Module 6 Study Guide

Chapters 12 and 13

Learning Objective 1

Sections 12.1, 12.2, Snap Judgements; Attributions

  1. How might a judge’s personal bias unconsciously influence a jury’s decision? (pp. 466-467)
  2. How might a verbal cue or facial cue be misread? (pp. 466-467)
  3. What good are thin slices of behavior? (p. 466)
  4. What are attributions? How does a dispositional (personal) attribution differ from a situational attribution? (pp. 467-468)
  5. What is the underlying assumption of the “just world” hypothesis? (p. 468)
  6. What is the core tendency of the fundamental attribution error? (p. 468)
  7. What is the actor/observer bias (and who is looking at whom)? (p. 468)

Learning Objective 2

Sections 12.3, 12.4, Tendency to Stereotype, Negative Effects of Stereotypes

  1. What is a stereotype, and how can stereotypes lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy? (pp. 469-470)
  2. What is stereotype threat? What can trigger it? What can prevent it? (pp. 470-472)
  3. What is prejudice? What is discrimination? (p. 472)
  4. How might stereotypes contribute to prejudice and discrimination? (p. 472)
  5. What are in-groups and out-groups? (p. 472)
  6. How does social identity theory account for in-group favoritism? How is self-esteem related to social identity? (pp. 472-474)
  7. Summarize Muzafer Sherif’s (1961) summer camp experiment. How did the experimenters get the campers to be hostile toward each other, and then to stop hating each other? (pp. 474-475)
  8. What is a jigsaw classroom, and what effects has it had on discrimination between students? (p. 475)
  9. Have you engaged in perspective-taking with people you didn’t initially appreciate? Have you ever imagined having pleasant interactions with people you see as outgroup members? (p. 475)

Learning Objective 3

Sections 12.5. 12.6, 12.7, Forming Attitudes; Discrepancies between Attitudes and Behavior; Persuasion

  1. What is psychology’s description of an attitude? (p. 476)
  2. Can attitudes predict behavior? How does attitude accessibility relate to this? (p. 476)
  3. What is the mere exposure effect? How does it create an attitude? (pp. 476-477)
  4. How can classical conditioning create an attitude? (p. 476)
  5. Does being socialized to have some attitude sound like observational learning? (p. 477)
  6. What is the difference between implicit and explicit attitudes? (pp. 477-478)
  7. Describe Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory. What initially triggers dissonance? (pp. 479-480)
  8. Describe how justification of effort reduces dissonance, and how this applies to experiences like hazing. (pp. 478-480)
  9. What is persuasion? Have you noticed when your attitudes have been influenced by persuasive strategies, such as those described in the textbook? (pp. 480-482)
  10. What three factors described in the textbook affect persuasiveness? (pp. 480-481)
  11. What are the differences between the central route of persuasion and the peripheral route of persuasion in the elaboration likelihood model? (p. 481)

Learning Objective 4

Sections 12.8, 12.9, Groups; Conformity & Compliance

  1. Describe social facilitation. (pp. 482-483)
  2. Describe social loafing and a situation in which it might occur. (pp. 482-483)
  3. What conditions lead to deindividuation? How does deindividuation influence a person’s behavior and thoughts? (p. 483)
  4. What is a risky shift in a group? (p. 483)
  5. What does the process of group polarization suggest for group decision making? (pp. 483-484)
  6. What, specifically, is groupthink? What conditions make it likely? (pp. 483-484)
  7. How does psychology define conformity? (p. 484)
  8. How does normative influence differ from informational influence? How might each play a role in Solomon Asch’s conformity study? (pp. 484-485)
  9. How are social norms enforced and maintained? (pp. 485-486)
  10. When is your conforming due to compliance? (pp. 486-487)
  11. Describe the foot-in-the door strategy. (pp. 486-487)
  12. Why might you wind up doing someone a favor, according to the door-in-the-face technique? (pp. 486-487)
  13. Why might you agree to pay more for a product when a salesperson uses the lowballing strategy? (pp. 486-487)

Learning Objective 5

Sections 12.10, 12.11, Obedience; You May Hurt or Help Others

  1. How does Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment demonstrate the power of situational influences on human behavior? (pp. 487-490)
  2. Some researchers have questioned whether Milgram’s participants were truly being obedient. What is their alternative explanation? (p. 489)
  3. What are some factors that affect obedience? (pp. 487-489)
  4. Why is Milgram’s study also a lesson about research ethics? (pp. 489-490)
  5. How do psychologists define aggression? (p. 490)
  6. What neurotransmitter is thought to play a role in aggression? (p. 490)
  7. How is frustration related to aggression? (p. 491)
  8. What is the evidence that aggression in humans is influenced by social and cultural factors and not just evolution? (p. 491)
  9. What’s the difference between prosocial behavior and altruism? (p. 492)
  10. How do our expectations for reciprocity contribute to helping others? (p. 492)
  11. What is the bystander effect? What are its four main contributing factors? (pp. 492-494)

