Copy of Final College Board AP Psychology Exam Review Guide

Exam Information

• 75 multiple choice questions in 90 minutes

• 2 Essays:

  • AAQ (recommended time of 25 minutes)

  • EBQ (recommended time of 45 minutes)

College Board Exam Format

• Evolutionary Perspective: ancient ancestors, natural selection, survival of fittest, human similarities, genetic predispositions; Darwin

• Psychoanalytic Perspective: Freud, unconscious, repression, mental conflict between the id and superego leaving the ego to make the real world decision.

• Humanistic Perspective: good seed analogy=everyone is born good; how your environment nurtures you determines your growth potential; Maslow and Rogers.

• Biological Perspective: genetics, genetic predispositions, brain, brain structures, neurotransmitters, blood chemistry, hormones, brain structures, medical, genetic predispositions, nervous systems

• Social-Cultural Perspective: thinking and behavior determined by culture/ethnic background; rules and expectations; power of the situation

• Cognitive Perspective: thinking, how we encode, process, store, and retrieve info.; memory, mnemonic devices, keywords often end in “ion” or can be turned into “ion” words. For example: recognition, interpretation, anticipation, comprehension, perception, etc.

• Behavioral Perspective: The learning perspective, Watson, Skinner, Pavlov’s Dogs= US/UR, CS/CR, classical and operant conditioning, rewards and punishment, observable behavior, avoided the study of mental processes and consciousness. The 2 E’s: Environmental and Experience

• Biopsychosocial Perspective: blended approach, both nature AND nurture, treats the in and the out.

Research Methods

• Hindsight bias (def.): given an outcome, the result seems obvious, the “I knew it all along phenomenon” showing that we are not as good at predicting outcomes as we think, so we need to put things to the test.

• Independent variable: manipulated variable, factor of interest. Whatever you are putting to the test.

• Dependent variable (# data): results of experiment, compared between exp. and control groups to see if manipulation of (IV) caused a change. The outcome

• Measures of central tendency: Should fall in the middle of a distribution of numbers

  • Mean: average, most affected by outliers, used and reported the most

  • Median: put numbers in order, the middle number

  • Mode: the most frequently occurring number

• Measures of variation:

  • Range: difference between lowest and highest scores; most affected by outliers.

  • Standard deviation: difference between each individual score and the average of all scores combined; better gauge of variability; shows consistency of data.

• Statistical Significance: Could be in your AAQ (Always put Not likely due to chance)

  • Psychologists are willing to accept a probability value $P = .05$$$P = .05$$ or less. 95% or more confident that data is not by chance/random.

  • If data is considered statistically significant that means that it is NOT LIKELY DUE TO CHANCE.

  • It is MORE LIKELY due to the manipulation of the independent variable.

• Correlations: “hint” at causal relationships; allow us to make predictions; no cause/effect. Go back to your notes and look at your scatter plots.

  • Correlation coefficients: -1 to 1, relationship gets stronger and easier to make a prediction from as it gets closer to -1 and 1

  • Correlation NEVER PROVES CAUSATION

  • Scatter plots: Positive, negative, weak, strong (you may want to look at these in your notes)

• Random sampling & Random Assignment:

  • Random sampling: random drawing from the population to ensure the sample is representative of the larger population allowing you to generalize results. Used in surveys as the ONLY step & in experiments as (step #1) Only Step in Survey

  • Random assignment: Experiment ONLY(step#2); random drawing from the sample giving all participants and = chance of being placed in the experimental or control group. Minimizes individual differences between the groups making them similar. Automatically an experiment if you see Random assignment in AAQ

• APA: American Psychological Association Guidelines for Human Research.

  • APA guidelines AAQ: consent, confidentiality, protect from harm both emotional and physical, debrief (Tell the participant what you did and why you did it). Deception is allowed because debriefing is required.

Neuroscience

• Parts of a neuron: dendrite(receive)-cell body- axon(away/longest part of neuron)

• Neurotransmitters: chemical messengers in the brain

  • Reuptake: reabsorption of excess neurotransmitters from sending neurons. Blocking reuptake increases the availability of neurotransmitters.

