Social Psychology and Personality

Social psychology 社会心理学 studies how people think about, influence, and relate to others. It begins with attribution 归因 - how we explain behaviour.

An explanation is either dispositional 内归因 (about the person's personality) or situational 外归因 (about the circumstances). People are not even-handed about which they choose:

• The fundamental attribution error 基本归因错误 is over-using dispositional explanations for other people's behaviour.
• The actor-observer bias 行动者-观察者偏差 is explaining your own behaviour situationally while explaining others' dispositionally.
• The self-serving bias 自利偏差 credits success to yourself and blames failure on the situation.
• The just-world phenomenon 公正世界现象 is the belief that people get what they deserve.

A person's explanatory style 解释风格 can be optimistic 乐观的 or pessimistic 悲观的, and this shapes how they respond to setbacks.

Person perception has its own effects. The mere exposure effect 单纯曝光效应 means repeated contact increases liking. A self-fulfilling prophecy 自我实现预言 occurs when expectations cause the behaviour that confirms them. Social comparison 社会比较 is judging yourself against others, either upward 向上比较 or downward 向下比较.

A stereotype 刻板印象 is a generalised idea about a group; it reduces mental effort but can be inaccurate and harmful. Prejudice 偏见 is an attitude, and discrimination 歧视 is the behaviour. Implicit attitudes 内隐态度 are held without full awareness.

Attitudes resist change. Belief perseverance 信念固着 keeps a belief alive even after the evidence for it is discredited. Confirmation bias 确认偏差 is seeking evidence that fits what you already believe.

Cognitive dissonance 认知失调 is the discomfort felt when actions and attitudes conflict. Because the action has already happened, people often resolve it by changing the attitude - which is why doing something can change what a person believes.

Social norms 社会规范 define the behaviour a group expects. Behaviour changes when others are present:

• Conformity 从众 is adjusting behaviour to match a group. It rises with group size (up to a point), unanimity, and ambiguity, and falls when even one other person dissents.
• Obedience 服从 is following an instruction from an authority. It rises with the authority's perceived legitimacy and closeness, and falls when the victim is close or the authority is distant.
• Normative social influence 规范性社会影响 is conforming to be accepted; informational social influence 信息性社会影响 is conforming because you think others know better.

Persuasion 说服 has two routes in the elaboration likelihood model 精细加工可能性模型: the central route 中心路径 uses the strength of the argument, and the peripheral route 边缘路径 uses cues such as attractiveness. Sequential techniques matter too: the foot-in-the-door 登门槛效应 technique starts with a small request, while the door-in-the-face 留面子效应 technique starts with an unreasonable one.

Group settings change behaviour further. Social facilitation 社会助长 improves performance on simple or well-practised tasks when others watch, but harms performance on difficult ones. Social loafing 社会惰化 is reduced individual effort in a group. Deindividuation 去个体化 is loss of self-awareness in a crowd. Group polarization 群体极化 pushes a group's average view further in its original direction, and groupthink 群体思维 is the suppression of dissent to keep harmony.

Individualism 个人主义 and collectivism 集体主义 shape all of these, and multiculturalism 多元文化主义 describes societies holding several traditions together. The false consensus effect 虚假一致效应 is overestimating how many people agree with you. Superordinate goals 超级目标 - shared aims that need cooperation - reduce hostility between groups.

Altruism 利他行为 is selfless helping, though prosocial behavior 亲社会行为 may also bring benefit to the helper. The bystander effect 旁观者效应 shows people are less likely to help as the number of onlookers rises, because of diffusion of responsibility 责任分散.

Worked example: evidence and a course concept. In the 2025 Evidence-Based Question, Source 1 studied 45 male undergraduates. Researchers compared an attentive audience with working alone. Participants completed their own-shoe tasks faster with an audience, but took longer on unfamiliar clothing tasks with an audience. An original worked response is: "An audience can improve well-learned performance but impair difficult, unfamiliar performance. Participants completed their own-shoe tasks faster with an attentive audience, but took longer on unfamiliar clothing tasks than when alone (Source 1). Social facilitation explains the opposite changes by task difficulty and familiarity, supporting a conditional claim rather than a rule that others always help." The official B(ii) criterion distinguishes explaining the evidence from applying a course concept to explain how it supports the claim. This practises Part A and B; a full EBQ also needs evidence from a different source and a different concept in Part C.

Group-pressure comparison. Mei privately believes B but says A because all her classmates say A and she wants to fit in. Matching the group is conformity; her stated wish for acceptance supports normative influence. If she were unsure and believed the others knew better, informational influence would fit. Arun follows a teacher's instruction to hand in his paper: this is obedience to authority. If one classmate now says B, the loss of unanimity can reduce pressure on Mei, but does not guarantee her choice. Use the motive and source of pressure; the same visible action may have more than one explanation.

Personality 人格 is a person's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Four approaches are examinable.

