EPPP Part 1 (Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology) — All Questions

In Asch's line-judgment studies, which change most sharply reduced conformity to an incorrect majority?

• a.Making the comparison lines harder to tell apart
• b.Having the participant answer after the confederates
• c.One other group member giving the correct answer✓
• d.Enlarging the unanimous majority to fifteen people

Asch (1956) found that when a single other person broke the majority's unanimity by giving the correct answer, conformity dropped dramatically. Asch found that enlarging the majority beyond three or four added little and did not reduce conformity, and making the task more ambiguous increases reliance on others rather than reducing it (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955, informational influence). Answering after the confederates was the standard procedure that produced conformity in the first place.

In Milgram's (1963) original obedience study, roughly what proportion of the 40 participants continued to the maximum 450-volt level?

• a.About one-third
• b.Fewer than 5 percent
• c.More than 90 percent
• d.About two-thirds✓

Milgram (1963) reported that 26 of 40 participants (65%) obeyed to the end of the shock generator, far more than people predicted beforehand. None stopped before 300 volts, but the proportion reaching 450 volts was about two-thirds, not a small minority, one-third or nearly all.

In Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) study, participants were paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting student that a dull task was enjoyable. Which result supported cognitive dissonance theory?

• a.Those paid $1 later rated the task as more enjoyable than those paid $20✓
• b.Both paid groups rated the task higher than the unpaid control group
• c.Those paid $20 later rated the task as more enjoyable than those paid $1
• d.Neither payment changed ratings relative to the unpaid control group

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) found that the $1 group, lacking sufficient external justification for the lie, reduced dissonance by coming to rate the task as more enjoyable. The $20 group had ample justification and rated the task about the same as controls, so neither the $20 result, a both-groups increase, nor a no-effect pattern matches the data.

Observers read an essay and were told the writer had been assigned which side to argue, yet they still judged that the writer personally held the view expressed. This finding demonstrates:

• a.The halo effect
• b.The self-serving attributional bias
• c.The fundamental attribution error✓
• d.The false consensus effect

Jones and Harris (1967) showed that observers inferred essay writers' true attitudes even when they knew the position was assigned, underweighting the situational constraint; Ross (1977) named this tendency the fundamental attribution error. The self-serving bias concerns explanations of one's own successes and failures, false consensus is overestimating how many others share one's views, and the halo effect is generalizing from one positive trait.

Participants talking over an intercom from separate booths heard another participant apparently having a seizure; they could not see or hear how the others reacted. The more people they believed were listening, the less likely and slower they were to help. The researchers attributed this to:

• a.Social loafing in groups
• b.Deindividuation in crowds
• c.Diffusion of responsibility✓
• d.Pluralistic ignorance

Darley and Latane (1968) explained the seizure-study result as diffusion of responsibility: the more bystanders, the less personal responsibility each felt. Pluralistic ignorance requires watching others' calm reactions, which the separated participants could not do. Social loafing is reduced effort on a pooled group task, and deindividuation is loss of self-awareness in crowds.

A beginner pianist plays worse when an audience is present, while an expert plays better. According to Zajonc's account of social facilitation, the audience:

• a.Lowers effort because responsibility is shared
• b.Distracts both players to the same degree
• c.Causes self-consciousness only in experts
• d.Raises arousal, boosting dominant responses✓

Zajonc (1965) proposed that the mere presence of others increases arousal, which strengthens dominant responses: correct, well-learned responses for experts and error-prone responses for novices. Shared responsibility is the mechanism of social loafing, equal distraction would not produce opposite effects, and the account does not limit the effect to experts.

A distracted viewer who cares little about the product sees an ad featuring an attractive celebrity. According to the elaboration likelihood model, any attitude change is most likely to:

• a.Come by the peripheral route and fade sooner✓
• b.Not occur unless the arguments are processed
• c.Depend chiefly on how strong the arguments are
• d.Come by the central route and be lasting

Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model holds that when motivation or ability to think about a message is low, attitudes shift through peripheral cues such as source attractiveness, and such change tends to be weaker and less durable. Central-route change, driven by argument quality, requires high elaboration, and the model says change can occur without argument processing.

Homeowners who first agreed to display a small 'Be a safe driver' sign were later far more likely to accept a large, unattractive safe-driving billboard in their yard. This compliance technique is known as:

• a.Door-in-the-face
• b.That's-not-all
• c.Low-balling
• d.Foot-in-the-door✓

Freedman and Fraser (1966) showed that agreeing to a small request increases compliance with a later larger one, the foot-in-the-door technique. Door-in-the-face starts with a large request that is refused, low-balling changes terms after a commitment, and that's-not-all adds a bonus before the person responds.

In the Robbers Cave study, hostility between two groups of boys was most effectively reduced by:

• a.Keeping the groups apart for a cooling-off period
• b.Pleasant shared contact such as meals and movies
• c.Lectures on the value of getting along
• d.Cooperation toward superordinate goals✓

Sherif and colleagues (1961) found that simple pleasant contact often turned into further conflict, and that hostility fell substantially only when the groups had to work together toward goals neither could reach alone. Lectures and separation were not what reduced hostility in the study.

A client who immigrated as an adult keeps her heritage language and traditions while also taking an active part in the wider society's work and civic life. In Berry's model, this acculturation strategy is:

• a.Marginalization
• b.Separation
• c.Integration✓
• d.Assimilation

In Berry's (1997) framework, integration means keeping one's culture of origin and, at the same time, taking part in the dominant society. Assimilation gives up the heritage culture, separation keeps the heritage culture while avoiding the larger society, and marginalization involves little interest in either.

A psychologist argues that a Black woman's experience of workplace discrimination cannot be understood by examining race and gender separately and adding the results. Which framework, introduced by Crenshaw (1989), is this?

• a.Minority stress theory
• b.The contact hypothesis
• c.Acculturative stress
• d.Intersectionality✓

Crenshaw (1989) introduced intersectionality to describe how overlapping identities such as race and gender produce distinct experiences of discrimination that single-axis analysis misses. Minority stress theory concerns chronic stress from stigma, acculturative stress concerns strain from cultural adaptation, and the contact hypothesis concerns intergroup contact reducing prejudice.

In Meyer's (2003) minority stress model for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, which is an example of a proximal stressor?

• a.Concealing one's sexual orientation✓
• b.Being fired because of one's sexual orientation
• c.Being denied housing by a landlord
• d.Experiencing an anti-gay assault

Meyer (2003) distinguishes distal stressors, objective events of prejudice and discrimination such as job loss, violence or housing denial, from proximal stressors that operate within the person: expectations of rejection, concealment of identity and internalized homophobia. Concealment is therefore the proximal stressor here.

A person described by colleagues as organized, dependable, and self-disciplined would be expected to score highest on which Big Five factor?

• a.Openness to experience
• b.Conscientiousness✓
• c.Extraversion
• d.Agreeableness

In the five-factor model measured by Costa and McCrae's NEO inventories, conscientiousness captures organization, dependability, achievement striving and self-discipline. Agreeableness concerns trust and cooperativeness, openness concerns imagination and receptivity to new experience, and extraversion concerns sociability and positive emotionality.