BAPSY Social and Behavioral Psychology 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which classical conditioning phenomenon occurs when a conditioned response is elicited by stimuli similar but not identical to the original conditioned stimulus?
- Stimulus generalization (Correct answer)
- Stimulus discrimination
- Second-order conditioning
- Spontaneous recovery
Correct answer: Stimulus generalization
Stimulus generalization allows organisms to respond to novel but similar stimuli, which has adaptive survival value.
Question 2: Bandura's Bobo doll experiments primarily demonstrated which behavioral principle?
- Observational learning can occur without direct reinforcement (Correct answer)
- Aggressive behavior is innately determined
- Punishment eliminates modeled aggression
- Children only learn from same-sex models
Correct answer: Observational learning can occur without direct reinforcement
Children who watched adults aggress toward the Bobo doll later imitated those behaviors, showing that reinforcement is not required for learning.
Question 3: The 'foot-in-the-door' compliance technique works primarily through which psychological mechanism?
- Commitment and consistency (Correct answer)
- Reciprocity
- Social proof
- Scarcity
Correct answer: Commitment and consistency
Once people agree to a small request, they feel motivated to remain consistent with their self-image as helpful, making larger requests more likely to succeed.
Question 4: In operant conditioning, a negative reinforcer is best defined as:
- A stimulus whose removal increases the likelihood of a behavior (Correct answer)
- A stimulus whose addition decreases the likelihood of a behavior
- Any unpleasant event following a behavior
- The absence of reward after a learned response
Correct answer: A stimulus whose removal increases the likelihood of a behavior
Negative reinforcement strengthens behavior by removing an aversive stimulus, such as taking aspirin to relieve a headache.
Question 5: Which attribution error involves overestimating the role of external situational factors when explaining one's own failures?
- Self-serving bias (Correct answer)
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer asymmetry
- Base rate neglect
Correct answer: Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias leads people to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external circumstances to protect self-esteem.
Question 6: The bystander effect is best explained by which two psychological processes identified by Latané and Darley?
- Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance (Correct answer)
- Social loafing and conformity
- Obedience and deindividuation
- Groupthink and social facilitation
Correct answer: Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance
Bystanders fail to help because they assume others will act (diffusion of responsibility) and misread others' calm as a sign there is no emergency (pluralistic ignorance).
Question 7: Which schedule of reinforcement produces the highest and most persistent rate of responding?
- Variable ratio (Correct answer)
- Fixed ratio
- Variable interval
- Fixed interval
Correct answer: Variable ratio
Variable ratio schedules are unpredictable, keeping the organism consistently responding because reinforcement could come at any time.
BAPSY Social and Behavioral Psychology 3
Which classical conditioning phenomenon occurs when a conditioned response is elicited by stimuli similar but not identical to the original conditioned stimulus?