Deck 5: Biological Aspects of Personality

Question 1

According to Darwin, individual differences

A) have a function in survival.
B) can be adaptive.
C) can aid in passing on one's genes to offspring.
D) have a genetic basis.
E) have all of these.

Answer 1

have all of these.

Question 2

Behavioral genomics is the study of

A) the effects of genetics on biological maturation.
B) how behaviors affect biological development.
C) the ethics involved in unraveling the human genome.
D) how genes affect behavior.
E) the unraveling of the human genome.

Answer 2

how genes affect behavior.

Question 3

"Temperament" refers to

A) stable individual differences in emotional reactivity.
B) individuals' widely varying fluctuations in mood.
C) the trait of being irritable and temperamental.
D) physical characteristics which correlate with behaviors.
E) a disease common in dogs that sometimes is transmitted to humans.

Answer 3

stable individual differences in emotional reactivity.

Question 4

Of the following, which are among the four basic aspects of temperament?

A) Activity and emotionality
B) Activity and gender congruence
C) Activity, emotionality, and gender congruence
D) Emotionality and gender congruence
E) Activity, emotionality, and warmth

Question 5

All of the following EXCEPT __________ is considered one of the four basic aspects of temperament.

A) emotionality
B) sociability
C) impulsivity
D) activity
E) energy

Question 6

In what way does Eysenck link his dimension of introversion to biology?

A) Introverts are superior to extroverts in their ability to cope with arousal.
B) Introverts are innately at a higher level of central nervous system arousal.
C) Introverts are either very high or very low in terms of central nervous system arousal.
D) Introverts are innately at a lower level of central nervous system arousal.
E) He doesn't specify a link.

Question 7

According to Eysenck's theory, an extrovert, if exposed to annoying external stimuli, would

A) start out by being more bothered, and then become equal with, an introvert.
B) be less bothered by it than an introvert would.
C) trigger an Oedipal reaction.
D) enjoy the external stimulation.
E) be more bothered by it than would an introvert.

Question 8

The behavioral activation system is responsible for

A) helping us to respond to things that are punishing.
B) regulating our response to rewards.
C) regulating our sleep cycle.
D) activating chemicals in our brain in response to stress.
E) regulating our heart activity.

Question 9

Individuals with defects or weaknesses in their dopamine systems may be susceptible to

A) impulsivity.
B) negative emotions.
C) addiction.
D) introversion.

Question 10

Individuals who have a relatively more active right hemisphere (compared to what is typical) are more likely to

A) be politically conservative.
B) be calm and even-tempered.
C) have auditory hallucinations (hear voices).
D) be right-handed.
E) overreact to a negative stimulus.

Question 11

One of the first scientists to explore possible genetic links for personality, who tried to separate the effects of genetics and environment by looking at adopted twins, and who began the eugenics movement, was, __________.

A) Charles Darwin
B) Ivan Pavlov
C) Floyd Allport
D) Hans Eysenck
E) Francis Galton

Question 12

The Cinderella phenomenon describes

A) the tendency for girls to be more affected, in terms of personality, by their looks.
B) the tendency for biological children to be treated better than stepchildren.
C) the assertion that a dream is wish your heart makes.
D) the tendency for stepchildren to be more physically attractive than biological children.
E) a tendency for some people to lose their shoes when they are in a hurry.

Question 13

How does the case of Angelman syndrome demonstrate a genetic influence on personality?

A) People with Angelman syndrome usually develop hostile personalities later in life.
B) People with Angelman syndrome are almost always happy and cheerful.
C) People with Angelman syndrome are usually depressed and have an inactive temperament.
D) People with Angelman syndrome have a very flat affect, demonstrating very little personality.
E) People with Angelman syndrome tend to develop bipolar disorder.

Question 14

What does a "lie detector" have to do with Eysenck's biological theory of temperament?

A) It has nothing to do with Eysenck's theory.
B) It shows that there are no differences in lying behavior between introverts and extroverts; therefore biological underpinnings of personality are unlikely.
C) Eysenck has found that extroverts are more likely to lie than introverts.
D) It can be used to measure levels of physiological arousal in people, and Eysenck posits that introverts are more physiologically aroused at baseline.
E) It can be used to accurately place people into four discrete categories of temperament among which there is no overlap.

Question 15

Which of the following is NOT characteristic of Zuckerman's "sensation seeking"?

A) Tendency to actively engage environments
B) Seeking out highly stimulating activities
C) Seeking out novel experiences
D) Preferring large crowds of people
E) Being attracted to the unknown

Question 16

Judith Rich Harris has suggested that

A) parents are the most important influence on children.
B) fathers are not significant socializing agents when compared to mothers.
C) children's friends do not influence them very much.
D) parents who receive training are more effective parents.
E) peers are more important influences on children than parents are.

