Chapter 9 – Cognitive Structures of Attitudes

1. Which of the following terms are used to describe the fact that attitudes must be inferred

from an individual’s overt response to a stimulus?

a. Cognitive consistency

b. Hypothetical mediating variable

c. Selective perception

d. Selective interpretation

2. Which of the following terms best describes an attitude?

a. Motivation

b. Evaluation

c. Mediation

d. None of the above

3. Why was the social cognition approach useful to the study of attitudes?

a. It was the first movement to bring widespread attention to the concept of attitude

b. It overhauled most of the previous research on attitudes

c. It allowed traditional variables to be explored in new ways

d. All of the above

4. Which of the following is considered to be a cognitive consistency theory?

a. Cognitive dissonance theory

b. Balance theory

c. Both A & B

d. None of the above

5. Which author proposed and developed the initial version of cognitive dissonance theory?

a. Festinger

b. Heider

c. Abelson

d. Cialdini

6. Which of the following authors said that attitudes are “the most distinct and indispensable

concept in contemporary American social psychology,” back in 1935?

a. Festinger

b. Allport
 c. Heider

d. Fishbein

7. Which of the following is a concept from the persuasion framework?

a. The channel

b. To whom

c. The what

d. All of the above

8. Attractiveness is an example of which of the following variables from the persuasion

framework?

a. Audience

b. Message

c. Communicator

d. Modality

9. Which of the following is an element of the work on selective perception?

a. Selective attention

b. Selective exposure

c. Selective interpretation

d. All of the above

10. The fact that most of us inhabit environments biased in favor of positions and beliefs that

we hold can be best described by the term?

a. Selective learning

b. De facto selective exposure

c. Consistency seeking

d. Cognitive dissonance

11. Laura is a chronic optimist who tends to avoid threatening stimuli. Which of the following

phenomena studied by consistency theories could best explain her behavior?

a. Selective interpretation

b. Selective recall

c. Selective learning

d. None of the above

12. Suppose that you are a customer who just chose one product over another. In order to
justify your choice, you overestimate your choices’ positive attributes and downplay the

nonchosen product’s positive attributes. How is this phenomenon called?

a. Spreading of alternatives

b. De facto selective exposure

c. Dual attitudes

d. Hypothetical mediating variable

13. How does Balance theory differ from dissonance theory?

a. It concerns imbalances between general and specific attitudes

b. It concerns imbalances between attention, exposure, and interpretation of attitudinal

objects

c. It concerns relationships between people

d. It concerns learning and retention as a function of consistency

14. According to social schema research, how are balanced relationships stored in memory?

a. As dual attitudes

b. As multiple units

c. As single units

d. None of the above

15. The associative-propositional evaluation model of attitudes integrates which of the

following two competing views of attitude structure?

a. Discrete versus distributed representations

b. Single versus dual attitudes

c. Explicit versus implicit attitudes

d. Person versus circumstance attribution

16. Which of the following is an element of the attributional analysis of communicator effects

in perception?

a. Dispositional factor

b. Situational factor

c. Both A & B

d. None of the above

17. Which of the following claims is made by the persuasive arguments theory (Burnstein &

Vinokur, 1973)?
 a. Attitudes in groups polarize toward relatively extreme alternatives when people are

exposed to new information

b. Group decisions are riskier than the average of individual decisions

c. People value risk more than caution and when individuals in some group compare

opinions, they discover others are taking more risks than they are. Because risk is

valued, the group moves towards the riskier position

d. None of the above

18. If a researcher uses a computer simulation to study the expected behavior of interacting

individuals with various attitudes, they are using which of the following approaches?

a. Covariation model of attribution

b. Associative-propositional evaluation model

c. Agent-based modeling

d. Social-adjustive functions

19. Which of the following theories posits that, under uncertainty, people infer their attitudes

from their own behavior?

a. Implicit theory

b. Self-perception theory

c. Temporal self-appraisal theory

d. Self-categorization theory

20. Which of the following is a motivational function of attitudes that was studied

independently in classical approaches?

a. Identification

b. Compliance

c. Both A & B

d. None of the above

21. Which of the following is a function of attitudes?

a. Value-expression

b. Group polarization

c. Both A & B

d. None of the above

22. Which of the following functions of attitudes is usually included into the more general
object-appraisal function?

a. Self-enhancement

b. Ego involvement

c. Cognitive knowledge

d. Task involvement

23. Which of the following is considered to be the most fundamental function of attitudes?

a. Social-adjustment

b. Value-expression

c. Object-appraisal

d. Vested interest

24. Which of the following is an example of an individual difference variable that is related to

the value-expressive function of attitudes?

a. Ego involvement

b. Self-monitoring

c. Personal involvement

d. Vested interest

25. Which of the following is described in the text as the ultimate in value-expressive function,

possibly explaining why compromise can seem unthinkable between socio-cultural

populations?

a. Strength

b. Ideology

c. Conviction

d. Importance

26. If you decide to train for a marathon, and after completing the marathon, underestimate

your level of fitness before you began training, which of the following theories best

describes this misperception?

a. Cognitive dissonance theories

b. Implicit theory

c. Self-categorization theories

d. All of the above

27. According to the text, dual attitudes comprise an older, automatic attitude and a newer
attitude that is explicitly accessible in memory. Which attitude predominates depends on

which of the following?

a. The number of cognitive unites that comprise each attitude

b. The number of recall cues available at the time of retrieval

c. The method of expression

d. All of the above

28. Consistency theories posit a strong ________ basis toward consistency, while cognitive

approaches are based on _________ understandings.

a. motivational, cognitive

b. behavioral, motivational

c. motivational, neurological

d. behavioral, cognitive

29. Attitude conviction involves which of the following elements?

a. Ego preoccupation

b. Centrality

c. Importance

d. Strength