A History Of Modern Psychology 5th Edition By C. James Goodwin – Test Bank

I. Multiple Choice

NOTE: The following items also appear in the online study guide that is available to students:
1, 6, 16, 26, 33, 36, 46, 55

1. Starting the in 1930s, behaviorism became a dominant force in American psychology. Of the following factors, which contributed the least?
a. Watson’s behaviorist manifesto
b. the translation of Pavlov’s work into English
c. the development of operationism
d. Watson’s popularizing of behaviorism in the 1920s

2. All of the following are true about American psychology in the 1920s except
a. gestalt psychology became popular
b. most researchers had been converted to behaviorism by then
c. American psychologists became fully aware of the scope of Pavlov’s work for the first time
d. logical positivism and operationism appeared on the scene

3. During the 1920s in American psychology,
a. behaviorism became the dominant force in American psychology
b. behaviorism, dominant since the manifesto in 1913, began to fade
c. operationism began to be influential
d. interest in mental testing had peaked and was virtually nonexistent

4. In the 1920s, several factors contributed to the creation of “neobehaviorism.” Which of the following was not one of them?
a. Bridgman’s book on operationism
b. the fact that Pavlov’s works became widely available in English
c. the outright rejection of the “old behaviorism” (i.e., Watson’s version)
d. Watson’s continued popularizing of behaviorist ideas

5. Woodworth’s 1931 Contemporary Schools of Psychology included descriptions of
a. gestalt psychology
b. introspective psychology
c. both gestalt psychology and introspective psychology
d. none of these—the book only described the varieties of neobehaviorism

6. Why was logical positivism attractive to American experimental psychologists?
a. it provided a means to study unobservable entities and still remain “scientific”
b. it enabled researchers to avoid having to take unobservable entities into account in their
theorizing
c. researchers like facts, not theory, and this movement enabled them to avoid theory
d. it provided a way to reintroduce introspection into psychology, but to do it scientifically

7. According to the logical positivists,
a. unobservable theoretical entities can be studied as long as they are tied to observable events
b. operational definitions are inadequate to capture the range of meanings that can be
associated with such terms as hunger
c. unobservable theoretical entities have no place in science
d. behaviorism can never be an adequate approach to science because it cannot account
for unobservable theoretical entities

8. Which of the following is the poorest definition, from the standpoint of those advocating operational definitions in psychology?
a. learning a maze means going through it three times in a row without making an error
b. hunger means going 24 hours without food
c. poor memory means recalling less than half the list after 60 seconds
d. aggression is any act in which there is an intent to harm

9. In his treatise on operationism, Bridgman also described what he called pseudoproblems. What would be an example of one?
a. is it better to measure maze learning by means of errors or time?
b. is your experience of the color red the same as mine?
c. to what extent can people discriminate various wavelengths of light?
d. when measuring pain, should you use self-report or some physiological measure?

10. A problem with the strict use of operational definitions in psychology was that
a. using operational definitions made replication impossible
b. it meant studying unobservable theoretical entities (e.g., hunger), and American
neobehaviorists wanted to avoid that
c. psychologists often disagreed on the best operational definition for a concept
d. it made it impossible for converging operations to occur

Answers

1. A
2. B
3. C
4. C
5. C
6. A
7. A
8. D
9. B
10. C