True or False
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slapdash21
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- Joined: 29 Sep 2004 14:50
- Location: Beantown, kidd
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slapdash21
- Futureless
- Posts: 4681
- Joined: 29 Sep 2004 14:50
- Location: Beantown, kidd
Re: True or False
dammit, here is both
Quoted from the first page=
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Just answer true or false, as honestly as possible (it would be preferable if the debating didnt start quite yet...i dont want anyone's opinion to be swayed). also, i recommend only looking at the first post until after you answer... once there are like 5-8 responses (or a lack of interest) i will add some interesting flame to the fire.
go.
1. To change the way people act, you must first change their attitudes.
2. The greater the reward promised for a boring activity, the more one will come to enjoy the activity
3. Most people rate themselves as below average when comparing themselves to others on socially desirable characteristics (such as attractiveness)
4. Most people will disobey a person in authority who orders them to hurt a stranger.
5. In a debate, it is always to your advantage to to be the last speaker instead of going first (you want the last word).
6. People pull harder in a tug-of-war when they are part of a team than when they are pulling by themselves.
7 Groups will generally make more moderate decisions than a single individual will.
8. Opposites attract.
9. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
10. People are LESS likely to help another person when they are alone than when there is a group around.
11. If you pick up a crying baby whenever it cries, this will increase the amount the baby will cry, so it can get picked up again.
12. Children who grow up in a family with gay parents are more likely to become gay.[/quote]
===============================================
also quoted:
===============================================
All are FALSE!
All of these have been established through research, mostly in the field of Social Psychology, and represent outcomes we might not have intuitively expected. Thus, they are called Counter-Intuitive. Here is why. Each item from the Common Sense Test is explained below.
1. To change the way people act, you must first change their attitudes.
This is false because people often behave in ways that run contrary to their attitudes. Any time we explain our behavior as "giving in to peer pressure" we have said that we hold an attitude against that behavior, but engaged in it regardless.
2. The greater the reward promised for a boring activity, the more one will come to enjoy the activity.
While we may be more willing to engage in a boring activity if there is a great reward promised for doing so, we will actually enjoy it less. We explain our behavior in terms of the payoffs we receive for engaging in that behavior. If we are getting paid, for example, then the money is the justification for performing the behavior, "at least I'm being paid well." However, if there is minimal external reward, we will attribute our behavior to something like, "Well, it wasn't really that bad. In fact, it was sort of fun trying to get a rhythm to the task."
Beyond that, we will come to enjoy intrinsically rewarding activities less when there is an external reward associated with it. Reading programs for children that provide money or pizza for the number of books read actually end up decreasing the number of books read by those children once the external rewards are removed. The children explain their behavior by showing that they engaged in the activity not for the pleasure of reading, but for the money or pizza.
(See: work by Mark Lepper, cf: Lepper, M.R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the over justification hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 129-137.)
3. Most people rate themselves as below average when comparing themselves to others on socially desirable characteristics (such as attractiveness).
Most people rate themselves above average, but less than ideal. This is often called the Self-centered bias. Several studies have found that we tend to say we are "not genius, but above average intelligence, not gorgeous, but above average looking, etc."
Markus, H., & Wurf, E. (1987) The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299-337.
Myers, D.G. (1980) Inflated self: Human illusions and the biblical call to hope. New York: Seabury Press.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1988). Illusion and well-being : A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1994) Illusion and well-being revisited Separating fact from fiction. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 21-27.
4. Most people will disobey a person in authority who orders them to hurt a stranger.
Unfortunately, this is false. The most classical experiments on this were performed by Stanley Milgram. In his studies, he had an experimenter in a white lab coat instruct a research subject to deliver ever-increasingly strong shocks to another person, believed to be another subject. The shocks were followed by groans, screams, protests, and finally by silence. Although subjects did not want to persist, all delivered at least some shocks, and about 2/3 completed the entire range of shocks. Many subjects believed the subject being shocked had possibly died as a result of their activity, but none heroically rescued the victim in defiance of the official authority!
See his book: Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to authority. New York: Harper & Row.
5. In a debate, it is always to your advantage to be the last speaker instead of going first (you want the last word).
The first person to speak gets the advantage of setting the stage. The person who follows must break down the arguments and scenario as presented by the first speaker, while also presenting their own perspective. While the last word is certainly beneficial, being first provides a decided advantage.
6. People pull harder in a tug-of-war when they are part of a team than when they are pulling by themselves.
Despite all the talk about making team efforts and "we're in this together" people tend to slack off when there are others to take over for them or cover their lack of effort. This is apparent to anyone who ever had a group project in school or at work in which peoples' individual effort could not be determined by the teacher or boss. Someone ends up with the lion's share of the work, and an equal share in the payoff.