Question 17

Non-shared environmental influences may include

A) children's different experiences within the home.
B) peer relationships.
C) birth order.
D) all of the above.

Question 18

In regard to the biological determination of homosexuality,

A) there are no differences between the concordance levels of monozygotic versus dizygotic twins in the occurrence of homosexuality.
B) there is no evidence that sexual orientation is influenced by biological factors.
C) some functional and structural brain differences have been found when comparing the brains of homosexual with heterosexual men.
D) it is clear that sexual orientation is completely biologically determined.

Question 19

One possible way that homosexuality might have been selected for through evolution is by

A) kin selection.
B) multiplicative evolution.
C) selective attrition.
D) evolutionary sublimation.
E) open selection.

Question 20

Where did the phrase "mad as a hatter" come from?

A) People wore hats in the 1800s to signify mental illness.
B) Hat makers were notorious in old England for their angry and violent tempers.
C) Hat makers were poisoned by mercury in hat factories and madness was a symptom.
D) Lewis Carroll coined the term in his Alice in Wonderland, and it has been used ever since.
E) A well-known insane asylum in England was called Hatfield, and the residents were called "hatters."

Question 21

Which of the following can affect observable personality?

A) Major surgeries, such as coronary artery bypass surgery
B) Use of legal drugs (e.g. Halcion) or illegal drugs (e.g. LSD)
C) Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and strokes
D) Poisoning by metals, including mercury, manganese, and lead
E) All of these

Question 22

The textbook argues that there should be a field of study called "personality toxicology," which would mean that experts would study

A) personality precursors to illegal drug use.
B) "toxic" or maladaptive personalities.
C) "toxic" or maladaptive interpersonal relationships.
D) the factors necessary for one to deal with stress.
E) the effects of environmental substances and toxins on personality.

Question 23

Which of the following is NOT an example of someone actively creating an environment?

A) John was born into a large family, and he likes this because he has lots of siblings to play with, study with, and talk with.
B) John chooses to play competitive sports despite the fact that he sometimes gets injured, because he loves the adrenaline rush and the cheers of the crowd.
C) John picks his friends carefully because he doesn't want to hang around with people who are always getting into trouble.
D) John spends every Sunday with his grandmother because he enjoys hearing her tell stories of the "old days."
E) John broke up with his girlfriend because he felt their goals in life were too dissimilar.

Question 24

Ernst Kretschmer, the first to systematically study the relationship between physical appearance and personality, believed that schizophrenic individuals were more likely to

A) be attractive.
B) have blue eyes.
C) be slender.
D) be unattractive.
E) be overweight.

Question 25

Which of the following is a correct match between W.H. Sheldon's somatotype and its description?

A) Mesomorphs: roly-poly and good-natured
B) Ectomorphs: muscular, large-boned, and athletic
C) Endomorphs: muscular, large-boned, and athletic
D) Endomorphs: slender, bookworm types
E) Ectomorphs: slender, bookworm types

Question 26

Research has shown that, in general, physically attractive people are assumed to be

A) more musically inclined than their less attractive peers.
B) less emotionally stable than their less attractive peers.
C) more successful than their less attractive peers.
D) less athletic than their less attractive peers.

Question 27

Social Darwinism supports the notion that

A) our social interactions are constantly evolving in an evolution-like process.
B) Darwinian theory is most applicable to socialist societies.
C) "superior" societies have the right to invade and conquer "lesser" societies.
D) Darwin was a socialist.
E) the roots of social psychology may be traced to the writings of Darwin.

Question 28

Sociobiologists study

A) the biological predisposition to socialism.
B) how childhood affects later psychological functioning.
C) the rate at which children from different ethnicities learn.
D) the social interactions of biologists.
E) the influence of evolutionary biology on individual responses regarding social matters.

Question 29

In the United States, women could not graduate from top colleges such as Yale and Princeton until the

A) 1920s.
B) 1950s.
C) 1940s (war years).
D) 1970s.
E) 1990s.

Question 30

A major study done at the University of Minnesota examining identical twins raised apart has found

A) same sex and opposite sex twins have similar personalities.
B) people raised in Minnesota do not like Mexican food.
C) similarities in physical appearance but not personality.
D) impressive similarities in personality between people who have the same genetic makeup.
E) personality is mostly located in the genes, regardless of the environment.

Question 31

Jenny is not a particularly happy toddler. She is easily frightened, and seems to be easily irritated. Her mother reports that she's not a lot of trouble, however, as she spends most of her time playing quietly by herself or watching TV; in fact, her mother often has to encourage her to play with the other children in her daycare group. Describe Jenny on each of the following temperamental dimensions: 1) activity; 2) emotionality; 3) sociability.

