoing messages.
3. Interneurons c. carry outgoing messages from the CNS to muscles and glands.
Answer: 1, c; 2, a; 3, b
What bodily changes does your ANS direct before and after you give an important speech?
Answer: Responding to this challenge, your ANS sympathetic division will arouse you. It accelerates your heartbeat, raises your blood pressure and blood sugar, slows your digestion, and cools you with perspiration. After you give the speech, your ANS parasympathetic division will reverse these effects.
How does information flow through your nervous system as you pick up a fork? Can you summarize this process?
Answer: Your central nervous system’s hungry brain activates and guides the muscles of your arm and hand via your peripheral nervous system’s motor neurons. As you pick up the fork, your brain processes the information from your sensory nervous system, enabling it to continue to guide the fork to your mouth. The functional circle starts with sensory input, continues with interneuron processing by the central nervous system, and finishes with motor output.
Why is the pituitary gland called the “master gland”?
Answer: Responding to signals from the hypothalamus, the pituitary releases hormones that trigger other endocrine glands to secrete hormones, which in turn influence brain and behavior.
How are the nervous and endocrine systems alike, and how do they differ?
Answer: Both of these communication systems produce chemical molecules that act on the body’s receptors to influence our behavior and emotions. The endocrine system, which secretes hormones into the bloodstream, delivers its messages much more slowly than the speedy nervous system, and the effects of the endocrine system’s messages tend to linger much longer than those of the nervous system.
Match the scanning technique with the correct description
1. fMRI scan a. tracks radioactive glucose to reveal brain activity.
2. PET scan b. tracks successive images of brain tissue to show brain function.
3. MRI scan c. uses magnetic fields and radio waves to show brain anatomy.
Answer: 1, b; 2, a; 3, c
The _____________ is a crossover point where nerves from the left side of the brain are mostly linked to the right side of the body, and vice versa.
Answer: brainstem
What are the three key structures of the limbic system, and what functions do they serve?
Answer: (1) The amygdala is involved in aggression and fear responses. (2) The hypothalamus is involved in bodily maintenance, pleasurable rewards, and control of the hormonal systems. (3) The hippocampus processes memory of facts and events.
Electrical stimulation of a cat’s amygdala provokes angry reactions. Which autonomic nervous system division is activated by such stimulation?
Answer: The sympathetic nervous system
In what brain region would damage be most likely to (1) disrupt your ability to jump rope? (2) disrupt your ability to hear? (3) leave you in a coma? (4) cut off the very breath and heartbeat of life?
Answer: (1) cerebellum; (2) thalamus; (3) reticular formation; (4) medulla
Which area of the human brain is most similar to that of less complex animals? Which part of the human brain distinguishes us most from less complex animals?
Answer: the brainstem; the cerebral cortex
Our brain’s _____________ cortex registers and processes body touch and movement sensations. The _____________ cortex controls our voluntary movements.
Answer: somatosensory; motor
Why are association areas important?
Answer: Association areas are involved in higher mental functions—interpreting, integrating, and acting on information processed in other areas.
Try moving your right hand in a circular motion, as if cleaning a table. Then start your right foot doing the same motion, synchronized with your hand. Now reverse the right foot’s motion, but not the hand’s. Finally, try moving the left foot opposite to the right hand.
Answer: 1. The right limbs’ opposed activities interfere with each other because both are controlled by the same (left) side of your brain. 2. Opposite sides of your brain control your left and right limbs, so the reversed motion causes less interference.
(1) If we flash a red light to the right hemisphere of a right-handed person with a split brain, and flash a green light to the left hemisphere, will each observe its own color? (2) Will the person be aware that the colors differ? (3) What will the person verbally report seeing?
Answer: (1) yes; (2) no; (3) green
Those working in the interdisciplinary field called _____________ _____________ study the brain activity associated with the mental processes of perception, thinking, memory, and language.
Answer: cognitive neuroscience
What are the mind’s two tracks, and what is dual processing?
Answer: The human brain has separate conscious and unconscious tracks that process information simultaneously. In vision, for example, the visual action track normally guides our conscious visual processing, while the visual perception track normally operates unconsciously, enabling our quick recognition of objects.
Put the following cell structures in order from smallest to largest: nucleus, gene, chromosome.
Answer: gene, chromosome, nucleus
How do researchers use twin and adoption studies to learn about psychological principles?
Answer: Researchers use twin and adoption studies to understand how much variation among individuals is due to genetic makeup and how much is due to environmental factors. Some studies compare the traits and behaviors of identical twins (same genes) and fraternal twins (different genes, as in any two siblings). They also compare adopted children with their adoptive and biological parents. Some studies compare traits and behaviors of twins raised together or separately.
Those studying the heritability of a trait try to determine how much of the person-to-person variation in that trait among members of a specific group is due to their differing _____________.
Answer: genes
Match the following terms to the correct explanation.
1. Epigenetics a. Study of the relative effects of our genes and our environment on our behavior.
2. Molecular behavior genetics b. Study of how the structure and function of specific genes interact with our environment to influence behavior.
3. Behavior genetics c. Study of environmental factors that affect how our genes are expressed.
Answer: 1, c; 2, b; 3, a
How are Belyaev and Trut’s fox-breeding practices similar to, and how do they differ from, the way natural selection normally occurs?
Answer: Over multiple generations, Belyaev and Trut selected and bred foxes that exhibited a trait they desired: tameness. This process is similar to naturally occurring selection, but it differs in that natural selection is much slower, and normally favors traits (including those arising from mutations) that contribute to reproduction and survival.
How do evolutionary psychologists explain male-female differences in sexuality?
Answer: Evolutionary psychologists theorize that females have inherited their ancestors’ tendencies to be more cautious sexually because of the challenges associated with incubating and nurturing offspring. Males have inherited a tendency to be more casual about sex, because their act of fathering requires a smaller investment.
What are the three main criticisms of the evolutionary explanation of human sexuality?
Answer: (1) It starts with an effect and works backward to propose an explanation. (2) This explanation may overlook the effects of cultural expectations and socialization. (3) Men could use such explanations to rationalize their irresponsible behavior toward women.
How does the biopsychosocial approach explain our individual development?
Answer: The biopsychosocial approach considers all the factors that influence our individual development: biological factors (including evolution and our genes, hormones, and brain), psychological factors (including our experiences, beliefs, feelings, and expectations), and social-cultural factors (including parental and peer influences, cultural individualism or collectivism, and gender norms).
Explain how Heather Sellers’ experience of prosopagnosia illustrates the difference between sensation and perception.
Answer: Heather Sellers’ sensation is normal, and her perception is nearly so, but her brain is lacking the functional area that helps us recognize a familiar human face. While her bottom-up physical sensory system receives and represents stimuli, a problem with her top-down mental process of organizing and interpreting sensory input results in her inability to recognize faces.
Explain three attentional principles that magicians may use to fool us.
Answer: Our selective attention allows us to focus on only a limited portion of our surroundings. Inattentional blindness explains why we don’t perceive some things when we are distracted. And change blindness happens when we fail to notice a relatively unimportant change in our environment. All these principles help magicians fool us, as they direct our attention elsewhere to perform their tricks.
Using sound as your example, explain how these concepts differ: absolute threshold, subliminal stimulation, and difference threshold.
Answer: Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular sound (such as an approaching bike on the sidewalk behind you) 50 percent of the time. Subliminal stimulation happens when, without your awareness, your sensory system processes a sound that is below your absolute threshold (such as when your perceptions are affected by first being primed by a subliminally heard word). A difference threshold is the minimum sound difference a person can detect (for example, when listening to music, how many times you need to increase the volume in order to notice the difference).
Why is it that after wearing shoes for a while, you cease to notice them?
Answer: The shoes provide constant stimulation. Thanks to sensory adaptation, we tend to focus primarily on changing stimuli.
What type of evidence shows that, indeed, “there is more to perception than meets the senses”?
Answer: We construct our perceptions based on both sensory input and—experiments show—on our assumptions, expectations, schemas, and perceptual sets, often influenced by the surrounding context.
Does perceptual set involve bottom-up or top-down processing? Why?
