PSY 450: Experimental Psychology



PSY 450: Experimental Psychology

Practice Test #1

1. Dr. Jade, a clinical psychologist, says that human behavior is deterministic. What does she mean by that?

a. We determine, through free will, what behaviors to perform.

b. Behavior is solely influenced by natural causes.

c. Our actions follow some grand scheme or design laid out for us.

d. We are predestined to engage in certain behaviors.

2. A psychic claims to be able to lift objects by the force of mind alone. Yet when a psychologist attempts to observe the phenomenon, the psychic claims that her "power" does not work in the presence of skeptics. If we cannot observe a behavior, we cannot study it, according to the criterion that scientific evidence must be

a. systematic.

b. serendipitous.

c. controlled.

d. empirical.

3. Fletch is studying movie-going behavior. Sometimes he counts the number of times his participants go to the movies each month and sometimes he asks participants to report whether they go to movies "never," "seldom," or "frequently." Unfortunately, Fletch's measure violates the scientific criterion of

a. control.

b. empiricism.

c. objectivity.

d. being systematic.

4. Understanding the factors that eliminate aggression in children's behavior is most similar to which goal of psychological research?

a. Control

b. Prediction

c. Describing

d. Explaining

5. Ivan Pavlov and his students accidentally discovered the basic tenants of classical conditioning when studying the digestive system in dogs. In other words, their findings relevant to learning theory were

a. serendipitous.

b. systematic.

c. deterministic.

d. parsimonious.

6. An example of a testable hypothesis is

a. "A wagging tail means a dog is happy."

b. "When people die, they see a bright light."

c. "New neurons grow when old ones die off."

d. "Little boys suffer an Oedipal complex until they can successfully identify with the male gender role."

7. Jade, a researcher, is doing a new study to try to duplicate the specific design and results of a previous study. She wants to rule out the chance factors that may have affected the previous study. Which type of replication does this procedure involve?

a. Literal

b. Indirect

c. Conceptual

d. Converging

8. Suppose I am selecting people to call for jury duty. It is a small county, so I place the names of everyone who is eligible in a large hat. After mixing thoroughly, I draw 40 people to call. I have chosen a

a. population.

b. systematic random sample.

c. simple random sample.

d. representative sample.

9. Dr. Fletch recently got permission from the warden of a local prison to use prisoners to study the effects of the drug Zoloft on depression. He wants to be able to generalize the results obtained from the study to the general population of adults in the United States. What is the major problem with using this sample?

a. This is a simple random sample.

b. This sample is not representative of the population.

c. Controlled observations of this sample are difficult.

d. This sample cannot be studied systematically.

10. Dr. Fletch is testing participants to examine the effects of music tempo on how quickly they respond in a Jeopardy-style task. The dependent variable here is

a. time of responding.

b. music tempo.

c. sex of experimenter.

d. sex of subject.

11. For her developmental psychology class, Jade is comparing the motor performance of two-year-olds and four-year-olds at a daycare center. Of course, the children already qualify for each condition based upon their current age. Jade's study is an example of

a. a true experiment.

b. the use of random assignment.

c. a quasi-experiment.

d. the use of representative sampling.

12. In a(n) ________________ design, the researcher measures, rather than manipulates, variables to determine whether a relationship can be found.

a. experimental design

b. causal

c. correlational design

d. laboratory

13. Fletch is conducting a study to examine sex differences in smiling. His hypothesis is that women smile more than men. He unintentionally smiles more at women during the experiment than he does at men. This experimenter variables is

a. a systematic extraneous variable.

b. random error, thus nothing to worry about.

c. an unsystematic extraneous variable.

d. consistent across participants, thus is not a confound.

14. Jade takes an IQ test today, and her IQ score is 130. Last week, her IQ score on the same test was 70. The IQ test appears to lack

a. construct validity.

b. generalizability.

c. reliability.

d. content validity.

15. A culture-fair IQ test is intended to measure an individual's capacity for intelligence, not an individual's unique cultural experience. This type of test is designed to have

a. ecological validity.

b. internal validity.

c. external validity.

d. construct validity.

16. Jade a study on racism that was published in 1953. She wonders whether similar results would be found today. What type of validity is she concerned with?

a. Internal

b. Construct

c. Ecological

d. Temporal

17. A descriptive design could not tell you whether

a. calm people drink less coffee than do jittery people.

b. excess dopamine causes schizophrenia.

c. taller people weigh more than shorter people.

d. women have higher verbal scores than men.

18. Compared with true experiments, quasi-experiments are generally

a. less likely to have external validity.

b. more likely to use random assignment.

c. more likely to have confounding variables.

d. less likely to use reliable measures.

19. The kind of experiments that are conducted to show a causal relationship in a natural setting are

a. descriptive research.

b. external experiments.

c. field experiments.

d. representative research.

20. Imagine that you are doing an interview study of people's religious beliefs. One day while interviewing participants, without thinking you wear a necklace with a cross on it. You have created a research problem called

a. a confound.

b. a demand characteristic.

c. diffusion of treatment.

d. lack of experimental realism.

