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Psychology Exam #3 Review

Social Psychology

  • Studies how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

  • Emphasizes the power of the situation over individual traits.

  • Includes topics like conformity, obedience, group dynamics, prejudice, and prosocial behavior.

Prejudice

  • A negative attitude toward someone based solely on their membership in a social group (e.g., race, gender, religion).

  • Has three components: affective (feelings), behavioral (discrimination), and cognitive (stereotypes).

  • Often learned through socialization and reinforced by societal norms and media.

Bystander Effect

  • First studied by Latané and Darley (1968) after the murder of Kitty Genovese.

  • When more people are present, individuals feel less pressure to take action.

  • Linked to diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance (assuming others know how to act).

Social Loafing

  • Happens in group tasks where individual performance is not evaluated.

  • People tend to exert less effort compared to when they work alone.

  • More common in individualistic cultures and on additive tasks (where everyone’s input combines).

Just-World Hypothesis

  • Belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

  • Provides psychological comfort but can lead to victim-blaming.

  • Helps explain why people sometimes dismiss others’ misfortunes.

Diffusion of Responsibility

  • In group settings, responsibility is shared, so individuals feel less personally accountable.

  • A key factor in the bystander effect.

  • Can happen in emergencies, workplace decisions, or moral dilemmas.

Obedience (Milgram’s Study)

  • Conducted in the 1960s to study obedience to authority.

  • Participants were instructed to deliver shocks to a "learner" when they answered questions incorrectly.

  • Found that 65% of participants delivered the maximum shock.

  • Showed how far people will go to obey authority, even against their morals.

Cognitive Dissonance

  • Theory by Leon Festinger (1957).

  • When behavior and beliefs don’t match, people feel discomfort.

  • To reduce dissonance, people might change their beliefs, change behavior, or justify the inconsistency.

Self-Serving Bias

  • Tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and failures to external ones.

  • Helps maintain self-esteem.

  • Common in individualistic cultures.

Fundamental Attribution Error

  • Overestimating internal traits and underestimating situational factors when explaining others' behavior.

  • Less common in collectivist cultures.

  • Example: Assuming someone is rude because of personality, not stress.

Compliance

  • Changing behavior due to a direct request.

  • Techniques: foot-in-the-door (small to big), door-in-the-face (big to small), lowballing (changing the deal).

  • Different from obedience (authority) and conformity (group pressure).

Attribution

  • Explaining the causes of behavior.

  • Internal (dispositional) vs. external (situational).

  • Part of attribution theory developed by Heider, Kelley.

Ethnocentrism

  • Judging another culture by the standards of one’s own.

  • Can lead to misunderstanding and prejudice.

  • Opposite of cultural relativism (understanding cultures on their own terms).

Stanford Prison Experiment

  • Conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971.

  • Simulated a prison with volunteers as guards and prisoners.

  • Study ended early due to ethical concerns.

  • Showed how situational roles can heavily influence behavior.

Altruism

  • Helping others with no expectation of reward.

  • Might be explained by empathy, social norms, or evolutionary theory (kin selection).

  • Differs from prosocial behavior (which may involve reward).

Solomon Asch

  • Studied conformity using line judgment tasks.

  • Found that individuals often conform to group opinion, even when it’s clearly wrong.

  • Showed power of normative social influence (wanting to fit in).

Stereotype

  • A generalized belief about a group of people.

  • Can be positive or negative, but often leads to oversimplification.

  • Can result in stereotype threat: fear of confirming a negative stereotype.

Social Cognition

  • How people process, store, and apply information about others and social situations.

  • Involves perception, memory, and judgment.

  • Includes schemas, heuristics, and biases.

Attitudes

  • Evaluations of people, objects, or ideas.

  • Composed of affective, behavioral, and cognitive components.

  • Can influence behavior, especially if strong and personally important.

Anxiety Disorders

  • Involve excessive fear or anxiety.

  • Includes generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, phobias, OCD, and PTSD.

  • Symptoms interfere with daily life and are persistent.

Psychological Disorders

  • Patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that are deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional.

  • Diagnosed using the DSM-5.

  • Include mood, anxiety, personality, and psychotic disorders.

Bipolar Disorder

  • Involves mood swings from depressive lows to manic highs.

  • Bipolar I: at least one full manic episode.

  • Bipolar II: hypomania and major depression.

Schizophrenia

  • Characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, and negative symptoms (e.g., flat affect).

  • Onset typically in late adolescence or early adulthood.

  • Strong genetic component, treated with antipsychotics and therapy.

OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)

  • Involves obsessions (repetitive thoughts) and compulsions (repetitive behaviors).

  • Compulsions are meant to reduce anxiety caused by obsessions.

  • Treated with therapy (CBT) and sometimes medication.

PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

  • Develops after exposure to a traumatic event.

  • Symptoms: flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and avoidance.

  • Can occur immediately or be delayed.

Narcissism

  • Inflated sense of self-importance and need for admiration.

  • Can be a trait or part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

  • Often masks underlying insecurity.

Personality Disorder / Personality

  • Personality: consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

  • Personality disorders: inflexible and maladaptive patterns causing distress or impairment.

  • Cluster B includes dramatic/emotional disorders (e.g., borderline, narcissistic).

Borderline Personality Disorder

  • Intense fear of abandonment, unstable relationships, self-image, and emotions.

  • Impulsive and sometimes self-harming behavior.

  • Treated with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

  • Published by the American Psychiatric Association.

  • Current edition: DSM-5.

  • Standard classification system for mental disorders in the U.S.

Panic Attack

  • Sudden episode of intense fear or discomfort.

  • Symptoms: heart palpitations, sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, fear of dying.

  • Can occur unexpectedly or in response to triggers.

GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder)

  • Excessive, uncontrollable worry about various things most days for at least 6 months.

  • Physical symptoms: fatigue, restlessness, muscle tension, sleep problems.

Dissociative Disorder

  • Involves a disconnection between thoughts, identity, consciousness, and memory.

  • Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): presence of two or more distinct identities.

  • Often linked to severe trauma in childhood.

Agoraphobia

  • Fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult.

  • Often leads to avoiding public spaces, crowds, or being alone outside home.

  • May be linked with panic disorder.