AP Psychology Notes 3
Social psychology- the study of how we think about influence and relate to another
Attribution theory- give a casual explanation for someone's behavior, credit behavior to situation or, persons disposition
Fundamental Attribution Error- tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of disposition
Attitudes- belief or feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon- tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to later agree with a larger request
Door-in-face phenomenon- tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to agree with a smaller one
Zimbardo Prison Study- Role playing affects attitudes what do you think happened when college students were made to take on roles
Cognitive Dissonance- to first disagree but to later agree to lower tension

 Social Influence
Conformity- adjust behavior to coincide with a  group standard
Conditions that strengthen conformity- one feels incompetent, at least three in a group, group is unanimous, one admires the group status, and one has no prior commitment
Social Facilitation- a person performs better around others
Yerkes-Dodson Law- optimal level of arousal for the best performance of any task
Social Loafying- a person performs worse around others
DE individuation- loss of self-awareness and self restraint
Group polarization- concept that a group's attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate
Groupthink- mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision making group overrides sense
Self-fulfilling prophecy- one persons belief about others leads one to act as others do

Social Relations
Prejudice- unjustifiable attitude towards a group of people
Ingroup- "us" share common identity
Ingroup bias- tendency to favor ones group
Outgroup- "them" different than one's group
Motivation- a psychological process that directs and maintains your behavior toward a goal
Motives-  needs, wants, interests, and desires
Motivation
Instinct theory- motivated by our inborn automated behaviors
Biological Motives- hunger, thirst, sex, sleep, and excretory
Social motives- achievement, order, play, autonomy, affilitation
Drive theory- biological internal motivation (homeostasis)
Incentive theory- environmental motivation  (not much homeostasis
Drive Reduction Theory- individuals experience a need or drive they're motivated to reduce that need or drive. motivation comes from the person
Arousal- level of alertness
Hypothalamus
Lateral hypothalamus- when stimulated it makes you hungry
Ventromedial hypothalamus- feel full
hunger- environment factors
environmental cue- odor, commercials, talking
Set Point Theory-hypothalamus acts as thermostat, maintain stable weight, activate the lateral for diets and activate ventromedial to gain weight

Eating Disorder
Bulimia Nervosa- characterized by binging and purging
Anorexia Nervosa-  starving to below 85% normal body weight
Obesity- severely overweight

Emotion
Emotion-a response of the whole organism
Theories of emotion
James-Lange Theory of emotion- experience of emotion is awareness of physiological responses to emotion arousing stimuli
Cannon Bard Theory-  emotion arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger
Schechter's two factors theory of emotion- experience emotion one must physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal

Emotion lie Detector
polygraph- machine commonly used in attempts to detect lies, measures several physical signs (perspiration, cardiovascular, breathing changes)
The Amygdala- a neural key to fear learning
Catharsis- a release of emotion and tension
Feel-good, do-good phenomenon- what to help when in a good mood
Adaptation level phenomenon- form judgments relative to a neutral level
Relative Deprivation- one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself