AP Psychology Flashcards: Social Psychology, Conformity, Obedience, Attribution, Groups

Solomon Asch's 1951 line judgment experiment demonstrated the power of social conformity. Participants were asked to match the length of a line to one of three comparison lines, an obviously easy task. However, they were placed in a group of confederates who unanimously gave the wrong answer. About 75 percent of participants conformed to the group's incorrect answer at least once, and overall conformity rate was about 37 percent across trials. Conformity increased with group size up to about five members and decreased when one other person gave the correct answer.

Stanley Milgram's 1963 experiment tested how far ordinary people would go in obeying an authority figure's instructions to harm another person. Participants were told to administer increasing electric shocks to a confederate learner for wrong answers, up to a potentially lethal 450 volts. Approximately 65 percent of participants delivered the maximum shock level despite the learner's screams and pleas to stop. Milgram demonstrated that obedience to authority is a powerful social force that can override personal moral judgment.

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the influence of internal dispositional factors and underestimate the influence of external situational factors when explaining other people's behavior. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you are likely to think they are a rude person rather than considering they might be rushing to a hospital. Interestingly, when explaining our own behavior, we tend to attribute it to the situation, a pattern called the actor-observer bias.

Cognitive dissonance, proposed by Leon Festinger, is the uncomfortable tension that arises when a person holds two contradictory beliefs or when their behavior conflicts with their attitudes. For example, a smoker who knows smoking causes cancer experiences dissonance between the behavior and the knowledge. People are motivated to reduce dissonance by changing their behavior to match beliefs, changing beliefs to match behavior, or adding new beliefs to justify the inconsistency.

The bystander effect is the tendency for individuals to be less likely to help someone in distress when other people are present. Research by John Darley and Bibb Latane showed that as the number of bystanders increases, the probability that any one person will help decreases. Two psychological processes explain this: diffusion of responsibility, where each person assumes someone else will help, and pluralistic ignorance, where each bystander looks to others for cues about how to react and misinterprets their inaction as evidence that help is not needed.

A stereotype is a generalized belief about the characteristics of a group of people, which may be positive or negative and represents the cognitive component of bias. Prejudice is an unjustified negative attitude toward a group and its members, representing the emotional component of bias. Discrimination is unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members, representing the behavioral component. A person can hold stereotypes without being prejudiced, and can be prejudiced without discriminating, though all three often coexist.

Groupthink, identified by Irving Janis, is a phenomenon where the desire for harmony and conformity in a group leads to irrational or dysfunctional decision-making. Group members suppress dissent, ignore alternatives, and develop an illusion of invulnerability and moral superiority. Historical examples include the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Challenger disaster. Prevention includes assigning a devil's advocate, encouraging all members to voice concerns, inviting outside experts, and having the leader withhold their opinion initially to avoid anchoring the discussion.

In-group bias, also called in-group favoritism, is the tendency to favor members of one's own group over members of other groups. People rate in-group members as more likeable, trustworthy, and competent, and allocate more resources to them. Out-group homogeneity is the perception that members of other groups are all alike while members of one's own group are diverse individuals. People see nuance and variation in their own group but view outsiders as interchangeable. Both biases strengthen with competition between groups and contribute to prejudice and discrimination.