Describe what "positive psychology" is, and discuss its relationship to the field of social psychology
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: The newly emerging field of "positive psychology," spearheaded by psychologist Martin Seligman, focuses on the study of strengths and virtues, including topics such as the nature of healthy human functioning, how to define and categorize human strengths, and how to improve people's lives. While this focus is a necessary corrective to some areas of psychology (such as clinical psychology, which has tended to focus on disease and negative behaviors), social psychology has a long history of focusing on the positive as well as the negative aspects of behavior. For example, while social psychology has examined factors that lead to unreasoning and harmful obedience to authority, the failure to help when a person is in need, and the existence of prejudice, it has also examined factors that lead to resistance to unjust authority, to increased helping, and to decreased expressions of prejudice.
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The IPAT Culture Fair Test was designed to
a. eliminate cultural influences in an ability test. b. estimate the intelligence of language impaired children. c. estimate the intelligence of language impaired adults. d. be used with children three years of age and younger.
A limitation of adoption studies is that they
a. tend to be based on selective breeding research. b. need to recognize that adoptive homes tend to provide below-average environmental experiences. c. may underestimate the full range of environments experienced by a child. d. tend to take a long time to complete.
Jane has just begun teaching Psychology 100 and wants her students to participate during class. She hopes that discussing the material, doing writing tasks, and working in small groups will help her students understand the material better. Jane is attempting to use ____ in her class.?
a. ?cognitive maps b. ?latent learning c. ?insight learning d. ?active learning
In the moral dilemma in your textbook that involved the druggist and the man who could not afford the medicine for his sick wife, which of the following responses would demonstrate the conventional level?
a. Although his wife needs the drug, the law says that stealing is wrong. b. Even if he steals the drug, his wife will probably die before he gets out of jail. c. He cannot steal the drug because he might get caught and go to jail. d. He should steal the drug to save his wife and then go "turn himself in" to the police.