  • Serotonin: depression/too low

  • Dopamine: Parkinson’s/too low; Schizophrenia/too high; Feel-good neurotransmitter making happy go to happier when we eat, get notifications on our phone which can make these behaviors addictive.

  • Acetylcholine: memory and movement; Alzheimer’s/too low

  • Norepinephrine: mania/too high; depression/too low

• Nervous Systems: Central nervous system & Peripheral Nervous System

  • Central nervous system: brain and spinal cord. Interneurons intervene between sensory inputs and motor outputs.

  • Peripheral nervous system: somatic and autonomic; sensory and motor neurons

    • Somatic: voluntary muscle movement. Wave to me😊

    • Autonomic: involuntary responses that operate on their own.

      • Sympathetic nervous system: part of autonomic nervous system; fight or flight; heart rate and breathing rate speed up; Traps: digestion and salivation inhibited.

      • Parasympathetic nervous system: other part of the autonomic nervous system; rest and digest; heart rate and breathing rate slow back down to achieve homeostasis

• Brainstem

  • Medulla: heartbeat and breathing

  • Cerebellum: balance and coordination

  • Reticular Formation: alertness; severed will lapse into a coma

  • Thalamus: sensory switchboard for all senses except smell

• Limbic system

  • Hippocampus: emotion and memory

  • Hypothalamus: homeostasis; hunger=lateral hunger on, ventromedial hunger off; emotion.

• Language

  • Aphasia: impaired use of language

  • Broca’s area: controls speech

  • Wernicke’s: language comprehension

  • Angular gyrus: reading aloud

• Association areas: cerebral cortex; think “pink”

• Endocrine System

  • Pituitary gland: master gland of the endocrine system; releases growth hormone in stage 4 sleep

  • Pineal gland: produces melatonin at night to help you sleep

• Brain Research Tools

  • Lesion: destroying brain tissue through surgery or by an accident

  • EEG: electroencephalogram; shows brain wave activity; often used in sleep research

  • PET scan: glucose injection shows more or less brain activity

Nature vs. Nurture

• Nature: inside, genetics, born with/innate

• Nurture: outside, experience, learning, environment

• Twins

  • Identical twins: most alike in every way, one egg joins one sperm(monozygotic), same sex

    • Best research tool to show the effects of genetics = identical twins raised apart; when reunited years later the similarities, both physical and behavioral, are linked to genes.

    • Best research tool to show the effects of the environment= identical twins raised together; we focus not on how they are alike BUT how they are different. Their differences can be explained by their unique experiences. Adoption studies also highlight experiences since similarities between adoptive parents and their adopted children can’t be linked to genetics.

  • Fraternal twins: less alike than identical twins, two eggs fertilized by two sperm(dizygotic), same or opposite sex

• Evolutionary Psychology

  • What do men prefer in women (evolutionary)? Youth=fertility; increases chances of sending genes into the future.

  • What do women prefer in men (evolutionary)? Wealth and social status; increases chances of supporting offspring to reproductive age, again increasing chances of sending genes into the future

Sleep and Psychoactive Drugs

• Sleep

  • Circadian rhythm: 24 hr. sleep/wake cycle

  • Sleep cycle: 90 minutes; repeats itself 4-5 times per night

    • N1: Falling/floating

    • N2: Sleep spindles

    • N3: Sleepwalking, talking, bedwetting, night terrors, pituitary gland releases the growth hormone.

    • REM: rapid eye movement, dream sleep, paradoxical=brain active/body paralyzed

  • Nightmares: bad dreams/REM

  • Activation-synthesis theory: brain creates dream from random burst of activity in visual cortex, using images that don’t go together, has no meaning

• Psychoactive Drugs

  • Stimulants: speed up the nervous system; by blocking the reuptake of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Ex. caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, cocaine.

  • Depressants: slow down the nervous system; alcohol, opiates like morphine and heroin.

  • Tolerance: when you need to take more and more of a drug to get the same effect.

  • Withdrawal: when the drug begins to decrease in the body there will be physical pain like a headache or worse signaling physical addiction.

