Week 1 · Quiz

Week 1 — Quiz (auto-graded) · The Science of Psychology

Introduction to Psychology · PSYC 1 Fall 2026 · Prof. Bennett Fictional sample

Course: Introduction to Psychology (PSYC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Bennett
Objective tested: Objective 1 — what makes psychology a science; the major theoretical perspectives.
Points: 10 (1 each) · Assignment group: Quizzes (15% of grade) · Due: end of Module 1.

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI is in F-quiz-week-01-qti.xml; the reusable item-bank entries and the Canvas placement block are at the bottom of this file.

Blueprint

#	Type	Concept	Objective
1	Multiple choice	Definition of psychology	1
2	Multiple choice	Founding of the field (Wundt, 1879)	1
3	Multiple answer	Mental processes vs. observable behavior	1
4	Multiple choice	Psychodynamic perspective	1
5	Multiple choice	Cognitive perspective	1
6	Matching	The major perspectives	1
7	Multiple choice	Hindsight bias ("just common sense")	1
8	True / False	"A theory is just a guess" misconception	1
9	Multiple choice	Functionalism (William James)	1
10	Multiple choice	Biopsychosocial integration	1

No trick questions; distractors target the Week 1 misconceptions named in the lecture outline.

Questions, key, and feedback

Q1 (MC). Psychology is best defined as the —
- A. study of mental illness and its treatment
- B. scientific study of behavior and mental processes ✅
- C. philosophy of how the mind ought to work
- D. study of the brain and nervous system only
Feedback: Two words carry the definition — science (it's empirical, not opinion) and behavior and mental processes (what's observable and what's internal). (A is psychiatry/clinical work, one corner of the field; D is just the biological perspective.)

Q2 (MC). In 1879, a researcher opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, marking psychology's start as a formal science. Who was it?
- A. Sigmund Freud
- B. William James
- C. Wilhelm Wundt ✅
- D. B. F. Skinner
Feedback: Wundt's 1879 lab is the conventional birthdate of scientific psychology. Freud, James, and Skinner all came later and worked in very different traditions.

Q3 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). Which of the following are mental processes rather than directly observable behaviors?
- A. Recalling a childhood memory ✅
- B. Raising your hand in class
- C. Feeling a wave of anxiety ✅
- D. Running on a treadmill
- E. Solving a math problem in your head ✅
Feedback: Mental processes are internal (a memory, a feeling, silent reasoning). Raising a hand and running are observable behaviors — things an outside observer could record. Psychology studies both.

Q4 (MC). Which perspective explains behavior mainly in terms of unconscious conflicts and early childhood experiences?
- A. Behavioral
- B. Psychodynamic ✅
- C. Cognitive
- D. Biological
Feedback: The psychodynamic perspective (rooted in Freud) emphasizes unconscious drives and early experience. The behavioral perspective would point to learning; the cognitive to thinking; the biological to the brain.

Q5 (MC). A psychologist who studies how people remember, think, and solve problems is working within which perspective?
- A. Cognitive ✅
- B. Humanistic
- C. Psychodynamic
- D. Behavioral
Feedback: The cognitive perspective treats the mind as an information processor — attention, memory, reasoning, problem-solving.

Q6 (Matching). Match each major perspective to its core idea.
| Perspective | Correct core idea |
|---|---|
| Biological | Behavior arises from brain activity, neurotransmitters, and genes |
| Behavioral | Behavior is learned through conditioning and shaped by the environment |
| Cognitive | Behavior is driven by how we take in, process, and store information |
| Humanistic | Behavior reflects free will and the drive toward personal growth |
Feedback: These are lenses, not rivals — the same behavior can be viewed through several. Watch the classic mix-ups: biological (inside the body) vs. behavioral (outside, learned).

Q7 (MC). Psychologists rely on the scientific method rather than common sense partly because of a well-known mental trap. The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that you "knew it all along" is called —
- A. the placebo effect
- B. hindsight bias ✅
- C. introspection
- D. the fundamental attribution error
Feedback: Hindsight bias ("the I-knew-it-all-along effect") makes results feel obvious after the fact — which is exactly why we test claims instead of trusting intuition.

Q8 (True / False). "In science, a theory is simply a guess or hunch about what might happen."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. In science a theory is a well-supported explanation that organizes many observations and generates testable hypotheses. The everyday "it's just a theory" is the misconception this question targets. (A single testable prediction is a hypothesis, not a theory.)

Q9 (MC). The early school of thought associated with William James, which focused on the purpose or function of behavior and mental processes in helping us adapt, was —
- A. structuralism
- B. functionalism ✅
- C. behaviorism
- D. psychoanalysis
Feedback: Functionalism (James) asked what mind is for. Contrast structuralism (Wundt/Titchener), which used introspection to break consciousness into its elements.

Q10 (MC). A psychologist explains a person's depression as the combined result of inherited biology, learned patterns of negative thinking, and cultural stressors. This integrated explanation best reflects the —
- A. psychodynamic perspective alone
- B. structuralist school
- C. biopsychosocial approach ✅
- D. introspection method
Feedback: The biopsychosocial approach combines biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis — the modern habit of using several perspectives together rather than just one.

Answer key (quick reference)

Q	Answer
1	B
2	C
3	A, C, E
4	B
5	A
6	Biological→brain/genes / Behavioral→conditioning / Cognitive→information processing / Humanistic→free will & growth
7	B
8	False
9	B
10	C

Quality gate (self-checked): each single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the multiple-answer item lists all three mental processes (A, C, E); the matching item pairs four perspectives to four distinct core ideas; no item asserts a fact outside the Week 1 course definitions. No computation in this quiz, so no arithmetic to mis-key.

Item-bank entries (for variants + the midterm/final)

All ten items are tagged course=PSYC1 · week=1 · objective=1 · topic=science-of-psychology and deposited in Item Bank: Week 1 — The Science of Psychology. The midterm (Week 8) and the per-term variant updates draw fresh items from this bank. (Tags: q1 definition, q2 history-wundt, q3 behavior-vs-mental-process, q4 psychodynamic, q5 cognitive, q6 perspectives-match, q7 hindsight-bias, q8 theory-vs-hunch, q9 functionalism, q10 biopsychosocial.)

Canvas placement block

canvas_object   = Quizzes::Quiz
title           = "Week 1 Quiz — The Science of Psychology"
assignment_group = "Quizzes"
points_possible = 10
grading_type    = points
due_offset_days = 6        # 6 days after module start
published       = true
shuffle_answers = true
provenance      = "~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and rationale. The import-ready Classic-QTI version (F-quiz-week-01-qti.xml) ships inside the course's .imscc package — it lands in the Canvas gradebook on import.

~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com