Click what you believe to be the best answer for each question.  Once you have clicked an answer, you will be given an explanation as to why your answer was correct or incorrect.  If the answer is incorrect, you will be given a chance to go back to the question, or go back to the home page.  If the answer is correct, you will be given the chance to either go to the next question or go back to the home page. It may be helpful to look at the links that you think are wrong too.  They have valuable information about WHY those choices are wrong.

Note: All questions are interactive. All questions have reasons why each selection is correct or incorrect.

Good luck.

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1: Which of the following does NOT occur in the self-serving bias?

A: we are motivated to enhance our self-esteem
B: we attribute our good behaviors to the situation
C: we attribute our bad behaviors to the situation
D: we make internal attributions for our good behaviors

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2: Why is it easier to think of words that start with the letter K than
  words that have the letter K as the third letter?

A: availability heuristic
B: representativeness heuristic
C: false consensus bias
D: illusory correlation

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3: A store was robbed last night.  Witnesses said that they saw a group of
  teenagers standing on the corner of that same street yesterday
  afternoon.  What factor in the attributional process might cause people
  to blame the teenagers for the robbery?

A: perceptual salience
B: proximity
C: cognitive busyness
D: motivational bias

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4: A group of people were told that red M&M's caused cancer.  Later they
  were told that they had received incorrect information and that red
  M&M's were absolutely safe.  According to research on belief
  perseverance, the people.

A: believed the new information and felt safe eating the M&Ms
B: continued to believe that red M&M's were harmful
C: decided they would eat only the red M&M's and avoid the rest
D: bought stock in the company that makes M&M's

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 5: I like you.  You and I have an argument in a night club, and I hit you,
  which neither of us likes.  According to balance theory, what are the
  options I have for restoring balance to our situation?

A: I might decide that I like you less than I thought I did.
B: I might decide that I didn't really hit you very hard.
C: I might offer you a toaster.
D: A and B only

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6: The relationship between how many violent TV programs children watch in their homes,
and high levels of aggression, is an example of:

A: a causal relationship
B: a correlational relationship
C: a demand characteristic
D: an experimental relationship

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 7: When you phone one of your friends, she is cold and distant toward you.
  After hanging up, you consider the possible causes for her behavior.
  According to Kelley's covariation model of attribution, you would
  consider three kinds of information.  Which is NOT one of them?

A: how your friend acts toward other people on the telephone
B: how your friend acted toward you the last few times you called
C: how other friends of yours have been acting toward you when you phone them
D: how you acted toward your friend during the phone call

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 8: The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs, termed the
  overconfidence phenomenon, can be remedied by

A: receiving prompt feedback about the accuracy of one's judgments
B: instructing people to think of a good reason why one's beliefs may be wrong
C. Learning about the base-rate fallacy.
D: A and B

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 9: In which of the following cases is a person most likely to maintain
  attitude change?

A: Johnny is threatened with severe punishment if he does not clean up his room.
B: Students are paid $300 for writing an essay that goes against their beliefs.
C: A college student goes through severe initiation to get into a sorority.
D: A student is assigned to a campus group that later proves to be unrewarding.

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 10: The goal of attributional retraining is to encourage students to
  persist in school by changing their attributions regarding the cause of
  academic failure from ______________ causes to __________________
  causes.

A: external unstable; internal stable
B: internal stable; internal unstable
C: internal unstable; internal stable
D: external unstable; internal stable

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 11: During discussion section, a debate was held regarding the ethics of
  the Stanford Prison Study.  Results of the demonstration generally
  showed that

A: observers successfully identified the debaters' true attitudes every time
B: observers said they were unable to identify the debates' true attitudes because the debaters had been randomly assigned to argue a certain position
C: observers tended to disregard the random assignment to argue a certain position and identified the debaters' true attitudes to be those they expressed during the debate
D: observers own beliefs influenced their ratings of the debaters, regardless of the positions taken in the debate
 