Answer: It involves top-down processing, because it draws on your experiences, assumptions, and expectations when interpreting stimuli.
If an ESP event occurred under controlled conditions, what would be the next best step to confirm that ESP really exists?
Answer: The ESP event would need to be reproduced in other scientific studies.
Some nocturnal animals, such as toads, mice, rats, and bats, have impressive night vision thanks to having many more _____________ (rods/cones) than _____________ (rods/cones) in their retinas. These creatures probably have very poor _____________ (color/black-and-white) vision.
Answer: rods; cones; color
Cats are able to open their _____________ much wider than we can, which allows more light into their eyes so they can see better at night.
Answer: pupils
What are two key theories of color vision? Are they contradictory or complementary? Explain.
Answer: The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory shows that the retina contains color receptors for red, green, and blue. The opponent-process theory shows that we have opponent-process cells in the retina and thalamus for red-green, blue-yellow, and white-black. These theories are complementary and outline the two stages of color vision: (1) The retina’s receptors for red, green, and blue respond to different color stimuli. (2) The receptors’ signals are then processed by the opponent-process cells on their way to the visual cortex in the brain.
What is the rapid sequence of events that occurs when you see and recognize a friend?
Answer: Light waves reflect off the person and travel into your eyes. Receptor cells in your retina convert the light waves’ energy into millions of neural impulses sent to your brain. Your brain’s detector cells and work teams process the subdimensions of this visual input—including color, movement, form, and depth—separately but simultaneously. Your brain interprets this information, based on previously stored information and your expectations, and forms a conscious perception of your friend.
In terms of perception, a band’s lead singer would be considered _____________ (figure/ground), and the other musicians would be considered _____________ (figure/ground).
Answer: figure; ground
What do we mean when we say that, in perception, “the whole may exceed the sum of its parts”?
Answer: Gestalt psychologists used this saying to describe our perceptual tendency to organize clusters of sensations into meaningful forms or coherent groups.
How do we normally perceive depth?
Answer: We are normally able to perceive depth thanks to (1) binocular cues (such as retinal disparity), and (2) monocular cues (which include relative height, relative size, interposition, linear perspective, light and shadow, and relative motion).
What are the basic steps in transforming sound waves into perceived sound?
Answer: The outer ear collects sound waves, which are translated into mechanical waves by the middle ear and turned into fluid waves in the inner ear. The auditory nerve then translates the energy into electrical waves and sends them to the brain, which perceives and interprets the sound.
The amplitude of a sound wave determines our perception of _____________ (loudness/pitch).
Answer: loudness
The longer the sound waves, the _____________ (lower/higher) their frequency and the _____________ (higher/lower) their pitch.
Answer: lower; lower
Which theory of pitch perception would best explain a symphony audience’s enjoyment of a high-pitched piccolo? How about a low-pitched cello?
Answer: place theory; frequency theory
Which of the following options has NOT been proven to reduce pain? a. Distraction b. Placebos c. Phantom limb sensations d. Endorphins
Answer: c
Where are the kinesthetic receptors and the vestibular sense receptors located?
Answer: Kinesthetic receptors are located in our joints, tendons, and muscles. Vestibular sense receptors are located in our inner ear.
When is hypnosis potentially harmful, and when can hypnosis be used to help?
Answer: Hypnosis can be harmful if used to “hypnotically refresh” memories, which may plant false memories. But posthypnotic suggestions have helped alleviate some ailments, and hypnosis can also help control pain.
Hilgard believed that hypnosis involves a state of divided consciousness called _____________. His beliefs have been challenged by researchers who suggest _____________ influence is involved.
Answer: dissociation; social
What are the four sleep stages, and in what order do we normally travel through those stages?
Answer: NREM-1, NREM-2, NREM-3, REM; normally we move through NREM-1, then NREM-2, then NREM-3, then back up through NREM-2 before we experience REM sleep.
Can you match the cognitive experience with the sleep stage?
1. NREM-1 a. story-like dream
2. NREM-3 b. fleeting images
3. REM c. minimal awareness
Answer: 1, b; 2, c; 3, a
The _____________ nucleus helps monitor the brain’s release of melatonin, which affects our _____________ rhythm.
Answer: suprachiasmatic; circadian
What are five proposed reasons for our need for sleep?
Answer: (1) Sleep has survival value. (2) Sleep helps us restore the immune system and repair brain tissue. (3) During sleep we consolidate memories. (4) Sleep fuels creativity. (5) Sleep plays a role in the growth process.
A well-rested person would be more likely to have _____________ (trouble concentrating/quick reaction times) and a sleep-deprived person would be more likely to _____________ (gain weight/fight off a cold).
Answer: quick reaction times; gain weight
Are you getting enough sleep? What might you ask yourself to answer this question?
Answer: You could start with the true/false questions in James Maas’ sleep deprivation quiz in Table 24.1. Also, William Dement (1999, p. 73) has suggested considering these questions: “How often do you think about taking a quick snooze? How often do you rub your eyes and yawn during the day? How often do you feel like you really need some coffee?” Dement concluded that “each of these is a warning of a sleep debt that you ignore at your peril.”
What five theories propose explanations for why we dream?
Answer: (1) Freud’s wish-fulfillment (dreams as a psychic safety valve), (2) information-processing (dreams sort the day’s events and consolidate memories), (3) physiological function (dreams pave neural pathways), (4) activation-synthesis (REM sleep triggers random neural activity that the mind weaves into stories), and (5) cognitive development (dreams reflect the dreamer’s developmental stage)
What is the process that leads to drug tolerance?
Answer: With repeated exposure to a psychoactive drug, the user’s brain chemistry adapts and the drug’s effect lessens. Thus, it takes bigger doses to get the desired effect.
Can someone become “addicted” to shopping?
Answer: Unless it becomes compulsive or dysfunctional, simply having a strong interest in shopping is not the same as having a physical addiction to a drug. It typically does not involve obsessive craving in spite of known negative consequences.
Alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates are all in a class of drugs called _____________.
Answer: depressants
What withdrawal symptoms should your friend expect when she finally decides to quit smoking?
Answer: Nicotine-withdrawal symptoms include strong cravings, insomnia, anxiety, irritability, distractibility, and difficulty concentrating. However, if your friend sticks with it, the craving and withdrawal symptoms will gradually dissipate over about six months.
Why do tobacco companies try so hard to get customers hooked as teens?
Answer: Nicotine is powerfully addictive, expensive, and deadly. Those who start paving the neural pathways when young may find it very hard to stop using nicotine. As a result, tobacco companies may have lifelong customers.
“How strange would appear to be this thing that men call pleasure! And how curiously it is related to what is thought to be its opposite, pain! . . . Wherever the one is found, the other follows up behind.” (Plato, Phaedo, fourth century B.C.E.) How does this pleasure-pain description apply to the repeated use of psychoactive drugs?
Answer: Psychoactive drugs create pleasure by altering brain chemistry. With repeated use of the drug, the user develops tolerance and needs more of the drug to achieve the desired effect. (Marijuana is an exception.) Discontinuing use of the substance then produces painful or psychologically unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
Why are habits, such as having something sweet with that cup of coffee, so hard to break? (Hint: Think about learned associations.)
Answer: Habits form when we repeat behaviors in a given context and, as a result, learn associations—often without our awareness. For example, we may have eaten a sweet pastry with a cup of coffee often enough to associate the flavor of the coffee with the treat, so that the cup of coffee alone just doesn’t seem right anymore!
As we develop, we learn cues that lead us to expect and prepare for good and bad events. We learn to repeat behaviors that bring rewards. And we watch others and learn. What do psychologists call these three types of learning?
Answer: Through classical conditioning, we learn cues that lead us to expect and prepare for good and bad events. Through operant conditioning, we learn to repeat behaviors that bring rewards. Through cognitive learning, we watch others and learn.
An experimenter sounds a tone just before delivering an air puff that causes your eye to blink. After several repetitions, you blink to the tone alone. What is the NS? The US? The UR? The CS? The CR?
