5 Steps to a 5: AP Psychology - McGraw Hill 2021
Review Questions
5 Scientific Foundations of Psychology
STEP 4 Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
Directions: For each item, choose the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.
1. Wilhelm Wundt and the structuralists studied questions still asked today primarily by
(A) behavioral psychologists
(B) cognitive psychologists
(C) psychodynamic psychologists
(D) humanistic psychologists
(E) sociocultural psychologists
2. With which definition of psychology would John Watson and B. F. Skinner most agree?
(A) Psychology is the science of behavior.
(B) Psychology is the science of mental processes.
(C) Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes.
(D) Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes specific to contexts.
(E) Psychology is the extension of population.
3. The question, “Is intelligence more influenced by heredity or experience?” deals with a big issue in psychology known as
(A) stability vs. change
(B) mind-body dualism
(C) rationality vs. irrationality
(D) structure vs. function
(E) nature vs. nurture
4. If Aristotle and Locke, who both believed that what we know is acquired from experience, were alive today, they would best agree with the
(A) behavioral approach
(B) psychoanalytic approach
(C) humanistic approach
(D) biological approach
(E) psychodynamic approach
5. Which psychological approach is most concerned with the importance of encoding, storing, and retrieving information?
(A) information technology
(B) behavioral approach
(C) psychodynamic approach
(D) biological approach
(E) cognitive approach
6. Dr. Didden was hired by the TLC Company to help it retain its employees without lowering the firm’s profits. After TLC removed cubicles and permitted employees to decorate their workroom as recommended by Dr. Didden, the absentee rate declined and no employees left for jobs elsewhere. Dr. Didden is most likely to be
(A) a forensic psychologist
(B) an industrial/organizational psychologist
(C) a counseling psychologist
(D) a clinical psychologist
(E) an engineering psychologist
7. Organized sets of concepts that explain phenomena are
(A) independent variables
(B) dependent variables
(C) hypotheses
(D) theories
(E) statistics
Refer to the following and your knowledge of psychology to answer questions 8 and 9: Students will be able to read a statement printed in the Comic Sans font faster than the same statement written in the Lucida Calligraphy font.
8. This statement is a(n)
(A) hypothesis
(B) theory
(C) replication
(D) operational definition
(E) correlation
9. The dependent variable in an experiment based on the statement would be
(A) the statement written in the Comic Sans font
(B) the statement written in the Lucida Calligraphy font
(C) the length of time it takes students to read the statements
(D) the students who read the statements written in the Comic Sans font
(E) the number of students who participate in the experiment
10. A quasi-experiment cannot be considered a controlled experiment because
(A) subjects cannot be randomly selected
(B) subjects cannot be randomly assigned
(C) experimenter bias is unavoidable
(D) demand characteristics are unavoidable
(E) too few subjects participate in the procedure
Refer to the following and your knowledge of psychology to answer questions 11 and 12: When subjects in the experimental group put a puzzle piece in the wrong place, the experimenter unconsciously winced. The experimenter did not wince when subjects in the control group put a piece in the wrong place.
11. The wincing of the experimenter must be eliminated because it is
(A) fraudulent
(B) a demand characteristic
(C) a placebo effect
(D) a confabulation
(E) a confounding variable
12. One method to eliminate the wincing of the experimenter is by instituting
(A) the experimenter expectancy effect
(B) the single-blind procedure
(C) the double-blind procedure
(D) the placebo effect
(E) counterbalancing
13. Of the following, which research method is most effective for studying unusually complex or rare phenomena?
(A) controlled experiment
(B) quasi-experiment
(C) test
(D) survey
(E) case study
14. Of the following, which research method would be most appropriate for investigating the relationship between political party membership and attitude toward the death penalty?
(A) controlled experiment
(B) quasi-experiment
(C) test
(D) survey
(E) case study
15. John wants to study the effects of alcohol on the behavior of college students. For his study, he spends 5 hours every night for 2 weeks at a bar near a college watching how the patrons act before and after drinking alcoholic beverages. The research method John is employing is a
(A) controlled experiment
(B) quasi-experiment
(C) test
(D) naturalistic observation
(E) case study
16. Of the following, which can establish a cause and effect relationship?
I. controlled experiment
II. quasi-experiment
III. correlational research
(A) I only
(B) II only
(C) I and II only
(D) I and III only
(E) I, II, and III
Refer to the following and your knowledge of psychology to answer questions 17 and 18: Ms. Costas owns a business with nine other employees. Ms. Costas’s annual salary is $90,000. Her manager’s salary is $60,000. Of her other employees, three earn $25,000 each and five earn $15,000 each.
