Weekly Short Essays-Week Seven

This is a short essay assignment with a mixture of multiple-choice/short answer and essay questions that cite evidence or research to explain/support your answer.

Your essay answers must be in your own words with paraphrasing properly source credited. Quotes in lieu of answering in your own words will not receive points.

Please submit your responses as a Word document (.docx file). Make sure to number your responses so your instructor will know where one response ends and the next starts. It is not necessary to rewrite each question in your document. For multiple choice questions, CLEARLY indicate your response (a, b, c, or d) so that your instructor does not have to search and try to determine your response in your short answer explanation.

Each response is worth 20 possible points. Please see the attached Rubric for the grading schematic that will be used to evaluate your responses. Your responses should be approximately one-half page each (double-spaced) for a total of three pages (not including Title and References Pages if you choose to include them).

1. Suppose you are observing a highly popular and well-respected politician and a college student eat lunch. Both proceed to spill gravy on their neckties. Generalizing from research cited in Aronson, your liking of the politician will most likely _____? And your liking of the college student will _____________?

a. increase; increase

b. increase; decrease

c. decrease; decrease

d. decrease; increase

Why do you believe that this is the correct choice?

2. Aronson’s text describes an experiment in which subjects watch a victim supposedly receive electric shocks. Subjects were given the opportunity to vote as to whether the victim should continue to receive the shocks, and the shocks were either terminated or not. What was the outcome of that experiment in terms of liking the victim?

3. (Based on Article #37 of Readings About the Social Animal) Explain why it was that Dutton and Aron found it necessary to conduct a third experiment, this time in a laboratory setting, to control for what possible potential confounding factor?

4. Explain a situation in which you heard it said or someone said to you something that started a conflict or became a confrontation. Explain how it made you feel. Next, describe how the confrontation or conversation could be rewritten using “Straight Talk.”

5. According to the Aronson textbook in Chapter 8, why is it important to express one’s feelings rather than one’s judgments about another person?