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12: Self-perception theory differs from dissonance theory in that

A: self-perception theory doesn't address the effects that our behaviors have on our expressed opinions
B: self-perception theory doesn't maintain that an uncomfortable state of tension is aroused when attitudes and actions are inconsistent
C: self-perception theory predicts that small rewards for behavior will produce larger changes in expressed opinions than will large rewards, whereas dissonance theory predicts that large rewards will have more effect on opinions
D: self-perception theory emphasizes more than does dissonance theory the effects that our attitudes have on behavior

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 13: Self-perception theory states that we

A: work to see ourselves in the most positive light
B: consider how other people would act in our place
C: are aware of our attitudes and focus attention on any discrepancies among them
D: have no special access to our own attitudes

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 14: The overjustification effect states that

A: rewarding children is always harmful
B: rewards are harmful only when they are given as a surprise
C: rewarding a child after an activity he enjoys may create too many reasons to enjoy the activity
D: rewarding a child after an activity he enjoys will increase his enjoyment of the activity

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 15: (Taken out at Prof. Aspinwall's request)

 16: An example of an internal attribution for someone's behavior is

A: the weather is rainy and depressing today
B: she was lucky
C: she is a certain type of person
D: she was pressured by others to behave that way

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 17: One of Nancy's professors requires her to write an essay favoring
  additional tuition increases for the spring.  Despite his education and
  the fact the he required her to write the essay, research on the
  fundamental attribution error suggests that the professor is likely to
  infer

A: that Nancy actually does favor the tuition increase
B: that because Nancy was required to write the essay, it could not possibly reflect her real opinions
C: that Nancy's attitude cannot be inferred from the essay on account of the conditions under which it was written
D: that because Nancy is a student, she will not favor the tuition increase

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 18: The fundamental attribution error occurs when

A: we perceive others to be more similar to ourselves than they really are
B: observers fail to augment the effects of the dispositional qualities of the actor
C: observers overestimate situational influences on behavior and underestimate dispositional influences on behavior
D: observers underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on an actor's behavior

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 19: Athletes receive enormous amounts of money for their services to
  professional teams.  If, as their salary increases, their enjoyment of
  playing decreases, this change is best explained by

A: balance theory
B: cognitive dissonance theory
C: Kelley's covariation model
D: the overjustification effect

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 20: A significant correlation between the incidence of mental illness and
  the incidence of divorce among middle class people is likely to mean

A: the mentally ill have difficulty maintaining a successful marriage
B: getting divorced leads to mental illness
C: divorce and mental illness are both caused by other factors, such as a difficult childhood
D: all of the above may be true
 

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21: According to Bem's self-perception theory, participants in the $1 and
  $20 experiment who told a lie for $1 changed their attitudes more than
  participants who told a lie fo $20 because the participants

A: wanted to reduce the unpleasant psychological tension they experienced from telling a lie for so little money<
B: inferred that they must have liked the task because they said they did for so little money
C: inferred that their self-concept could be affirmed by changing their attitudes
D: wanted to increase their self-esteem
 

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NEW QUESTIONS (note: these answers do not have rationales)

22. One of the students who was given the role of playing guard in the
Stanford Prison Study said that in the beginning he felt really bad being
so mean and controlling towards the students who were playing the
prisoners.  However, by the end of the study, he had succeeded in
convincing himself that that they were inferior to him and deserved the
treatment that he was giving them. This is an example of:
(credit Rebecca Engelhart, Spring 99)

A. Over Justification Effect
B. Self-Efficacy
C. Cognitive Dissonance
D. Self-Handicapping

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23. Consider  a situation we have probably all encountered before:
a rude server at a restaurant.  Generally, we do not consider that the
server may be having a bad day, or has to work long hours, or has to work in a
bad environment.  Rather, most people attribute her rudeness to her
disposition.  This is known as_____________

A. Overjustification effect
B. Correspondence bias
C. Self-serving bias
D. Empathy  

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