Social-Cultural Psychology Quiz for AP Psychology Students

🧠 Quick Study Guide: Social-Cultural Psychology

• 🌍 Culture & Norms: Culture refers to the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. Norms are understood rules for accepted and expected behavior.
• 🤝 Social Influence: How our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are affected by other people. Key concepts include:
  • ⚖️ conformity (adjusting behavior/thinking to coincide with a group standard)
  • 👮 obedience (complying with demands from an authority figure)
  • 👥 groupthink (when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives)
  • 📈 social facilitation (improved performance on simple tasks in the presence of others)
  • 😴 social loafing (tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than when individually accountable).
• 🤔 Attribution Theory: Explains how we infer the causes of others' behavior and our own.
  • 🧐 Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): Tendency to overestimate dispositional (personality) factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behavior.
  • 💪 Self-serving bias: Tendency to attribute positive events to one's own character but attribute negative events to external factors.
• 🎭 Roles & Stereotypes:
  • 🏷️ Social Roles: A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave. (e.g., Stanford Prison Experiment).
  • 🖼️ Stereotypes: Generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people.
  • 😠 Prejudice: An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members.
  • 🚫 Discrimination: Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.
• 💡 Cognitive Dissonance Theory: The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the dissonance by changing our attitudes.
• 🚨 Bystander Effect: The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.

📝 Practice Quiz: Social-Cultural Psychology

1. Which of the following best describes the fundamental attribution error?

• A. The tendency to attribute one's own successes to internal factors and failures to external factors.
• B. The tendency to conform to group norms even when they conflict with one's personal beliefs.
• C. The tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the impact of dispositional factors when explaining others' behavior.
• D. The tendency for people to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.

2. In Solomon Asch's conformity experiments, participants conformed to the incorrect judgment of the group about one-third of the time. What was a key factor influencing this conformity?

• A. The presence of a strong authority figure.
• B. The ambiguity of the task.
• C. The desire to avoid disapproval or rejection.
• D. The participants' prior knowledge of the confederates.

3. Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment famously illustrated the powerful influence of:

• A. Cognitive dissonance on attitude change.
• B. Groupthink on decision-making.
• C. Social roles on behavior.
• D. The bystander effect on helping behavior.

4. When a person experiences discomfort because their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors are inconsistent, they are experiencing:

• A. Social facilitation.
• B. Cognitive dissonance.
• C. Group polarization.
• D. Deindividuation.

5. Which term refers to a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people?

• A. Discrimination.
• B. Prejudice.
• C. Stereotype.
• D. Scapegoat theory.

6. According to the bystander effect, an individual is less likely to offer help to a victim when:

• A. The victim is a stranger.
• B. The situation is ambiguous.
• C. Other people are present.
• D. The potential helper is in a hurry.

7. A cohesive group of highly skilled engineers is working on a new product. Despite some individual doubts, no one voices concerns about a critical design flaw because they want to maintain group harmony and believe the group leader knows best. This scenario best illustrates:

• A. Social loafing.
• B. Groupthink.
• C. Social facilitation.
• D. Normative social influence.