good morning afternoon evening night whenever you are watching this welcome to unit four of AP Psychology today we are going to review attribution theory and talk about perception as we review unit 4 topic one but before we do that don't forget to take out the guided notes that go along with this video you can find a copy of them by clicking the link down in the description below now let's start our review off with a question why do we always feel the need to explain other people's behaviors for example we all have that one friend we're trying to get a hold of them is like texting a black hole I mean NASA would have a better time probably easier honestly contacting aliens than you getting a reply from that friend like seriously what are they doing why are they ghosting you are they busy or are they just a terrible friend we can see that we as individuals often attribute an individual's Behavior to either dispositional or situational attributions dispositional attributions are internal for instance a person's intelligence attitude or personality while situational attributions are external environmental factors that impact an individual such as the weather or world events now before we delve deeper into these Concepts take a minute and see if you can identify which attributions are being used in these examples pause the video if you need more time notice that in the first example when your friend fails the test you say they might have been sick or the questions were just too hard these are situational attributions you are putting the blame on the poor grave on external factors but in the second example you are putting the blame on the individual stating that they must have been lazy and not studied enough this is dispositional attribution since the explanation is on the person's internal characteristics both dispositional and situational attributions are part of the attribution theory the attribution theory explains how people interpret and explain the causes of behaviors this Theory helps us recognize our own thought processes highlights the importance of of internal and external factors and can also shed light on our own biases for instance we can see that generally when we as individuals reflect on our own behaviors and actions we focus on the positive elements when we succeed we attribute that success to our internal factors and when we fail we attribute our failure to external factors this is known as the self-serving bias the self-serving bias can help protect an individual self-esteem since the bias puts the blame for our failure on external factors but also can prevent us from learning from our own mistakes speaking of biases you also want to be familiar with the Actor Observer Bias which is when we use situational attribution to explain our own actions but we use dispositional attributions to explain the actions of someone else for instance if you arrive late to work you might blame the traffic which would be the situational attribution but if someone else is late you might think they're just lazy and disorganized which would be an example of of dispositional attribution now that example also highlights the fundamental attribution error which is the tendency to overemphasize internal factors when judging others behaviors while underestimating the importance of situational factors now one factor that can impact how an individual explains behaviors is a person's explanatory style which is the way an individual explains or rationalizes different events or situations in life people have either an optimistic explanatory Style or a pessimistic explanatory style an optimistic explanatory style tends to explain bad events as temporary problems putting the blame or focus on external factors that are outside of an individual's control so situational attributions now if events are good a person with an optimistic explanatory style will tend to credit the positive outcomes to their dispositional attributes focusing on internal factors for example if an optimistic student gets a high grade on a test they may attribute it to how they studied and if they got a poor grade on a test they may say that it was because the test was unusually difficult or state that they weren't feeling well that day on the other hand a pessimistic explanatory style tends to explain bad events as something that is more permanent putting the blame on internal factors that end up impacting the individual so dispositional attributes if an event is good a person with a pessimistic explanatory style will tend to attribute that positive event to situational fact factors crediting external factors over internal for instance a pessimistic student that gets a good grade on a test will say they got lucky or that the test was just easy this time but if they get a bad grade on the test they may say it's because they are not smart enough or that it's because they're not good at taking tests or another example could be after a first date let's say you don't get a text back the next day an optimistic person might brush it off assuming that the person is just busy and they'll hear from them later but a pessimistic person person might assume that the person hated them and that they will end up dying alone surrounded by 17 cats and All Is Lost now to help you practice dispositional and situational attribution along with the different biases and explanatory Styles I created a couple different practice quizzes and put them up in the ultimate review packet I also made sure to include an in-depth explanation for each answer explaining to you why each answer is easily right or wrong that way you can truly understand these Concepts remember you got to be active in your learning so we can see that a person's explanatory style impacts how they view different events and how they explain the outcomes of those events another factor that can impact a person's attitudes and explanations is their locus of control which is about who or what an individual believes has power over the events in their life locus of control can be broken up into two sides external and internal locus of control individuals with an external locus of control feel like outside factors or situational factors are what determine the outcome of different events in their lives this can cause an individual to assume their actions do not make a difference so why even try this could lead an individual to develop learned helplessness since the individual may assume there's nothing that they can do to change the outcome of an event now individuals with a high sense of external Locust of control can be impacted in different ways sometimes they may experience heightened stress or anxiety since they feel like they have little to no control over events in their life or they may experience actually more relaxation since they may just accept that things are outside of their control and they just give up letting things slide for example a student who fails a test might say I failed because the teacher hates me they'll never let me pass on the other hand individuals can also have an internal locus of control which is when an individual believes