ENR 5400 Midterm Exam
Questions And Answers
Lewin's equation - Answer B = f(P,E)
Behavior is a function of person and environment
Define carrying capacity and be able to apply it to real world situations - Answer -
carrying capacity is the maximum number of any species that a habitat can support
- if population grows too quickly, it depletes resources very suddenly, which will result
in a population crash
- Easter Island example: unsustainable population growth for several centuries; to
support rapidly growing population more and more of the surrounding forests were cut
down, and eventually soil, water, and food supplies were depleted; then their population
crashed
What is exponential growth and why is it problematic for sustainability? - Answer - it is
growth that starts off slowly and accelerates quickly
- it doubles every time instead of an incremental increase
- exponential growth depends on an infinite number of resources, but natural resources
are limited in reality; thus, in the real world, exponential growth will eventually lead to a
depletion of resources faster than the Earth can reproduce them; ergo, it is bad for
sustainability
How is affluenza related to ecological footprints? - Answer - affluenza is characterized
by an addiction to materialism and consumption and tends to be unsustainable
- increased consumption and materialism is correlated with rising ecological footprints
Experimental design - Answer - participants are randomly assigned to treatment or
control conditions and complete outcome measures after or during treatment period
- ex: undergrads sugn up for a study; half are randomly assigned to environmental
identity salience condition and are told to write about a time they behaved sustainably,
the other half are told to write about their weekend; their beliefs on anthropogenic
climate change are then measured
Independent variable - Answer - variable that is manipulated
- ex: the type of liquid fed to a plant
Dependent variable - Answer - the variable that is affected by the manipulation of the
independent variable
, - ex: amount of plant growth
External validity - Answer extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world
settings
External validity threats - Answer - non-random selection
- non-random assignment of experimental group
Internal validity - Answer the degree to which the effects observed in an experiment are
due to the independent variable and not confounds; demonstration of causality
Internal validity threats - Answer - Hawthorne effect: people modify their behavior when
they know they are being observed
- attrition: losing subjects
- sequencing effects: variation in the order in which subject receive treatment
- diffusion of treatment: when experiment groups communicate with each other, they
may be giving each other information about the study, which may affect the results
What are mental maps and how do they relate to associative neural networks? - Answer
- people simplify reality by creating mental maps of situations or experiences
- they can impact experiences and judgment, result in biases and inaccuracies, and are
made possible by associative networks
- associative networks are interconnected units of information through which learning
occurs
- neural networks are physical connections of neurons that are changed by experience
in ways that then alter behavior
Identify problems associated with taking in limited information - Answer - to
comprehend a complex a world, we depend on biases and heuristics, which are
shortcuts that can lead to snap judgments
- confirmation bias, availability heuristic, affect heuristic
Identify problems associated with taking in irrelevant information - Answer - too much
information can lead to poor decisions because people don't know what to focus on
- many reasoning difficulties come from being distracted by or using irrelevant
information
- ex: greenwashing is when inaccurate and irrelevant information is displayed in an
attempt to make companies appear environmentally friendly (7-up example)
Selective attention - Answer - when the human perception system takes in only as much
information as is required to navigate a particular situation because the world is full of
Questions And Answers
Lewin's equation - Answer B = f(P,E)
Behavior is a function of person and environment
Define carrying capacity and be able to apply it to real world situations - Answer -
carrying capacity is the maximum number of any species that a habitat can support
- if population grows too quickly, it depletes resources very suddenly, which will result
in a population crash
- Easter Island example: unsustainable population growth for several centuries; to
support rapidly growing population more and more of the surrounding forests were cut
down, and eventually soil, water, and food supplies were depleted; then their population
crashed
What is exponential growth and why is it problematic for sustainability? - Answer - it is
growth that starts off slowly and accelerates quickly
- it doubles every time instead of an incremental increase
- exponential growth depends on an infinite number of resources, but natural resources
are limited in reality; thus, in the real world, exponential growth will eventually lead to a
depletion of resources faster than the Earth can reproduce them; ergo, it is bad for
sustainability
How is affluenza related to ecological footprints? - Answer - affluenza is characterized
by an addiction to materialism and consumption and tends to be unsustainable
- increased consumption and materialism is correlated with rising ecological footprints
Experimental design - Answer - participants are randomly assigned to treatment or
control conditions and complete outcome measures after or during treatment period
- ex: undergrads sugn up for a study; half are randomly assigned to environmental
identity salience condition and are told to write about a time they behaved sustainably,
the other half are told to write about their weekend; their beliefs on anthropogenic
climate change are then measured
Independent variable - Answer - variable that is manipulated
- ex: the type of liquid fed to a plant
Dependent variable - Answer - the variable that is affected by the manipulation of the
independent variable
, - ex: amount of plant growth
External validity - Answer extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world
settings
External validity threats - Answer - non-random selection
- non-random assignment of experimental group
Internal validity - Answer the degree to which the effects observed in an experiment are
due to the independent variable and not confounds; demonstration of causality
Internal validity threats - Answer - Hawthorne effect: people modify their behavior when
they know they are being observed
- attrition: losing subjects
- sequencing effects: variation in the order in which subject receive treatment
- diffusion of treatment: when experiment groups communicate with each other, they
may be giving each other information about the study, which may affect the results
What are mental maps and how do they relate to associative neural networks? - Answer
- people simplify reality by creating mental maps of situations or experiences
- they can impact experiences and judgment, result in biases and inaccuracies, and are
made possible by associative networks
- associative networks are interconnected units of information through which learning
occurs
- neural networks are physical connections of neurons that are changed by experience
in ways that then alter behavior
Identify problems associated with taking in limited information - Answer - to
comprehend a complex a world, we depend on biases and heuristics, which are
shortcuts that can lead to snap judgments
- confirmation bias, availability heuristic, affect heuristic
Identify problems associated with taking in irrelevant information - Answer - too much
information can lead to poor decisions because people don't know what to focus on
- many reasoning difficulties come from being distracted by or using irrelevant
information
- ex: greenwashing is when inaccurate and irrelevant information is displayed in an
attempt to make companies appear environmentally friendly (7-up example)
Selective attention - Answer - when the human perception system takes in only as much
information as is required to navigate a particular situation because the world is full of