  • Addiction

    • Physical addiction exists when someone experiences cravings and goes through withdrawal without the drug in their body.

    • Psychological addiction exists when someone believes they need a drug but without it does not experience withdrawal.

Sensation

• Sensation: Detect, Transduce, Deliver (DTD)

  • Detection: notice a stimulus; going from nothing to something

  • Transduction: converting physical energy into a neural impulse

  • Parallel processing (bird): brain delegates responsibility to different teams of cells that work simultaneously (form, motion, color, depth)

  • Thresholds

    • Absolute threshold: detection of a stimulus 50% of the time; going from nothing to something

    • Signal detection theory: explains that absolute thresholds vary; hit, miss, correct rejection, false alarm

    • Difference threshold: smallest change needed in a stimulus to detect a just noticeable difference (jnd)/change (car stereo video, color tiles in class, taste tests); going from this to that.

    • Weber’s law: just-noticeable diff. depends on the magnitude of the original stimulus. If the stereo volume were high, it would take a significant increase in volume to detect the change than if it were low.

• Vision

  • Rods (visual receptors; black/white) and cones ( visual receptors; color)

  • Retina: holds rods/cones

  • Fovea: center of retina, central pt. of focus, visual acuity

  • Feature detectors: visual cortex cells that respond to lines, edges, angles

  • Color Vision

    • Young Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision: red, blue, green cones

    • Opponent Process theory of color vision: red/green, blue/yellow, black/white; explains why we see after images (American flag)

• Audition

  • Cochlea: inner ear, cilia/receptor cells for soundwaves

  • Pitch Perception:

    • Place theory: better for high pitch/frequency sounds because cilia are located at the beginning of basilar membrane

    • Frequency theory: better for low pitch/frequency because cilia are scattered on basilar membrane

    • Volley theory: explains how we perceive pitch above 1000 waves per second due to the fact that when individual neurons fire in rapid succession they achieve a combined frequency of more than 1000 waves per second.

  • Sound location: cock head to create just noticeable difference (jnd) in timing and intensity(loudness)

• Other Senses

  • Vestibular: sense of equilibrium; Semicircular canals in inner ear: receptors for vestibular sense, may feel dizzy/vertigo.

  • Kinesthesis: (kick)sensing position and movement of individual body parts without having to look at them while moving.

  • Touch: only pressure that has identifiable skin receptors

  • Pain: Gate-control theory of pain: neural gate in spinal cord that opens/closes to let pain signals reach/or not reach the brain distraction (psychological way) can close the gate (psychological way to close the gate)

  • Gustation: taste, taste buds are receptors

  • Olfaction: smell, cilia in nasal cavity are receptors it does not route through the thalamus (only one that does this)

• Sensory Adaptation: when your exposure to an unchanging stimulus causes your sensory receptors to fire less and less allowing you to get used to the stimulus. For example: loud television, cold pool, smelly room “noseblind” . your senses adapt to something because it doesn’t change

• Sensory Interaction: when one sense interacts with another. For example, you have a cold and can’t smell which interacts with taste receptors and you can’t taste your food as well. Another example, you like the flavor of banana but can’t eat a banana because of its texture; so taste and touch are interacting. ex: Colored goldfish and having a association with the color and maybe a different flavor

Perception

• Perception thinking about what your senses deliver

• Key words for perception: same as cognition, interpretation, organization

• Types of selective attention: paying attention to a particular stimulus while IGNORING other stimuli

  • Selective attention: paying attention to one stimulus while not noticing or ignoring others

  • In-attentional blindness: (gorilla) failing to notice a stimulus in plain sight b/c you are focused on another

  • Change blindness: failing to notice a change b/c you are focused on something else video where the person is looking at the map and the two guys switch

  • Cocktail party effect: auditory; you can pay attention to the conversation you are having while other people are talking around you. You can tune them out.

