Section 5-1: The Power of the Situation

1. What is the major assumption of those working within the field of social psychology?
2. Do others need to be present in order for them to influence our behaviors, cognitions, and emotions? Why or why not?
3. How does personality psychology differ from social psychology?
4. How is personality psychology similar to social psychology?
5. In what way(s) does personality psychology complement social psychology?
6. What is conformity?
7. How did Solomon Asch study conformity?
8. Which situational factors had the largest influence on the degree to which participants conformed in Asch's experiments?
9. Why do individuals tend to avoid disagreeing with the judgements and opinions expressed by a group to which they belong?
10. Why did Asch make use of confederates and deception in his studies of conformity?
11. How would you define "social facilitation" in your own words?
12. What is an example of social facilitation from your own life?
13. In what way is task difficulty linked to social facilitation?
14. What is a problem with the theory that social facilitation is caused by feelings of competitiveness when others are present?
15. What is a problem with the theory that social facilitation is caused by feelings of performance anxiety?
16. What was Zajonc's theory of social facilitation?
17. What are two general problems that should make us cautious about choosing one particular theory as explaining fully a phenomenon?
18. How is conformity similar to obedience?
19. How does conformity differ from obedience?
20. What events inspired Stanley Milgram to study obedience to authority?
21. How would you describe in your own words the experimental procedure used in Milgram's "standard condition"?
22. Who was the participant being observed and who were the confederates in this procedure?
23. What were the two main "social forces" influencing the participants' behaviors?
24. When Milgram surveyed a group of psychiatrists and asked them to predict at which point most participants would disobey the Experimenter, what was the most common response?
25. How many people out of 1000 did these psychiatrists predict would fully obey the Experimenter?
26. According to Milgram, what were the psychiatrists incorrectly assuming about the primary causes of behavior?
27. How did most participants feel about the consequences of their actions on the Learner?
28. What was the minimum amount of information needed for the participants to begin disobeying the Experimenter?
29. For most participants, what was required in order for them to fully obey the Experimenter?
30. When fully obedient participants were asked to name those responsible for their actions, who did they typically mention?
31. Given the definition of "personality" provided above, why would we conclude that the Teachers' actions were not primarily caused by personality characteristics?
32. Why did Milgram suspect that personality characteristics might have some effect on the amount of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
33. How would you define in your own words the personality characteristic that Elms and Milgram (1966) claimed is linked to levels of obedience?
34. What was their evidence for this claim?
35. Why can we not use this evidence to generalize to all Teachers who participated in the Milgram experiments?
36. What was Milgram's conclusion about the primary cause of differences in the amount of obedience shown by Teachers?
37. Did the physical environment of the experimental setting influence the amount of obedience displayed by Teachers? How was this tested?
38. What are your thoughts about the reason(s) why Teachers did not immediately quit the experiment as soon as they read the labels on the "shock generator"?
39. Why was it important that the shock levels increased only gradually in Milgram's experimental procedure?
40. In what way(s) did the immediacy (salience) of the Learner influence the levels of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
41. In what condition did the Learner's immediacy lead to the lowest levels of obedience?
42. In what way(s) did the immediacy (salience) of the Experimenter influence the levels of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
43. In what condition did the Experimenter's immediacy lead to the highest levels of obedience?
44. In what way did the manner in which the experimental situation was defined by the participants and the social role that they accepted in that situation help to explain the results of Milgram's experiments?

