Social Psychology
Lily Scott
8 min read
Study Guide Overview
This AP Psychology study guide covers social psychology, focusing on how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others. Key concepts include social influence, social cognition, and social relations. It examines influential studies by Festinger, Zimbardo, Asch, and Milgram, exploring concepts like cognitive dissonance, conformity, and obedience. The guide also defines key vocabulary terms related to social psychology and offers practice questions and exam tips.
#AP Psychology: Social Psychology - The Ultimate Study Guide 🚀
Welcome to the final unit of AP Psychology! This is where everything comes together, focusing on how we interact with and influence each other. Let's make sure you're fully prepared for the exam!
#🎯 Unit Overview: Social Psychology
This unit is all about how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence of others, whether real or imagined. It's a high-value topic, so let's dive in!
#💡 Key Concepts:
- Social Influence: How the presence of others affects our actions.
- Social Cognition: How we think about ourselves and others in social situations.
- Social Relations: How we form relationships, help, and hurt others.
#🧭 Contextualizing Social Psychology
Remember how we've been focusing on the individual? Now, we're shifting to the social context. Social psychology explores why we behave differently in groups than we do alone. It's like discovering the hidden rules of social interaction. 👪
#🧠 Key Figures and Studies
Many of the foundational studies in social psychology were conducted before strict ethical guidelines were in place. While some of these studies may be unsettling, they are crucial for understanding ethical research practices.
#👨🏫 Leon Festinger
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory: When our actions and beliefs clash, we feel discomfort. We then try to reduce this discomfort by changing our thoughts or actions.
- Example: You know smoking is bad (belief), but you still smoke (action). To reduce dissonance, you might justify it by saying, "I don't smoke that much" or quit smoking.
Think: Dissonance = Disharmony. We want our thoughts and actions to align.
#👨🏫 Philip Zimbardo
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#Stanford Prison Experiment: Demonstrated how quickly people adopt assigned roles, even to the point of engaging in harmful behavior.
This study highlights the power of situational factors over individual personality in determining behavior.
Don't confuse Zimbardo's study with Milgram's. Zimbardo focused on role-playing, while Milgram focused on obedience.
#👨🏫 Solomon Asch
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#Conformity Study: Showed that people are likely to conform to group norms, even when they know the group is wrong.
Over one-third of participants conformed to the wrong answer in Asch's study.
Think: Asch = Agreeing. People tend to agree with the group.
*Image: Asch's line comparison task. Participants were asked to match the target line with one of the comparison lines. Confederates purposely gave the wrong answer to test conformity.*
#👨🏫 Stanley Milgram
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#Obedience Study: Revealed that people are surprisingly likely to obey authority figures, even when it means harming others.
This study raised significant ethical concerns about the treatment of participants.
Be prepared to discuss the ethical implications of Milgram's experiment on the FRQ.
#🗂️ Key Vocabulary
Here's a breakdown of important terms. Think of this as your social psychology dictionary!
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fundamental Attribution Error | The tendency to overestimate the impact of dispositional (personality) factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behavior. |
| Self-Serving Bias | The tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors (our abilities) and our failures to external factors (bad luck). |
| False Consensus Effect | The tendency to overestimate how... |
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