Go to: Answers to Section 5-3 Quiz Questions

1. Tammy believes that men are self-centered, manipulative, and insensitive. This belief BEST illustrates which of the following concepts?

A. automatic process
B. controlled process
C. social role
D. social stereotype

2. To what does the term "mindlessness" refer?

A. It refers to responding purposefully to a situation.
B. It refers to responding automatically to a situation.
C. It refers to severe deficits in cognitive abilities.
D. It refers to severe underdevelopment of cognitive abilities.

3. Why do we have controlled processes?

A. They allow us to process and interpret novel information.
B. They allow us to quickly and efficiently process familiar information.
C. We must use them if we are to perceive events.
D. We must use them if we are to remember events.

4. I have just met a person at a party. Based on her physical appearance and the way that she dresses, I have concluded that she is intelligent and aloof. My judgement of this person based on her physical appearance BEST illustrates

A. mindlessness.
B. the cognitive unconscious.
C. the internalization of social roles.
D. social cognition.

5. Research on the physical-attractiveness stereotype suggests that, if you had to choose between three equally well-qualified applicants for a job, you would be MOST likely to pick the

A. MOST physically attractive applicant.
B. LEAST physically attractive applicant.
C. applicant closest in physical attractiveness to yourself.
D. none of the above

6. What is the MOST important influence on the development of schemas?

A. heredity
B. emotions
C. motives
D. experience

7. Your self-schema is least likely to affect

A. which life events are most beneficial to you.
B. which life events you attend to.
C. how you interpret life events.
D. how you encode life events.

8. Which of the following is MOST likely to cause us to react mindlessly to events?

A. our gender stereotypes
B. our ethnic stereotypes
C. our self-schemas
D. all the above

9. Diana has a "teacher schema" that includes the belief that, "Teachers like to make students feel stupid." Last week, her algebra teacher tried to help her during class while Diana was struggling with a difficult problem. Given what you know about the relationship between schemas and memory, which of the following is MOST likely to occur?

A. Diana will remember incorrectly that her teacher tried to make her feel stupid.
B. Diana will remember incorrectly that she solved the problem with no trouble.
C. Diana will come to believe that teachers help students learn difficult material.
D. Diana will come to believe that she can't learn algebra without assistance.

10. A social stereotype is

A. a major influence on how much we enjoy social situations.
B. a major influence on how much we will try to please others.
C. a type of learning.
D. a type of schema.

11. On average, people who are physically attractive are judged by others to

A. have positive personality characteristics.
B. have negative personality characteristics.
C. be less likely to succeed in life.
D. be less likely to get along with others.

12. Self-schemas are most important for the

A. development of novel situations.
B. activation of life events and experiences.
C. encoding of information related to the self.
D. performance of learned behaviors.

13. When engaged in social cognition, we do all of the following EXCEPT:

A. interpret social information.
B. create social information.
C. remember social information.
D. attend to social information.

14. Which of the following statements about stereotypes is FALSE?

A. Stereotypes influence how we process information.
B. Stereotypes consist of oversimplified beliefs.
C. Stereotypes are one type of schema.
D. Stereotypes cause us to use controlled processes.

15. Research on physical attractiveness has shown that

A. most people disregard physical attractiveness when forming first impressions of people.
B. judgments of women's personalities are most affected by their physical attractiveness.
C. we tend to assign desirable personality characteristics to physically attractive people.
D. men are most likely to judge others based on their physical appearance.

16. Social psychologists believe that people's self-schemas

A. become less important for their personalities as they grow older.
B. have less influence on their behaviors than do social situations.
C. do not develop until late adolescence or young adulthood.
D. cause them to automatically process information related to the self.

17. In class, I am most likely to use _____ when I talk about a topic that I only recently started to learn about.

A. social stereotypes
B. social cognition
C. controlled processes
D. automatic processes

18. Which of the following tasks typically would NOT involve automatic processes?

A. thinking about your educational goals and how to achieve them
B. walking down the sidewalk outside your front door
C. reading your textbook while listening carefully to the TV
D. driving your car on a familiar road with little traffic

19. Social stereotypes tend to be MOST beneficial for person perception when

A. members of a stereotyped group generally share similar personality characteristics, beliefs, standards, and values.
B. the controlled processes typically activated by social stereotypes are used to make accurate inferences about group members.
C. members of the group believe that their social stereotype reflects accurately the personal qualities of most group members.
D. none of the above

20. What is the major advantage of schemas for our ability to respond adaptively to our surroundings?

A. The activation of a schema allows us to respond quickly and effortlessly to a familiar situation.
B. The activation of a schema allows us to respond quickly and effortlessly to a novel situation.
C. The activation of schemas allows us to inhibit the maladaptive responses produced by social stereotypes.
D. The activation of schemas allows us to inhibit the maladaptive responses produced by cognitive biases.

21. Are people always, or even often, aware of the environmental stimuli that activate their negative social stereotypes?

A. Yes, social psychologists have shown that people generally are aware of the causes of their own behaviors.
B. Yes, but only when people carefully introspect on the mental processes producing their behaviors.
C. No, people are unable to attend to the fundamental causes of their own cognitions, emotions, and behaviors.
D. No, social stereotypes are activated unconsciously even in those who consciously reject the stereotypes.

22. The field of cognitive neuroscience focuses primarily on understanding how

A. cognitive activity produces brain activity.
B. neurochemical activity produces brain sctivity.
C. brain activity produces behaviors.
D. brain activity produces cognitions.

23. Controlled processes are considered to be part of

A. sensory memory.
B. explicit memory.
C. working memory.
D. episodic memory.

24. Lisa believes that college professors are arrogant, rude, unfriendly, and uncaring. When she went to talk with her psychology professor about a low test score, she found that, as she had expected, he responded to her in an unfriendly, uncaring, rude, and arrogant manner. What surprised her later in the semester was that many other students in her class thought that he was kind, gentle, caring, and very friendly. Which of the following concepts probably is MOST relevant for understanding Lisa's apparently incorrect impression of her psychology professor's personality?

A. self-schema
B. self-fulfilling prophecy
C. social cognition
D. mindfulness

Go to: Answers to Section 5-3 Quiz Questions