Psychology exam

• This paper is for students from both Legon and Accra City Campuses.
• All questions in Section A should be answered, and any two questions from Section B need to be answered.
• The time allowed is two and a half (2½) hours.

Section A: Multiple Choice Questions

• Unilever Ghana Ltd requires an industrial organizational psychologist, and TT Brothers Ltd needs an environmental psychologist.
• Psychodynamic psychology is based on thoughts and impulses outside of conscious experience.
• Denial is the defense mechanism where someone confronted about a problem claims it does not exist.
• Repression is the defense mechanism of forcing thoughts to remain unconscious to avoid anxiety.
• Displacement is the defense mechanism Mary displayed when she yelled at her spouse and children after an argument with her boss.
• The bell in Pavlov's experiments with dogs and prior to conditioning was a neutral stimulus.
• Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory stresses the importance of learning by observing a model.
• Kalliyan took a back road she has never used due to an accident, she is displaying preparedness.
• According to John B. Watson, psychology is the study of behavior.
• The humanistic viewpoint emphasizes free will, self-image, and self-actualization.
• Jess enrolled in a kickboxing class to cope with the anger and frustration he experiences, this is an example of sublimation.
• The presentation of an aversive stimulus, or conversely the removal of a positive stimulus are both examples of punishment.
• The child avoids a furry black cat by learned experience but still plays with her grandmother's short-haired tabby, this response demonstrates discrimination.
• Ivan Pavlov is credited with the initial discovery of classical conditioning.
• Negative reinforcement occurs when a response removes an unpleasant event.
• The schedule of reinforcement in which a set number of responses must be made for each reward is called a fixed ratio schedule.
• To teach a child to eat spaghetti, reinforce for holding the fork, and then increasingly closer approximations to the final response, a procedure known as shaping.
• Shaping is the process through which a response is taught by rewarding successive approximations to the final desired response.
• A child who occasionally gets rewarded with candy after asking her grandmother for a "treat" is being rewarded with a variable ratio schedule.
• The pet dachshund resumed burying bones in the front yard after weeks of successful extinction trials which is an example of spontaneous recovery.
• The subject is able to correctly identify photographs of students she attended high school with from a larger group of strangers twenty years later by recognition.
• Cue-dependent theories of memory suggest taking the chemistry test in the room you studied.
• Memories of historical facts are to semantic memory, as memories of breakfast are to episodic memory.
• Selective attention determines what information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory.
• When students who go to graduate school have to brush up on a foreign language they learned before, they find it easier the second time around which illustrates relearning.
• Sensory memory is the kind of memory that lasts for only a second or two.
• Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall events preceding an accident which involved injuries to the head.
• Repression is consciously forcing painful or anxiety-producing thoughts from memory.
• A brain-injured patient who can still execute a perfect golf swing or a high dive but is unable to recall or relearn even the broad outlines of American history is superior in procedural memory.
• A multiple-choice question (like this one) makes greatest use of recognition type of memory.
• After a movie has ended, an elderly man falls when walking down the steps of the crowded theater and there is an extremely long pause before anyone moves to help the man, is an example of the bystander effect.
• Kim expecting a salary of $35,000 asked for $40,000 believing her soon-to-be employer will reject that figure for a figure closer to $35,000. This is the door-in-the-face strategy.
• Members of some hate groups cover their faces and sometimes their entire bodies while they mistreat their targeted group to participate in crimes they would not normally commit due to deindividuation.
• Success is generally attributed to internal characteristics.
• According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, attitudes are changed because clashing thoughts cause discomfort.
• The subjects in Milgram's obedience experiments when they received their orders over the phone, were far less obedient.
• Attribution theory concerns our tendency to explain our behavior and that of others by inferring causes on the basis of internal or external actors.
• Refusing to outline a complete text to aid studying for a friend's final exam initially, then agreeing to outline two chapters when asked again is the door-in-the-face effect.
• When a person with little or no authority makes a direct request to another person, the situation involves compliance.
• Cognitive dissonance theory is based on the human need for consistency.
• Prisoners quickly became passive and were dehumanized during research in a simulated prison situation.
• Social psychology is the field of study where how individuals are affected by the presence of others is the focus.
• The organism learns to respond to the CS alone after pairing the CS and US in a series of conditioning trials which is then called conditioned response.
• The child is conditioned to fear a furry, black cat and soon fears any black furry object, demonstrating stimulus generalization.
• Acquiring a fear of a light because you saw someone else getting shocked when the light came on is an example of vicarious conditioning.
• A continuous reinforcement means each response is reinforced.
• The boyfriend winks each time before saying "I love you" means your expectation when he winks is a conditioned stimulus.
• B. a relatively permanent change in behavior due to past experience.
• Is the best definition of learning.
• The tendency for prior learning to inhibit recall of later learning is called proactive interference.
• Memories outside of conscious awareness are called implicit memories.
• Essay questions tends to be more difficult because recall is required rather than recognition.
• An intelligence test for adults includes a general knowledge section which tests for semantic memory.
• A mail clerk now has difficulty sorting mail after having to rearrange mailboxes in a student dormitory, which illustrates retroactive interference.
• Remembering the first and last items of a list better than items in the middle is due to the serial position effect.
• According to the interference theory of forgetting, new learning can inhibit the retrieval of stored memory, and vice-versa.
• When new learning disrupts the ability to recall past, stored information, retroactive interference has said to occur.
• An area of the brain of particular importance for memory storage is the hippocampus.
• Picking out the criminal from a lineup after you witnessed a crime uses your recognition memory task.
• Tyrone is supportive of same-sex marriage and the political candidate for whom he plans to vote opposes same-sex marriage, Tyrone is likely experiencing cognitive dissonance.
• Jim believes that capital punishment is wrong and after speaking with some like-minded co-workers, he feels even more convinced that his opinion is which is an example of group polarization.
• A soldier who commits acts of violence against others because his or her superior instructed him or her to do so is an example of obedience.
• Asch is best known for research on conformity.
• Guards readily assumed their roles as agents of force during the Stanford Prison study.
• Solomon Asch's classic experiment tested the limits of conformity.
• The person who agrees to a small request initially is more likely later to comply with a larger demand, which describes the foot-in-the-door effect.
• The process of changing your behavior to match that of others in a group is conformity.
• Having "clashing thoughts" is experiencing cognitive dissonance.
• The distance between the teacher and the learner was a factor in determining the degree of obedience in Milgram's series of experiments.
• Stanley Milgram's experiment in which a "teacher" gave shocks to a "learner" was designed to test the limits of obedience.
• Milgram's shock study showed people to be surprisingly obedient.