False: Engaging in activities which can be interpreted as a substitute for remembering past events is termed acting out. In essence thoughts are replaced by actions, implying that such memories lack verbal representation or the impulse is too intense to be discharged in verbal form. Acts within the session such as pacing up and down, throwing things, etc. are referred to as acting in. Both acting out and acting in are examples of enactment. Acting out implies regression to a pre-reflective preverbal level (Bateman & Holmes 1995, p. 195).

True: Attention tests are of two types – focused and divided. Focused attention tests require subjects to attend only to one stimulus whilst being distracted by others. Divided attention tests require subjects to attend to multiple stimuli simultaneously (Munafo 2002, p. 20).

False: The fundamental attribution error occurs when we explain the bad behaviour of others by referring to the individual’s personal or dispositional factors. When analysing our own behaviour we are more likely to blame bad behaviour on situational factors (Gross 2001, p. 345; Wright et al 2005, p. 80).

True: The fundamental attribution error may be limited to Western societies. It may be more pronounced when people are required to attribute behaviour to a single cause (Fear 2004, p. 32; Gross 2001, p. 345; Wright et al 2005, p. 80).

True: Mental health care traditionally followed the deviancy approach with labelling, segregation and institutional care of the mentally ill. The normalization approach or social role valorization approach was initially developed in learning disabilities. It aims to reverse the devaluation of the disabled person and the group while accepting that disability exists. It capitalizes on the strengths and ambitions of the person to improve the person’s quality of life. It uses person-centred planning to identify what it would take to offer ‘normal’ opportunities for living, work, friendships and relationships (Fear 2004, p. 497; Gelder et al 2000, p. 1503).

False: Semantics is the study of the meaning of language, i.e. the meaning underlying words and sentences. It is divided into morphemes and sentences. Morphemes include words as well as prefixes and suffixes which may alter the meaning of a word. Meaning is also influenced by context and thus the sentence in which the word is contained is also important (Fear 2004, p. 48; Gross 2001, p. 279).

True: In telephone conversations all the information has to be conveyed solely via the audible component. In face-to-face communication the additional visual component involving facial expression, gestures, proximity, etc. carries a lot of information. This necessitates telephone conversations to be longer and more articulate than face-to-face conversations in order to convey the same amount of information.

True: According to Osgood and Tannenbaum’s congruity theory (1955), incongruity makes people feel uncomfortable and motivates them to change their attitudes to make them congruent. Both attitudes change. The weaker attitude changes more and the stronger attitude changes less. Attitudes do not change direction (Osgood & Tannenbaum 1955).

False: Primary deviance is a deviant act. Secondary deviance refers to the change in behaviour as a result of being labelled a deviant due to the primary act. Cohen in 1972 coined the term deviancy amplification spiral. It is the modern mass media phenomenon of an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behaviour or other undesirable events resulting in a moral panic which causes change out of proportion to the real threat (Cohen 1992; Puri & Tyrer 1998, p. 333).

True: Aggression is a spontaneously generated force which helps maintain dominance hierarchies and aids the process of natural selection. Animals that live in groups often develop a social order based on dominance hierarchies. In baboons the dominant male usually achieves his status through victory in several aggressive threat displays and encounters. After this, his status is settled for a while and lower ranking baboons generally step aside for his convenience (Gleitman 1996, p. 302).

True: In many primate societies, females compete as much as the males do. The females develop hierarchies that are often more stable than those of males. The female rank has more important long-term consequences than the male rank. The mothers tend to bequeath their social rank to their offspring, especially to their daughters (Gleitman 1996, p. 302).

True: Eysenck hypothesized that the ascending reticular activating system of introverts is sensitive and chronically over-aroused. Strong stimuli facilitate stimulus–response associations. As introverts are more easily stimulated than extroverts, they should, in theory, be more prone to conditioning. Experimental evidence does not strongly support this (Gelder et al 2000, p. 707; Gross 2001, p. 617).

False: Personality theories may be nomothetic or idiographic. The nomothetic approach describes personality in terms of shared attributes, i.e. there are a limited number of variables on which people differ. The idiographic approach considers each individual as unique. The nomothetic approach has two variants – type and trait approaches. Type theories are categorical or non-continuous, e.g. the use of diagnostic categories for various personality disorders. In the trait approach there are a limited number of personality variables, but they are continuous in nature. Eysenck’s three dimensions of personality, i.e. neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism, belong to the nomothetic and trait type (Johnstone et al 2004, p.111; Wright et al 2005, p. 75).