A) low; low; high
B) low; high; high
C) high; low; low
D) low; low; low
E) low; high; low

Question 32

Which of the following arguments points to non-genetic factors in the incidence of schizophrenia?

A) Individuals with schizophrenia often have larger ventricles in the brain.
B) Many identical twins of schizophrenics do not develop the disease.
C) Schizophrenia tends to run in families.
D) Individuals with schizophrenia often show signs of brain atrophy or developmental failure.

Question 33

Which of the following are biological factors that are likely to be related to personality?

A) Chromosomes
B) Levels of mercury or lead in the body
C) Hormones
D) Central nervous system arousal level
E) All of these

Question 34

If we postulate that introverts have an innately higher level of central nervous system arousal, this is an application of

A) Pavlov's theory of the classical conditioning of traits.
B) Freud's theory of the hydraulic nature of the id.
C) Buss's theory of the evolution of homeostatic mechanisms.
D) Eysenck's linking of the dimension of introversion to biology.

Question 35

Daly and Wilson suggest that family violence and abuse against children in modern America is often due to

A) evolutionary pressures driving individuals to protect themselves against all others (self-preservation instinct).
B) evolutionary pressures driving individuals to protect the human race from attack.
C) psychological conflicts in the abuser's unconscious.
D) reinforced behavioral patterns that include violent actions.
E) evolutionary pressures driving individuals to care more for their own offspring than for others.

Question 36

Pick's disease influences personality by

A) changing an individual's beliefs.
B) affecting a patient's sense of self.
C) causing brain deterioration.
D) interfering with normal brain functioning.
E) all of these.

Question 37

Tropisms are

A) health-promoting environments.
B) tendencies to seek out specific types of environments.
C) unhealthy temperaments.
D) health-threatening environments.
E) genetically caused chromosome abnormalities.

Question 38

An individual who is interested in experimenting with drugs, going skydiving, and traveling to exotic places is probably

A) high in sensation-seeking.
B) neurotic.
C) extroverted.
D) high in self-monitoring.
E) mentally unstable.

Question 39

Behavioral genomics is the study of what?

A) How behavior changes over the lifespan
B) How behavior is affected by the actions of other people
C) How behavior is affected by genes
D) How behavior is related to certain outcomes in society
E) How behavior can be controlled through therapeutic techniques

Question 40

Activity, Emotionality, Sociability, and Impulsivity refer to what?

A) Four basic aspects of temperament
B) Four basic categories in which all people fall
C) Genetic structures that make up temperament
D) Four methods of assessing personality

Question 41

Eysenck's model of temperament relies heavily on which biological system of the body?

A) The endocrine system
B) The cardiac system
C) The reproductive system
D) The nervous system
E) The emotionality system

Question 42

According to the biological model, sensation seekers are drawn to certain activities because they

A) may have a low level of dopamine, and therefore seek activities that stimulate the production of dopamine.
B) may have a high level of serotonin, and this higher level drives them to participate in certain activities.
C) are unable to produce any neurotransmitters, and therefore, are driven toward activities that would cause their bodies to feel the same way as someone who does produce neurotransmitters.
D) had early experiences in life that were traumatic, and they seek out extreme sensations to block those memories.
E) have a structural abnormality of the brain that makes them insensitive to danger.

Question 43

The purpose of using twins as a source of data in personality studies is to

A) show that nature is more powerful than nurture in the development of personality.
B) show that nurture is more powerful than nature in the development of personality.
C) study the effects that both nature and nurture have in the development of personality.
D) concentrate only on nature in the development of personality.
E) concentrate only on nurture in the development of personality.

Question 44

Identical twins differ from fraternal (non-identical) twins in what way?

A) Identical twins do not share the same genes; fraternal twins do share the same genes.
B) Identical twins do not share the same environment during childhood; fraternal twins share the same environment during childhood.
C) Identical twins are just twins that look similar in physical features; fraternal twins are twins that share no similar physical features.
D) Identical twins come from one fertilized egg that splits; fraternal twins come from two separately fertilized eggs.
E) Identical twins tend to be more physically attractive; fraternal twins tend to be more intelligent.

Question 45

What biological factors can affect a person's personality and behavior?