Learning Objective 6

Sections 13.1, 13.2, Self; Self-esteem

  1. What makes up an individual’s personality? (p. 504)
  2. How does a self-schema contribute to your sense of self? (pp. 504-505)
  3. What is a working self-concept and what does it tell us about our sense of self? (pp. 505-506)
  4. What is self-esteem and how is it related to a reflected appraisal? (pp. 506-507)
  5. What are some benefits of self-compassion? (p. 507)
  6. What is some evidence that high self-esteem is less important in terms of life outcomes than you might expect? (p. 508)
  7. What are the three negative personality traits that make up the dark triad? (pp. 508-510)
  8. Why might you be drawn to a person who has dark triad traits? (pp. 508-510)

Learning Objective 7

Sections 13.3, 13.4, Positive Sense of Self; Cultural Factors

  1. Do you have a better than average sense of humor? Are you a better than average friend, or parent, or driver? Describe the better-than-average effect. Which people are most likely to exhibit this effect? (p. 511)
  2. Why is optimism considered a “positive illusion”? How might positive illusions affect your self-esteem? (pp. 511-512)
  3. What is the difference between downward and upward social comparisons? What might motivate a person to make a downward or upward comparison? (p. 512)
  4. Why might you make temporal comparisons? (p. 512)
  5. How does a self-serving bias help us support a positive sense of self? How does it influence what we think of our own failures and successes? (p. 512)
  6. What do individualist cultures emphasize? What do collectivist cultures emphasize? (pp. 513-514)
  7. How is the interdependent self different from the independent self? (pp. 513-514)

Learning Objective 8

Sections 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 13.8, 13.9, Psychodynamic Theory; Humanistic Theory; Social Cognitive Approaches; Trait Approaches; Do Personalities Matter in Roommate Relationships

  1. What is the focus of Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory of personality? (pp. 515-517)
  2. How do the three Freudian structures of personality interact? (pp. 516-517)
  3. What core ideas have neo-Freudians saved from Freud’s original psychodynamic theory? (pp. 517-518)
  4. What is the focus of humanistic approaches to personality? (pp. 518-519)
  5. What kind of evaluations of us by others shape our personality, according to humanists? (p. 519)
  6. According to Carl Rogers, why is conditional love and support an important component of personality? What role does unconditional positive regard play? (p. 519)
  7. How does Julian Rotter’s expectancy theory relate to reinforcement and values? (p. 520)
  8. Describe locus of control and how it relates to a person’s expectations. (p. 520)
  9. Describe how environment, behavior, and person factors might interact, according to Albert Bandura’s idea of reciprocal determinism. Provide examples of each factor. (pp. 520-521)
  10. What is the focus of trait theories of personality? (p. 522)
  11. According to Hans Eysenck, what is the difference between introversion and extroversion? (p. 522).
  12. How does emotional stability differ from unstable (neurotic) characteristics in Eysenck’s theory? (pp. 522)
  13. Eysenck also described a dimension of psychoticism (now called constraint). What are the characteristics of constraint? (p. 522)
  14. Describe each of the basic personality traits in the 5-factor trait theory. (pp. 522-523)
  15. What does it mean to score high in each of the Big 5 traits? Or to score low? (p. 523)
  16. How can we predict which two random people are more likely to be satisfied as roommates? (pp. 524-525)

Learning Objective 9

Sections 13.10, 13.11, Biological Basis; Influence of Genes

  1. According to Hans Eysenck, how does the reticular activation system (RAS) differ between introverts and extroverts? How is arousal involved in this dimension of personality? (p. 526)
  2. How have twin and adoption studies helped us investigate genetic influences on personality? What does the greater similarity between identical twins in personality (compared to fraternal twins or other siblings) suggest about genetic influence on personality? (pp. 527-528)
  3. How do adoption studies also support the idea that personality traits are influenced by genes? (p. 528)
  4. What does the research on genetics suggest about parental influence on their children’s personalities? (p. 528)

Learning Objective 10

Sections 13.12, 13.13, Temperament; Personality Stability

  1. Describe temperament. What are the three aspects of temperament according to Arnold Buss and Robert Plomin? (pp. 528-530)
  2. How does temperament predict an individual’s long-term development and personality? (pp. 529-530)
  3. At what stage of development are personality traits most stable? When are they most unstable? (p. 531)
  4. How are characteristic adaptations different from basic tendencies? (pp. 531-532)
  5. Which is most stable, basic tendencies or characteristic adaptations? Why? (pp. 531-532)
  6. In what ways is aging related to personality change? What suggests these changes are due to biological maturation rather than social-emotional factors? (p. 532)
  7. What are some factors that might cause personality change over time? What is an example of a life event that can change a person’s personality? (pp. 532-533)