Practice Exam Cards

Question 1

Bystander effect

Answer 1

-as the number of people observing a situation INCREASE, the likelihood of that someone in need will receive assistance DECREASES -people will diffuse the responsibility amongst themselves to the point where no one ultimately acts

Question 2

Folkways

Answer 2

conventional ways of acting within a certain culture

Violating them would make one look unusual, but the violation would not carry an official penalty

Question 3

Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Answer 3

Avolition: the lack of motivation to initiate behavior

Alogia: poverty of speech

Thought disorder: disorganized thinking as evidenced by disorganized speech

Question 4

split-half reliability

Answer 4

involves a multiple-item instrument and how well parts of it assess what is being measured compared to the whole

Question 5

Compliance

Answer 5

the act of changing one’s behavior in the response to the request of another

Question 6

Master status

Answer 6

a social role that becomes more prominent than the other social roles that make up one’s identity

Question 7

Replicability

Answer 7

the ability to obtain the same results under the same experimental conditions

Question 8

Altruism

Answer 8

refers to instances wherein an individual helps another despite incurring a risk/cost for helping

Question 9

normative social influence

Answer 9

occurs when people conform because they desire social acceptance

Question 10

cultural capital

Answer 10

certain non-financial assets that promote or allow upward mobility in society ex. education, social graces, proper speech, specialized attire etc.

Question 11

Reciprocity

Answer 11

the social phenomenon in which people’s positive deeds put pressure on others to “return the favor”, such as with gift-giving. This phenomenon is so powerful that it is said to influence interactions between governments and is one of the motivations for extending international aid

Question 12

dependent variable

Answer 12

variable of the experiment that is being measured, NOT manipulated

Question 13

hippocampus

Answer 13

memory processes located here

Question 14

inter-rater reliability

Answer 14

how well different raters match in their assessments

Question 15

hypothalamus

Answer 15

associated with autonomic nervous system functions and hormonal processes

Question 16

External Validity

Answer 16

the extent to which the results of an experiment can be generalized to other situations and to other people

Question 17

Resource model of attention

Answer 17

states that human beings have a limited amount of resources for attention. Thus, if one wants to multitask, and the attentional needs exceed available resources, these tasks cannot be completed simultaneously

Question 18

social facilitation

Answer 18

people perform better on a task when others are watching

Question 19

What are the Big Five personality traits?

Answer 19

Openness to Experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism

Question 20

social comparison

Answer 20

the process of evaluating one’s opinion with regard to the opinion of another

Question 21

social capital

Answer 21

the benefits of belonging to certain social networks

Question 22

group polarization

Answer 22

a process by which the existing views of a group are strengthened during group discussion

Question 23

Test-Retest Reliability

Answer 23

applies to test scores and assesses the degree to which they are consistent from one administration to the next

Question 24

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 24

how stress and arousal affect performance; a moderate level of stress helps people the best

Question 25

Escape Learning

Answer 25

when an individual learns a means of escaping an unpleasant stimulus

Question 26

Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory

Answer 26

posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation

Question 27

mores

Answer 27

are formal norms that are very strictly enforced because they protect basic tenets of society (e.g., treason violates mores of loyalty and patriotism)

Question 28

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 28

mental stress or discomfort when an individuals ideas do not comport with his/her behavior, or do not comport with other ideas held by the individual

Question 29

Gentrification

Answer 29

The process through which deteriorated urban areas are rebuilt and become more upscale

Question 30

achieved status

Answer 30

a role that a person has taken on becuase of his/her own efforts

Question 31

construct validity

Answer 31

how well a test measures what it is expected to measure

Question 32

Positive Punishment

Answer 32

decreasing a behavior by following it with an undesirable or unpleasant stimulus

Question 33

symbolic capital

Answer 33

intangible assets such as prestige, honor, and recognition that help one advance within society

Question 34

informational influence

Answer 34

similar to groupthink in that ideas that come into group discussion are those that tend to favor the dominant viewpoint

Question 35

anterograde amnesia

Answer 35

the loss or inability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, even though long term memory remains mostly in tact; usually due to damage to the hippocampus

Question 36

parietal lobe

Answer 36

Processes sensory information Taste touch temperature

Question 37

cerebellum

Answer 37

regulation and coordination of movement, posture, and balance

Question 38

Positive Reinforcement

Answer 38

Increase a behavior by following it with a desirable or pleasurable stimulus

Question 39

independent variable

Answer 39

the variable manipulated by the researcher

Question 40

Internal Validity

Answer 40

The extent to which a causal conclusion based upon the experiment is warranted

Question 41

confounding variable

Answer 41

a variable that the experimenter does not intentionally manipulate but which may vary with the independent variable and thus confuse the results of the study

Question 42

social reproduction

Answer 42

the processes through which social, cultural, and financial capital are transmitted generationally

Question 43

ascribed status

Answer 43

a role that is assigned to someone by society despite that person's efforts to take on another role

Question 44

status symbol

Answer 44

a component of impression management and is generally an object that is displayed in order to effect a certain image

Question 45

complimentarity hypothesis

Answer 45

states that an individual will attract those whose needs are different in ways that complement the person's own needs; it does not address internal conflict between behavior and ideas

Question 46

mindguarding

Answer 46

an aspect of groupthink, which is the phenomenon wherein group members censor dissenting opinions in order to rmaintain group harmony and avoid “rocking the boat”. In a groupthink situation, "mindguards" serve to shelter the group from controversial or potentially divisive information

Question 47

Informational social influence

Answer 47

occurs when people conform because they want to make ethically correct choices and also because they believe that others know more than they do

Question 48

Spreading Activation

Answer 48

method of searching associative networks, neural networks, or semantic networks

Question 49

serial position affect

Answer 49

improved memory for words at the beginning and at the end of a list

Question 50

Proactive interference

Answer 50

the interference of information from long term memory with new information

Question 51

Confirmation Bias

Answer 51

the tendency to favor information that confirms exsiting beliefs

Question 52

anomie

Answer 52

* lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group * a lack of social norms, which leads to a breakdown in the connection between an individual and their community

Question 53

Spearman's idea of intelligence

Answer 53

* general intelligence or the *g factor* * used factor analysis to examine the results of mental aptitude tests * concluded that intelligence is a general cognitive ability that can be measured and quantified and numerically expressed

Question 54

Gardners theory of intelligence

Answer 54

* a theory regarding the idea that people have 8 different types of intelligence that are based on different skills and abilities that are valued in different cultures

Question 55

Galton's idea of hereditary genius

Answer 55

genius was passed down and diluted from generation to generation

Question 56

Binet's idea of mental age

Answer 56

compares how a child performs intellectually compared to their age

Question 57

extrinsic motivation

Answer 57

motivation that occurs due to external factors rather than those based within the individual

Question 58

Kohlberg's stages of moral development

Answer 58

Question 59

frustration-aggression hypothesis

Answer 59

a hypothesis that assumes that people will be more aggressive when they are frustrated

Question 60

James-Lange Theory of emotion

Answer 60

emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events

Question 61

George Herbert Mead the I and the Me

Answer 61

I: the response the the social self Me: the social self our self conception of ourself lies somewhere balanced in the middle

Question 62

social constructionism

Answer 62

a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality