Social Interactions - GRE Subject Test: Psychology

When individuals make decisions based on how easy it is to imagine similar instances, they're using what is known as the availability heuristic. Shark attacks are far more likely to be covered by news sources than asthma-related deaths; thus, stories of shark-related deaths are more available in one's memory.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, Cindy will feel conflicted over her desire to join the sorority and need to complete difficult challenges. After she is a part of the sorority, she will attempt to manage this conflict by liking the sorority more; therefore, justifying her actions.

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute other people's behaviors to internal or dispositional factors. A person who passes a car accident and commits the fundamental attribution error would attribute blame for the accident to the person. The fundamental attribution error does not say anything about how we make attributions about our own behavior; however, the actor-observer bias says that we tend to make dispositional attributions for the behavior of others and situational attributions for our own behaviors.

The bystander effect is related to diffusion of responsibility, and states that bystanders are less likely to help a victim if other bystanders are present. For example, if a person is having a medical emergency, he will be less likely to be helped if he is in a large crowd. The bystander effect says he would be most likely to be helped if only one or two other people are present, since the bystanders are more likely to feel responsible for helping.

Aronson's gain-loss principle states that an evaluation that changes will have more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant. Therefore, the worker would like the manager most if their evaluation had become more positive (e.g. shown a gain) over time compared to the manager who has consistently given the worker a positive evaluation or the manager who had shown a loss (e.g. received a negative evaluation after a positive evaluation).

Cognitive dissonance is the conflict that you feel when your attitudes are not in synch with your behaviors. In order to resolve the dissonance, the theory suggests that individuals either change their attitudes (in this case, deciding that Susan was okay) OR change their behavior (would have occurred if Nancy had stopped wearing the outfit). The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute someone else's negative outcome to their individual character or personality while attributing our own negative outcomes to our circumstances. The gain-loss principle suggests that an evaluation that changes over time has more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant over time. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when an individual assumes less personal responsibility in a given situation when there are other people present.

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to people to attribute a negative outcome to individual characteristics when it refers to someone else (Jake being dumb) and attribute a negative outcome to the context of the situation when it refers to themselves (Jake citing his lack of sleep and studying). Cognitive dissonance is the conflict that you feel when your attitudes are not in synch with your behaviors. The gain-loss principle suggests that an evaluation that changes over time has more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant over time. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when an individual assumes less personal responsibility in a given situation when there are other people present.

Cognitive dissonance is the theory that your attitudes and actions will eventually align; if they are not congruent, either your attitudes or your actions will change. In this case, Tony's attitude is changing to align with his actions (using online testing resources).

Solomon Ashe was most famous for his conformity study, the line test. The social psychologist most widely recognized for door in the face is Robert Cialdini.

John Bowlby and colleagues have studied attachment styles and their correlates by examining the health of adult relationships. The choices provided are terms that Bowlby coined to capture the four major categories of attachment styles. As the name implies, secure attachment denotes the healthiest style and the surest predictor of happy and trusting relationships.

Sternberg proposed a tri-pointed model of romantic love that he entitled, "Triangular Theory of Love." While communication is always at the core of a healthy relationship, it is not one of the three primary factors in his model whereas the remaining three responses listed in this question are. For Sternberg, intimacy, passion, and commitment coalesce into what he calls consummate love.

The 2010 movie 'She's Out of My League' captured this social psychological concept with comedic accuracy. The matching hypothesis describes the well-documented social tendency of pairing with a romantic partner who society would deem roughly equivalent in terms of physical attraction. Even if that's not what we value most highly, looks seem to set a range for whom we consider.

The disclosure reciprocity effect describes the process by which the act of two people sharing their feelings and/or secrets can facilitate emotional closeness between the two and increase attraction.

As stated by the bystander effect, individuals do not feel as responsible for helping others when other individuals are present. According to social psychological research, bystanders are most likely to intervene only when the following conditions are met: they share some similarities with the victim of the crime, are happy overall, feel guilty, and are not focused on their own affairs.

Darla first presents a small request and then presents a larger request. This is an example of a "foot-in-the-door" technique. Darla would be practicing "door-in-the-face" if she first presented a large request, then followed it with a smaller request. "Minority persuasion" involves a minority in a group persuading the majority members, and does not fit with this example. "Obedience" occurs when a subordinate complies with an authority figure's request, and is associated with the researcher Milgram.

The door in the face effect refers to a tendency in which people who refuse a large initial request will be more likely to agree to a later smaller request. By dropping the price from $100,000 to $40,000, the customer might believe he/she is getting a good deal even if the car should be priced lower. The non-profit call answer was an example of the foot in the door effect. The other two examples were sales techniques, but not examples of the door in the face effect because there is not a sequence of a large request followed by a smaller one.

The foot in the door effect refers to a tendency in which after agreeing to an initial small request, people will be more likely to agree to subsequent larger requests. By asking for a small initial donation of $10, the donor would be more likely to give $20 the following month than if the donor had been asked for $20 to begin with. The price drop on the car answer was an example of the door in the face effect. The other two examples were sales techniques, but not examples of the door in the face effect because there is not a sequence of a large request followed by a smaller one.

Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment involved an experimenter instructing participants to administer shocks to an confederate subject in an adjacent room when the subject answered "incorrectly". (No shocks were actually administered). The majority of participants continued to "administer shocks" at high levels when instructed to do so by the experimenter. Asch's classic conformity study involved subject's comparing lengths of lines and Sherif's classic conformity study examined the autokinetic effect. Clark and Clark performed a study on doll preference, but this was not a conformity/obedience study.

Soloman Asch's Conformity Study had a very similar set up to the given scenario. In his experiment, a subject was asked to compare lengths of lines that had obvious differences. The subject was in a group of other "subjects" (confederates) and often conformed to the answer that all of the other group members provided rather than sticking to the obviously correct answer. Clark and Clark's doll preference study involved a task for White and Black children to select the doll that they liked most. Milgram's obedience study involved subjects obeying direct instructions from an experimenter to administer shocks to another participant (confederate). Zimbardo's prison experiment involved members of assigned groups assuming roles (i.e. prison guards, prisoners).