Answer: NS = tone before conditioning; US = air puff; UR = blink to air puff; CS = tone after conditioning; CR = blink to tone
If the aroma of a baking cake sets your mouth to watering, what is the US? The CS? The CR?
Answer: The cake (including its taste) is the US. The associated aroma is the CS. Salivation to the aroma is the CR.
The first step of classical conditioning, when an NS becomes a CS, is called _____________. When a US no longer follows the CS, and the CR becomes weakened, this is called _____________.
Answer: acquisition, extinction
In horror movies, sexually arousing images of women are sometimes paired with violence against women. Based on classical conditioning principles, what might be an effect of this pairing?
Answer: If viewing an attractive nude or seminude woman (a US) elicits sexual arousal (a UR), then pairing the US with a new NS (violence) could turn the violence into a conditioned stimulus (CS) that also becomes sexually arousing, a conditioned response (CR).
With classical conditioning, we learn associations between events we _____________ (do/do not) control. With operant conditioning, we learn associations between our behavior and _____________ (resulting/random) events.
Answer: do not; resulting
People who send spam e-mail are reinforced by which schedule? Home bakers checking the oven to see if the cookies are done are on which schedule? Sandwich shops that offer a free sandwich after every 10 sandwiches purchased are using which reinforcement schedule?
Answer: Spammers are reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule (after sending a varying number of e-mails). Cookie checkers are reinforced on a fixed-interval schedule. Sandwich shop programs use a fixed-ratio schedule.
Fill in the three blanks below with one of the following terms: positive reinforcement (PR), negative reinforcement (NR), positive punishment (PP), and negative punishment (NP). We have provided the first answer (PR) for you.
| Type of Stimulus | Give It | Take It Away |
| Desired (for example, a teen’s use of the car): | 1. PR | 2. |
| Undesired/aversive (for example, an insult): | 3. | 4. |
Answer: 1. PR (positive reinforcement); 2. NP (negative punishment); 3. PP (positive punishment); 4. NR (negative reinforcement)
Ethan constantly misbehaves at preschool even though his teacher scolds him repeatedly. Why does Ethan’s misbehavior continue, and what can his teacher do to stop it?
Answer: If Ethan is seeking attention, the teacher’s scolding may be reinforcing rather than punishing. To change Ethan’s behavior, his teacher could offer reinforcement (such as praise) each time he behaves well. The teacher might encourage Ethan toward increasingly appropriate behavior through shaping, or by rephrasing rules as rewards instead of punishments. (“You can have a snack if you play nicely with the other children” [reward] rather than “You will not get a snack if you misbehave!” [punishment].)
Salivating in response to a tone paired with food is a(n) _____________ behavior; pressing a bar to obtain food is a(n) _____________ behavior.
Answer: respondent (classically conditioned); operant
How did Garcia and Koelling’s taste-aversion studies help disprove Gregory Kimble’s early claim that “just about any activity of which the organism is capable can be conditioned . . . to any stimulus that the organism can perceive”?
Answer: Garcia and Koelling demonstrated that rats may learn an aversion to tastes, on which their survival depends, but not to sights or sounds.
Instinctive drift and latent learning are examples of what important idea?
Answer: The success of operant conditioning is affected not just by environmental cues, but also by biological and cognitive factors.
To cope with stress when we feel in control of our world, we tend to use _____________-focused (emotion/problem) strategies. To cope with stress when we believe we cannot change a situation, we tend to use _____________-focused (emotion/problem) strategies.
Answer: problem; emotion
Jason’s parents and older friends all drive over the speed limit, but they advise him not to. Juan’s parents and friends drive within the speed limit, but they say nothing to deter him from speeding. Will Jason or Juan be more likely to speed?
Answer: Jason may be more likely to speed. Observational learning studies suggest that children tend to do as others do and say what they say.
Match the examples (1–5) to the appropriate underlying learning principle (a–e):
a. Classical conditioning 1. Knowing the way from your bed to the bathroom in the dark
b. Operant conditioning 2. Your little brother getting in a fight after watching a violent action movie
c. Latent learning 3. Salivating when you smell brownies in the oven
d. Observational learning 4. Disliking the taste of chili after becoming violently sick a few hours after eating chili
e. Biological predispositions 5. Your dog racing to greet you on your arrival home
Answer: 1, c; 2, d; 3, a; 4, e; 5, b
Multiple-choice questions test our _____________. Fill-in-the-blank questions test our _____________.
Answer: recognition; recall
If you want to be sure to remember what you’re learning for an upcoming test, would it be better to use recall or recognition to check your memory? Why?
Answer: It would be better to test your memory with recall (such as with short-answer or fill-in-the-blank self-test questions) rather than recognition (such as with multiple-choice questions). Recalling information is harder than recognizing it. So if you can recall it, that means your retention of the material is better—and so are the odds of your later recognizing the correct answer. Your chances of test success are therefore greater.
Memory includes (in alphabetical order) long-term memory, sensory memory, and working/short-term memory. What’s the correct order of these in the three-stage memory model?
Answer: sensory memory, working/short-term memory, long-term memory
How does the working memory concept update the classic Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage information-processing model?
Answer: The newer idea of a working memory emphasizes the active processing that we now know takes place in Atkinson-Shiffrin’s short-term memory stage. While the Atkinson-Shiffrin model viewed short-term memory as a temporary holding space, working memory plays a key role in processing new information and connecting it to previously stored information.
What are two basic functions of working memory?
Answer: (1) Active processing of incoming visual and auditory information, and (2) focusing our spotlight of attention.
What is the difference between automatic and effortful processing, and what are some examples of each?
Answer: Automatic processing occurs unconsciously (automatically) for such things as the sequence and frequency of a day’s events, and reading and comprehending words in our own language(s). Effortful processing requires attention and awareness and happens, for example, when we work hard to learn new material in class, or new lines for a play.
At which of Atkinson-Shiffrin’s three memory stages would iconic and echoic memory occur?
Answer: sensory memory
What would be the most effective strategy to learn and retain a list of names of key historical figures for a week? For a year?
Answer: For a week: Make the names personally meaningful. For a year: Take advantage of the spacing effect by spreading your learning over several months.
If you try to make the material you are learning personally meaningful, are you processing at a shallow or a deep level? Which level leads to greater retention?
Answer: Making material personally meaningful involves processing at a deep level, because you are processing semantically—based on the meaning of the words. Deep processing leads to greater retention.
Which parts of the brain are important for implicit memory processing, and which parts play a key role in explicit memory processing?
Answer: The cerebellum and basal ganglia are important for implicit memory processing, and the frontal lobes and hippocampus are key to explicit memory processing.
Your friend has experienced brain damage in an accident. He can remember how to tie his shoes but has a hard time remembering anything you tell him during a conversation. How can implicit versus explicit information processing explain what’s going on here?
Answer: Our explicit conscious memories of facts and episodes differ from our implicit memories of skills (such as tying shoelaces) and classically conditioned responses. The parts of the brain involved in explicit memory processing (the frontal lobes and hippocampus) may have sustained damage in the accident, while the parts involved in implicit memory processing (the cerebellum and basal ganglia) appear to have escaped harm.
Which brain area responds to stress hormones by helping to create stronger memories?
Answer: amygdala
Increased efficiency at the synapses is evidence of the neural basis of learning and memory. This is called _____________-_____________ _____________.
Answer: long-term potentiation
You have just watched a movie that includes a chocolate factory. After the chocolate factory is out of mind, you nevertheless feel a strange urge for a chocolate bar. How do you explain this in terms of priming?
Answer: Priming is the activation (often without our awareness) of associations. Seeing a chocolate factory in a movie, for example, might temporarily predispose you to crave a chocolate treat. Although you might not consciously remember the chocolate factory, it may prime how you interpret or recall events.
When we are tested immediately after viewing a list of words, we tend to recall the first and last items best, which is known as the _____________ _____________ effect.
Answer: serial position
What are three ways we forget, and how does each of these happen?
Answer: (1) Encoding failure: Unattended information never entered our memory system. (2) Storage decay: Information fades from our memory. (3) Retrieval failure: We cannot access stored information accurately, sometimes due to interference or motivated forgetting.