A) Genetic disorders (such as Angelman syndrome)
B) Organic diseases (such as Alzheimer's)
C) Environmental toxins (such as mercury poisoning)
D) Drugs
E) All of these

Question 46

Sally is outgoing and responsible. She has worked at the same job since graduating college and still socializes with the same people she met in college. She has been married for 15 years to an outgoing and kind man. Jane, on the other hand, is unpredictable and has a hot temper. She has been fired from four jobs and has never stayed in a job for more than a year without getting bored and quitting. She has been divorced once, after being married for only 18 months to a violent and volatile man. Which term best describes the phenomenon in which these two women consistently experience different environments and situations?

A) Tropisms
B) Environmental control
C) External drives
D) Internal drives
E) Psychological drives

Question 47

Which of the following is one of the three somatotypes identified by W.H. Sheldon?

A) Megamorphs
B) Endomorphs
C) Ecto-mesomorphs
D) Egomorphs
E) Endocrinemorphs

Question 48

What do sociobiologists study?

A) How people and animals have evolved to form close attachments between people and some species of animals
B) How animals' biological qualities and genes have changed over time
C) The reasons for the evolution of animal social behaviors
D) The differences between the genetic material in a human versus other primates
E) The effect that humans have on the environment natural to our species

Question 49

Which of the following statements best describes the biological perspective's view of free will?

A) Humans have the potential for free will beyond the constraints of the body (i.e. spiritual free will).
B) Free will differentiates humans from other animals.
C) Behavior is determined by biological tendencies.
D) Behavior is determined by biological tendencies and the unconscious.
E) Behavior occurs at random, with no rhyme or reason.

Question 50

Nonshared environmental variance refers to the aspects of the environment that

A) children raised in the same home experience differently.
B) children raised in different homes experience as similar.
C) children raised in the same home experience identically.
D) are shared in different communities and cultures.
E) vary over time for an individual.

Question 51

In a Darwinian analysis, attention is focused on the __________ of a characteristic in survival.

Question 52

__________ is the process by which adaptive genes are more likely to be passed on to offspring over the generations.

Question 53

Although there are differing models of temperament, most agree on the following four basic aspects of temperament: __________, __________, sociability, and impulsivity.

Question 54

The basic idea of Eysenck's biologically based personality theory is that extroverts have relatively low level of __________, and so seek stimulation. The opposite applies to introverts.

Question 55

__________ look to the external world for arousal (by doing things such as skydiving) because they may have a low level of natural activation.

Question 56

__________ are the chemicals that nerves used to communicate.

Question 57

Sir Francis Galton began the __________ movement, which encouraged purifying the gene pool of the elite in order to improve human blood lines.

Question 58

__________ is the idea that increasing the likelihood for the family members of an individual to survive increases the likelihood that the individual's genes will be carried on to the next generation, even if the individual did not reproduce him or herself.

Question 59

Measuring people's bodily proportions and their personalities, and developing a theory based on body types is known as __________.

Question 60

Supporters of Social Darwinism and eugenics sometimes suggest that __________ is not a biological principle but a moral imperative interpreted to mean that weak creatures should not survive.

Question 61

The approach called __________ suggests that not only individuals but societies and cultures naturally compete to survive, and so has been used to justify domination over other societies.

Question 62

The scientific study of the influence of evolutionary biology on individual responses regarding social matters describes the field called __________.

Question 63

In all human societies, __________ is a bond that develops shortly after birth between the infant and caretaker.

Question 64

Biologists that have worked to identify each of the tens of thousands of genes in our chromosomes contribute to the __________ project.

Question 65

People are attracted to the idea of __________ determinism because it is self-gratifying to think of "other" people as inherently inferior and therefore less deserving of freedom, success, and even life.

Question 66

The similarities of __________ twins are greater than those of __________ twins.

Question 67

What are some of the problems encountered in trying to test a nervous system-based theory of temperament? Describe how electrodermal measures may be used to provide support for Eysenck's biologically based model of temperament or personality.

Question 68

How might the finding that identical twins are more similar to one another than are fraternal twins be explained with something other than a biological explanation?

Question 69

If there is not a gene for "talented athlete," why might we expect that if one monozygotic twin is a high school football star, his twin brother might also be quite good at athletics?

Question 70

In the textbook a number of environmental factors that seem to affect personality are listed. Name and describe three of them.

Question 71

What is one way in which our "biology" may influence the types of experiences we have?

Question 72

List and briefly describe Sheldon's three somatotypes. Why has this approach to assessing personality become unpopular?

Question 73

When sociobiologists apply their theories to humans, which three human social behaviors are most often used? Why?

Question 74

What is the "Human Genome Project"? How is it different from the eugenics movement? How is it similar?

Question 75

Explain what the field of behavioral genomics addresses. What ethical issues are associated with research in this area?

Question 76

List and define the four basic elements of temperament discussed in the text. What are some similarities and differences between these basic elements of temperament and Eysenck's approach to understanding temperament?