Final Social Cognition Verified Test Bank Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Social Cognition

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the study of how we understand ourselves and the people around us called?
   1. Emotional cognition
   2. Interactionalism cognition
   3. Relational cognition
   4. Social cognition
   5. Moral cognition
2. What is Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning primarily concerned with?
   1. How people cognitively distort their bad behaviour so they can view it as “good”
   2. The analytical process used to arrive at judgments about what is right and wrong
   3. Whether people can tell the difference between actions that are right and wrong
   4. Why people sometimes act in ways that they know are wrong
   5. Why some people are violent and others are not
3. What level of moral development is exhibited by someone who states, “We shouldn’t do that because we’ll get caught and punished”?
   1. Neoconvention
   2. Postconventional
   3. Conventional
   4. Preconventional
   5. Proconventional
4. According to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, what is the highest level of moral reasoning?
   1. Neoconventional
   2. Postconventional
   3. Conventional
   4. Preconventional
   5. Proconventional
5. As a stage-based theory, which of the following statements about Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is NOT correct?
   1. People exhibit moral reasoning of one stage at a time and never multiple stages simultaneously.
   2. People always progress through the stages in the same sequence.
   3. People always progress to the highest stage.
   4. People only progress to higher levels and never regress backwards.
   5. People cannot move to the next stage without progressing through the one before it.
6. Research shows that delinquent youths are dominated by people operating at the which level of moral reasoning?
   1. Neoconventional
   2. Postconventional
   3. Conventional
   4. Preconventional
   5. Proconventional
7. Umar Abdulmutallab, also known as the Underwear Bomber, made remarks that his effort to blow up the jetliner he was on was intended to “save the lives of innocent Muslims.” This reflects a moral disengagement process that Bandura (2001) calls what?
   1. Dehumanization
   2. Euphemistic labelling
   3. Advantageous comparisons
   4. Moral justification
   5. Confabulation
8. The statement of a serial murderer that his victims were “worthless pieces of trash,” reflects which moral disengagement process?
   1. Displacement of responsibility
   2. Distortion of consequences
   3. Dehumanization
   4. Confabulation
   5. Advantageous comparisons
9. Which of the following is NOT a mechanism of moral disengagement identified by Bandura?
   1. Dehumanization
   2. Euphemistic labelling
   3. Advantageous comparisons
   4. Moral justification
   5. Confabulation
10. According to Bandura, what is the general effect of moral disengagement processes?
    1. Avoiding the negative feelings associated with violating one’s morals
    2. Changing how people arrive at their moral judgments
    3. Disrupting cognition so a person has difficulty recalling his or her moral standards
    4. Lowering a person’s internal standards of morality
    5. Ignoring the consequences of one’s actions
11. Moral justification, euphemistic labelling, and advantageous comparisons are moral disengagement processes that operate by cognitively distorting which of the following?
    1. The perpetrator’s responsibility for the immoral behaviour
    2. The harm caused by the perpetrator’s immoral behaviour
    3. The nature of the immoral behaviour carried out by the perpetrator
    4. The qualities of the victims harmed by the perpetrator
    5. The value of the damage caused by the perpetrator
12. In their book The Criminal Personality, Yochelson and Samenow (1976) describe which of the following?
    1. Different thinking errors that contribute to offending
    2. Different situational factors that contribute to offending
    3. Different psychodynamic forces that contribute to offending
    4. Different personality tests that predict offending
    5. All of the above
13. One of the main criticisms made against the findings Yochelson and Samenow (1976) presented in The Criminal Personality is that the results may be unique to the sample they studied, which consisted of a fairly unusual group of what type of offenders?
    1. Those awaiting execution on death row
    2. New immigrants to the United States
    3. Students who committed mass murder in school shootings
    4. Those found not guilty by reason of insanity
    5. Sexually violent predators
14. Mollification, entitlement, and superoptimism are all which of the following?
    1. Moral disengagement processes described by Bandura
    2. Personality types described by Yochelson and Samenow
    3. Criminal thinking styles described by Walters
    4. Cognitive processes described by Berkowitz
    5. Transfer processes described by Zillman
15. Which of the following ideas is central to Zillman’s excitation transfer theory?
    1. An emotion generated in one setting transfers so that a person continues to experience the same feeling even if the setting is different.
    2. A visible emotion seen in one person will spread so other people nearby experience it too.
    3. Lingering arousal generated in one context is mislabelled based on the person’s current context.
    4. Once an emotion is generated, it tends to activate other related thoughts and physical expressions in that person.
    5. All of the above
16. Berkowitz’s cognitive neo-association model expands on the type of events that might generate aggression beyond frustration to include which of the following?
    1. Unpleasant temperatures
    2. Physical pain
    3. Personal insults
    4. Foul odours
    5. All of the above
17. What process occurs when activation of one part of an interconnected neural network, such as hostile thoughts, leads to the activation of other parts, so that an array of interconnected feelings (e.g., arousal), physiological responses (e.g., increased heart rate), and physical expressions (e.g., clenched fists) are collectively experienced?
    1. Priming
    2. Spreading activation
    3. Deindividuation
    4. Neo-association
    5. Cognition
18. Which of the following is NOT likely to contribute to the psychological state of deindividuation?
    1. Wearing face paint
    2. Wearing a name tag
    3. Being in a large group
    4. Wearing sunglasses
    5. Wearing the same clothes as everyone else
19. According to the traditional view, the process of deindividuation results in behaviour becoming ________, whereas the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) proposes that it becomes ________.
    1. deregulated and less inhibited; more socially regulated and conforming
    2. irregular and unpredictable; deregulated and less inhibited
    3. more socially regulated and conforming; deregulated and less inhibited
    4. irregular and unpredictable; more socially regulated and conforming
    5. deregulated and less inhibited; irregular and unpredictable
20. Milgram’s studies revealed that obedience increases when the person carrying out the order and administering the shock is ________.
    1. closer to the person issuing the order and closer to the victim being shocked
    2. closer to the person issuing the order and farther from the victim being shocked
    3. farther from the person issuing the order and closer to the victim being shocked
    4. farther from the person issuing the order and father from the victim being shocked
    5. not affected by proximity to the authority figure or victim
21. Milgram’s studies of obedience provide empirical support for the moral disengagement mechanism that Bandura called what?
    1. Dehumanization
    2. Displacement of responsibility
    3. Moral justification
    4. Confabulation
    5. Diffusion of responsibility
22. Dodge theorizes that reactive violence is associated with biases/errors that occur in the ________ stages of social information processing, and these biases/errors often develop as a result of ________.
    1. initial; child abuse
    2. initial; exposure to violent role models
    3. later; child abuse
    4. later; exposure to violent role models
    5. later; domestic abuse
23. Which term refers to the tendency of some people to interpret the neutral or ambiguous conduct of others as indications of aggressive intent or behaviour?
    1. Projection
    2. Hostile attribution bias
    3. Frustration-aggression hypothesis
    4. Cognitive neo-association
    5. Cognitive transference
24. According to Fontaine and Dodge (2006), what is the social information processing stage that has likely been skipped when someone engages in impulsive and aggressive behaviour?
    1. Encoding process
    2. Interpretation process
    3. Response search process
    4. Response evaluation process
    5. Expectation process
25. Social information processing theories suggest we maintain cognitive structures in our memory that set out the expected sequence of behaviour for a particular social situation as well as the likely outcome of that behaviour. What does Huesmann (1998) call these cognitive structures?
    1. Templates
    2. Mental scenarios
    3. Cognitive storylines
    4. Scripts
    5. Knowledge bits
26. Berkowitz’s cognitive neo-association model involves two distinct phases of cognition, beginning with an initial phase dominated by ________, and followed by a second phase dominated by ________.
    1. spreading activation; deeper cognitive processing
    2. heightened emotions; emotional transfer
    3. aversive events; misattribution
    4. frustration; aggression
    5. biological and environmental factors; person and situational factors
27. The study by Berkowitz and LePage (1967) found that participants responded with more aggression when they were visually exposed to guns. This might occur because the sight of the weapons increased the accessibility of aggressive mental structures. What is this process known as?
    1. Priming
    2. Template triggering
    3. Aggressive excitation
    4. Fuelling
    5. The Rambo effect
28. Research supportive of social information processing theories shows that people who are aggressive tend to do which of the following?
    1. Seek out and remember aggressive social cues
    2. Display hostile attribution bias
    3. Retrieve fewer and less effective scripts
    4. Feel more skilled at executing aggressive than non-aggressive behaviours
    5. All of the above
29. According to the General Aggression Model (GAM), individual differences and situational factors act as input variables that increase the risk of violent behaviour because they impact what?
    1. A person’s current arousal level
    2. A person’s current emotional feelings
    3. A person’s current cognitions
    4. Both B and C
    5. All of the above
30. The general aggression model (GAM) theorizes that biological modifiers (e.g., executive functioning problems) and environmental modifiers (e.g., growing up in high-risk neighbourhoods) indirectly raise the risk of violence because of their impact on situational and person-based characteristics. In the model, what are the biological and environmental modifiers collectively labelled as?
    1. Historical factors
    2. Remote factors
    3. Distal factors
    4. Background factors
    5. Appraisal factors