You will experience less _____________ (proactive/retroactive) interference if you learn new material in the hour before sleep than you will if you learn it before turning to another subject.
Answer: retroactive
Freud believed that we _____________ unacceptable memories to minimize anxiety.
Answer: repress
What—given the commonness of source amnesia—might life be like if we remembered all our waking experiences and all our dreams?
Answer: Real experiences would be confused with those we dreamed. When seeing someone we know, we might therefore be unsure whether we were reacting to something they previously did or to something we dreamed they did.
Imagine being a jury member in a trial for a parent accused of sexual abuse based on a recovered memory. What insights from memory research should you offer the jury?
Answer: It will be important to remember the key points agreed upon by most researchers and professional associations: Sexual abuse, injustice, forgetting, and memory construction all happen; recovered memories are common; memories from our first four years are unreliable; memories claimed to be recovered through hypnosis are especially unreliable; and memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.
What memory strategies can help you study smarter and retain more information?
Answer: Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material to boost long-term recall. Schedule spaced (not crammed) study times. Make the material personally meaningful, with well-organized and vivid associations. Refresh your memory by returning to contexts and moods that activate retrieval cues. Use mnemonic devices. Minimize interference. Plan for a complete night’s sleep. Test yourself repeatedly—retrieval practice is a proven retention strategy.
According to Robert Sternberg, what are the five components of creativity?
Answer: Sternberg identified expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment as the five components of creativity.
Why is news so often focused on “something that hardly ever happens”? How does knowing this help us assess our fears?
Answer: If a tragic event such as a plane crash makes the news, it is noteworthy and unusual, unlike much more common bad events, such as traffic accidents. Knowing this, we can worry less about unlikely events and think more about improving the safety of our everyday activities. (For example, we can wear a seat belt when in a vehicle and use the crosswalk when walking.)
Match the process or strategy listed below (1–10) with its description (a–j).
1. Algorithm a. Inability to view problems from a new angle; focuses thinking but hinders creative problem solving.
2. Intuition b. Methodological rule or procedure that guarantees a solution but requires time and effort.
3. Insight c. Your fast, automatic, effortless feelings and thoughts based on your experience; huge and adaptive but can lead you to overfeel and underthink.
4. Heuristic d. Simple thinking shortcut that enables quick and efficient decisions but puts us at risk for errors.
5. Fixation e. Sudden Aha! reaction that instantly reveals the solution.
6. Confirmation bias f. Tendency to search for support for your own views and to ignore contradictory evidence.
7. Overconfidence g. Holding on to your beliefs even after they are proven wrong; closing your mind to new ideas.
8. Creativity h. Overestimating the accuracy of your beliefs and judgments; allows you to be happier and to make decisions more easily, but puts you at risk for errors.
9. Framing i. Wording a question or statement so that it evokes a desired response; can mislead people and influence their decisions.
10. Belief perseverance j. The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Answer: 1, b; 2, c; 3, e; 4, d; 5, a; 6, f; 7, h; 8, j; 9, i; 10, g
How many morphemes are in the word cuts? How many phonemes?
Answer: two morphemes—cut and s, and four phonemes—c, u, t, and s
What was the premise of researcher Noam Chomsky’s work in language development?
Answer: Linguist Noam Chomsky has proposed that humans are biologically predisposed to learn the grammar rules of language. He calls this trait universal grammar.
Why is it so difficult to learn a new language in adulthood?
Answer: Our brain’s critical period for language learning is in childhood, when we can absorb language structure almost effortlessly. As we move past that stage in our brain’s development, our ability to learn a new language diminishes dramatically.
What is the difference between receptive and productive language, and when do children normally hit these milestones in language development?
Answer: Infants normally start developing receptive language skills (ability to understand what is said to and about them) around 4 months of age. Then, starting with babbling at 4 months and beyond, infants normally start building productive language skills (ability to produce sounds and eventually words).
If children are not yet speaking, is there any reason to think they would benefit from parents and other caregivers reading to them?
Answer: Indeed there is, because well before age 1 children are learning to detect words among the stream of spoken sounds and to discern grammatical rules. Before age 1, they also are babbling with the phonemes of their own language. More than many parents realize, their infants are soaking up language. As researcher Peter Jusczyk reminds us, “Little ears are listening.”
_____________ _____________ is one part of the brain that, if damaged, might impair your ability to speak words. Damage to _____________ _____________ might impair your ability to understand language.
Answer: Broca’s area; Wernicke’s area
To say that “words are the mother of ideas” assumes the truth of what concept?
Answer: This phrase supports the linguistic determinism hypothesis, which asserts that language determines thought. Research indicates that this position is too extreme, but—as linguistic influence suggests—language does influence what we perceive and think.
What is mental practice, and how can it help you to prepare for an upcoming event?
Answer: Mental practice uses visual imagery to mentally rehearse future behaviors, activating some of the same brain areas used during the actual behaviors. Visualizing the details of the process is more effective than visualizing only your end goal.
Performance peaks at lower levels of arousal for difficult tasks, and at higher levels for easy or well-learned tasks. (1) How might this phenomenon affect marathon runners? (2) How might this phenomenon affect anxious test-takers facing a difficult test?
Answer: (1) Well-practiced runners tend to excel when aroused by competition. (2) High anxiety about a difficult test may disrupt test-takers’ performance.
An older friend recounted his weekend experience. After hours of driving to visit a friend he could not find anywhere to stop. Finally, he spotted a dimly lit diner. Although it looked deserted and a little creepy, he went in anyway because he was really hungry and thirsty. How would Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explain his behavior?
Answer: According to Maslow, the friend’s belongingness needs motivated the trip. His physiological needs of hunger and thirst took priority over his safety needs, prompting him to take a risk and enter the uninviting diner.
Hunger occurs in response to _____________ (low/high) blood glucose and _____________ (low/high) levels of ghrelin.
Answer: low; high
Why can two people of the same height, age, and activity level maintain the same weight, even if one of them eats much less than the other does?
Answer: Genetically influenced set/settling points, metabolism, and other factors influence the way our bodies burn calories. Sleep deprivation, which makes us more vulnerable to weight gain, may also factor in.
You skipped lunch to meet with your guidance counselor, so you haven’t eaten anything in eight hours. As your long-awaited favorite dish is placed in front of you, your mouth waters in anticipation. Why?
Answer: You have learned to respond to the sight and aroma that signal the food about to enter your mouth. Both physiological cues (low blood sugar) and psychological cues (anticipation of the tasty meal) heighten your experienced hunger.
The primary male sex hormone is _____________. The primary female sex hormones are the _____________.
Answer: testosterone; estrogens
What factors influence our sexual motivation and behavior?
Answer: Influences include biological factors such as sexual maturity and sex hormones, psychological factors such as environmental stimuli and fantasies, and social-cultural factors such as the values and expectations absorbed from family and the surrounding culture.
How might the drive-reduction theory and arousal theory explain our sexual motivation?
Answer: Drive-reduction theory: Hormonal influences create a driven (physiologically aroused) state that compels us to reduce the drive. Arousal theory: People sometimes seek the pleasure and stimulation of arousal.
How have students reacted in studies where they were made to feel rejected and unwanted? What helps explain these results?
Answer: They engaged in more self-defeating behaviors and displayed more disparaging and aggressive behavior. These students’ basic need to belong seems to have been disrupted.
Social networking tends to _____________ (strengthen/weaken) your relationships with people you already know and _____________ (increase/decrease) your self-disclosure.
Answer: strengthen; increase
What have researchers found to be an even better predictor of school performance than intelligence test scores?
Answer: self-discipline (grit)
How might drive-reduction theory and arousal theory explain our affiliation and achievement needs?
Answer: Drive-reduction theory: Being threatened and afraid drives us to find safety in the company of others (thus reducing our aroused state). Arousal theory: We welcome optimal levels of arousal, and the presence of others is arousing.
According to the Cannon-Bard theory, (a) our physiological response to a stimulus (for example, a pounding heart), and (b) the emotion we experience (for example, fear) occur _____________ (simultaneously/sequentially). According to the James-Lange theory, (a) and (b) occur _____________ (simultaneously/sequentially).