21. Workers in a factory perform especially well when they know they are being observed. Somehow, the observer never sees any of the "goofing off" that sometimes occurs. The workers' good behavior is a function of

a. experimental realism.

b. reactivity.

c. an instrumentation effect.

d. counterbalancing.

22. Fletch is testing children in his study. He takes special care to familiarize them with the experimenter, the equipment, and the procedure before he begins to collect data. He is attempting to reduce reactivity by using

a. habituation.

b. experimental realism.

c. counterbalancing.

d. unobtrusive measures.

23. It is fairly common in psychological experiments for the researcher to conceal the purpose of the experiment from the participants. Why does the experimenter disguise the true purpose of the study?

a. To make the study more parsimonious.

b. More participants can be run more quickly if you do not explain the purpose of the experiment.

c. To eliminate demand characteristics.

d. It is unethical to allow participants in an experiment to know the purpose of the experiment.

24. Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo (1973) created a prison simulation in which participants pretended to be guards and prisoners. This research technique is called

a. role playing.

b. counterbalancing.

c. use of a distracter task.

d. an unobtrusive measure.

25. Dr. Fletch claims that he has taught dolphins to understand spoken English, but another scientist suggests that the results may be due to the "Clever Hans" effect. What does the scientist mean by that?

a. The dolphins might be responding to subtle visual cues given by Dr. Fletch.

b. The dolphins are correct no more often than we would expect by chance alone.

c. Dr. Fletch's procedure works only with a few especially bright dolphins.

d. Dr. Fletch's procedure works only if the dolphins are trained at infancy.

Short Answers:

1. For the following list of hypothetical statements, explain why they would or would not represent

testable hypotheses.

a. Eating breakfast improves academic performance.

b. People should obey the law.

c. Owls eat more at night than chickadees.

d. People are born with the capacity for evil.

e. Life on Earth was originally “planted” by aliens.

2. Dr. Fletch has observed that people in his office with bigger windows tend to be happier. So he devised a quasi-experiment in which he compared people with different sized windows in their offices on their scores of the Happy People Scale (assume this is a reliable and valid measure of a person’s overall happiness). From this example, identify the independent and dependent variables. Assume he does find this to be true, explain two possible confounding factors that might influence these results.

3. Dr. Jade wants to examine people’s responses to frustration. She sets up a hidden camera in a student lounge and rigs up the school’s candy machine so people put in their money and get nothing in return. She then measures how much people hit kick, punch, shake etc. the candy machine. Explain some ethical considerations that should be made and some possible ethical problems with this study.

PSY 450: Experimental Psychology

Practice Test #1

Multiple Choice Answers

1. b

2. d

3. d

4. a

5. a

6. c

7. a

8. c

9. b

10. a

11. c

12. c

13. a

14. c

15. d

16. d

17. b

18. c

19. c

20. b

21. b

22. a

23. c

24. a

25. a

Short Answers:

1a. Yes it is testable. Participants can be randomly assigned to eat X times per week before class; a control group would not eat breakfast. Several indices of academic performance could then be used (e.g. test scores, quizzes, etc.)

1b. No it is not testable. This is more a statement of morality or social conscience. There is no way to test what people should do in such an ambiguous social perspective. While we can still say yes they should obey the law, we can’t really test if that is really the case or just “common sense”.

1c. Yes it is testable. You could present both types of birds with unlimited food at night and see which type, on average, eats more.

1d. No it is not testable. There is no way to test “evil” at birth (i.e. how could you really define and measure a concept like evil, plus how would you know if it was there at birth?)

1e. No it is not testable. First, there is no direct way of measuring the existence of aliens. Second, there is no way of determining what the conditions were at the inception of the Earth.

2. IV = window size

DV = happiness

There are a number of possible confounds, including:

• maybe people with big windows have bigger offices and it’s the office size that creates happiness

• maybe they have bigger windows because they are in higher positions and thus make more money and thus more happy

• maybe there is more light coming in the window and the light makes them happier

• maybe those with small offices have less heat (less direct sunlight) and that makes them unhappy

3. One ethical concern is the lack of consent because it is a field study (although we have seen that one rule of thumb is that people in the public should expect that others can see them, we have to consider if this is a necessary “unobtrusive” way of obtaining this information – possibly, but possibly not).

This could expose them to some psychological distress (undue anger and frustration) which is out of the control of the researcher (i.e. she has no idea how flipped out people might get). This could lead to physical problems (if they hurt themselves on the machine by hitting, shaking etc.). What would she do if there was some physical harm that happened to the subjects? What if the person gets so upset they don’t do anything to the machine, but go out and hurt someone else (e.g. hit, yell at, shove a secretary in charge of the machines; or take out their frustrations on another student they see).

Need we mention that she is essentially stealing their candy and taking their money in the process. Should she debrief them and give candy/money back?

Another consideration is if after considering potential harm and protecting during the study if the risk still outweigh what she’d actually gain from this situation (probably not).

Confidentiality of participants? What if they go off and someone else sees them who knows them and they get in trouble? What if they totally destroy the machine when no one else is around. Who’s to blame? Do you tell?

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