What's Your Psychological I.Q.?

15 questions to discover what you really know.

Post published by Ronald E Riggio Ph.D. on Aug 31, 2014 in Cutting-Edge Leadership

 Here are some questions concerning common misconceptions:
1. Schizophrenia is:

• a. possessing multiple personalities.
• b. associated with violent outbursts and huge mood swings.
• c. a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior.

2. Which saying best represents the research on physical attraction and dating?

• a. Opposites attract.
• b. Birds of a feather flock together.
• c. My strengths compensate for your weaknesses (and vice versa).

3. Lie detector tests (polygraphs):

• a. are 90% accurate.
• b. can only be beaten by psychopaths.
• c. are prone to error, particularly for innocent people who are viewed as guilty.

4. When it comes to our brains:

• a. everything we experience is stored in it, but we can’t retrieve much of it.
• b. we only use about 10%; much of the rest of our brain is silent.
• c. research shows that there are no silent areas of the brain.

5. Hypnotized people are most like:

• a. people who are asleep.
• b. people who are awake and alert.
• c. robots who are unaware of what is going on around them.

True or False?
6. The best way to get rid of anger and aggression is through sports or hitting a punching bag.
7. Human memory works like a video camera, recording everything we experience.
8. The happy worker is the productive worker.
9. The insanity defense is used in less than 1% of criminal trials.
10. Attractive people are believed to be smarter and more successful than unattractive people.
Here are the really tough questions:
11. A researcher finds a correlation between children’s TV viewing and lowered reading scores. This means that:

• a. TV viewing is harmful and causes students to be lazy.
• b. poor parenting is the likely explanation.
• c. less intelligent children are more likely to watch TV than to read.
• d. the correlation does not allow us to make a causal determination.

12. Young children are often unable to distinguish others' perspectives from their own. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, this is an example of:

• a. concrete-operational thinking.
• b. limits to short-term memory.
• c. poor ego development.
• d. pervasive egocentrism.

13. A farmworker is paid for every bushel of fruit that is picked. In terms of reinforcement theory, the worker is being paid on:

• a. an intermittent reinforcement schedule.
• b. a fixed interval schedule.
• c. a fixed ratio schedule.
• d. a variable interval schedule.

14. In a darkened room, a fixed pinpoint of light appears to move. This is called:

• a. the Purkinje reflex.
• b. the Ponzo illusion.
• c. the autokinetic effect.
• d. the optic motion theory.

15. A lesion in the Broca’s area of the frontal cortex of the brain will likely result in:

• a. expressive aphasia.
• b. apraxia.
• c. alexia.
• d. visual agnosia.

Answers
1. C, 2. B, 3. C, 4. C, 5. B
6. F, 7. F, 8. F, 9. T, 10. T
11. D, 12. D, 13. C, 14. C, 15. A.
Results

• Less than 8: Time to retake Psychology 101
• 8-10: Pretty good; you're ready for an upper-level course
• 11-12: You may be smarter than a freshman psychology major
• More than 13: You're a genius—of course, we’re not using “genius” in the scientific sense...