Answer: simultaneously; sequentially (first the physiological response, and then the experienced emotion)
According to Schachter and Singer, two factors lead to our experience of an emotion: (1) physiological arousal and (2) _____________ appraisal.
Answer: cognitive
Emotion researchers have disagreed about whether emotional responses occur in the absence of cognitive processing. How would you characterize the approach of each of the following researchers: Zajonc, LeDoux, Lazarus, Schachter, and Singer?
Answer: Zajonc and LeDoux suggested that we experience some emotions without any conscious, cognitive appraisal. Lazarus, Schachter, and Singer emphasized the importance of appraisal and cognitive labeling in our experience of emotion.
How do the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system affect our emotional responses?
Answer: The sympathetic division of the ANS arouses us for more intense experiences of emotion, pumping out the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine to prepare our body for fight or flight. The parasympathetic division of the ANS takes over when a crisis passes, restoring our body to a calm physiological and emotional state.
_____________ (Women/Men) report experiencing emotions more deeply, and they tend to be more adept at reading nonverbal behavior.
Answer: Women
Are people more likely to differ culturally in their interpretations of facial expressions, or of gestures?
Answer: gestures
The stress response system: When alerted to a negative, uncontrollable event, our _____________ nervous system arouses us. Heart rate and respiration _____________ (increase/decrease). Blood is diverted from digestion to the skeletal _____________. The body releases sugar and fat. All this prepares the body for the _____________ – _____________ – _____________response.
Answer: sympathetic; increase; muscles; fight-or-flight
The field of _____________ studies mind-body interactions, including the effects of psychological, neural, and endocrine functioning on the immune system and overall health.
Answer: psychoneuroimmunology
What general effect does stress have on our health?
Answer: Stress tends to reduce our immune system’s ability to function properly, so that higher stress generally leads to greater risk of physical illness.
Which component of the Type A personality has been linked most closely to coronary heart disease?
Answer: feeling angry and negative much of the time
What are some of the tactics we can use to successfully manage the stress we cannot avoid?
Answer: aerobic exercise, relaxation procedures, mindfulness meditation, and religious engagement
Which of the following factors does NOT predict self-reported happiness?
Answer: Age does NOT effectively predict happiness levels. Better predictors are personality traits, sleep and exercise, religious faith, and engaging work and leisure.
Developmental researchers who emphasize learning and experience are supporting _____________; those who emphasize biological maturation are supporting _____________.
Answer: continuity; stages
What findings in psychology support (1) the stage theory of development and (2) the idea of stability in personality across the life span?
Answer: (1) Stage theory is supported by the work of Piaget (cognitive development), Kohlberg (moral development), and Erikson (psychosocial development). (2) Some traits, such as temperament, exhibit remarkable stability across many years. But we do change in other ways, such as in our social attitudes.
The first two weeks of prenatal development is the period of the _____________. The period of the _____________ lasts from 9 weeks after conception until birth. The time between those two prenatal periods is considered the period of the _____________.
Answer: zygote; fetus; embryo
Your friend’s older sister—a regular drinker—hopes to become pregnant soon and has stopped drinking. Why is this a good idea? What negative effects might alcohol consumed during pregnancy have on a developing fetus?
Answer: There is no known safe amount of alcohol during pregnancy, so your friend’s older sister is wise to quit drinking before becoming pregnant. Harmful effects may occur even before a woman knows she is pregnant. If a woman drinks persistently and heavily during her pregnancy, the fetus will be at risk for severe physical and cognitive impairments (such as occurs with fetal alcohol syndrome).
Infants’ _____________ to repeated stimulation helps developmental psychologists study what they can learn and remember.
Answer: habituation
What is the biological growth process that explains why most children begin walking by about 12 to 15 months?
Answer: maturation
Match the correct cognitive developmental stage (a–d) to each developmental phenomenon (1–6).
a. Sensorimotor 1. Thinking about abstract concepts, such as “freedom.”
b. Preoperational 2. Enjoying imaginary play (such as dress-up).
c. Concrete operational 3. Understanding that physical properties stay the same even when objects change form.
d. Formal operational 4. Having the ability to reverse math operations.
5. Understanding that something is not gone for good when it disappears from sight, as when Mom “disappears” behind the shower curtain.
6. Having difficulty taking another’s point of view (as when blocking someone’s view of the TV).
Answer: 1, d; 2, b; 3, c; 4, c; 5, a; 6, b
Use Piaget’s first three stages of cognitive development to explain why children are not just miniature adults in the way they think.
Answer: Infants in the sensorimotor stage tend to be focused only on their own perceptions of the world and may, for example, be unaware that objects continue to exist when unseen. A preoperational child is still egocentric and incapable of appreciating simple logic, such as the reversibility of operations. A preteen in the concrete operational stage is beginning to think logically about concrete events but not about abstract concepts.
What does theory of mind have to do with autism spectrum disorder?
Answer: Theory of mind focuses on our ability to understand our own and others’ mental states. Those with autism spectrum disorder struggle with this ability.
The four parenting styles may be described as “too hard, too soft, too uncaring, and just right.” Which parenting style goes with each of these descriptions, and how do children benefit from the “just right” style?
Answer: The authoritarian style would be described as too hard, the permissive style too soft, the negligent style too uncaring, and the authoritative style just right. Parents using the authoritative style tend to have children with high self-esteem, self-reliance, self-regulation, and social competence.
What distinguishes imprinting from attachment?
Answer: Attachment is the normal process by which we form emotional ties with important others. Imprinting occurs only in certain animals that have a critical period very early in their development during which they must form their attachments, and they do so in an inflexible manner.
_____________ (Men/Women) are more likely to commit relational aggression, and _____________ (men/women) are more likely to commit physical aggression.
Answer: Women; men
What are gender roles, and what do their variations tell us about our human capacity for learning and adaptation?
Answer: Gender roles are social rules or norms for accepted and expected female and male behaviors. The norms associated with various roles, including gender roles, vary widely in different cultural contexts, which is proof that we are able to learn and adapt to the social demands of different environments.
To predict whether a teenager smokes, ask how many of the teen’s friends smoke. One explanation for this correlation is peer influence. What’s another?
Answer: There may also be a selection effect. Adolescents tend to select similar others and sort themselves into like-minded groups. Those who smoke may seek out other teenagers who also smoke.
According to Kohlberg, _____________ morality focuses on self-interest, _____________ morality focuses on self-defined ethical principles, and _____________ morality focuses on upholding laws and social rules.
Answer: preconventional; postconventional; conventional
How has Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning been criticized?
Answer: Kohlberg’s work reflected an individualist worldview, so his theory is less culturally universal than he supposed.
How has the transition from childhood to adulthood changed in Western cultures in the last century or so?
Answer: In little more than a century, the gap between puberty and adult independence has widened from about 7 years to about 14 years. This longer adolescence gives us a chance to grow up a bit more before facing the “real world,” but it also comes with its share of stressors, as sexually mature teens must wait many years before achieving true independence. In Western nations, this has led to a postadolescent, not-yet-settled phase of life known as emerging adulthood.
Match the psychosocial development stage (1–8) with the issue that Erikson believed we wrestle with at that stage (a–h).
1. Infancy a. Generativity vs. stagnation
2. Toddlerhood b. Integrity vs. despair
3. Preschool c. Initiative vs. guilt
4. Elementary school d. Intimacy vs. isolation
5. Adolescence e. Identity vs. role confusion
6. Young adulthood f. Competence vs. inferiority
7. Middle adulthood g. Trust vs. mistrust
8. Late adulthood h. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
Answer: 1, g; 2, h; 3, c; 4, f; 5, e; 6, d; 7, a; 8, b
Prenatal sexual development begins about _____________ weeks after conception. Adolescence is marked by the onset of _____________.
Answer: seven; puberty
From a biological perspective, HIV is passed more readily from women to men than from men to women. True or false?
Answer: False. HIV is transmitted more easily and more often from men to women.
Which THREE of the following five factors contribute to unplanned teen pregnancies?
Answer: a, c, d
Which THREE of the following five factors have researchers found to have an effect on sexual orientation?