The process is call "diffusion of responsibility" and occurs regularly in groups and teams.
7. Groups will generally make more moderate decisions than a single individual will.
Groups actually will make more extreme decisions than will individuals. This is related to diffusion of responsibility - if things go wrong I can say, "I didn't want it, but the group over-rode me." There is also a tendency toward "groupthink." This is a polarization of groups into more extreme opinions and plans. There is a mentality that, "you're either with us or you're against us, what's it gonna be?" There is also the dynamic that "we can do it if we all get together!" (Refer back to #6 above!)
cf: Janis, I.L. (1971) Groupthink. Psychology Today, 5(6), 43-46ff.
cf: Janis, I.L. (1972) Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
8. Opposites attract.
Here we tend to notice the aspects of our loved ones that are different from us, labeling them as "opposite". But stop for a moment and think about yourself, what would your true opposite be? A tall, thin, dark-skinned, motivated, religious, intelligent, social, liberal, college student striving for a degree in engineering would be attracted to a short, heavy, light-skinned, apathetic, atheist, unintelligent, withdrawn, conservative high-school drop out! This is the opposite of these characteristics! While a bit of variation makes for interest, opposites are generally rejected and we search for people much like ourselves. This is called the "matching hypothesis." People tend to marry within their own social group (called endogamy) and tend to marry those with similar personality characteristics (called Homogamy).
As with this cliche, there are often counter-cliches that say the reverse, but are also believed to be true. Although opposites attract, birds of a feather flock together. How can these both be true? The basic problem with cliches is that we treat them as if they were obvious, we tend to select only that data which supports the underlying assumptions, and reject or simply not notice other data.
9. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
While short separations in a committed relationship might make the couple celebrate the reunion, absences tend to make the heart start to wander! Long distance relationships rarely work for long. There are people close by who start to look interesting.
Cliches in general do not offer good advice for living.
10. People are LESS likely to help another person when they are alone than when there is a group around.
This is due to a phenomenon called the "bystander effect" and is related to diffusion of responsibility (discussed under #6 above). Essentially, we take cues about whether to act from the others gathered around us. Since the others are also taking cues from each other, we tend to all stand around doing nothing because it is "nothing" that seems to be the thing to do. No one wants to look like a fool for being the only one to act and end up with it being a mistake. This is exaggerated in situations that are ambiguous. We may not be sure what the right thing to do is; or whether the person really needs help. We see this being addressed in crisis intervention and first aid classes when they tell people that if you are choking at mealtime to stand, throw over the table, and point to your throat. If you are being polite and trying not to create a scene, people might mistake the true state of emergency and you might die for your politeness! Reduce the ambiguity.
When there is only one other person, that person is more likely to intervene. Have your emergencies around a select few trained people and you are more likely to have assistance.
cf:. Latane, B., & Darley, J. (1970) The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
11. If you pick up a crying baby whenever it cries, this will increase the amount the baby will cry, so it can get picked up again.
Contrary to popular belief, babies who are quickly attended to do not learn to cry more to be picked up more, they learn that their needs will be readily attended to and cry less. It is like the child in the grocery store who knows she has to fuss for a long time to get the candy at the check-out counter - she starts in early and is fussing for the long haul. A baby whose needs are attended to learn a sense of security in the responsiveness of care-givers.
12. Children who grow up in a family with gay parents are more likely to become gay.
While we expect modeling to be effective here, the fact is there is no difference between families of gay or lesbian parents and families of heterosexual parents in the sexual orientation of the children. If this were true, then homosexual parents would model this to their children and there would be no gay or lesbian people because all children (aside for artificial methods of conception) are from a male-female union.
(Question items 1 - 10 are from Whitford, F.W. (1992) Instructors' Resource Manual for Worchel & Shebilske's Psychology, 4th Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. All explanations are original to Matthew Westra).
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well there you have it. i certainly dont agree with all of that (when i first took the test in psychology i barely agreed with anyone, but upon further discussion, my opinions were swayed on many of them. i know its a lot to discuss at once, but go for it
=============================================
Quoted from the first page=
==============================================
Just answer true or false, as honestly as possible (it would be preferable if the debating didnt start quite yet...i dont want anyone's opinion to be swayed). also, i recommend only looking at the first post until after you answer... once there are like 5-8 responses (or a lack of interest) i will add some interesting flame to the fire.
go.
1. To change the way people act, you must first change their attitudes.
2. The greater the reward promised for a boring activity, the more one will come to enjoy the activity
3. Most people rate themselves as below average when comparing themselves to others on socially desirable characteristics (such as attractiveness)
4. Most people will disobey a person in authority who orders them to hurt a stranger.
5. In a debate, it is always to your advantage to to be the last speaker instead of going first (you want the last word).
