AP Psychology Exam Review - Final Video Lecture Summary

Introduction

• The lecture is designed to help you identify areas of weakness in your understanding of AP Psychology to better prepare for the exam.
• Emphasis on re-watching videos, studying vocabulary, and overall understanding of the discussed concepts.

Unit 9: Social Psychology

• Topics include attribution theory, attribution errors, self-serving biases, conformity, compliance, obedience, and psychological research analysis.
• Special focus on key experiments and theories to ensure a deep understanding and ability to analyze psychological research.

Key Concepts and Theories:

Attribution and Errors

• Attribution Theory: Explaining someone's behavior by attributing a cause.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to attribute others’ actions to their character rather than to situational factors.
• Self-Serving Bias: Attributing personal successes to dispositional factors and failures to situational factors.

Major Psychological Phenomena and Biases

• False Consensus Effect: Overestimating how much others agree with us.
• Confirmation Bias: Favoring information that confirms previously existing beliefs.
• Just World Hypothesis: Believing that the world is just and people get what they deserve.

Social Interactions and Effects

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Expectations about a person lead to behavior that causes those expectations to come true.
• Cognitive Dissonance: Discomfort from holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., beliefs, attitudes).
• Deindividuation: Losing self-awareness and restraint occurring in group situations.
• Social Facilitation: Improved performance on tasks in the presence of others.

Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

• Conformity: Adjusting behaviors or thoughts to align with others.
  • Asch Study highlights the power of conformity.
• Compliance: Yielding to social pressure in one’s public behavior, despite not necessarily agreeing privately.
  • Example: Groupthink phenomenon.
• Obedience: Changing one’s behavior at the command of an authority.
  • Milgram's study and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrate the extent and impact of obedience.

Group Influence and Behavior

• Group Polarization: The strengthening of the group's prevailing opinion after discussing an idea.
• Social Traps: Situations in which individuals or groups pursue self-interest over collective interest.
• Superordinate Goals: Shared goals that override differences among individuals and require their cooperation.

Examination Preparation Tips

• Emphasize testing over passive review (e.g., using Quizlet, taking practice tests).
• Suggests active recall training by explaining concepts to others or testing without looking at notes.
• Psychological Preparedness: Encourages confidence and calm demeanor heading into the exam.

Conclusion

• Reiteration of the importance of understanding all discussed concepts thoroughly.
• Encourages continuing preparation outside of the video lectures to achieve a deep and actionable understanding of materials for the AP exam.