Answer: b, c, e
Freud defined the healthy adult as one who is able to _____________ and to _____________.
Answer: love; work
What are some of the most significant challenges and rewards of growing old?
Answer: Challenges: decline of muscular strength, reaction times, stamina, sensory keenness, cardiac output, and immune system functioning. Risk of cognitive decline increases. Rewards: positive feelings tend to grow; negative emotions are less intense; and anger, stress, worry, and social-relationship problems decrease.
Research has shown that living together before marriage predicts an increased likelihood of future divorce. What are some possible explanations for this correlation?
Answer: First, those who choose to live together are often less committed to the enduring marriage ideal. Second, they may become even less supportive of this ideal while cohabiting. Third, people may be more reluctant to break up with a cohabiting partner than a dating partner, despite suspecting that the relationship is unsustainable.
According to Freud’s ideas about the three-part personality structure, the _____________ operates on the reality principle and tries to balance demands in a way that produces long-term pleasure rather than pain, the _____________ operates on the pleasure principle and seeks immediate gratification, and the _____________ represents the voice of our internalized ideals (our conscience).
Answer: ego; id; superego
In the psychoanalytic view, conflicts unresolved during one of the psychosexual stages may lead to _____________ at that stage.
Answer: fixation
Freud believed that our defense mechanisms operate _____________ (consciously/unconsciously) and defend us against _____________.
Answer: unconsciously; anxiety
What are three big ideas that have survived from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory? What are three ways in which Freud’s theory has been criticized?
Answer: Freud is credited with first drawing attention to (1) the importance of childhood experiences, (2) the existence of the unconscious mind, and (3) our self-protective defense mechanisms. Freud’s theory has been criticized as (1) not scientifically testable and offering after-the-fact explanations, (2) focusing too much on sexual conflicts in childhood, and (3) being based on the idea of repression, which has not been supported by modern research.
Which elements of traditional psychoanalysis have modern-day psychodynamic theorists and therapists retained, and which elements have they mostly left behind?
Answer: Today’s psychodynamic theorists and therapists still rely on the interviewing techniques that Freud used, and they still tend to focus on childhood experiences and attachments, unresolved conflicts, and unconscious influences. However, they are not likely to dwell on fixation at any psychosexual stage, or the idea that sexual issues are the basis of our personality.
How did humanistic psychology provide a fresh perspective?
Answer: The humanistic theories sought to turn psychology’s attention away from drives and conflicts and toward our growth potential. This movement’s focus on the way people strive for self-determination and self-realization was in contrast to Freudian theory and strict behaviorism.
What does it mean to be empathic? How about self-actualized? Which humanistic psychologists used these terms?
Answer: To be empathic is to share and mirror another person’s feelings. Carl Rogers believed that people nurture growth in others by being empathic. Abraham Maslow proposed that self-actualization is the motivation to fulfill one’s potential, and one of the ultimate psychological needs (the other is self-transcendence).
Which two primary dimensions did Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck propose for describing personality variation?
Answer: introversion–extraversion and emotional stability–instability
What are the Big Five personality factors, and why are they scientifically useful?
Answer: The Big Five personality factors are conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism (emotional stability vs. instability), openness, and extraversion: CANOE. These factors may be objectively measured, they are relatively stable over the life span, and they apply to all cultures in which they have been studied.
How well do personality test scores predict our behavior? Explain.
Answer: Our scores on personality tests predict our average behavior across many situations much better than they predict our specific behavior in any given situation.
Albert Bandura proposed the _____________-_____________ perspective on personality, which emphasizes the interaction of people with their environment. To describe the interacting influences of behavior, thoughts, and environment, he used the term _____________ _____________.
Answer: social-cognitive; reciprocal determinism
What is the best way to predict a person’s future behavior?
Answer: Examine the person’s past behavior patterns in similar situations.
What are the positive and negative effects of high self-esteem?
Answer: People who feel confident in their abilities are often happier, have greater motivation, and are less susceptible to depression. Inflated self-esteem can lead to self-serving bias, greater aggression, and narcissism.
The tendency to accept responsibility for success and blame circumstances or bad luck for failure is called _____________ – _____________ _____________ .
Answer: self-serving bias
_____________ (Secure/Defensive) self-esteem is linked to angry and aggressive behavior. _____________ (Secure/Defensive) self-esteem is a healthier self-image that allows us to focus beyond ourselves and enjoy a higher quality of life.
Answer: Defensive; Secure
How do people in individualist and collectivist cultures differ?
Answer: Individualists give priority to personal goals over group goals and tend to define their identity in terms of their own personal attributes. Collectivists give priority to group goals over individual goals and tend to define their identity in terms of group identifications.
How does the existence of savant syndrome support Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences?
Answer: People with savant syndrome have limited mental ability overall but possess one or more exceptional skills. According to Howard Gardner, this suggests that our abilities come in separate packages rather than being fully expressed by one general intelligence that encompasses all our talents.
Joseph, a Harvard Law School student, has a straight-A average, writes for the Harvard Law Review, and will clerk for a Supreme Court justice next year. His grandmother, Judith, is very proud of him, saying he is far more intelligent than she ever was. But Joseph is also very proud of Judith: As a young woman, she was imprisoned by the Nazis. When the war ended, she walked out of Germany, contacted an agency helping refugees, and began a new life in the United States as an assistant chef in her cousin’s restaurant. According to the definition of intelligence in this unit, is Joseph the only intelligent person in this story? Why or why not?
Answer: Joseph is not the only intelligent person in this story. Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. Judith certainly demonstrates this quality as well, given all that she has accomplished.
What did Binet hope to achieve by establishing a child’s mental age?
Answer: Binet hoped that determining the child’s mental age (the age that typically corresponds to a certain level of performance) would help identify appropriate school placements.
What is the IQ of a 4-year-old with a mental age of 5?
Answer: 125 (5 ÷ 4 × 100 = 125)
An employer with a pool of applicants for a single available position is interested in testing each applicant’s potential. To determine that, she should use an _____________ (achievement/aptitude) test. That same employer wishing to test the effectiveness of a new, on-the-job training program would be wise to use an _____________ (achievement/aptitude) test.
Answer: aptitude; achievement
What are the three criteria that a psychological test must meet in order to be widely accepted? Explain.
Answer: A psychological test must be standardized (pretested on a representative sample of people), reliable (yielding consistent results), and valid (measuring and predicting what it is supposed to).
Correlation coefficients were used in this section. Here’s a quick review: Correlations do not indicate cause-effect, but they do tell us whether two things are associated in some way. A correlation of -1.00 represents perfect _____________ (agreement/disagreement) between two sets of scores: As one score goes up, the other score goes _____________ (up/down). A correlation of _____________ represents no association. The highest correlation, +1.00, represents perfect _____________ (agreement/disagreement): As the first score goes up, the other score goes _____________ (up/down).
Answer: disagreement; down; zero; agreement; up
Researcher A is well-funded to learn about how intelligence changes over the life span. Researcher B wants to study the intelligence of people who are now at various life stages. Which researcher should use the cross-sectional method, and which the longitudinal method?
Answer: Researcher A should develop a longitudinal study to examine how intelligence changes in the same people over the life span. Researcher B should develop a cross-sectional study to examine the intelligence of people now at various life stages.
Why do psychologists not diagnose an intellectual disability based solely on a person’s intelligence test score?
Answer: An intelligence test score is only one measure of a person’s ability to function. Other important factors to consider in an overall assessment include conceptual skills, social skills, and practical skills.
The Smiths have enrolled their 2-year-old son in a special program that promises to assess his IQ and, if he places in the top 5 percent of test-takers, to create a plan that will guarantee his admission to a top university at age 18. Why is this endeavor of questionable value?
Answer: First, IQ tests given before age 3 are only modestly reliable predictors of adult intelligence. Second, admission to a top university depends on more than simple IQ. Third, there are no known training programs that could guarantee this result.
A check on your understanding of heritability: If environments become more equal, the heritability of intelligence will
Answer: a. (Heritability—variation explained by genetic influences—will increase as environmental variation decreases.)
What psychological principle helps explain why women tend to perform more poorly when they believe their online chess opponent is male?