The psychodynamic 精神动力学 approach holds that unconscious 无意识 processes drive personality. Ego defense mechanisms 自我防御机制 protect the person from anxiety, and the examinable set is denial 否认, displacement 转移, projection 投射, rationalization 合理化, reaction formation 反向形成, regression 退行, repression 压抑, and sublimation 升华. It assesses personality with projective tests 投射测验, which present an ambiguous stimulus; these have weak reliability and validity.

The humanistic 人本主义 approach focuses on growth. It emphasises unconditional positive regard 无条件积极关注 and self-actualization 自我实现 - becoming the fullest version of oneself.

The social-cognitive 社会认知 approach explains personality through reciprocal determinism 交互决定论: the person, their behaviour, and the environment each influence the other two. Self-efficacy 自我效能感 - belief in one's own ability to succeed at a task - is central, as is locus of control 控制点, which is internal 内控 or external 外控.

Trait theories 特质理论 describe personality as enduring characteristics. The Big Five 大五人格 traits are openness to experience 开放性, conscientiousness 尽责性, extraversion 外向性, agreeableness 宜人性, and neuroticism 神经质. Traits are measured with self-report inventories, which are more reliable than projective tests.

Several theories explain what drives behaviour:

• Drive-reduction theory 驱力减少理论 says behaviour reduces a physical need to restore homeostasis 内稳态.
• Arousal theory 唤醒理论 says people seek an optimal level of arousal; the Yerkes-Dodson law 耶克斯-多德森定律 links performance to arousal. The optimal level depends on the task: difficult or unfamiliar tasks generally require lower arousal than easy, well-learned tasks. Increasing arousal does not always improve performance.
• Self-determination theory 自我决定理论 separates intrinsic motivation 内在动机 (from within) from extrinsic motivation 外在动机 (from reward), and incentive theory 诱因理论 focuses on the pull of rewards.
• Instincts 本能 are innate fixed patterns, in many non-human animals. The course says humans do not seem to show these patterns; this does not deny innate capacities or reflexes. An unlearned choice alone does not establish a fixed, stimulus-triggered instinct.
• Lewin's motivational conflicts 勒温的动机冲突理论 names three: approach-approach 双趋冲突, approach-avoidance 趋避冲突, and avoidance-avoidance 双避冲突.
• Sensation-seeking theory 感觉寻求理论 explains differences in the need for novelty.

Worked motivation comparison. Jia drinks after a long run because she is thirsty: drive reduction explains reducing a physical need and restoring homeostasis. She chooses a new puzzle because her usual game feels dull: arousal theory explains seeking suitable stimulation. A promised reward for a school task illustrates incentives and extrinsic motivation. Enjoying the puzzle itself illustrates intrinsic motivation. The same activity can have both motives; identify the stated reason rather than assuming one theory explains every action.

Worked conflicts. Choosing between two enjoyable events at the same time is approach-approach. Choosing between an unpleasant chore now and missing an outing later is avoidance-avoidance. One performance that offers an exciting opportunity but also possible embarrassment is approach-avoidance: the same option has an attraction and a cost. Identify the options before classifying the conflict.

Eating shows physical and mental processes interacting. Ghrelin and leptin, regulated by the hypothalamus, control hunger and fullness, while external factors - the sight of food, the time of day, a shared meal - change how much people eat.

Emotion 情绪, also called affect 情感, combines physical arousal, expressive behaviour, and conscious experience. The exam requires comparison of physiological and cognitive experiences in succession or simultaneously, and accounts requiring a cognitive label. Specific historical theory names are outside the AP Psychology Exam scope. As optional historical context, the James-Lange theory 詹姆斯-兰格理论 (the body responds first, and emotion is the reading of that response), the Cannon-Bard theory 坎农-巴德理论 (arousal and emotion occur at once), and the Schachter-Singer two-factor theory 沙赫特-辛格两因素理论 (arousal plus a cognitive label 认知标签). Broaden-and-build theory 拓展-建构理论 proposes that positive emotions widen thinking and build lasting resources.

Worked emotion comparison. Sam notices a racing heart on entering a room. Interpreting the setting as dangerous accompanies fear; interpreting it as a celebration accompanies excitement. In a cognitive-label account, context supplies an interpretation of arousal. A successive account instead proposes bodily changes before experienced emotion, while a simultaneous account proposes arousal and conscious emotion together. These illustrative cases compare the proposed mechanisms; they are not experimental evidence proving one account.

Some facial expressions are recognised across cultures, but display rules 表达规则 - a culture's norms for showing emotion - and the events that trigger emotion both vary.

• Fundamental attribution error applies to explaining others. For your own behaviour, distinguish actor-observer explanations from self-serving explanations of success or failure.
• Social facilitation improves simple tasks and harms difficult ones. Say which kind of task the scenario describes.
• Separate conformity (matching a group) from obedience (following an authority).
• For cognitive dissonance, name the conflict and say which side changed - usually the attitude, because the behaviour already happened.
• Learn the Big Five as a set; questions often ask you to place a described person on one named trait.
• For emotion, compare succession, simultaneous responses and cognitive labelling. Specific historical theory names are outside the exam scope.