AP Psych: Social Thinking

Social Psychology

• Study of how individuals’ thoughts, behaviors, and feelings are influenced by others

Attribution

• Process of explaining the causes of people’s behavior, including one’s own, either by crediting:

  • The Internal/External Situation

Dispositional Attribution

• The behavior is due to ther person’s disposition (personality)

Situational Attribution

• The behavior is due to the circumstances of the situation

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Tendency to attribute OTHER people’s behavior to their core character rather than to their situation

Actor/Observer Bias

• Tendency to attribute our own actions to external, situational causes

Individual Persuasion

• Central

  • Rational, evidence based logic

• Peripheral

  • Appealing to desires & emotion

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

• Tendency for people who agree to a small request to comply with a larger one

Door-in-the-face Phenomenon

• Following an extravagant request with a reasonable one so the subject complies

Cognitive Dissonance → Leon Festinger

• When we become aware that our attitudes and actions clash (resulting in dissonance) by changing our attitudes

Stanford Prison Experiment → Phillip Zimbardo

• Role Playing

  • Changing of one’s behavior to assume or act out an adopted role