AP PsychologyCerqueira Guide Unit 1: Intro/Social Psychology

XIV. Social Psychology (8–10%)
This part of the course focuses on how individuals relate to one another in social situations. Social psychologists study social attitudes, social influence, and other social phenomena. AP students in psychology should be able to:
• Apply attribution theory to explain motives (e.g., fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias).
• Describe the structure and function of different kinds of group behavior (e.g., deindividuation, group polarization).
• Explain how individuals respond to expectations of others, including groupthink, conformity, and obedience to authority.
• Discuss attitudes and how they change (e.g., central route to persuasion).
• Predict the impact of the presence of others on individual behavior (e.g., bystander effect, social facilitation).
• Describe processes that contribute to differential treatment of group members
(e.g., in-group/out-group dynamics, ethnocentrism, prejudice).
• Articulate the impact of social and cultural categories (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) on self-concept and relations with others.
• Anticipate the impact of behavior on a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Describe the variables that contribute to altruism, aggression, and attraction.
• Discuss attitude formation and change, including persuasion strategies and cognitive dissonance.
• Identify important figures in social psychology (e.g., Solomon Asch, Leon Festinger, Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo).
Date / To read for HW / Topics to focus on as you read and take notes:
Th 1/3 / 1-2, 10,
12-16 / Definition of psychology (three parts). Introduction to the biopsychosocial method. Basic vs. applied research. How to improve your study skills (including the SQ3R method.)
F 1/4 / 723-730 / Definition of social psychology. (How is sociology different?) Attribution theory, fundamental attribution error (“people see themselves as less susceptible than others”). Attitudes and actions. The foot-in-the-door phenomenon.How role playing affects attitudes (Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment). Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger), WMD example. Attitudes follow behavior?
M 1/7 / 730-742 / ** Reading quiz on pp. 723-730. ** CONFORMITYBehavior is contagious. Group pressure and conformity (Asch experiment). Conditions that strengthen conformity, reasons for conformity (normative social influence, informational social influence). “In individualist countries, conformity rates are lower.”OBEDIENCEMilgram’sshocking experiment on obedience. What factors made people more/less obedient? “Ordinary people … can become agents in a terribly destructive process.” Group influence: social facilitation, social loafing, deindividuation, group polarization, groupthink. The power of individuals.
T 1/8 / 742-756 / **Content quiz** Prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination. (How are they the same? different?) Assessing how prejudiced people are. Ingroups v. outgroups, scapegoat theory, vivid cases, just-world phenomenon. Aggression: sources (bio, social, models). Video games and violence – what does the evidence say?
W 1/9 / 756-770 / **Reading quiz on 742-756** Conflict: social traps, zero-sum game, prisoner’s dilemma, approach and avoidance (ask Jones). Attraction: proximity (mere exposure effect), physical attractiveness, similarity. Kinds of love: romantic and companionate. Altruism, Kitty Genovese incident. Bystander intervention: diffusion of responsibility (ask Jones), Darley and Latane’s experiment, bystander effect. Social exchange, reciprocity, social-responsibilty.Sherif’s camp experiment. Cooperation, superordinate goals. GRIT.
Th1/10 / 119-126 / CULTURE: norms, personal space. Individualism v. collectivism (Table 3.1).Child-rearing and culture. (Look for specific examples from different cultures.)
F 1/11 / 126-129, 131-133 / **Content quiz** GENDER: definition of gender, similarities and differences in men and women (in aggression, social power, social connectedness – look for the evidence that supports the claims). Gender roles: how are they created? How are they changing? Social learning theory and gender schema theory of developing gender identity. “Young children are ‘gender detectives’.”
M 1/14 / --- / Review in class of social psychology. (possible review quiz)
T 1/15 / --- / Test, social psychology. See the next Cerqueira guide for tonight’s reading.