Answer: stereotype threat
What is the difference between a test that is biased culturally, and a test that is biased in terms of its validity?
Answer: A test may be culturally biased if higher scores are achieved by those with certain cultural experiences. That same test may not be biased in terms of validity if it predicts what it is supposed to predict. For example, the SAT may be culturally biased in favor of those with experience in the U.S. school system, but it does still accurately predict U.S. college success.
A lawyer is distressed by feeling the need to wash his hands 100 times a day. He has little time to meet with clients, and his colleagues are wondering about his competence. His behavior would probably be labeled disordered, because it is _____________—that is, it interferes with his day-to-day life.
Answer: dysfunctional or maladaptive
Are psychological disorders universal or culture-specific? Explain with examples.
Answer: Some psychological disorders are culture-specific. For example, anorexia nervosa occurs mostly in Western cultures, and taijin-kyofusho appears largely in Japan. Other disorders, such as schizophrenia, are universal—they occur in all cultures.
What is the value, and what are the dangers, of labeling individuals with disorders?
Answer: Therapists and others apply disorder labels to communicate with one another using a common language, and to share concepts during research. Clients may benefit from knowing that they are not the only ones with these symptoms. The dangers of labeling people are that (1) people may begin to act as they have been labeled, and (2) the labels can trigger assumptions that will change people’s behavior toward those labeled.
What is the biopsychosocial approach, and why is it important in our understanding of psychological disorders?
Answer: Biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences combine to produce psychological disorders. This approach helps us understand that our well-being is affected by our genes, brain functioning, inner thoughts and feelings, and the influences of our social and cultural environments.
What is the relationship between poverty and psychological disorders?
Answer: Poverty-related stresses can help trigger disorders, but disabling disorders can also contribute to poverty. Thus, poverty and disorder are often a chicken-and-egg situation; it’s hard to know which came first.
Unfocused tension, apprehension, and arousal are symptoms of _____________ _____________ disorder.
Answer: generalized anxiety
Those who experience unpredictable periods of terror and intense dread, accompanied by frightening physical sensations, may be diagnosed with a _____________ disorder.
Answer: panic
If a person is focusing anxiety on specific feared objects or situations, that person may have a _____________.
Answer: phobia
Those who express anxiety through unwanted repetitive thoughts or actions may have a(n) _____________-_____________ disorder.
Answer: obsessive-compulsive
Those with symptoms of recurring memories and nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia for weeks after a traumatic event may be diagnosed with _____________ _____________ disorder.
Answer: posttraumatic stress
Researchers believe that conditioning and cognitive processes contribute to anxiety-related disorders. What biological factors also contribute to these disorders?
Answer: Biological factors include inherited temperament differences and other gene variations; experience-altered brain pathways; and inherited responses that had survival value for our distant ancestors.
What does it mean to say that “depression is a whole-body disorder”?
Answer: Many factors contribute to depression, including the biological influences of genetics and brain function. Social-cognitive factors also matter, including the interaction of explanatory style, mood, our responses to stressful experiences, and changes in our patterns of thinking and behaving. Depression involves the whole body and may disrupt sleep, energy, and concentration.
A person with schizophrenia who has _____________ (positive/negative) symptoms may have an expressionless face and toneless voice. These symptoms are most common with _____________ (chronic/acute) schizophrenia and are not likely to respond to drug therapy. Those with _____________ (positive/negative) symptoms are likely to experience delusions, and, if the symptoms have arisen suddenly, to be diagnosed with _____________ (chronic/acute) schizophrenia, which is much more likely to respond to drug therapy.
Answer: negative; chronic; positive; acute
What factors contribute to the onset and development of schizophrenia?
Answer: Biological factors include abnormalities in brain structure and function and a genetic predisposition to the disorder. Environmental factors such as nutritional deprivation, exposure to virus, and maternal stress contribute by activating the genes that increase risk. Exposure to many environmental triggers can increase the odds of developing schizophrenia.
What does somatic mean, and how does it apply to somatic symptom disorders?
Answer: Somatic symptoms are bodily symptoms. A somatic disorder is one in which symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause.
The psychodynamic and learning perspectives agree that dissociative identity disorder symptoms are ways of dealing with anxiety. How do their explanations differ?
Answer: The psychodynamic explanation of DID symptoms is that they are defenses against anxiety generated by unacceptable urges. The learning perspective attempts to explain these symptoms as behaviors that have been reinforced by relieving anxiety.
How do biological and psychological factors contribute to antisocial personality disorder?
Answer: Twin and adoption studies show that biological relatives of people with this disorder are at increased risk for antisocial behavior. Researchers have also observed differences in the brain activity and structure of antisocial criminals. Negative environmental factors, such as poverty or childhood abuse, may channel genetic traits such as fearlessness in more dangerous directions—toward aggression and away from social responsibility.
People with _____________ _____________ (anorexia nervosa/bulimia nervosa) continue to want to lose weight even when they are underweight. Those with _____________ _____________ (anorexia nervosa/bulimia nervosa) tend to have weight that fluctuates within or above normal ranges.
Answer: anorexia nervosa; bulimia nervosa
In psychoanalysis, when patients experience strong feelings for their therapist, this is called _____________. Patients are said to demonstrate anxiety when they put up mental blocks around sensitive memories, indicating _____________. The therapist will attempt to provide insight into the underlying anxiety by offering a(n) _____________ of the mental blocks.
Answer: transference; resistance; interpretation
What might a psychodynamic therapist say about Mowrer’s therapy for bed-wetting? How might a behavior therapist defend it?
Answer: A psychodynamic therapist might be more interested in helping the child develop insight about the underlying problems that have caused the bed-wetting response. A behavior therapist would be more likely to agree with Mowrer that the bed-wetting symptom is the problem, and that counterconditioning the unwanted behavior would indeed bring emotional relief.
Some maladaptive behaviors are learned. What hope does this fact provide?
Answer: If a behavior can be learned, it can be unlearned, and replaced by other more adaptive responses.
Exposure therapies and aversive conditioning are applications of _____________ conditioning. Token economies are an application of _____________ conditioning.
Answer: classical; operant
How do the humanistic and cognitive therapies differ?
Answer: By reflecting clients’ feelings in a nondirective setting, the humanistic therapies attempt to foster personal growth by helping clients become more self-aware and self-accepting. By making clients aware of self-defeating patterns of thinking, cognitive therapies guide people toward more adaptive ways of thinking about themselves and their world.
A critical attribute of _____________ _____________, developed by Aaron Beck, focuses on the belief that changing people’s thinking can change their functioning.
Answer: cognitive therapy
What is cognitive-behavioral therapy, and what sorts of problems does this therapy best address?
Answer: This integrative therapy helps people change self-defeating thinking and behavior. It has been shown to be effective for those with anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, and eating disorders.
How might the placebo effect bias clients’ and clinicians’ appraisals of the effectiveness of psychotherapies?
Answer: The placebo effect is the healing power of belief in a treatment. Patients and therapists who expect a treatment to be effective may believe it was.
Therapy is most likely to be helpful for those with problems that _____________ (are/are not) well-defined.
Answer: are
What is evidence-based practice?
Answer: Using this approach, therapists make decisions about treatment based on research evidence, clinical expertise, and knowledge of the client.
Those who undergo psychotherapy are _____________ (more/less) likely to show improvement than those who do not undergo psychotherapy.
Answer: more
What does the evidence suggest about the efficacy of EMDR and light therapy?
Answer: light therapy
What are some examples of lifestyle changes we can make to enhance our mental health?
Answer: Exercise regularly, get enough sleep, get more exposure to light (get outside or use a light box), nurture important relationships, redirect negative thinking, and eat a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids.
How do researchers determine if particular drug therapies are effective?
Answer: Researchers assign people to treatment and no-treatment conditions to see if those who receive the drug therapy improve more than those who don’t. Double-blind controlled studies are most effective. If neither the therapist nor the client knows which participants have received the drug treatment, then any difference between the treated and untreated groups will reflect the drug treatment’s actual effect.
The drugs given most often to treat depression are called _____________. Schizophrenia is often treated with _____________ drugs.
