CHAPTER 8
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. When groups become more risk-taking or cautious after discussion has occurred than the
initial preferences of group members would indicate, this is called
2. You want to prevent groupthink from becoming a problem in your group. To do this you should
3. You’re the leader of the Interstellar Dark Beer Drinking Doomsday cult. You predict that the
world will end when consumption of dark beer declines by 5% or more in a year.
Consumption declines 7%, but the world does not end. When this fact is pointed out to you,
your response is, “Members of the IDBDD drank mass quantities of dark beer, so they saved
4. Groupthink is a process whereby
5. Potentially, the group’s best means of coping effectively with information overload is
6. Rationalization of disconfirmation means
7. Collective inferential error is a group’s tendency to
8. Inferences
9. Several group members believe in the power of Therapeutic Touch. They see a program on
the Discovery channel that shows examples of TT in action. They are now even more
convinced than ever that TT heals people. Another program on PBS, however, announces
that it will show TT is a fraudulent, worthless therapy. Group members refuse to watch this
program because it casts doubt on their belief in TT. This is an example of
10. A correlation is
11. Dialectical inquiry is
12. Group discussion promotes higher quality decision making when
13. Which of the following is a consequence of information overload?
14. A friend of yours has joined a controversial doomsday group headed by an individual who claims to
be a prophet with divine powers. The head of this group predicts that the world will end on
Christmas Eve. When this prophecy proves to be wrong the explanation provided by the head of the
group claims, “This was just a dress rehearsal for the real thing—testing your faith.” This is
15. You energetically seek information that agrees with your point of view when researching a group
project and you ignore information that contradicts your point of view. You are exhibiting
16. Group polarization can be avoided by
17. The group polarization effect can be explained by
18. Confirmation bias is the psychological predisposition to
20. Which of the following is a valid statement about correlations?
TRUE-FALSE
2. Group polarization is manifested when the points of view and opinions among a group’s members
7. Pattern recognition is potentially the most effective means of coping with information
8. “A station KBNR call-in survey found that 66% of the 1,200 callers opposed raising property
10. Specialization is a pattern recognition means of screening information in order to cope with
11. A false dichotomy is either-or thinking where we view the world in terms of
12. A group has to display all the symptoms of groupthink in order to experience the poor quality
15. Information overload occurs when the rate of information flow into a system exceeds the
16. Making inferences is a serious problem for group decision making, so group members should be
17. Advances in electronic technology have made a bias for speed; faster is not only possible but
21. Because of the risky shift phenomenon, groups in all cultures tend to polarize toward risk
22. Groupthink is a decision-making process in which members think deeply about potential
23. Groupthink can be most effectively addressed by discouraging dissent in a group so the
24. As communication technologies become ever more widespread and sophisticated, the problem of
25. Specialization is a particularly effective strategy for addressing the problem of information