Short Answer Questions

According to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, locking delinquents up is not expected to be a very helpful strategy for reducing their reoffending. Why not?

Define and distinguish moral reasoning and moral disengagement.

Define and distinguish the moral disengagement processes of displacement of responsibility and diffusion of responsibility.

Albert is driving to the airport to catch a flight. On the way there he narrowly avoids a collision with another vehicle, which causes his heart to pound wildly and blood pressure to skyrocket. He arrives to the airport late and rushes inside. At the security check, an elderly man in front of Albert sets off the buzzer. He is confused and can’t seem to understand that the security guard wants him to empty his pockets and as a result everyone behind him is being held up. Albert becomes irritated and loses his temper at the gentleman.

Using excitation transfer theory, explain how Albert’s earlier near-accident might have influenced his later loss of temper at the airport.

Explain the process of deindividuation and identify two factors that contribute to and enhance this process.

Explain the classic view of why deindividuation leads to criminal behaviour and distinguish it from the social identity model of deindividuation (SIDE).

What is hostile attribution bias? Why are people with this bias more likely to engage in violence?

Essay Questions

1. Identify and describe the four main processes involved in social information processing theories and explain how various errors at each of these stages may lead to inappropriate aggressive behaviour.
2. Dodge hypothesizes that instrumental and reactive violence are the result of different social information processing (SIP) errors/biases. For each type of violence, indicate whether Dodge believes the errors/biases occur in the initial or latter stages of SIP and describe the early developmental experiences Dodge believes produces these SIP errors/biases.
3. Identify the four broad ways that moral sanctions can be selectively disengaged, and then identify and describe a specific moral disengagement process for each one of these points.