AP Psychology 4.1-4.3
The College Board's AP Psychology Course and Exam Description provides detailed definitions and explanations of key psychological terms and concepts. While I cannot provide verbatim definitions from the copyrighted material, I can offer concise explanations of the terms you've listed, based on standard psychological definitions.
Concept: A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people that helps to simplify and organize information.
Prototype: A mental image or best example of a category; used to enhance memory and understanding by matching new items to the prototype.
Confirmation Bias: The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.
Availability Heuristic: Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.
Representativeness Heuristic: Judging the probability of an event by comparing it to an existing prototype in our minds, which can lead to neglect of relevant base rate information.
Belief Perseverance: Clinging to one's initial beliefs even after they have been discredited.
Person Perception: The process of forming impressions of others, including the judgments we make about their character and intentions.
Attribution Theory: A theory that explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their own and others' behavior, attributing actions to either internal dispositions or external situations.
Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors when judging others' behavior.
Self-Serving Bias: The common habit of a person taking credit for positive events or outcomes, but blaming outside factors for negative events.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A belief that leads to its own fulfillment; expectations about a person can lead that person to behave in ways that confirm the expectations.
Actor-Observer Bias: The tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing others' behaviors to internal causes.
Prejudice: An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members, often involving stereotyped beliefs and a predisposition to discriminatory action.
Stereotypes: Generalized beliefs about a group of people, where specific traits are attributed to all members regardless of individual variation.
Discrimination: Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group or its members based on their membership in that group.
Just-World Phenomenon: The tendency to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
Social Identity: The part of an individual's self-concept derived from their membership in social groups, combined with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.
Ingroup: "Us"—a group of people who share a sense of belonging and a feeling of common identity.
Outgroup: "Them"—those perceived as different or apart from one's ingroup.
Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor one's own group over other groups.
Scapegoat Theory: The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.
Other-Race Effect: The tendency to more easily recognize faces of the race that one is most familiar with, often one's own race.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
Role: A set of expectations about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory: The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent, often by changing our attitudes to align with our actions.
Persuasion: The process of changing someone's beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors through argument, reasoning, or appeal.
Peripheral Route Persuasion: A method of persuasion characterized by an emphasis on factors other than the message itself, such as the attractiveness or credibility of the source.
Central Route Persuasion: A method of persuasion that uses evidence and logical arguments to influence people.
Norms: Understood social rules that prescribe appropriate behavior for various situations.
Social Contagion: The spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through crowds and other types of social aggregates from one member to another.
Conformity: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
Informational Social Influence: Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.
Obedience: Complying with instructions or orders from an authority figure.
Stanley Milgram: A psychologist best known for his controversial experiments on obedience, demonstrating the power of authority figures in compelling individuals to act against their personal morals.
Social Facilitation: Improved performance on tasks in the presence of others; occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered.
Social Loafing: The tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working individually.
Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Group Polarization: The enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.
Groupthink: A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives, often leading to poor decisions.
Tight Cultures: Cultures that have strong norms and low tolerance for deviance from those norms.
Loose Cultures: Cultures that have weaker norms and a higher tolerance for deviance from societal expectations.
Frustration-Aggression Principle: The theory that frustration—the blocking of an attempt to achieve a goal—creates anger, which can generate aggression.
Social Script: A culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations.
Mere Exposure Effect: The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.
Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a romantic relationship.
Companionate Love: The deep, affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Equity: A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.
Self-Disclosure: The act of revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.
Altruism: Unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
Bystander Effect: The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.
Social Exchange Theory: The theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.
Reciprocity Norm: An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
Social-Responsibility Norm: An expectation that people will help those who are dependent upon them.
Social Traps: Situations in which conflicting parties, by each pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.
Mirror-Image Perceptions: Mutual views often held by conflicting people, in which each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and the other side as evil and aggressive.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: (Repeated) A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.
Superordinate Goals: Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.
GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction): A strategy designed to decrease international tensions, in which one side announces and initiates conciliatory acts that lead to reciprocal actions from the other side.