Psych Exam 3 Practice Questions

Marge tells her son that he doesn’t have to do his chores one night when he behaves well at home. This illustrates:

When Grisha gets a bad grade, his dad takes away his video games for a week. This illustrates:

When Kitz uses vulgar words, his mother makes him write “I will not use vulgar words” 100 times. This illustrates:

To train an animal to make some response, a psychologist decides to use the procedure known as shaping. This means that the psychologist will:

Eld is a physically aggressive teenager because his friends have always complimented him when he wins physical fights. This illustrates:

Petra wants to teach her cat to use her paw to open the bedroom door. To do so, she first rewards the cat for going near the bedroom door, then gives her a reward for putting her paw in the air near the bedroom door, then rewards her for putting her paw on the doorknob, etc. until the cat learns to open the door with her paw. This illustrates:

For every 7 times you do the back exercises recommended by your physical therapist, you get your favorite beverage from Starbucks. You are using the _____ schedule of reinforcement.

You provide private softball training to high school players; for every 2 hours of training, you earn $50. You are being reinforced on a _____ schedule.

Ji approaches people to buy Girl Scout cookies outside of a grocery store. Sometimes, she makes a sale after approaching just one person; other times, she doesn’t make a sale until she approaches 12 people. Ji is being reinforced on a _____ schedule.

Spencer makes donations to Unicef because he likes the colorful return address labels they send him in return. He makes the donations due to:

Little Simone really enjoys her gymnastics classes, and to encourage their daughter to do well, her parents start giving her toys and ice cream whenever she has a good practice. Unfortunately, Simone starts to find gymnastics boring, which can be explained by:

Sperling’s study in which participants were briefly flashed 12 letters demonstrated that, for a fraction of a second, _____ letters were in their iconic memory.

After seeing a billboard advertising Rita’s Water Ice, Daenerys feels parched and in the mood for a sweet frozen treat, although she doesn’t realize why she has this craving. Daenerys’s response is affected by her _____ memory.

Wes, a suspect of a crime, is asked to provide an alibi for between 10 and 11 pm on May 11. Wes recalled studying for his constitutional law exam with Asher at the library at that time, which is an example of _____ memory.

Which of the following questions would best enable you to remember the word “ball?” (ball is in blue)

If you are trying to learn a list of words, what would be the best possible advice?

Suppose an experimenter asks people a question about something they did not see (e.g., people who did not see a truck might be asked what color the truck was). How does asking such a question affect people’s memory, if at all?

Although the patient H.M. suffered severe anterograde amnesia, he remained fairly normal in his ability to learn:

A student who just found out that he was not admitted to Rutgers spends his days rehearsing "if onlys": "If only I had studied more in high school"; "if only I had taken the SATs more seriously"; "if only I had done more volunteer work." The student is demonstrating the _____ heuristic.

Mistakenly concluding that the forgetful acts of an elderly person must be indicative of Alzheimer’s disease (because the memory impairments seem typical of Alzheimer’s disease) best illustrates the _____ heuristic.

Laurel, a law student assisting on a case, believes that her client is guilty of a crime. When her fellow law students point out various pieces of evidence that point to the client’s innocence, Laurel doesn’t pay attention, and when later reviewing the case, only remembers the evidence suggesting that the client is guilty; therefore, she maintains her belief that the client did commit the crime. The persistence of Laurel’s belief can be explained by:

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need that is highest (last) on the hierarchy is:

According to the _____ theory of emotion, after someone steals our car, we will first experience an increased heart rate and then experience anger.

Which scenario supports the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion?

In the “wobbly bridge” study, what is the explanation for why the men crossing the wobbly part of the bridge were more likely to call the woman than those on the stable part of the bridge?

Neeka drank a Red Bull (an energy drink) and then found herself feeling very angry and screaming obscenities when watching her little brother’s little league game in which the umpire made some errors. This is probably due to:

In a study of the _____, participants who were aware that essay writers were told what position to take regarding Fidel Castro made _____ attributions.

In Festinger’s study, participants who were paid _____ to lie to the next group of participants about their enjoyment of the task were most likely to change their attitudes – they then believed that the task was fun.

In the previous question, the participants changed their attitudes due to:

Fraternity pledges who are subjected difficult hazing practices are more committed to their fraternities than pledges who undergo mild initiation rituals due to:

When other shoppers leave their shopping carts next to their cars rather than putting them in the designated spot, Spencer thinks the other shoppers are selfish and lazy. When Spencer leaves his shopping cart next to his car rather than putting it in the designated spot, he knows that he is in a huge hurry to get to work. This reflects the:

Sophocles assumes that all of his professors have outgoing and talkative personalities since he always sees them talking. This assumption reflects:

Apolo, a speed-skater, feels good about being strong and training hard when he wins, but when he loses, he says that the other skaters cheated. This shows the:

JJ has just agreed to donate $100 to support the troops, although she has anti-military attitudes. According to _____ theory, she is likely to become more pro-military.

In an experiment, students (who generally supported free speech) wrote essays in favor of banning controversial speakers from campus. Some were told that they must write the essay for the study; others were told that it would be appreciated if they did so, but it was their choice. Consistent with cognitive dissonance theory, which students came to be less supportive of free speech?