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Unit 12: Social Psychology

How the presence, opinions, and mere existence of other people quietly reshape what one person thinks, feels, and does.

12 topics · 43 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

12.1 The Fundamental Attribution Error

  1. How it worksHow does the fundamental attribution error overweight personality and underweight the situation when judging others?
  2. Worked exampleFind which type of attribution, dispositional or situational, someone is making when they call a late coworker lazy instead of considering they might be stuck in traffic.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the fundamental attribution error's strength when judging someone from your own culture versus a very different one?
  4. Worked exampleFind whether blaming a friend's canceled plans on them being flaky, rather than on a family emergency, is a dispositional or situational attribution.
Your turn1 of 2
A coworker arrives late to a meeting, and a colleague immediately assumes they must be a lazy, inconsiderate person, without considering that they might have been stuck in unusually bad traffic. What kind of attribution is the colleague making, and what does this illustrate?

12.1 Actor-Observer and Self-Serving Biases

  1. How it worksHow does the actor-observer bias flip depending on whether you're judging your own behavior or someone else's?
  2. How it worksWalk me through how the self-serving bias takes credit for successes but blames failures on circumstances.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the self-serving bias simply the same thing as arrogance?
Your turn1 of 2
A student blames a classmate's bad grade on laziness, but blames their own equally bad grade on an unfair test. Their psychology professor says while this looks like the fundamental attribution error, it's more precisely the actor-observer bias. What is the distinction the professor is drawing?

12.2 Social Roles, Scripts, and the Stanford Prison Experiment

  1. How it worksHow does a social role's script quietly pressure someone into acting the part, even against their own values?
  2. Going furtherWhat does the Stanford prison experiment suggest about how much of cruelty comes from bad people versus bad situations?
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the Stanford prison experiment prove that anyone at all would have behaved exactly the same way?
Your turn1 of 2
In the Stanford prison experiment, ordinary, psychologically healthy college students assigned the role of 'guard' began behaving cruelly toward 'prisoners' within just a few days. What does this finding suggest about the source of cruel behavior in this situation?

12.3 Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance

  1. How it worksHow does cognitive dissonance create discomfort when a belief and a behavior don't match?
  2. How it worksWalk me through how changing your attitude, rather than your behavior, is often the easier way to resolve dissonance.
  3. Worked exampleFind why smokers who can't quit often shift their attitude toward downplaying how dangerous smoking really is.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't cognitive dissonance always get resolved by changing the behavior rather than the belief?
Your turn1 of 2
A longtime smoker who has repeatedly tried and failed to quit begins insisting that the health risks of smoking are 'probably exaggerated' and that 'plenty of smokers live long lives anyway.' What psychological process best explains this shift in attitude?

12.3 Routes to Persuasion: Central and Peripheral

  1. How it worksHow does the central route to persuasion rely on the strength of the actual argument's logic?
  2. How it worksHow does the peripheral route rely on surface cues like attractiveness or credibility instead?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to which persuasion route works best when the audience is highly motivated and informed versus distracted?
Your turn1 of 2
One advertisement carefully lays out detailed statistics and logical arguments for why a particular car is the safest option on the market. A different advertisement for the same car simply features an attractive, famous celebrity standing next to it, with no real safety argument given at all. Which routes to persuasion, respectively, are these two ads using?

12.4 Conformity and the Asch Line Experiments

  1. How it worksWalk me through how Asch's line experiment tested whether a person would conform to an obviously wrong group answer.
  2. Worked exampleFind how conformity rates changed in Asch's study when just one other person in the group also gave the correct answer.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't conformity in Asch's experiment mean people actually saw the lines as being the same length?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to conformity rates when the group's answer is given privately instead of out loud?
  5. Worked exampleFind how conformity rates changed in Asch's study when the group's wrong answer was extremely obvious versus only slightly off.
Your turn1 of 2
In a version of Asch's conformity experiment, participants conformed to an obviously wrong group answer on 37 percent of trials when facing the group alone. When just one other person in the group also gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 8 percent of trials. By how many percentage points did having an ally reduce conformity?