6. People pull harder in a tug-of-war when they are part of a team than when they are pulling by themselves.
7 Groups will generally make more moderate decisions than a single individual will.
8. Opposites attract.
9. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
10. People are LESS likely to help another person when they are alone than when there is a group around.
11. If you pick up a crying baby whenever it cries, this will increase the amount the baby will cry, so it can get picked up again.
12. Children who grow up in a family with gay parents are more likely to become gay.[/quote]
===============================================
also quoted:
===============================================
All are FALSE!
All of these have been established through research, mostly in the field of Social Psychology, and represent outcomes we might not have intuitively expected. Thus, they are called Counter-Intuitive. Here is why. Each item from the Common Sense Test is explained below.
1. To change the way people act, you must first change their attitudes.
This is false because people often behave in ways that run contrary to their attitudes. Any time we explain our behavior as "giving in to peer pressure" we have said that we hold an attitude against that behavior, but engaged in it regardless.
2. The greater the reward promised for a boring activity, the more one will come to enjoy the activity.
While we may be more willing to engage in a boring activity if there is a great reward promised for doing so, we will actually enjoy it less. We explain our behavior in terms of the payoffs we receive for engaging in that behavior. If we are getting paid, for example, then the money is the justification for performing the behavior, "at least I'm being paid well." However, if there is minimal external reward, we will attribute our behavior to something like, "Well, it wasn't really that bad. In fact, it was sort of fun trying to get a rhythm to the task."
Beyond that, we will come to enjoy intrinsically rewarding activities less when there is an external reward associated with it. Reading programs for children that provide money or pizza for the number of books read actually end up decreasing the number of books read by those children once the external rewards are removed. The children explain their behavior by showing that they engaged in the activity not for the pleasure of reading, but for the money or pizza.
(See: work by Mark Lepper, cf: Lepper, M.R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the over justification hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 129-137.)
3. Most people rate themselves as below average when comparing themselves to others on socially desirable characteristics (such as attractiveness).
Most people rate themselves above average, but less than ideal. This is often called the Self-centered bias. Several studies have found that we tend to say we are "not genius, but above average intelligence, not gorgeous, but above average looking, etc."
Markus, H., & Wurf, E. (1987) The dynamic self-concept: A social psychological perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 299-337.
Myers, D.G. (1980) Inflated self: Human illusions and the biblical call to hope. New York: Seabury Press.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1988). Illusion and well-being : A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown J.D. (1994) Illusion and well-being revisited Separating fact from fiction. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 21-27.
4. Most people will disobey a person in authority who orders them to hurt a stranger.
Unfortunately, this is false. The most classical experiments on this were performed by Stanley Milgram. In his studies, he had an experimenter in a white lab coat instruct a research subject to deliver ever-increasingly strong shocks to another person, believed to be another subject. The shocks were followed by groans, screams, protests, and finally by silence. Although subjects did not want to persist, all delivered at least some shocks, and about 2/3 completed the entire range of shocks. Many subjects believed the subject being shocked had possibly died as a result of their activity, but none heroically rescued the victim in defiance of the official authority!
See his book: Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to authority. New York: Harper & Row.
5. In a debate, it is always to your advantage to be the last speaker instead of going first (you want the last word).
The first person to speak gets the advantage of setting the stage. The person who follows must break down the arguments and scenario as presented by the first speaker, while also presenting their own perspective. While the last word is certainly beneficial, being first provides a decided advantage.
6. People pull harder in a tug-of-war when they are part of a team than when they are pulling by themselves.
Despite all the talk about making team efforts and "we're in this together" people tend to slack off when there are others to take over for them or cover their lack of effort. This is apparent to anyone who ever had a group project in school or at work in which peoples' individual effort could not be determined by the teacher or boss. Someone ends up with the lion's share of the work, and an equal share in the payoff.
The process is call "diffusion of responsibility" and occurs regularly in groups and teams.
7. Groups will generally make more moderate decisions than a single individual will.
Groups actually will make more extreme decisions than will individuals. This is related to diffusion of responsibility - if things go wrong I can say, "I didn't want it, but the group over-rode me." There is also a tendency toward "groupthink." This is a polarization of groups into more extreme opinions and plans. There is a mentality that, "you're either with us or you're against us, what's it gonna be?" There is also the dynamic that "we can do it if we all get together!" (Refer back to #6 above!)
cf: Janis, I.L. (1971) Groupthink. Psychology Today, 5(6), 43-46ff.
cf: Janis, I.L. (1972) Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
8. Opposites attract.
Here we tend to notice the aspects of our loved ones that are different from us, labeling them as "opposite". But stop for a moment and think about yourself, what would your true opposite be? A tall, thin, dark-skinned, motivated, religious, intelligent, social, liberal, college student striving for a degree in engineering would be attracted to a short, heavy, light-skinned, apathetic, atheist, unintelligent, withdrawn, conservative high-school drop out! This is the opposite of these characteristics! While a bit of variation makes for interest, opposites are generally rejected and we search for people much like ourselves. This is called the "matching hypothesis." People tend to marry within their own social group (called endogamy) and tend to marry those with similar personality characteristics (called Homogamy).
