AP Exam

🧍‍♂ Unit 4: Social Psychology and Personality

🧠 Attribution Theory

  • Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to overemphasize personality and underestimate situational factors in explaining others' behavior.
    🧾 Ex: Assuming someone is rude because they cut you off, rather than considering they may be in a rush due to an emergency.

  • Self-Serving Bias: Attributing success to internal factors and failure to external ones.
    🧾 Ex: "I passed because I'm smart," vs. "I failed because the test was unfair."

🤝 Conformity and Obedience

  • Asch's Conformity Experiment: People conform to group pressure even when the group is clearly wrong.

  • Milgram’s Obedience Experiment: People will obey authority figures, even when it involves harming others.

🧬 Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN)

  • Openness: Creativity, willingness to try new things.

  • Conscientiousness: Organization, dependability.

  • Extraversion: Outgoing, social.

  • Agreeableness: Kindness, trust.

  • Neuroticism: Emotional instability, anxiety.

🧠 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

  • Id: Primitive urges (pleasure principle).

  • Ego: Mediates between id and superego (reality principle).

  • Superego: Moral conscience.

🛡 Defense Mechanisms

  • Denial: Refusing to accept reality.

  • Repression: Unconscious forgetting of painful events.

  • Projection: Attributing your own feelings to others.

  • Displacement: Redirecting feelings to a safer target.

  • Rationalization: Justifying behavior with false logic.

  • Regression: Reverting to childish behavior under stress.

🧠 Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health

📘 Psychological Disorders (DSM-5 Categories & Symptoms)

Disorder

Symptoms

Depression (Major Depressive Disorder)

Sadness, loss of interest, fatigue, changes in sleep/appetite

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Persistent worry, restlessness, muscle tension

Schizophrenia

Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions)

PTSD

Flashbacks, avoidance, hyperarousal after trauma

🧠 Types of Therapy

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Identifies and changes negative thought patterns.

  • Humanistic Therapy (Rogers): Focuses on self-actualization and unconditional positive regard.

  • Psychoanalytic Therapy (Freud): Explores unconscious conflicts and childhood experiences.

Stress and Health Psychology

  • Stress: Response to a perceived challenge or threat.

  • General Adaptation Syndrome (Selye):

    • Alarm → Resistance → Exhaustion

  • Health Psychology: Studies how biological, psychological, and social factors affect health and illness.

    • Chronic stress can lead to weakened immune function and heart disease.

💊 Biomedical Therapies

Medication Type

Used For

Example Drugs

Antidepressants

Depression, Anxiety

SSRIs (Prozac, Zoloft)

Antipsychotics

Schizophrenia

Thorazine, Risperdal

Anti-anxiety

Anxiety Disorders

Xanax, Valium

Mood Stabilizers

Bipolar Disorder

Lithium