BAPSY Social Psychology 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The 'bystander effect' suggests that the likelihood of a person receiving help in an emergency decreases as the number of bystanders:
- Decreases
- Increases (Correct answer)
- Stays constant
- Reaches exactly two
Correct answer: Increases
The bystander effect demonstrates that diffusion of responsibility among more onlookers reduces the probability any individual will intervene.
Question 2: In Milgram's obedience studies, which factor most increased participants' likelihood of defying the authority figure?
- Being paid more money
- Seeing another 'teacher' refuse to continue (Correct answer)
- Receiving verbal encouragement from the experimenter
- Being in a smaller room
Correct answer: Seeing another 'teacher' refuse to continue
Social proof from a peer who refused significantly undermined the authority's power and emboldened participants to disobey.
Question 3: Which cognitive bias leads people to attribute their own failures to situational factors while attributing others' failures to dispositional factors?
- Self-serving bias
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer bias (Correct answer)
- Halo effect
Correct answer: Actor-observer bias
The actor-observer bias reflects our tendency to use situational explanations for ourselves but dispositional explanations when judging others.
Question 4: Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that intergroup conflict could be reduced most effectively through:
- Mere contact between groups
- Superordinate goals requiring cooperation (Correct answer)
- Separate but equal resource allocation
- Competitive sports between groups
Correct answer: Superordinate goals requiring cooperation
Superordinate goals that required both groups to cooperate reduced hostility more effectively than simple contact alone.
Question 5: Social loafing is most likely to be reduced when individual contributions to a group task are:
- Anonymous
- Identifiable (Correct answer)
- Compared to group averages
- Evaluated by outsiders
Correct answer: Identifiable
When people know their individual output can be identified and evaluated, they are less likely to reduce their effort in group settings.
Question 6: The phenomenon where group discussion leads members to adopt more extreme positions than they initially held is called:
- Groupthink
- Group polarization (Correct answer)
- Social facilitation
- Deindividuation
Correct answer: Group polarization
Group polarization occurs because discussion exposes members to persuasive arguments and normative pressure that push the group toward a more extreme version of the initial tendency.
Question 7: Which persuasion route in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) relies on superficial cues like source attractiveness rather than careful argument evaluation?
- Central route
- Peripheral route (Correct answer)
- Systematic route
- Heuristic route
Correct answer: Peripheral route
The peripheral route involves attitude change based on simple cues rather than effortful processing of message content.