17. The range of this distribution is
(A) $75,000
(B) $50,000
(C) $25,000
(D) $20,000
(E) $15,000
18. For this distribution, the mean is
(A) lower than both the median and the mode
(B) lower than the median, but higher than the mode
(C) lower than the mode, but higher than the median
(D) higher than both the median and the mode
(E) the same as the median
19. The frequency polygon for this distribution resembles a
(A) normal curve
(B) positively skewed line graph
(C) negatively skewed line graph
(D) bar graph
(E) scatterplot
Answers and Explanations
1. B—Wilhelm Wundt, Hall, and Titchener studied the basic elements of consciousness. Consciousness is currently called cognition. Cognitive psychologists examine thinking, memory, etc., using different methods.
2. A—John Watson and B. F. Skinner rejected the study of consciousness/mental processes because they are private events that cannot be verified scientifically. These behaviorists focused on the antecedents of a behavior, the behavior, and the consequences of the behavior.
3. E—The nature-nurture issue deals with the relative contribution of genes and experience to the expressions of psychological traits and behaviors.
4. A—Behaviorists think that what we know is gained through learning. The other approaches accept that some of our behavior is inborn.
5. E—Cognitive psychologists focus on how we acquire, maintain, and use information.
6. B—Industrial/organizational psychologists examine and assess the conditions, methods, and procedures in the workplace and apply psychological principles to help improve the working environment to increase productivity and job satisfaction.
7. D—This is the definition of theory.
8. A—A hypothesis predicts how two or more factors are related. This statement relates the appearance of a font with the speed at which it can be read.
9. C—The dependent variable in an experiment is the factor that is measured. In this experiment, the type of font is the factor the experimenter is manipulating, or the independent variable. The speed at which it is read is the factor that is measured, or the dependent variable.
10. B—Quasi-experiments deal with groups that have preexisting differences, such as males and females, young and old, etc. Since the study is examining differences associated with those preexisting differences, participants are assigned on the basis of sex, age, etc. Thus, random assignment is not possible.
11. E—The wincing behavior of the experimenter is an unintentional difference between the treatment of the experimental group and the treatment of the control group. An additional difference between the experimental and control groups is a confounding variable. If the wincing is deliberate, then it is considered dishonest, possibly even fraudulent.
12. C—The double-blind procedure, in which neither the experimenter nor the subjects know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group, would probably eliminate the wincing behavior. A single-blind procedure in which only the subjects do not know in which treatment group they have been placed would not affect the experimenter’s behavior.
13. E—An in-depth examination, usually over an extended time, characterizes the case study method.
14. D—Correlational research examines the relationship between two variables. Questionnaires or interviews that ask questions about political party membership and attitude toward the death penalty distributed to a large representative sample of the population could gather appropriate data for the study. Questionnaires and interviews are kinds of surveys.
15. D—He is gathering information in the field about typical behavior of people without manipulating any variables, which characterizes naturalistic observation.
16. A—Only controlled experiments can establish cause-and-effect relationships.
17. A—The range is $90,000 to $15,000, or $75,000. To find the range, deduct the lowest score from the highest score.
18. D—The mean is determined by adding all of the scores and then dividing by the number of scores. $300,000 ÷ 10 = $30,000. The median is the middle score in the ordered distribution. Since there is an even number of scores in the distribution, the median is halfway between the fifth and sixth scores, or $20,000. The most frequent score or mode is $15,000, so the mean is higher than both the median and the mode.
19. B—A frequency polygon is a line graph. A positively skewed distribution has scores clustered toward the low end of the range and a small number of unusually high scores. If you draw the graph with the value of scores on the X axis and the frequency of scores on the Y axis, you can see that the tail is on the right, or more positive, side of the graph.