Difficulty: 2
Page(s) in Text: 6
Topic: What Is Social Psychology?
Skill: APPLICATION
183. The chapter emphasizes that disciplines differ in their level of analysis of important questions. Describe a question or topic that would be best answered by a sociologist, and explain how that question or topic might be modified to be answered by a social psychologist.
Answer: Sociologists are interested in the study of larger social units such as groups, organizations, and societies. They might be interested in the role of marriage in American families or the number of divorces in cultures with arranged marriages. Social psychologists could examine these topics by focusing on the individuals in those situations. For example, how do husbands communicate happiness in marriages in America or how do individuals think about one another in arranged marriages.
Difficulty: 3
Page(s) in Text: 7
Topic: What Is Social Psychology?
Skill: CONCEPTUAL
184. Define the term “fundamental attribution error,” and provide an example of this phenomenon that might occur in daily life.
Answer: The fundamental attribution error is defined as the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors. One example of this is when you see someone trip and fall, you might assume that person is clumsy and may not take into account that it is icy outside.
Difficulty: 2
Page(s) in Text: 8
Topic: The Power of the Situation
Skill: FACTUAL
185. Compare the importance that behaviorist and Gestalt approaches attach to such “mentalistic” concepts as thoughts and feelings. To which of these schools of thought is contemporary social psychology more closely related and why?
Answer: Behaviorists have historically believed that to understand human behavior, there is no need to consider such subjective internal states as thinking or feeling; instead, they have focused on characteristics of the external environment (e.g., punishment and reinforcement). In contrast, Gestalt psychologists assert that it is not enough to understand the objective characteristics of the situation; one must understand how people perceive and interpret the situation. Given social psychology’s focus on social cognition and subjective construals, it shares more in common with Gestalt psychology. Social psychologists often view behaviorist concepts as simplistic.
Difficulty: 2
Page(s) in Text: 9-10
Topic: Power of Social Interpretation
Skill: CONCEPTUAL
186. Consider the following situation: Madeline does very poorly on a term paper she has written. If Madeline is motivated by the need to feel good about herself (the self-esteem approach), what kinds of construals might she make about this?
Answer: Madeline would try to make herself feel better about her performance. She may claim that she just did not care that much about the paper. Or, she may claim that the instructor did not grade it fairly. Another possibility is that she will say that she did not try that hard on the paper, and the grade does not really reflect her abilities.
Difficulty: 2
Page(s) in Text: 13
Topic: Where Construals Come From: Basic Human Motives
Skill: APPLICATION