12.4 Obedience and the Milgram Experiment

  1. How it worksWalk me through how Milgram's experiment escalated the shocks and measured how far participants would go.
  2. Worked exampleFind what percentage of participants in Milgram's original study delivered the maximum 450 volt shock.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to obedience rates in Milgram's design when the authority figure isn't in the same room as the participant?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't Milgram's result mean the participants were unusually cruel people to begin with?
Your turn1 of 2
In Milgram's original study, 66 percent of participants delivered the maximum 450 volt shock when instructed by the experimenter to continue. If 45 participants took part in this condition, how many of them delivered the maximum shock?

12.4 Groupthink and Group Polarization

  1. How it worksHow does groupthink suppress dissent in favor of maintaining harmony within a tight-knit group?
  2. How it worksWalk me through how group polarization pushes a group's initial leaning into a more extreme final decision.
  3. Going furtherWhat structural change to a group's process most reduces the risk of groupthink?
Your turn1 of 2
A tight-knit executive team, eager to maintain group harmony and avoid conflict, quickly agrees on a risky business decision without anyone raising serious concerns or objections, even though several members privately have doubts. What group process does this best illustrate?

12.5 The Origins and Reduction of Prejudice

  1. How it worksHow does social categorization split the world into an in-group and an out-group almost automatically?
  2. How it worksWalk me through how the contact hypothesis reduces prejudice through structured, cooperative interaction between groups.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't mere contact between two groups reliably reduce prejudice on its own?
  4. Worked exampleFind why simply assigning people at random to a blue team or a red team is enough to produce in-group favoritism.
Your turn1 of 2
In a classic study, participants are randomly assigned to a 'blue team' or a 'red team' based on nothing more than a coin flip, with no real history, competition, or meaningful difference between the groups. Despite this, participants quickly begin favoring members of their own randomly assigned team over the other. What does this reveal about the origins of prejudice?

12.6 Biological and Situational Triggers of Aggression

  1. How it worksHow do biological factors like testosterone interact with situational triggers like frustration to produce aggression?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the frustration-aggression hypothesis linking a blocked goal to an aggressive response.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to aggression rates when a frustrating situation is clearly explained as unavoidable?
Your turn1 of 2
A commuter who is repeatedly blocked from reaching an important meeting on time, first by a canceled train and then by unexpected road construction, arrives extremely irritable and snaps angrily at a coworker over a minor, unrelated comment. What does the frustration-aggression hypothesis suggest is happening?

12.7 The Bystander Effect and Altruism

  1. How it worksHow does diffusion of responsibility spread the sense of duty to help so thin across a crowd that no one acts?
  2. Worked exampleFind why the number of bystanders present, more than their character, predicted whether Kitty Genovese's neighbors intervened.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the bystander effect when just one person in the crowd steps forward to help first?
Your turn1 of 2
In the well-known Kitty Genovese case and subsequent research, having more bystanders present at an emergency was found to be a stronger predictor of whether anyone would help than the personal character or kindness of the individual bystanders themselves. What does this finding highlight?

12.7 Attraction and Why Opposites Don't Attract

  1. How it worksHow does the mere-exposure effect make familiar faces more attractive over repeated contact?
  2. How it worksWalk me through how similarity in attitudes and values predicts long-term attraction better than any single trait.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the old idea that opposites attract actually hold up in relationship research?
  4. Worked exampleFind why two people who both love hiking and hate crowded parties are statistically more likely to stay together than two people with opposite habits.
Your turn1 of 2
Research finds that two people who both genuinely love hiking and both dislike crowded parties are statistically more likely to stay together long-term than two people with opposite habits and preferences on these same dimensions. What does this finding illustrate about attraction?