Social Cognition: From brains to culture
Student Resources
Multiple Choice Quizzes
Take the quiz test your understanding of the key concepts covered in the chapter. Try testing yourself before you read the chapter to see where your strengths and weaknesses are, then test yourself again once you’ve read the chapter to see how well you’ve understood.
1. How accurate are people at estimating averages from a sample population?
- Not very accurate, because their estimates are affected by anchoring
- Fairly accurate, unless a prior expectation influences their estimate
- Very accurate, unless they use a small sample size
- None of the above
Answer:
b. Fairly accurate, unless a prior expectation influences their estimate
2. What is a pitfall that hampers people’s ability to draw inferences from samples?
- Extreme examples within the sample
- Small sample size
- Non-randomness of samples
- All of the above
Answer:
d. All of the above
3. Recognizing that a star baseball prospect will probably “fall back to earth” and perform less outstandingly in the future implies some understanding of what?
- Law of large numbers
- Regression to the mean
- Dilution effect
- Both A and B
Answer:
b. Regression to the mean
4. When people are held accountable for their social judgments, what are the results?
- People become more accurate in their inferences in general
- People’s judgments are impacted more strongly by the dilution effect
- People’s judgments are impacted more strongly by sampling errors
- Both B and C
Answer:
b. People’s judgments are impacted more strongly by the dilution effect
5. Do people improve their inferences when they are trained in reasoning strategies?
- Yes, when learning the explicit rules of statistical inference
- Yes, when learning how to reason based on specified examples
- No, training in reasoning strategies has no measurable effect
- Both A and B
Answer:
d. Both A and B
6. Why might errors in social judgment be overestimated in experiments?
- Conditions in the real world are different from conditions in the laboratory, where people may use different inference strategies
- Problem-solving tasks may be unfair
- Comparing judgments to normative models lacks sensitivity to context
- All of the above
Answer:
d. All of the above
7. When might errors in social judgment not matter?
- When they won’t affect future behaviour
- When biases are constant over time
- When biases are only against certain people
- Both A and B
Answer:
d. Both A and B
8. Which strategies might cancel each other out in their net effects on judgment?
- Dilution effect and failure to recognize regression to the mean
- Dilution effect and sampling error
- Sampling error and failure to recognize regression to the mean
- None of the above
Answer:
d. None of the above
9. When are rapid judgments relatively more likely to be correct?
- When the judgment task is perceived as simple
- When perceivers are expert in the domain
- When perceivers have seen many examples of the targets in the past
- Both B and C
Answer:
d. Both B and C
10. Dijksterhuis and colleagues’ work on unconscious reasoning demonstrated that people tend to be more satisfied with purchases when:
- They deliberate about all purchasing decisions
- They do not deliberate about purchasing decisions
- They deliberate about complex choices and do not deliberate about simple choices
- They deliberate about simple choices and do not deliberate about complex choices
Answer:
d. They deliberate about simple choices and do not deliberate about complex choices
11. Why might one predict that they are not in the 40% of first marriages that end in divorce?
- Base-rate fallacy
- Motivated reasoning
- Availability heuristic
- All of the above
Answer:
d. All of the above
12. People tend to be more receptive of information concerning their personal risk as a result of certain behavioral choices when:
- They feel bad about themselves and their situations
- They feel good about themselves and their situations
- They are unthreatened
- Both B and C
Answer:
d. Both B and C
13. Neuroeconomics uses what model as its reference point?
- Expected utility theory
- Simulation theory
- Discounted utility theory
- None of the above
Answer:
a. Expected utility theory
14. How does neuroeconomics characterize different aspects of human inference?
- By inferring psychological process from activity in different brain regions
- By inferring activity in different brain regions from measures of psychological process
- Both A and B
- Neither A nor B
Answer:
a. By inferring psychological process from activity in different brain regions
15. According to neuroeconomics research, which judgments are more strongly affected by valence information?
- Automatic judgments
- Controlled judgments
- Sequential judgments
- None of the above
Answer:
a. Automatic judgments