• Depth perception: allows us to judge distance

  • Binocular cues: 2 eyes, depth perception for nearby objects think of binoculars because they bring things up close

    • Retinal (difference) disparity: binocular, greater difference in what each retina sees the closer the object, the less difference in what each retina sees the farther away only works for up close

    • Convergence: binocular, neuromuscular inward turn of the eyes, closer the object the greater the convergence put you finger up to your nose. only works for up close

  • Monocular cues: one eye, depth perception for far away objects

    • Interposition: something partially blocking the view of another thing (Mrs. Farmer standing right in front of the board)

    • Relative size: only when you are assuming two things are the size size

    • Relative clarity: hazy/ foggy

    • Texture gradient

    • Linear perspective

  • Visual cliff experiment: depth perception is at least partly innate (from birth) other part is due to experience- ex: baby crawling

• Gestalt: whole, grouping principles, organization of sensory input

  • figure-ground: the object you are looking at is your figure while everything else becomes the ground. what has your focus and your attention=figure, ground; what ever is in the background of your figure

  • grouping principles: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, connectedness.

    • Closure (anytime you fill in the gaps, like a song), similarity (grouping things that are the same), and proximity(assuming two things are together because they are closer together) are the most popular on the exam.

• Perceptual Abnormalities

  • Prosopagnosia: face blindness, 100% sensation/0%perception no recognition

• Illusions

  • Phi phenomenon: illusion of motion due to adjacent lights blinking. Holiday lights. Vegas strip

  • Stroboscopic movement: 24 or more still images per second create the illusion of motion. Cartoon, flipbook.

• Perceptual Set: Internal, a mental predisposition, based on schemas, that influences how you perceive. Ex. Your religious and political schemas influence your view on politics, what is right/wrong, moral, immoral. Another ex. You hear that a movie is really good, so you go watch it. Since you thought that it would be good before you watched it, you think it is better than it really was.

• Context Effects: External, influences perception due to location, situation, or circumstance. Tears at a wedding= happy tears; tears at a funeral = sad tears, etc. in the hospital and see a baby in a blue blanket so you think it is a boy

Thinking and Problem Solving

• Schemas =concepts/categories/classifications/constructs=mental groupings; formed using prototypes; schema=holidays/protype=Christmas

• Prototype=best example of something (usually common)

• Algorithms: step by step process, time consuming, guarantees solution suited for harder problems

• Heuristics: shortcut, less time, common sense jumping to a conclusion

  • Representativeness heuristic: quick judgment based on prototype judging something based off of how similar it is to your prototype ex: Pitbull match your prototype of a dangerous animal

  • Availability heuristic: quick judgment based on personal experience or something all over the media; 1st thing that pops in your mind if there is a plane crash today and it might influence you to change your travel plans

• Fixations

  • Functional fixedness: not seeing other uses for items “flossing my teeth with the end of an envelope”

  • Mental set: repeating solutions because they worked in the past can keep you from seeing fresh perspective

• Framing: the way info. is presented; 2 for $$1 sale sounds good, but ea. unit was worth .50 to begin with; 95%success rate/5%failure rate

• Confirmation bias: seeking evidence to support your beliefs and ignoring evidence that contradicts it. IGNORING evidence that contradicts our beliefs

• Belief perseverance: clinging to beliefs when confronted with contradictory evidence

• Convergent thinking: 1 solution; even if it means considering other solutions to get to the ONE. For example, multiple choice questions

• Divergent thinking: multiple solutions;creative

Memory

• Memory: storing info. over time; 3 step process=encoding-storage-retrieval. E^2 - S - R^4 Recall and Recognition Know the difference between sensory, short-term, and long-term memory

  • Encoding: getting info. from sensory to short-term to long-term

    • Automatic processing: no rehearsal required; days events

    • Effortful processing: requires conscious attention; studying

• Memory Types

  • Sensory memory: very limited/few seconds; iconic=visual; echoic=auditory

  • Short term memory aka working memory: limited by magic # $7 +/- 2$$$7 +/- 2$$

    • chunking=grouping info. using acronyms is best way to deal with magic #

  • Long term memory(LTM)=unlimited, where we store info. and retrieve it PLEASE study your long term memory flowchart