False: Parental depression is associated with a greatly increased risk of psychopathology and developmental difficulties in children. This is due to a complex bi-directional interaction between genetic vulnerability, influence of depression on parenting behaviour, parent–child relationships and social disadvantage, not just the core symptoms (Gelder et al 2000, p. 1848).

False: Teenagers’ standards are remarkably in tune with those of their parents. Peer and friendship groups work in concert with, rather than in opposition to, adult values, attitudes, goals and achievements (Gross 2001, p. 540; Sadock & Sadock 2005, p. 3040).

True: The parents respond with grief, similar to that which occurs with a sudden loss. Every expectant parent daydreams about the child. The arrival of a sick or damaged baby destroys many of those dreams. The phases of the response are also similar to normal grief, involving shock, denial and anger followed by constructive active adaptation, which might involve learning about the condition or joining a parents’ association, leading on to resolution (Gelder et al 2000, p. 2001).

True: Group discussions tend to lead to decisions that are more extreme than individual decisions. If the group members were initially inclined to take risks with regard to a particular issue, the group would make even riskier decisions. Similarly, if the group members were cautious to start with, the group decision would be even more cautious. This is called the group polarization effect (Wright et al 2005, p. 81).

False: (Clinical) iatrogenesis is the state of ill health, adverse effect or complication resulting from medical treatment. The word literally means ‘brought forth by a doctor’ (iatros means physician in Greek). From a sociological point of view there are three types of iatrogenesis: clinical, social and cultural.

Social iatrogenesis results from the medicalization of life. More and more problems are seen as amenable to medical intervention. Normal phenomena such as relationships, sex, pregnancy, menstruation, and especially childbirth are medicalized. Pharmaceutical companies develop expensive treatments for non-diseases. Social problems such as homelessness, child abuse, violence and alcohol intoxication have become redefined as medical areas. Medicalization of such areas is a more effective way of controlling such deviance than legal punishment (Illich 2001).

True: Howard Becker proposed labelling theory to explain the role of society in creating deviance. Many people commit criminal acts but not all are prosecuted. The society picks on those it decides are ‘deviant’, labels them ‘whore’, ‘thief’, ‘abuser’, ‘junkie’, etc. and segregates them from the rest of society. This creates ‘outsiders’ who are outcast from society. They are thus forced to associate with others who have also been cast out. When society treats them as deviants, they respond as such. Thus the deviant reacts to such a response by continuing to engage in the behaviour society now expects from them (Fear 2004, p. 82; Giddens 1997, p. 178).

True: Charismatic leaders show referent power, i.e. they are liked by others. French & Raven (1960) described referent power (being charismatic and liked by others) as a type of social power. The other four types of power are authority (power derived from role), reward (power comes from ability to reward), coercive (power derived from ability to punish) and expert (power derived from skill) (Puri & Hall 2004, p. 53).

True: Leadership ability may depend on task orientation but the nature of the task is also important. Task orientated leaders are better for structured tasks and emotion orientated leaders for unstructured tasks (Munafo 2002, p. 79).

False: Every culture has a number of unwritten laws or guidelines that direct conduct in particular situations and tell us what is right to do and what is wrong. They are called norms. Norms are specific guides to action, which define acceptable and appropriate behaviour in particular situations. Norms are enforced by positive and negative sanctions, i.e. rewards and punishments. Some norms vary from person to person, but others are collective within a society or even across cultures. For example, all societies have norms governing dress. A 70-year-old grandmother dressed as a teenager would contravene the norms for her age group.

Unlike norms, which provide specific directives for conduct, values provide more general guidelines. A value is a belief that something is good and desirable. It is an abstract concept. It defines what is ideal, important, worthwhile and worth striving for. Generally, norms reflect values (Giddens 1997, p. 172).

False: Social cohesion is where the following exist:

True: In the UK, the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys has traditionally divided the population into six groups depending on an individual’s occupation or the occupation of the head of the household. This was expanded in 2001 to reflect some of the social change which has occurred since the original scale was designed in 1911. There are now eight social classes:

False: Acute stress reaction or the fight or flight reaction results from increased sympathetic activation. The sympathetic activation increases heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar level, blood flow in heart muscle, lungs and skeletal muscle, and causes vasoconstriction and decreased blood flow in smooth muscle, skin and the digestive tract. People turn pale as a result of decreased blood flow to the skin (Sadock & Sadock 2005, p. 1729; Wright et al 2005, p. 74).