PSYCH 3325 – Midterm Exam Practice
Questions and Answers
Suppose you are a plant supervisor, and you want your employees to assemble your
product more quickly. Triplett would suggest that you do which of the following?
a. Let people work in whatever way seems best to them.
b. Set production quotas and fire employees who do not meet them.
c. Put up barriers so the employees cannot see each other and therefore won't chat.
d. Have people working side by side so they can see what others are doing. - ANS-d
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom finds more than a dozen friends
to paint his fence, and they start to work. Upon inspecting the progress, Tom finds that
they don't seem to be working especially hard and their work is shoddy. Which famous
social psychological finding best accounts for this result?
a. Kurt Lewin's field theory
b. Max Ringelmann's social loafing
c. Norman Tripplet's social facilitation
d. Stanley Milgram's obedience - ANS-b
What did Milgram find in his studies on obedience?
a. When people feel that they have been harmed by others, they are more likely to
choose to harm individuals from that same group.
b. When people are working in large groups, diffusion of responsibility can result in
behaving against their moral compasses.
c. When people are given orders by someone who appears to have legitimate authority,
many will follow the orders even if it means harming others.
d. When people are in the military, they develop an intense loyalty to each other such
that they will act blindly as a group instead of individuals. - ANS-c
Protests are not an uncommon event on campuses, and sometimes those protests can
be prolonged and vigorous. In seeking to understand why protests occur, a social
psychologist would be most likely to start by looking at which of the following?
a. The situation that led to the protests
b. The motivations of the students
c. the students' political attitudes
d. The student's affect - ANS-a
Your social psychology professor gives you an assignment that involves creating a
social psychological experiment of interest to you. You know from your text that an
experiment involves _____.
a. the systematic testing of a theory
,b. snowball sampling
c. the collection of quantitative data
d. meta-analytic methods - ANS-a
Dr. Salingaros studies criminal behavior and is interested in why people choose to
commit crimes. In particular, he looks that matters like what other options people have
other than criminal behavior and the potential risks and benefits of criminal behavior to
them. His research is most influenced by _____.
a. history
b. anthropology
c. economics
d. political science - ANS-c
Psychologists who study the changes in people from conception and birth to old age
and death are known as _____.
a. clinical psychologists
b. cognitive psychologists
c. developmental psychologists
d. personality psychologists - ANS-c
Upon learning that you are a psychology major, one of your friends immediately starts
asking for study tips, noting that when he takes a test, he cannot seem to remember
anything. This issue is best addressed by the subfield of _____.
a. biological psychology
b. personality psychology
c. cognitive psychology
d. clinical psychology - ANS-c
Dr. Bordt is interested in studying how to reduce the stigma associated with mental
disorder. This study is an example of which type of research?
a. correlational
b. practical
c. basic
d. applied - ANS-d
You are conducting research on how personal religious beliefs are related to attitudes
towards regulations aimed at slowing climate change. According to the text, your next
step is to _____.
a. state a testable hypothesis
b. identify the statistical tests
c. develop operational definitions
d. review the research literature - ANS-a
You are engaging in a spirited discussion with your uncle about gender roles and
explain the results of recent research. He responds by dismissively telling you, "that's
only a theory." You sigh and emphasize that in science, a theory is _____.
, a. a series of guidelines for research
b. a consensus statement by experts in the field
c. a series of mathematical formulas
d. composed of logically linked constructs - ANS-d
Dr. Mangus studies how socioeconomic status is related to political attitudes. She
believes that it is not just an individual's current socioeconomic status is important, but
how that status has changed over time. She therefore creates a series of questions that
enable her to categorize how an individual's status has changed over time. In doing so,
she has created a(n) _____.
a. within-subjects design
b. a control method
c. dependent variable
d. operational definition - ANS-d
Dr. Leifson is reading a research article on beliefs about aggression but questions
whether the instrument really measures what is claims to measure. Dr. Leifson is
questioning the instrument's _____.
a. test-retest reliability
b. significance
c. construct validity
d. assignment - ANS-c
You want to learn more about what it is like to conduct research and decide to
participate in a research study. You arrive at a research facility where you are given
paperwork that gives you information about the study's procedures. You recognize that
you have been given a _____.
a. release document
b. demand characteristics form
c. consent form
d. survey document - ANS-c
Dr. Aguilar wants to study how persuasive public service ads are regarding getting
COVID vaccinations. She believes that the persuasiveness of the ads may vary
depending on whether the person viewing them knows someone who died from COVID.