    • Explicit/declarative LTM: requires conscious recall; facts & general knowledge; semantically(meaning) encoded; stored in hippocampus “I declare”

      • Episodic memory: explicit; personal visual memory; graduation/wedding day

    • Implicit/non-declarative/procedural LTM: does not require conscious recall; muscle memory/motor skills; walking/talking; learned by repetition; hard to unlearn; don’t have to think about; stored in cerebellum

• Retrieval: getting info. out of LTM using recall and recognition

  • Mood congruent (equal) memory(aka state dependent): retrieval of info. is easier if you are in the same mood as when you encoded the info., moods need to match in order to retrieve happy/happy, if not retrieval will be more difficult, happy/sad

  • Locus (Location) dependent: retrieval of info. is easier if you are in the same context/location as when you encoded the info.

• Theories

  • Encoding specificity principle:

  • Serial position effect: likely to retrieve the beginning(primacy) and ending(recency)items in a list; middle most likely to be forgotten.

  • Tip-of-the-tongue: know info. but can’t retrieve b/c blocked

  • Mnemonics: strategies for encoding info; acronyms, etc.

• Forgetting/Memory Interference

  • Proactive interference: can’t remember the new b/c the old is getting in the way; old before new

  • Retroactive interference: can’t remember the old b/c the new is getting in the way; new pushes out old

  • Ebbinghaus Forgetting curve: most info. is forgotten immediately. The spacing effect is more beneficial than one long study session. RElearning information should be quicker.

Lifespan/Developmental

• Revisit Graphic Organizers in your notes; if needed.

• Maturation: biological growth process, order (doesn’t change)of motor skill development, rollover, crawl, walk, not influenced by experience

• Teratogen: any substance that can cross the placenta and harm unborn child

Cognitive Development

• Schemas: mental groupings, concepts, categories for organizing experiences

• Egocentrism: unable to see from another’s point of view, preoperational only can see from their point of view

• Assimilation: putting new experiences into existing schemas (dog/cow)

• Accommodation: adjusting schemas

• Habituation: decrease in responsiveness to a stimulus to which one is repeatedly exposed; getting bored measuring boredom in infants by how much they stare at something

• SPOCF - Stages of Cognitive Development - Piaget

  • Jean Piaget: Cognitive Development, socks pulled over cold feet (SPOCF), sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete, formal know what goes on in each stage

  • Object permanence: knowing things exists even when hidden, sensorimotor separation anxiety and stranger anxiety attach to object permanence

  • Conservation: mass, volume, number remain the same despite changes in form, concrete

• Lev Vygotsky: mind grows through interaction with the social-cultural environment.

  • Zone of proximal development: what a child can do with help

  • Inner speech: helps children with self-control. Allows them to regulate their emotions and behavior.

Attachment Research

• Attachment Research

  • Harry Harlow’s (monkeys) research findings: parent-infant bond comes from body contact Mary Ainsworth research findings: the strange situation

  • Secure attachment: mother’s return comforted child

  • Insecure attachment: mother’s return did not comfort child

  • ANOTHER explanation for how outgoing or reserved your child is=Temperament: your inborn degree of emotional excitability: introverted=shy, reserved, quiet, etc. vs. extroverted=outgoing, social, loud, etc.

Moral Development (Kohlberg)

• Lawrence Kohlberg’s 3 stages of moral (right vs. wrong) development:

  • Pre-conventional stage: egocentric, does the right thing to gain a reward or avoid punishment. I will not skip class because I will get detention. What about me?

  • Conventional stage: concerned with others; goal is to meet others’/society’s’ expectations. I will not skip class because it is a rule and rules are meant to be followed; I will disappoint the teacher. What others think

  • Post-conventional stage: universal ethics/greater good mentality, own set of standards, willing to go against societal norms for the greater good Questioning authority and rules

Psychosocial Development (Erikson)

• Erik Erikson’s (8 stages of psychosocial development) research: remember the key focus of adolescence(teens) is to establish an identity

Parenting Styles (Baumrind)

• Diana Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

  • Authoritarian: excessive discipline; little affection

  • Authoritative: democratic, fair discipline applied with love best

    • Correlates with higher self-esteem, self-reliance, and social competence in children.