Section 5-2: Validity, Research Ethics, & Social Roles

1. How would you define, in your own words, the meaning of "internal validity"?
2. Would random assignment to different groups increase, decrease, or have no effect on the internal validity of a study? Why?
3. How would you define, in your own words, the meaning of "external validity"?
4. Would random assignment to different groups increase, decrease, or have no effect on the external validity of a study? Why?
5. Controlling for the directionality and third-variable problems found in correlational studies would increase which type of validity? Why?
6. What was Joseph Goldberger's theory of pellagra?
7. Goldberger was more concerned with maximizing which kind of validity in his studies? Why?
8. How did Goldberger show that pellagra was much more likely to be caused by inadequate nutrition than by an organism transmitted through bodily fluids?
9. Why would we conclude that Milgram's studies had high internal validity?
10. Let's say that we want to show that a new medication reduces high levels of cholesterol in people over 40 by performing a study of 1000 men over 40, 500 of whom receive the medication and 500 of whom receive a placebo. The study is performed in a double-blind manner. Which type of validity would be lower in this study: internal or external? Why?
11. Variations in which two factors determine the degree to which a study is externally valid?
12. Which factor was Milgram most concerned with when he tested people from the surrounding community in addition to undergraduate students?
13. Why are artificial research conditions created in laboratory settings if this procedure reduces the external validity of studies?
14. What are researchers most concerned with testing when they perform a study in a controlled laboratory setting?
15. Why is deception used in many social psychological studies?
16. What is(are) the ethical problem(s) with respect to the use of deception? (In your answer, please discuss the issue of informed consent.)
17. Why did Milgram not think that his use of deception and the extreme distress experienced by many of the participants violated ethical standards?
18. Why is it important to have debriefing sessions for participants after they have completed an experiment?
19. What are possible benefits of research studies?
20. How do we decide whether or not a study meets ethical standards for research?
21. Why do people disagree about whether a study is ethical or not?
22. What are institutional review boards (IRBs)?
23. Why do many research psychologists criticize IRBs?
24. What inspired Philip Zimbardo to perform the Stanford Prison Study?
25. What hypothesis was Zimbardo and his colleagues testing?
26. Why did they not use an actual prison situation to test this hypothesis?
27. How did they control for the effects of personality?
28. What did they do to make their prison simulation as real as possible?
29. What did they do to make sure that the participants became immersed in their assigned roles?
30. What individual differences emerged in those assigned to the prisoner role?
31. What individual differences emerged in those assigned to the guard role?
32. What happened with respect to "group cohesiveness" in the prisoners and in the guards?
33. In what way did the cruel behaviors of the guards in Zimardo's study differ from the cruel behaviors of the Teachers in Milgram's study?
34. Why did this difference occur between the two studies?
35. In what ways did the thinking of the prison guard who kept a diary change over the course of the experiment?
36. Why did Zimbardo end the study over a week before it was supposed to end?
37. In what ways were the results of Zimbardo's and Milgram's studies similar?
38. Why did they get such similar results?
39. What was Zimbardo's main conclusion?
40. What makes this conclusion so extreme?
41. What was a major limitation of Zimbardo's study with respect to discovering the factors that were most important for the influence of social roles on behavior?
42. Why did Zimbardo not realize initially that his study was unethical — that its harms outweighed its benefits?

Section 5-3: The Cognitive Unconscious

1. According to social psychologists such as Stanley Milgram, why do people often not know the causes of their own behavior?
2. At what level of awareness do we tend to process information in our immediate social situations?
3. What is an example of a habit that is not mentioned in the textbook?
4. Is the information required for the performance of a habit processed consciously? Why or why not?
5. How would you define automatic processes in your own words?
6. When do we tend to use automatic processes?
7. How would you define controlled processes in your own words?
8. When do we tend to use controlled processes?
9. What is an example of a situation, not mentioned in the textbook, in which you would use controlled processes?
10. How would you use the concepts of automatic and controlled processes to explain the behaviors of the Teachers in Milgram's studies of obedience?
11. How is working memory related to controlled processes?
12. How is working memory related to automatic processes?
13. How would you define "mindlessness" in your own words?
14. How would you define "mindfulness" in your own words?
15. In what type of social situation are we most likely to act mindlessly?
16. In what type of social situation are we most likely to act mindfully?
17. How does the Stroop Test Illustrate the distinction between automatic and controlled processes?
18. How would you define the cognitive unconscious in your own words?
19. What is an example from your own life of the influence of the cognitive unconscious?
20. How are automatic processes related to the cognitive unconscious?
21. How are controlled processes related to the cognitive unconscious?
22. How does the case study of Neil help us to understand the cognitive unconscious?
23. How would you define the field of "cognitive neuroscience" in your own words?
24. What is an example of a schema not mentioned in the textbook?
25. In what ways are we influenced by schemas?
26. How are schemas related to automatic and controlled processing of information?
27. How are schemas related to the cognitive unconscious?
28. Why are self-schemas thought to be especially important influences on our conscious cognitions, emotions, and behaviors?
29. How would you explain the information presented in Figure 1 to someone who knows nothing about the topic?
30. What effects do schemas tend to have on episodic memories?
31. What problems may result from using schemas to process information?
32. What are the benefits of using schemas to process information?
33. How would you define "social cognition" in your own words?
34. What is an example from earlier today of a situation in which you were engaged in social cognition?
35. How did Milgram study the effects of person perception on obedience? What did he find?
36. How would you define "person perception" in your own words?
37. Do you think that controlled processes can be used in person perception? (Please explain your answer.)
38. What is an example from earlier today of a situation in which you were engaged in person perception?
39. What kinds of information are used in person perception when we meet someone new?
40. What kinds of information do you think we use in person perception when we see a member of our immediate family?
41. How would you define "social stereotype" in your own words?
42. What is an example of a social stereotype not mentioned in the textbook?
43. What were the hypotheses tested in the study reported by Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005)? How did they test these hypotheses?
44. How did the results of the study reported by Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005) show the influence of social stereotypes on person perception?
45. When a person rejects a social stereotype because it is based on prejudice and false beliefs about a group of people, what influence does this have on the inferences this person makes about individual members of the stereotyped group? (Please explain your answer.)
46. What are the benefits of social stereotypes?
47. What are the harms of social stereotypes?
48. When are social stereotypes most likely to be accurate, in general terms?
49. What is the physical-attractiveness stereotype?
50. Given that you know that a great deal of research has shown that the physical-attractiveness stereotype is mostly inaccurate, do you think that it no longer will affect the inferences you make about physically attractive versus physically unattractive people? Why or why not?
51. How would you define the "self-fulfilling prophecy" in your own words?
52. How are social stereotypes related to self-fulfilling prophecies?
53. What is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy from your own life?