Obviously, she cannot randomly assign people to groups and then arrange for the
friends or family members of one group to die from COVID. Her research is therefore
most likely to involve which design?
a. basic
b. experimental
c. quasi-experimental
d. meta-analytic - ANS-c
Dr. Watson just completed a study on how self-esteem is influenced by social media is
very confident that changes in the independent variable (presentation of various
Questions and Answers
Suppose you are a plant supervisor, and you want your employees to assemble your
product more quickly. Triplett would suggest that you do which of the following?
a. Let people work in whatever way seems best to them.
b. Set production quotas and fire employees who do not meet them.
c. Put up barriers so the employees cannot see each other and therefore won't chat.
d. Have people working side by side so they can see what others are doing. - ANS-d
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom finds more than a dozen friends
to paint his fence, and they start to work. Upon inspecting the progress, Tom finds that
they don't seem to be working especially hard and their work is shoddy. Which famous
social psychological finding best accounts for this result?
a. Kurt Lewin's field theory
b. Max Ringelmann's social loafing
c. Norman Tripplet's social facilitation
d. Stanley Milgram's obedience - ANS-b
What did Milgram find in his studies on obedience?
a. When people feel that they have been harmed by others, they are more likely to
choose to harm individuals from that same group.
b. When people are working in large groups, diffusion of responsibility can result in
behaving against their moral compasses.
c. When people are given orders by someone who appears to have legitimate authority,
many will follow the orders even if it means harming others.
d. When people are in the military, they develop an intense loyalty to each other such
that they will act blindly as a group instead of individuals. - ANS-c
Protests are not an uncommon event on campuses, and sometimes those protests can
be prolonged and vigorous. In seeking to understand why protests occur, a social
psychologist would be most likely to start by looking at which of the following?
a. The situation that led to the protests
b. The motivations of the students
c. the students' political attitudes
d. The student's affect - ANS-a
Your social psychology professor gives you an assignment that involves creating a
social psychological experiment of interest to you. You know from your text that an
experiment involves _____.
a. the systematic testing of a theory
,b. snowball sampling
c. the collection of quantitative data
d. meta-analytic methods - ANS-a
Dr. Salingaros studies criminal behavior and is interested in why people choose to
commit crimes. In particular, he looks that matters like what other options people have
other than criminal behavior and the potential risks and benefits of criminal behavior to
them. His research is most influenced by _____.
a. history
b. anthropology
c. economics
d. political science - ANS-c
Psychologists who study the changes in people from conception and birth to old age
and death are known as _____.
a. clinical psychologists
b. cognitive psychologists
c. developmental psychologists
d. personality psychologists - ANS-c
Upon learning that you are a psychology major, one of your friends immediately starts
asking for study tips, noting that when he takes a test, he cannot seem to remember
anything. This issue is best addressed by the subfield of _____.
a. biological psychology
b. personality psychology
c. cognitive psychology
d. clinical psychology - ANS-c
Dr. Bordt is interested in studying how to reduce the stigma associated with mental
disorder. This study is an example of which type of research?
a. correlational
b. practical
c. basic
d. applied - ANS-d
You are conducting research on how personal religious beliefs are related to attitudes
towards regulations aimed at slowing climate change. According to the text, your next
step is to _____.
a. state a testable hypothesis
b. identify the statistical tests
c. develop operational definitions
d. review the research literature - ANS-a
You are engaging in a spirited discussion with your uncle about gender roles and
explain the results of recent research. He responds by dismissively telling you, "that's
only a theory." You sigh and emphasize that in science, a theory is _____.
, a. a series of guidelines for research
b. a consensus statement by experts in the field
c. a series of mathematical formulas
d. composed of logically linked constructs - ANS-d
Dr. Mangus studies how socioeconomic status is related to political attitudes. She
believes that it is not just an individual's current socioeconomic status is important, but
how that status has changed over time. She therefore creates a series of questions that
enable her to categorize how an individual's status has changed over time. In doing so,
she has created a(n) _____.
a. within-subjects design
b. a control method
c. dependent variable
d. operational definition - ANS-d
Dr. Leifson is reading a research article on beliefs about aggression but questions
whether the instrument really measures what is claims to measure. Dr. Leifson is
questioning the instrument's _____.
a. test-retest reliability
b. significance
c. construct validity
d. assignment - ANS-c
You want to learn more about what it is like to conduct research and decide to
participate in a research study. You arrive at a research facility where you are given
paperwork that gives you information about the study's procedures. You recognize that
you have been given a _____.
a. release document
b. demand characteristics form
c. consent form
d. survey document - ANS-c
Dr. Aguilar wants to study how persuasive public service ads are regarding getting
COVID vaccinations. She believes that the persuasiveness of the ads may vary
depending on whether the person viewing them knows someone who died from COVID.
Obviously, she cannot randomly assign people to groups and then arrange for the
friends or family members of one group to die from COVID. Her research is therefore
most likely to involve which design?
a. basic
b. experimental
c. quasi-experimental
d. meta-analytic - ANS-c
Dr. Watson just completed a study on how self-esteem is influenced by social media is
very confident that changes in the independent variable (presentation of various