  • Permissive: friend, too little discipline, indulgent with affection

Cognitive Changes in Adulthood

• Cognitive Changes in Adulthood

  • Fluid Intelligence: involves abstract thinking and ability to solve problems quickly, declines in 50’s. “It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks” . declines

  • Crystallized Intelligence: remains relatively the same as we age; accumulated knowledge and vocabulary. stays the same as we age

Language

• Language Building blocks

  • phonemes (sounds) of a language

  • morphemes=carry meaning/”ed” past/”s” plural suffixes and prefixes

  • grammar=syntax(word order) & semantics (meaning)

• Language Acquisition

  • Language Acquisition Device(LAD)=in you brain; born ready to learn any language you hear; Noam Chomsky (nature)

  • Overgeneralization=”goed” to store; two “foots”; not imitation; natural attempt at grammar by children assimilating before accomadation

Learning/Conditioning

• Classical conditioning: stimulus-stimulus association, CS+US

  • CS + US = UR: Bell + Food= drool to Food

  • CS = CR: after conditioning, drop food, drool to bell alone

    • Discrimination: CR/responding to original CS only

    • Generalization: CR/responding to stimuli similar to original CS

    • Extinction: CR diminishes b/c CS is no longer paired with US

    • Spontaneous recovery: After extinction, weakened CR returns out of the blue

    • John B. Watson (Little Albert): Behaviorist/classical

• Operant conditioning: response-stimulus association, options/choices; we have control, decisions based on consequences (rewards/punishment)

  • Shaping: used to teach a complex sequence of behaviors leading up to a desired behavior; circus animals

    • B. F. Skinner (Skinner Box): operant chamber

    • Reinforcers: strengthens behavior; increases the chances it will be repeated

    • Positive reinforcement: strengthens behavior; repeat for a perceived reward

    • Negative reinforcement: strengthens behavior; removes an annoying stimulus when you do something ex. Seatbelt/buzzer is removed

    • Punishment: consequence to end behavior

    • Positive punishment: add a negative consequence to bad behavior. Ex. You missed curfew so now you have to do the dishes for a month.

    • Negative punishment: subtract a desirable reinforcer due to bad behavior. Ex. You missed curfew so I took away your weekend plans.

    • Schedules of Reinforcement

    • Fixed ratio: reinforcement comes after a specific number of responses. Ex. Free ice cream after you buy 10

    • Variable ratio: reinforcement comes after an unknown number of responses. Ex. Slot machine

    • Fixed interval: reinforcement comes (once) after a fixed amount of time has passed. cookies in the oven

    • Variable interval: reinforcement comes (once) after an unknown amount of time has passed. pop quiz

    • Motivation

    • Intrinsic motivation: internal desire to do something because you love it, no extrinsic motivation needed.

    • Extrinsic motivation: external motivator needed to do something

Social Psychology

• Overjustification effect: external rewards like scholarships backfire because they make you “think” of the sport like a job which undermines/decreases your internal desire to do it.

• Latent learning: Tolman studied latent learning with rats and mazes. cognitive update to operant cond.; cognitive maps, rats in maze; learning can occur w/o a reward (“cheese”) in place. But will not demonstrate learning until a reward is offered.

• Social Learning

  • Albert Bandura (Bobo Doll experiment)/social learning theory: observational learning, modeling, imitation. Monkey see monkey do.

    • Social learning theory: learning by observation with OR without imitation. For example, you could watch a youtube video on how to fix your calculator and imitate/copy the model in the video OR a child can learn to fear bees just by observing someone else experience a bee sting (vicarious conditioning).

• Attribution Theory

  • Attribution theory: we judge others based on internal qualities/dispositions or external circumstances/situational factors.

    • Actor-observer bias: the tendency for those acting to explain their behavior to external situational factors and those observing to attribute others’ behavior to internal causes.

    • FAE: (fundamental attribution error): when judging others, we tend to OVERESTIMATE internal/disposition and UNDERESTIMATE the power of the situation/external; “throw them under the bus” .