Section 5-4: Attributions & the Sociocognitive Approach

1. What are attributions and how do they affect our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors?
2. What is an example from your everyday life that provides an illustration of your answer to the preceding question?
3. How are internal and external attributions similar?
4. How do internal and external attributions differ?
5. What information helps us to make either an internal or an external attribution?
6. What is an example from your own life in which you made an internal or an external attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
7. How are stable and unstable attributions similar?
8. How do stable and unstable attributions differ?
9. What information helps us to make either a stable or an unstable attribution?
10. What is an example from your own life in which you made a stable or an unstable attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
11. How are general (global) and specific attributions similar?
12. How do general (global) and specific attributions differ?
13. What information helps us to make either a general or a specific attribution?
14. What is an example from your own life in which you made a general or a specific attribution based on such information? (Note: Please indicate the actor, action, and situation in your example.)
15. What is a depressive attributional style and which emotional problems is it associated with?
16. How would a cognitive psychotherapist help a person with a depressive attributional style?
17. How would you define "cognitive bias" in your own words?
18. How would you define a "motivational bias" in your own words?
19. How is a cognitive bias similar to a motivational bias?
20. How does a cognitive bias differ from a motivational bias?
21. What is an example of the "bandwagon effect" from your everyday life?
22. What is an example of "wishful thinking" from your everyday life?
23. How would you define the "fundamental attribution bias" in your own words?
24. What is an example of the fundamental attribution bias from your everyday life?
25. How did the study performed by Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977) provide evidence for the strength of the fundamental attribution bias?
26. How do the attributions often made with respect to the actions of a television or movie actor portraying a character provide evidence for the strength of the fundamental attribution bias?
27. How would you define the "just-world bias" in your own words?
28. What is an example of the just-world bias from your everyday life?
29. How would you define the "self-serving bias" in your own words?
30. What is an example of the self-serving bias from your everyday life?
31. How is the self-serving bias similar to the self-effacing bias?
32. How does the self-serving bias differ from the self-effacing bias?
33. In which type of culture is the self-serving bias most likely to be found?
34. In which type of culture is the self-effacing bias most likely to be found?
35. What would you predict about the relationship between the self-effacing bias and suffering from major depression? Why?
36. Which of the attributional biases listed above are cognitive biases and which are motivational biases?
37. What is suggestion and how does it determine our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors according to the model outlined in Figure 3?
38. What do psychodynamically oriented therapists tend to assume about hypnosis and the retrieval of implicit memories?
39. What is age regression and how do hypnotherapists use it to retrieve repressed memories of traumatic events?
40. Which theoretical approach claims that hypnosis involves an altered state of consciousness?
41. According to sociocognitive theorists, why do hypnotic inductions cause people to respond as if they are in a trance-like state of consciousness?
42. According to sociocognitive theorists, what teaches people how to become hypnotized?
43. How would you summarize in your own words Spanos' sociocognitive theory of hypnosis? (Note: See the passage from his 1996 book quoted above.)
44. What does it mean to say that hypnotic inductions act as suggestions?
45. What evidence is there that we are capable of experiencing significant changes in our experience of ourselves and the world around us even while in a normal waking state of consciousness?
46. What did Fisher (1954) conclude with respect to the claim that posthypnotic suggestions cause people to respond involuntarily to certain cues?
47. What does research demonstrate about the effectiveness of hypnosis in helping people to consciously retrieve forgotten implicit memories?