1. Which of the following is NOT an empirical question?

A. Are women more talkative than men?
B. Is dieting an effective weight loss strategy?
C. Should we prohibit cell phone use while driving?
D. Does cognitive psychotherapy help depressed people?

2. The tendency to notice evidence that is consistent with our beliefs and ignore evidence that is inconsistent with our beliefs is called _____.

A. Wishful thinking
B. Confirmation bias
C. Skepticism
D. Common sense

3. Two important attitudes of scientists are skepticism and _____.

A. Emotional neutrality
B. Mathematical ability
C. Tolerance of uncertainty
D. Religious agnosticism

4. What is an empirically supported treatment?

A. A psychological treatment that has been shown to work by scientific research
B. A psychological treatment that has not yet been tested
C. A psychological treatment that should work in theory but that does not work in practice
D. A psychological treatment that can, in principle, be tested

5. Researcher A says that people who got allowances as children are more financially responsible as adults because they had more opportunity to learn how to handle money. Researcher B says that people who got allowances as children are more financially responsible adults because they are responsible people in general. Which is why their parents gave the allowances in the first place. Which of the following best describes this state of affairs?

A. The researchers share the same hypothesis but are proposing different phenomena.
B. The researchers agree on the phenomenon but disagree about the theory.
C. The researchers have the same theory but different hypotheses.
D. The researchers are taking different perspectives on the same theory.

6. Which of the following is an advantage of narrow theories over broad theories?

A. They are simpler.
B. They explain more phenomena.
C. They are less technical.
D. They make more precise predictions.

7. A theory that explains a behavior primarily in terms of why it happens is which of the following?

A. A mechanistic theory
B. A typology
C. A functional theory
A. A hypothesis

8. In general, what do researchers conclude when their hypotheses are confirmed?

A. It is time to switch to a new research topic.
B. They have proven their theory.
C. Their theory now has more support.
D. Nothing because a hypothesis cannot ever be confirmed.

9. The variable sex (male vs. female) is measured at the nominal level.

A. True
B. False
10. Intelligence is measured at the ratio level.

A. True
B. False

11. Imagine that a research methods instructor accidentally includes concepts on an exam that he did not actually cover in the course. This is a problem with which of the following?

A. The exam’s face validity
B. The exam’s discriminant validity
C. The exam’s criterion validity
D. The exam’s content validity

12. Random selection and random assignment are the same thing.
A. True
B. False

13. When will researchers typically abandon a theory?

A. When it is criticized by other researchers
B. As soon as a hypothesis based on the theory is disconfirmed
C. After several hypotheses based on the theory are disconfirmed
D. After approximately 10 to 15 years

14. Which of the following is the most common type of sample in psychological research?

A. A convenience sample
B. A random sample
C. A haphazard sample
D. A stratified sample

15. There is a statistical relationship between two variables if which of the following is true?

A. One of the variables has a higher mean than the other.
B. The average level of one variable differs across levels of the other.
C. The variables are conceptually similar (e.g., intelligence and common sense).
D. All of the above

16. Which of the following could NOT be the independent variable in an experiment?

A. Sexual abuse
B. Study strategy
C. Room temperature
D. Mood

17. Which of the following studies most clearly has the directionality problem?

A. A study on whether or not a person was sexually abused as a child and how paranoid he or she is as an adult
B. A study on the relationship between losing a limb and one’s self-esteem
C. A study relating college students’ study habits to their final exam performance
D. A study on the correlation between how much negative emotion a person has and how many physical symptoms he or she has

18. The most common source of research ideas in psychology is which of the following?

A. Previous research
B. Informal observations
C. Government regulations
D. Suggestions from friends

19. What typically happens to a manuscript during the peer review process for a professional journal?

A. The researcher gets comments on the manuscript from his or her friends before submitting it for publication.
B. The manuscript is posted on the Internet and voted on by a large group of evaluators.
C. The journal editor sends the manuscript to three experts for their comments before deciding whether to publish it.
D. The manuscript is published and the journal editor then publishes comments from readers.

20. Which of the following is the best example of a construct?

A. Depression
B. Number of siblings
C. Height
D. Annual income

21. A low test-retest correlation would probably not be a concern for a measure of which of the following?

A. Mood
B. Intelligence
C. Extroversion
D. Conscientiousness

22. Which of the following is a common measure of internal consistency?

A. Test-retest correlation
B. Split-half correlation
C. Cohen’s d
D. Cronbach’s alpha

23. Which of the following is generally true of measures created for use in scientific research?

A. They can be used without permission.
B. They are described in a published article.
C. They should be properly referenced in any published work.
D. all of the above

24. After using any psychological measure, it is always good practice to do which of the following?

A. Write a thank you note to the creator of the measure
B. Evaluate its reliability and validity based on the new data
C. Publish the results in the Mental Measurements Yearbook
D. Discuss participants’ responses with them

25. What are the two defining features of an experiment?

A. Control of extraneous variables; statistical analysis of the results
B. Statistical analysis of the results; a comparison of two groups
C. A comparison of two groups; manipulation of an independent variable
D. Manipulation of an independent variable; control of extraneous variables

26. In an experiment, the different levels of the independent variable are referred to as which of the following?

A. Conditions
B. Factors
C. Means
D. Variables