Free MCAT-style practice, 8C
Attraction, Attachment and Altruism: 8 Free MCAT Questions
Free MCAT style practice on attraction, aggression, attachment styles, kin selection and the bystander effect, with full explanations for every answer.
Check your email
We sent a link to confirm your address. Nothing else is sent until you click it.
Download your free sample: 3-page Amino Acids, Proteins and Enzymes cheat sheet (PDF)
Meanwhile, start with the free notes.
Quick concept primer
Liking between people tracks a short list of predictors. Proximity matters because the people we see often become familiar, and repeated exposure to a neutral stimulus tends to raise liking (the mere exposure effect). Similarity in attitudes and background, perceived physical attractiveness and reciprocal liking (we like people who like us) round out the list. Aggression is behavior intended to harm someone who wants to avoid that harm. The frustration-aggression hypothesis ties blocked goals to aggression, social learning theory shows that aggression is copied from models, especially rewarded ones, and biology contributes through the amygdala, weak prefrontal control and testosterone.
Attachment is the emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver. In Ainsworth's Strange Situation, secure infants are upset at separation and comforted at reunion, avoidant infants show little reaction to either, ambivalent infants are very distressed and hard to soothe, and disorganized infants act in contradictory ways. Altruism is helping at a cost to oneself. Kin selection follows Hamilton's rule (help when rB is greater than C), reciprocal altruism trades help over time, and helping drops as onlookers multiply (the bystander effect). The 8C Social Interactions pack adds flashcards and more practice across the whole category, and you can try a free sampler first.
Traps: diffusion of responsibility explains the bystander effect, not a lack of empathy, and relatedness r is 0.5 for full siblings, 0.25 for half siblings and 0.125 for first cousins.
8 practice questions
Question 1
Twelve new graduate students are assigned desks in a shared office in alphabetical order by surname. At the end of the year, most students name the people at adjacent desks as their closest friends in the program, regardless of shared hometowns or research interests. Which factor best explains this pattern?
- Similarity
- Reciprocal liking
- Proximity
- Physical attractiveness
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Proximity
Desk placement was set by surname, so the friendships followed physical nearness, which is proximity. Similarity is ruled out because shared hometowns and interests did not predict the friendships, and nothing in the stem describes mutual expressions of liking or ratings of appearance.
Question 2
Participants viewed unfamiliar abstract symbols either 0, 1, 5 or 20 times during a session and then rated how much they liked each symbol on a 1 to 7 scale.
| Prior exposures | Mean liking rating |
|---|---|
| 0 | 3.1 |
| 1 | 3.4 |
| 5 | 4.0 |
| 20 | 4.5 |
Which conclusion is best supported by these data?
- Liking rose as the number of prior exposures rose.
- Liking depended mainly on how similar the symbols were to each other.
- Repeated exposure produced boredom that lowered liking ratings.
- Liking reached its maximum after a single exposure.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Liking rose as the number of prior exposures rose.
Mean liking climbs steadily from 3.1 to 4.5 as exposures increase, the pattern described by the mere exposure effect. Ratings never fall, which rules out a boredom decline, they keep rising after one exposure, and the study did not manipulate similarity between symbols.
Question 3
A ground squirrel's alarm call lowers its own expected future offspring by 0.2, and each relative who hears the call gains 0.15 expected offspring. Under Hamilton's rule, the call is favored by kin selection only when the summed rB exceeds C. Which group of listeners is the call favored for?
- One full sibling
- Two half siblings
- Four first cousins
- Three full siblings
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. Three full siblings
Three full siblings give 3 × 0.5 × 0.15 = 0.225, which exceeds the cost of 0.2. One full sibling (0.5 × 0.15), two half siblings (2 × 0.25 × 0.15) and four first cousins (4 × 0.125 × 0.15) each sum to only 0.075, below the cost.
Question 4
In a Strange Situation session, a 14-month-old explores the toys freely while the caregiver is present, cries when the caregiver leaves, and on the caregiver's return quickly approaches, settles within a minute and goes back to playing. Which attachment classification fits best?
- Avoidant
- Secure
- Ambivalent
- Disorganized
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Secure
Using the caregiver as a base for exploration, showing distress at separation and being comforted quickly at reunion is the secure pattern. An avoidant infant would show little distress or reunion seeking, an ambivalent infant would stay upset and resist comfort, and a disorganized infant would show contradictory or confused behavior.
Question 5
A research team classifies 40 infants with the Strange Situation.
| Classification | Number of infants |
|---|---|
| Secure | 26 |
| Avoidant | 8 |
| Ambivalent | 4 |
| Disorganized | 2 |
What percentage of the sample fell into one of the insecure categories (avoidant, ambivalent or disorganized)?
- 20%
- 35%
- 65%
- 30%
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. 35%
The insecure categories total 8 + 4 + 2 = 14 infants, and 14 / 40 = 0.35, or 35%. The 65% figure is the secure share (26 / 40), and 30% comes from leaving out the 2 disorganized infants, which the stem lists as insecure.
Question 6
Each of the following is generally associated with an increase in aggressive behavior EXCEPT:
- frustration from having a goal blocked.
- watching a model be rewarded for aggression.
- uncomfortably high ambient temperatures.
- increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.
The prefrontal cortex supports impulse control and tends to restrain aggression, so reduced, not increased, prefrontal activity is linked to more aggression. Blocked goals (frustration-aggression hypothesis), rewarded aggressive models (social learning) and heat are all associated with higher aggression.
Question 7
A researcher stages a scene in a grocery store in which a shopper spills a bag of oranges. The share of passersby who help depends on how many other customers are nearby.
| Other customers nearby | Percent who helped |
|---|---|
| 0 | 80% |
| 2 | 55% |
| 5 | 30% |
Which concept best explains the trend?
- Diffusion of responsibility
- Reciprocal altruism
- Kin selection
- Social facilitation
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Diffusion of responsibility
Helping falls as more people are present because each person feels less personally responsible to act, which is diffusion of responsibility behind the bystander effect. Reciprocal altruism and kin selection explain why helping evolves, not why it drops with crowd size, and social facilitation concerns performance improving in front of others.
Question 8
An 8-year-old watches an older cousin shove another child out of a lunch line and then receive the first and largest slice of cake. The next week, the 8-year-old shoves a classmate at the drinking fountain. Which explanation fits best?
- The frustration-aggression hypothesis
- Catharsis
- Vicarious reinforcement in observational learning
- Hostile attribution bias
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Vicarious reinforcement in observational learning
The child saw a model rewarded for shoving and then copied the act, which is observational learning strengthened by vicarious reinforcement. No blocked goal is described for the frustration-aggression hypothesis, catharsis predicts that aggression reduces later aggression, and hostile attribution bias concerns reading hostile intent into others' ambiguous acts.
Free MCAT sampler
Free sample: MCAT cheat sheet (PDF)
Join the list and download a free sample from a paid pack: the 3-page Amino Acids, Proteins and Enzymes cheat sheet (PDF). We also email free MCAT notes and practice sets.
Free sampler, no signup needed: 160 study notes with original diagrams and 5-question quizzes, 86 practice sets (756 questions with full explanations) and the 2027 study schedule generator.
Check your email
We sent a link to confirm your address. Nothing else is sent until you click it.
Download your free sample: 3-page Amino Acids, Proteins and Enzymes cheat sheet (PDF)
Meanwhile, start with the free notes.