Answer: antidepressants; antipsychotic
Severe depression that has not responded to other therapy may be treated with _____________ _____________, which can cause brain seizures and memory loss. More moderate neural stimulation techniques designed to help alleviate depression include _____________ direct current stimulation, _____________ _____________ magnetic stimulation, and _____________-_____________ stimulation.
Answer: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT); repetitive transcranial; deep-brain
What is the difference between preventive mental health and the psychological and biomedical therapies?
Answer: Psychological and biomedical therapies attempt to relieve people’s suffering from psychological disorders. Preventive mental health attempts to prevent suffering by identifying and eliminating the conditions that cause disorders.
Driving to school one snowy day, Marco narrowly misses a car that slides through a red light. “Slow down! What a terrible driver,” he thinks to himself. Moments later, Marco himself slips through an intersection and yelps, “Wow! These roads are awful. The city plows need to get out here.” What social psychology principle has Marco just demonstrated? Explain.
Answer: By attributing the other person’s behavior to the person (“he’s a terrible driver”) and his own to the situation (“these roads are awful”), Marco has exhibited the fundamental attribution error.
How do our attitudes and our actions affect each other?
Answer: Our attitudes often influence our actions as we behave in ways consistent with our beliefs. However, our actions also influence our attitudes; we come to believe in what we have done.
When people act in a way that is not in keeping with their attitudes, and then change their attitudes to match those actions, _____________ _____________ theory attempts to explain why.
Answer: cognitive dissonance
Despite her mother’s pleas to use a more ergonomic backpack, Antonia insists on trying to carry all of her books to school in an oversized purse the way her fashionable friends all seem to do. Antonia is affected by what type of social influence?
Answer: normative social influence
Psychology’s most famous obedience experiments, in which most participants obeyed an authority figure’s demands to inflict presumed painful, dangerous shocks on an innocent participant, were conducted by social psychologist _____________ _____________.
Answer: Stanley Milgram
What types of situations have researchers found to be most likely to encourage obedience in participants?
Answer: The Milgram studies showed that people were most likely to follow orders when the experimenter was nearby and was a legitimate authority figure, the victim was not nearby, and there were no models for defiance.
What is social facilitation, and why is it more likely to occur with a well-learned task?
Answer: This improved performance in the presence of others is most likely to occur with a well-learned task, because the added arousal caused by an audience tends to strengthen the most likely response. This also predicts poorer performance on a difficult task in others’ presence.
People tend to exert less effort when working with a group than they would alone, which is called _____________ _____________.
Answer: social loafing
You are organizing a meeting of fiercely competitive political candidates. To add to the fun, friends have suggested handing out masks of the candidates’ faces for supporters to wear. What phenomenon might these masks engage?
Answer: The anonymity provided by the masks, combined with the arousal of the contentious setting, might create deindividuation (lessened self-awareness and self-restraint).
When like-minded groups discuss a topic, and the result is the strengthening of the prevailing opinion, this is called _____________ _____________.
Answer: group polarization
When a group’s desire for harmony overrides its realistic analysis of other options, _____________ has occurred.
Answer: groupthink
What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?
Answer: Prejudice is an unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members, while unjustifiable negative behavior is discrimination.
When prejudiced judgment causes us to blame an undeserving person for a problem, that person is called a _____________.
Answer: scapegoat
What psychological, biological, and social-cultural influences interact to produce aggressive behaviors?
Answer: Our biology (our genes, neural systems, and biochemistry—including testosterone and alcohol levels) influences our aggressive tendencies. Psychological factors (such as frustration, previous rewards for aggressive acts, and observation of others’ aggression) can trigger any aggressive tendencies we may have. Social influences, such as exposure to violent media or being ostracized from a group, and cultural influences, such as whether we’ve grown up in a “culture of honor” or a father-absent home, can also affect our aggressive responses.
People tend to marry someone who lives or works nearby. This is an example of the _____________ _____________ _____________ in action.
Answer: mere exposure effect
How does being physically attractive influence others’ perceptions?
Answer: Being physically attractive tends to elicit positive first impressions. People tend to assume that attractive people are healthier, happier, and more socially skilled than others are.
How does the two-factor theory of emotion help explain passionate love?
Answer: Emotions consist of (1) physical arousal and (2) our interpretation of that arousal. Researchers have found that any source of arousal (running, fear, laughter) may be interpreted as passion in the presence of a desirable person.
Two vital components for maintaining companionate love are _____________ and _____________-_____________.
Answer: equity; self-disclosure
Why didn’t anybody help Kitty Genovese? What social psychology principle did this incident illustrate?
Answer: In the presence of others, an individual is less likely to notice a situation, correctly interpret it as an emergency, and take responsibility for offering help. The Kitty Genovese case demonstrated this bystander effect, as each witness assumed many others were also aware of the event.
Why do sports fans tend to feel a sense of satisfaction when their archrival team loses? Why do such feelings, in other settings, make conflict resolution more challenging?
Answer: Sports fans may feel they are part of an ingroup that sets itself apart from an outgroup (fans of the archrival team). Ingroup bias tends to develop, leading to prejudice and the view that the outgroup “deserves” misfortune. So, the archrival team’s loss may seem justified. In conflicts, this kind of thinking is problematic, especially when each side in the conflict develops mirror-image perceptions of the other (distorted, negative images that are ironically similar).
What are some ways to reconcile conflicts and promote peace?
Answer: Peacemakers should encourage equal-status contact, cooperation to achieve superordinate goals (shared goals that override differences), understanding through communication, and reciprocated conciliatory gestures (each side gives a little).
Why do tobacco companies try so hard to get customers hooked as teens?
Answer: Nicotine is powerfully addictive, and those who start paving the neural pathways when young may find it very hard to stop using it. As a result, tobacco companies may have lifelong customers. Moreover, evidence suggests that if cigarette manufacturers haven’t hooked customers by early adulthood, they most likely won’t.
Studies have found that people who begin drinking in their early teens are much more likely to develop alcohol use disorder than those who begin at age 21 or after. What possible explanations might there be for this correlation?
Answer: Possible explanations include (a) biological factors (a person could have a biological predisposition to both early use and later abuse, or alcohol use could modify a person’s neural pathways); (b) psychological factors (early use could establish taste preferences for alcohol); and (c) social-cultural factors (early use could influence enduring habits, attitudes, activities, or peer relationships that could foster alcohol use disorder).
What is the value of finding flow in our work?
Answer: We become more likely to view our work as fulfilling and socially useful, and we experience higher self-esteem, competence, and overall well-being.
A human resources director explains to you that “I don’t bother with tests or references. It’s all about the interview.” Based on I/O psychology research, what concerns does this raise?
Answer: (1) Interviewers may presume people are what they seem to be in interviews. (2) Interviewers’ preconceptions and moods color how they perceive interviewees’ responses. (3) Interviewers judge people relative to other recent interviewees. (4) Interviewers tend to track the successful careers of those they hire, not the successful careers of those they reject. (5) Interviews tend to disclose prospective workers’ good intentions, not their habitual behaviors.
What are the two basic types of leadership, and how do the most effective managers employ these leadership strategies?
Answer: Task leadership is goal-oriented. Managers using this style set standards, organize work, and focus attention on goals. Social leadership is group-oriented. Managers using this style build teamwork, mediate conflict, and offer support. Research indicates that effective managers exhibit both task and social leadership, depending on the situation and the person.
What characteristics are important for transformational leaders?
Answer: Transformational leaders are able to inspire others to share a vision and commit themselves to a group’s mission. They tend to be naturally extraverted and set high standards.
What is the curse of knowledge, and what does it have to do with the work of human factors psychologists?
Answer: To develop safer machines and work environments, human factors psychologists stay mindful of the curse of knowledge—the tendency for experts to mistakenly assume that others share their knowledge.
If your dog barks at a stranger at the door, does this qualify as language? What if the dog yips in a telltale way to let you know she needs to go out?
Answer: These are definitely communications. But if language consists of words and the grammatical rules we use to combine them to communicate meaning, few scientists would label a dog’s barking and yipping as language.