their actions directly affect what happens to them this can result in the individual taking more initiative in life since they believe that their effort will change the outcome even if an individual comes across challenges or setbacks they'll be more likely to keep putting effort in since they believe it will pay off if the outcome is negative individuals will generally take responsibility and try to figure out what went wrong so they can improve for next time individuals with a high internal Locust of control also tend to have higher self-efficacy and reduce feelings of helplessness since they believe that they can achieve their goal if we go back to the student who failed their tests but this time look look at it from a perspective of a student who has a high internal locus of control we can see that a student would most likely respond to the F by saying that they just need to adjust their study habits and prepare more for the next test notice the focus here is on internal factors that the individual can control so we can see that a person's locus of control shapes how they respond to challenges and how they attribute their success or failure now if you need more help with practicing internal or external locus of control you can take matters into your own hands now and check out the practice resources I created inside the ultimate review packet all of which will help you study and review all right so we have spent some time now talking about attributions now comes the time to shift our Focus over to talk about person perception which is all about how an individual forms impressions of other people and sometimes even themselves one effect that impacts an individual's perception is the mere exposure effect which occurs when an individual is repeatedly exposed to a stimulus resulting in the indiv idual to like the stimulus more and more over time this effect shows us that human beings tend to like familiarity with people gravitating towards things that are familiar to them over things that are unfamiliar for instance often times when you hear a new song on the radio you might at first be like this isn't that great but over time you keep hearing it and hearing it and hearing it and before you know it it actually starts to grow on you and you're actually liking the song now I do want to point out that if a person strongly dislikes something then being repeatedly exposed to it over and over and over again probably is going to have the exact opposite effect and it's actually going to intensify their dislike fun fact the mere exposure effect is one of the reasons why advertisers will repeatedly run the same ad over and over and over again they're not necessarily trying to get you to buy the product right after you see the App instead they're trying to get you more familiar with the product which will increase your chance in the future of getting the product speaking of which remember if you are struggling to get an A in your class you can check out my review packet today it's one of the best resources to help you get an A in your class and a five on the AP National exam yeah yeah that was a little bad but I couldn't resist it just fit too perfectly all right now another psychological phenomenon that we need to review is the self-fulfilling prophecy which is when a person's expectations influence their behavior in a way that causes those expectations to come true this phenomenon can cause a cycle to form that ultimately impacts a person's relationship with others their own achievements and even a person's self-esteem for example say that you believe one of your classmates is mean and scary this will cause you to act different around them most likely you won't smile at them or engage with them instead you probably will become more hands-off this will cause them to respond to you in a similar manner as they will most likely believe that you do not like them or want nothing to do with them which will ultimately then reinforce your original perception that they are mean notice that in this example your perception of the other individual changes your actions which in turn then validates the perception the self-fulfilling prophecy can also cause people to behave in ways that confirm other perceptions that an individual has about themselves for example say that you believe that you are a bad test taker even though you're not but you believe that you have an exam coming up and you are debating about studying you think to yourself well what's the point I'm terrible at taking tests I always do bad so you just decide not to study resulting in you doing poorly on the exam all right now there's one more concept that we need to review for perception and that is social comparison it turns out that we as humans constantly evaluate ourselves by comparing our circumstances our skills abilities and internal characteristics to other people often times this can directly influence how we see ourselves and how satisfied we are with life people generally use two types of social comparisons the first is upward comparison which is when an IND individual Compares themselves to someone they believe is better off this can help motivate an individual to improve and strive for Higher Goals but if an individual feels like the gap between them and the other person is too large it could cause the person to feel inadequate and lead them to become discouraged the other comparison type is downward comparison which is when an individual Compares themselves to someone that they believe is worse off this can cause an individual to feel feel better about their own situation but also May reduce a person's motivation to improve since the person already feels like they are doing better now sometimes when individuals compare themselves to other people they may experience relative deprivation this is the feeling that an individual is missing out on resources opportunities or are generally worse off than others relative deprivation is not about meeting your basic needs rather it's about your situation and how you compare it to others for example let's say that you just got a new phone and you're really excited because it's been quite frankly a while since you got your last upgrade you go to school all excited to show it off but when you get to school you realize that all of your friends have an even newer model resulting in you becoming less satisfied with your new phone in this example we can see your friends are the reference group this is the people you are comparing yourself to also notice that in this example you are changing your perception based on what your friends have and not based on your individual situation originally you felt good about the new phone however after comparing you now feel worse off and disappointed all right there you have it the first topic review video of unit 4 is done now you know the drill if you want more review videos consider subscribing and if you do need more help in your AP Psychology class check out my ultimate review packet or the Discord server for more support as always I'm Mr sin thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time online