AP Psych Unit 4: Social Psych

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Social Psychology

The framework describing how people explain the behavior and mental processes of themselves and others.

Attribution Theory

Explaining a person's behavior using internal qualities like personality or intelligence.

Dispositional Attribution

Explaining a person's behavior using external circumstances or environmental contexts.

Situational Attribution

A predictable pattern of how people explain good and bad events in life.

Explanatory Style

Tendency to see bad events as temporary, specific, and external occurrences.

Optimistic Explanatory Style

Tendency to see bad events as permanent, pervasive, and internal failures.

Pessimistic Explanatory Style

Overestimating dispositional factors and underestimating situational factors when analyzing others' behavior.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Attributing our own behaviors to situations while attributing others' behaviors to their dispositions.

Actor-Observer Bias

Claiming personal credit for successes but blaming external situations for failures.

Self-Serving Bias

Repeated exposure to a stimulus automatically increases our liking of it.

Mere Exposure Effect

Behaving in ways that elicit behaviors from others that confirm our initial beliefs.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Evaluating oneself based on comparisons to other members of society.

Social Comparison

Comparing yourself to someone you perceive as superior or better off.

Upward Social Comparison

Comparing yourself to someone you perceive as inferior or worse off.

Downward Social Comparison

Judging your personal sense of deprivation relative to others' success.

Relative Deprivation

Feelings, influenced by beliefs, that predispose our responses to objects, people, and events.

Attitude

A generalized, sometimes overgeneralized, concept or belief about a group.

Stereotype

Evaluations an individual holds but may be unaware of or fail to acknowledge.

Implicit Attitudes

An unjustifiable, usually negative, preconceived attitude toward a group.

Prejudice

Unjustifiable negative behavior or actions directed toward a specific group.

Discrimination

The cognitive tendency to favor our own group over external groups.

Ingroup Bias

Viewing members of an outgroup as entirely identical to one another.

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

The belief that one's own culture or ethnic group is superior to others.

Ethnocentrism

Clinging to an attitude or belief even when evidence proves it inaccurate.

Belief Perseverance

Actively seeking or interpreting evidence to confirm pre-existing personal beliefs.

Confirmation Bias

Mental discomfort occurring when actions or attitudes are in conflict.

Cognitive Dissonance

Understood rules defining expectations and roles for accepted behavior in society.

Social Norms

Social Influence Theory

Proposes social pressures alter behavior via normative or informational pressure.

Normative Social Influence

Conforming out of a desire to gain approval or avoid rejection.

Informational Social Influence

Conforming due to a willingness to accept others' evidence about reality.

Persuasion

Techniques applied to convince self or others of particular ideas, actions, or beliefs.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

A model outlining two main pathways to change minds

Central Route to Persuasion

Persuasion focusing on deep processing of evidence, facts, and logic.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

Persuasion focusing on superficial cues like attractiveness or celebrity endorsements.

Halo Effect

A peripheral bias where an overall positive impression distorts our judgment of character.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Agreeing to a small request first makes a person likely to yield to a larger request.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

Making an unreasonable request first so a person agrees to a smaller target request.

Conformity

Adhering to unspoken rules, norms, or expectations due to group pressure.

Obedience

Complying directly with the explicit directives of an authority figure.

Solomon Asch

Researcher who conducted line-judgment experiments testing conformity.

Stanley Milgram

Researcher who conducted controversial shock experiments measuring obedience.

Philip Zimbardo

Researcher who led the Stanford Prison Experiment highlighting social roles.

Social Roles

A pattern of behavior that is socially expected of an individual in a situation.

Compliance

Changing behavior in response to a direct request from a peer, not an authority.

Individualism

A cultural phenomenon prioritizing personal independence and self-reliance over group needs.

Collectivism

A cultural phenomenon prioritizing group goals, harmony, and community needs.

Multiculturalism

A cultural framework encouraging interest and respect for distinct cultural groups.

Group Polarization

The enhancement of group inclinations through intense internal discussion.

Groupthink

Overriding realistic alternatives to maintain harmony within a decision group.

Diffusion of Responsibility

Dilution of accountability because the burden of taking action is shared.

Social Loafing

Exerting less effort in a group than when individually accountable.

Deindividuation

Losing self-awareness and self-restraint in anonymous group situations.

Social Facilitation

Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in front of a group.

False Consensus Effect

Overestimating the level to which other people agree with us.

Superordinate Goals

Shared goals uniting disparate groups because they require total cooperation to achieve.

Social Traps (Social Dilemmas)

Destructive behavior occurring when individuals act in self-interest to the detriment of the group.

Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology

The study of human behavior and performance in the workplace.

Burnout

Severe, chronic workplace exhaustion and stress studied by I/O psychologists.

Altruism

Completely selfless behavior aimed at helping others without expecting rewards.

Social Debt

A psychological obligation to help someone because they previously provided help to you.

Reciprocity Norm

The societal expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who helped them.

Social-Responsibility Norm

The expectation to help those dependent or in need of assistance.

Bystander Effect

Phenomenon where a person is less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.

Hostile Aggression

Aggression driven by anger with the primary goal of inflicting harm.

Instrumental Aggression

Aggression intended to harm someone as a means to achieve a separate goal.

Catharsis Hypothesis

The disproven idea that releasing aggressive energy safely relieves aggressive urges.

Bystander Intervention

The multi-step decision process an individual undergoes before helping a stranger.

Social Exchange Theory

The theory that social behavior is a transaction maximizing benefits and minimizing costs.

Physical Attractiveness

Outer appearance factors that heavily dictate early interpersonal attraction.

Similarity

Forming relationships with individuals who share comparable backgrounds and beliefs.

Self-Disclosure

Revealing intimate, private aspects of oneself to foster deep emotional intimacy.

Equity

A condition where partners receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give.

Defensive Attribution

Blaming victims for misfortune to avoid feeling vulnerable to the same fate.

Self-Handicapping

Creating obstacles or excuses beforehand to protect self-esteem if failure occurs.

Personality

An individual's characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Unconscious

A deep reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, and memories.

Id

The primitive, unconscious personality component operating strictly on the pleasure principle.

Ego

The largely conscious "executive" personality component operating on the reality principle.

Superego

The personality component representing internalized ideals and providing standards for moral judgment.

Defense Mechanisms

The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Repression

The basic mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts from conscious awareness.

Regression

Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage when faced with intense anxiety.

Reaction Formation

Unconsciously switching unacceptable impulses into their exact behavioral opposites.

Projection

Disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to other people.

Rationalization

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, threatening reasons for actions.

Displacement

Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a less threatening object or person.

Sublimation

Re-channeling unacceptable impulses into productive, socially approved activities.

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful, obvious realities.

Projective Test

A personality test providing ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of inner dynamics.

Sigmund Freud

Father of psychoanalysis who proposed the psychodynamic model of development.

Free Association

A psychoanalytic method of exploring the unconscious by speaking completely without filtering.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective test utilizing symmetrical inkblots to identify inner feelings.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test where people express inner feelings by inventing stories about cards.