• Compliance

  • Compliance: agreeing to a request.

    • Foot in the door: compliance; getting someone to agree with a small request makes it easier to get more later.

    • Door in the face: compliance; getting someone to agree with a small request by asking for a LARGE one FIRST(this makes the smaller request seem more reasonable).

• Attitudes/Behaviors

  • Cognitive dissonance: actions and attitudes do not match, causes tension, so you make excuses to relieve tension. Ex. You feel bad because you performed poorly on a test because you didnt’ study. To make this tension go away you make excuses for why you didn’t have time to study to justify the low grade.

• Group Influence

  • Conformity: going along with the crowd; Asch Line Test

    • Normative social influence: conforming to fit in and avoid rejection

    • Informational social influence: conforming b/c you lack knowledge and don’t know what to do and believe those in the group do (whether they really do or not).

    • Obedience: follow outright orders/commands; Milgram Obedience Experiment

    • Social loafing: presence of others diminishes effort/performance

    • Social Facilitation: presence of others improves effort/performance

    • Deindividuation: loss of identity; being caught up in-group behavior and acting in ways that you otherwise wouldn’t

    • Group polarization: members of a group spend time discussing shared

    • Groupthink: dangerous outcome of group polarization b/c a single member of the group is not likely to speak out in opposition of the group and run the risk of disrupting group harmony

• Aggression/Attraction

  • Frustration-aggression principle: frustration may lead to anger; anger to aggression=intent to harm

    • Mere exposure effect: repeated exposure to someone or something for an extended period can cause you to like them/it

• Social Relations

  • Altruism: putting other people before yourself

    • Bystander effect/diffusion of responsibility: the more people present when help is needed the less likely any one of them is to provide assistance

    • Superordinate goals: goals that can only be achieved by cooperation of opposing sides; reduces conflict

• Prejudice

  • Ethnocentrism: the belief that your culture is superior to others

    • Outgroup homogeneity: recognizing how greatly we vary from individuals in our own groups but OVERESTIMATE how much people are alike in other groups.

    • Stereotype lift: when people perform better because they are not associated with a group that is stereotyped.

    • Stereotype threat: when people perform worse because they are part of a stereotyped group.

    • In-group (bias) vs. out-group: you favor your group and look down on your out-group/scapegoat.

  • Social exchange theory: weighing rewards/pros and costs/cons of helping; will help if you are getting MORE than you are giving

    • Reciprocity norm: helping as much as you are going to get in return

    • Social responsibility norm: helping w/o expectation of getting anything back

    • Just world phenomenon: belief that people get what they deserve (rape, domestic violence)

• Love

  • Companionate love: equity, deeper connection=disclose most personal details to one another, love that grows over time. Relative to passionate love that is filled with arousal and subsides over time turning into companionate love.

Personality

• Personality is a pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting; believed to be more influenced by genetics than environment.

• Personality Theories

  • PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE OF PERSONALITY:

    • FOCUS: explain disorders/maladaptive behaviors from psychological causes=mental conflict and defense mechanisms.

      • Mental conflict between id & superego, mediated by ego

      • Id=devil, unconscious, pleasure

      • Superego=angel, conscious and unconscious, morality

      • Ego=mediates between other 2, conscious and unconscious, reality

      • Defense mechanisms operate unconsciously when the ego fears losing control over the id and superego, and reduces anxiety.

      • Repression=forget; Regression=acts immature; Reaction formation=opposite; Projection=hypocrite; Rationalization=justification/making excuses; Displacement=undeserving target; sublimation=good/better alternative; denial=refuses to accept truth

      • ASSESSING the Unconscious: Projective Tests

      • TAT: ambiguous pictures, asked to tell what you see

      • Rorschach/inkblot, same

      • Other: finish sentence, draw a picture, first word that comes to mind

      • ALL lack reliability (no right answer) and validity (hard to make predictions from)

  • TRAIT PERSPECTIVE OF PERSONALITY

    • FOCUS: classify and describe INNER (genetic) personality traits

      • ASSESSING: self-report inventories like En