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AP Psychology Review
Social Psychology
Social Psychology—the study of how groups and cultures shape our perceptions, attitudes, and
behaviors.
GROUP DYNAMICS
 Social group—two or more individuals sharing common goals, interacting, and influencing
each other’s behavior
 Norms—rules (implicit or explicit) that apply to all group members
 Zimbardo Prison Study—behavior determined by social roles or positions
 Social loafing—tendency to put forth less effort when group evaluations are made
 Deindividuation—losing self-awareness, engaging in unusual or uncharacteristic behavior
because of group anonymity (looting after Hurricane Katrina)
 Social facilitation—tendency to perform better in front of a group
 Group Polarization—decisions reached by group often more extreme than those made by
individuals
 Diffusion of Responsibility—sense of personal responsibility reduced in proportion to size of
group present (Kitty Genovese case)
ATTRIBUTION PROCESSES—way to understand what causes or behaviors and that of others
 Dispositional Attribution—hold individual responsible for behavior
 Situational Attribution—use environmental factors to explain behavior
 Self-serving Bias—we tend to use dispositional attribution to explain our successes and
situational to explain our failures
 Fundamental Attribution Error—we do the opposite to explain behavior of others—we
underestimate situational and overestimate dispositional
 Just-World Phenomenon—we tend to believe that people “get what they deserve”
 Self-fulfilling Prophesy—we let our expectations of others influence how we treat them
INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTION—when two or more groups come into contact with each other,
potential for conflict or cooperation
 Prejudice—unjustifiable negative attitude an individual has about someone based on their
membership in a group, many times resulting in discrimination (behavior)
 Mere Exposure Effect—the more we come into contact with someone, the more we like them
CONFORMITY, COMPLIANCE, OBEDIENCE
 Conformity—Solomon Asch Experiement—subjects chose incorrect answer (pick which line
similar to original line) because they wanted to conform to what group gave as answer,
although it was incorrect
 Compliance Behavior—Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon—our tendency to comply with large
requests when previously complied with smaller ones
 Obedience to Authority—Stanley Milgram “shocking” experiment—ordinary people can be
influenced to harm others when ordered to do so by someone they perceive as a legitimate
authority figure