Kap 2: Metodologi: hvordan forsker socialpsykologer

Question 1

1. How do most researchers in social psychology devise new ideas of what to study?
   a. By drawing on earlier theories.
   b. By drawing on earlier research and refining it.
   c. By basing it on something in their own lives or events that’s in the news.
   d. All of the above.

Answer 1

d

Question 2

2. Suppose that a researcher found a positive correlation of 0.80 between a person’s personal income and
   their level of education. Which of the following is the best conclusion from this study?
   a. Someone who has attended college will have an annual income of $40,000.
   b. Years of education has a positive effect on income level.
   c. Personal income is the only predictor of education.
   d. The more years of education people receive, the higher their income tends to be.

Answer 2

d

Question 3

3. Which of the following would be the best way to improve the external validity of an experiment about
   whether or not people are more likely to help a handicapped person open a door when they are in a good
   mood?
   a. Make sure the experiment uses the observational method.
   b. Make sure it uses the correlational method to measure if mood correlates with helping behavior.
   c. Make the experiment as realistic as possible and conduct it in a real-life setting instead of in a lab.
   d. Give the participants a good cover story.

Answer 3

c

Question 4

4. Which of the following is true of cross-cultural research?
   a. It is a good way to increase the internal validity of a study.
   b. A study must be replicated in at least three cultures to be considered valid.
   c. Because social psychology began as a Western science, most experimenters within it are not overly
   concerned with generalizing their results to other cultures.
   d. Its goal is to see which findings within social psychology are universal across all cultures and which are
   culture-bound.

Answer 4

d

Question 5

5. Which of the following is not true about field experiments?
   a. They take place in real-life settings instead of inside a laboratory.
   b. They use the same kinds of designs as laboratory experiments.
   c. They use an independent variable but not a dependent variable.
   d. They tend to be high in external validity because they can be generalized to real-life situations.

Answer 5

c

Question 6

6. Suppose an experiment is designed such that male undergraduate student participant groups are split
   in half on a random basis. One group plays a violent video game and another plays a neutral game.
   Immediately afterward, the participants have someone “accidentally” bump into them. The experimenter is
   wants to see whether or not the participants react aggressively to the person who bumped into them.
   Which of the following are true about this experiment?
   a. It has high external validity because it uses a heterogeneous sample.
   b. The independent variable is how participants react and the dependent variable is which video
   game group they were assigned to.
   c. It meets the condition of “random assignment to condition” because each participant was equally likely
   to be assigned to the violent or nonviolent video game condition.
   d. The dependent variable is how participants react and the independent variable is which video game
   group they were assigned to.

Answer 6

Answer: c and d

Question 7

7. Let’s suppose that the same experiment’s (as in Question 6) procedures were repeated using a wider
   range of participants who vary in age, gender, occupation, and ethnicity. What is this process called and
   what is its purpose?
   a. Random assignment to condition; to increase generalizability
   b. A meta-analysis; to increase internal validity
   c. Replication; to increase external validity
   d. Replication; to increase internal validity

Answer 7

c

Question 8

8. A basic dilemma of the social psychologist is that
   a. it is hard to teach social psychology to students because most people believe strongly in personality.
   b. there is a trade-off between internal and external validity in most experiments.
   c. it is nearly impossible to use a random selection of the population in laboratory experiments.
   d. almost all social behavior is influenced by the culture in which people grew up.

Answer 8

b

Question 9

9. Which of the following is true about new frontiers in social psychological research?
   a. Social psychologists are interested in the role of culture but not in evolutionary processes.
   b. Social psychologists are interested in evolutionary processes but not the role of culture.
   c. Social psychologists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to correlate different kinds of
   brain activity with social information processing.
   d. The purpose of cross-cultural research is to show that all social psychological findings are universal with
   no cultural variations.

Answer 9

c

Question 10

10. All of the following except one are part of the guidelines for ethical research. Which is not?
    a. All research is reviewed by an IRB (institutional review board) that consists of at least one scientist, one
    nonscientist, and one person unaffiliated with the institution.
    b. A researcher receives informed consent from a participant unless deception is deemed necessary and
    the experiment meets ethical guidelines.
    c. When deception is used in a study, participants must be fully debriefed.
    d. There must be a cover story for every study, because all studies involve some type of deception.

Answer 10

d