As with this cliche, there are often counter-cliches that say the reverse, but are also believed to be true. Although opposites attract, birds of a feather flock together. How can these both be true? The basic problem with cliches is that we treat them as if they were obvious, we tend to select only that data which supports the underlying assumptions, and reject or simply not notice other data.
9. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
While short separations in a committed relationship might make the couple celebrate the reunion, absences tend to make the heart start to wander! Long distance relationships rarely work for long. There are people close by who start to look interesting.
Cliches in general do not offer good advice for living.
10. People are LESS likely to help another person when they are alone than when there is a group around.
This is due to a phenomenon called the "bystander effect" and is related to diffusion of responsibility (discussed under #6 above). Essentially, we take cues about whether to act from the others gathered around us. Since the others are also taking cues from each other, we tend to all stand around doing nothing because it is "nothing" that seems to be the thing to do. No one wants to look like a fool for being the only one to act and end up with it being a mistake. This is exaggerated in situations that are ambiguous. We may not be sure what the right thing to do is; or whether the person really needs help. We see this being addressed in crisis intervention and first aid classes when they tell people that if you are choking at mealtime to stand, throw over the table, and point to your throat. If you are being polite and trying not to create a scene, people might mistake the true state of emergency and you might die for your politeness! Reduce the ambiguity.
When there is only one other person, that person is more likely to intervene. Have your emergencies around a select few trained people and you are more likely to have assistance.
cf:. Latane, B., & Darley, J. (1970) The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
11. If you pick up a crying baby whenever it cries, this will increase the amount the baby will cry, so it can get picked up again.
Contrary to popular belief, babies who are quickly attended to do not learn to cry more to be picked up more, they learn that their needs will be readily attended to and cry less. It is like the child in the grocery store who knows she has to fuss for a long time to get the candy at the check-out counter - she starts in early and is fussing for the long haul. A baby whose needs are attended to learn a sense of security in the responsiveness of care-givers.
12. Children who grow up in a family with gay parents are more likely to become gay.
While we expect modeling to be effective here, the fact is there is no difference between families of gay or lesbian parents and families of heterosexual parents in the sexual orientation of the children. If this were true, then homosexual parents would model this to their children and there would be no gay or lesbian people because all children (aside for artificial methods of conception) are from a male-female union.
(Question items 1 - 10 are from Whitford, F.W. (1992) Instructors' Resource Manual for Worchel & Shebilske's Psychology, 4th Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. All explanations are original to Matthew Westra).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
well there you have it. i certainly dont agree with all of that (when i first took the test in psychology i barely agreed with anyone, but upon further discussion, my opinions were swayed on many of them. i know its a lot to discuss at once, but go for it
=============================================
Pete Bowler
B$C
keeps it offah da ground.
617 FOR LIFE
B$C
keeps it offah da ground.
617 FOR LIFE
-
slapdash21
- Futureless
- Posts: 4681
- Joined: 29 Sep 2004 14:50
- Location: Beantown, kidd
-
bluntobj3ct
- BSOS Beast
- Posts: 408
- Joined: 16 Dec 2005 00:17
- Location: SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA BABY
I had all false except the numbers 2, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Others of these were in my opinion "true", I didn't answer the number 9 because I didn't understand it first. 
Number 10 is easy to understand, so are numbers 2 and 8.
Based on my own experienses, I don't really agree with the number 11. My parents have told me I was a pain in the ass when I was a 0-2 years old and I was supposed to go to sleep. I always started crying (they say) or shouting them and kept doing it for hours until I finally fell asleep. At some point they realized not to go to see me all the time and I started to sleep sooner.
Also, my cousin is now 6 and until she got a baby brother a few months ago, she'd often come to sleep next to her parents or demanding that the other one would come to sleep in her room.
"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
Number 10 is easy to understand, so are numbers 2 and 8.
Based on my own experienses, I don't really agree with the number 11. My parents have told me I was a pain in the ass when I was a 0-2 years old and I was supposed to go to sleep. I always started crying (they say) or shouting them and kept doing it for hours until I finally fell asleep. At some point they realized not to go to see me all the time and I started to sleep sooner.
Also, my cousin is now 6 and until she got a baby brother a few months ago, she'd often come to sleep next to her parents or demanding that the other one would come to sleep in her room.
"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
Lauri Jaakkola