How to study this deck

These social psychology flashcards cover a connected set of ideas: how people explain behaviour, how groups influence them, and how people respond to other groups. They are designed to test one distinction or finding at a time. That matters because a card that asks for a whole theory often lets you recognise the words without being able to explain the theory.

For each card, read the question and formulate an answer before looking at the answer. Then compare your response with the wording on the card. Choose Again if you could not retrieve the fact, Hard if you needed a lot of effort or left out an important part, Good if you recalled it accurately, or Easy if the answer came promptly and completely. Be honest: a familiar-sounding term is not the same as a retrievable definition.

This deck moves from attribution to social influence, then to group behaviour and intergroup relations. The order helps you link related concepts, but each card should still make sense on its own. A MySummaries deck on this topic might look like this:

Cards — Social Psychology18 due

What does the fundamental attribution error describe?

The tendency to overestimate personal or dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining another person’s behaviour.

All 18 cards
What does the fundamental attribution error describe?The tendency to overestimate personal or dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining another person’s behaviour.
What is the actor–observer difference in attribution?People may explain their own behaviour more by the situation and another person’s behaviour more by that person’s disposition; the pattern varies with context.
What is a self-serving attribution?Explaining a success with internal causes and a failure with external causes, in a way that protects or enhances self-esteem.
What are Kelley’s three covariation cues?Consensus, distinctiveness and consistency.
In Kelley’s model, what pattern points towards a person cause?Low consensus, low distinctiveness and high consistency: this person behaves this way across occasions and towards different stimuli, unlike most others.
What is cognitive dissonance?A state of psychological discomfort associated with inconsistency between cognitions, or between a cognition and behaviour, which can motivate efforts to reduce the inconsistency.
What is effort justification?Reducing dissonance by valuing an outcome or group more after having invested substantial effort to obtain it.
What is normative social influence?Changing behaviour or expressed judgement to gain approval or avoid social rejection.
What is informational social influence?Using other people’s responses as evidence about what is correct, especially when a situation is ambiguous.
In Asch’s classic line-judgement experiments, about what proportion of critical-trial responses conformed to the unanimous wrong majority?About 36.8% of responses across the critical trials in the classic experiments.
In Asch-style conformity studies, what does a dissenting ally generally do to conformity?Breaking the majority’s unanimity generally reduces conformity, even if the ally does not give the correct answer.
In Milgram’s original Yale baseline condition, how many of the 40 participants reached the 450-volt maximum?26 of 40 participants, or 65%, reached the maximum in the original baseline condition.
In Zajonc’s social facilitation account, what does an audience tend to do to performance?The presence of others tends to strengthen the dominant response: this can help a well-learned or simple task and impair a new or difficult one.
What is diffusion of responsibility?A reduction in each person’s felt personal responsibility when responsibility is perceived to be shared among others.
What is pluralistic ignorance in an emergency?People privately doubt that a situation is harmless but infer from others’ apparent calm that intervention is unnecessary.
What is social loafing?Reduced individual effort on a collective task, particularly when individual contributions are difficult to identify or evaluate.
How do stereotype, prejudice and discrimination differ?A stereotype is a belief or generalisation, prejudice is an evaluative attitude, and discrimination is behaviour that treats people differently.
What four conditions did Allport identify as helping intergroup contact reduce prejudice?Equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation and support from authorities or institutions. They are conditions that help, not a guarantee of change.

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Work through the tricky distinctions

The attribution cards are easiest to muddle if you memorise labels without asking whose behaviour is being explained. The fundamental attribution error concerns explanations of another person’s behaviour. The actor–observer difference compares explanations of your own and someone else’s behaviour; it is a proposed tendency, not a rule that applies equally in every setting. The self-serving attribution card is different again: it concerns how explanations can protect self-esteem after success or failure.

Kelley’s covariation model is useful when a question gives you information about a person, an action and a situation. Say the three cues aloud: consensus (do other people respond similarly?), distinctiveness (does this person respond this way to this particular stimulus?), and consistency (does the person respond this way on other occasions?). Then retrieve the person-cause pattern on card five. Do not confuse high consistency with evidence for a person cause on its own; the other cues matter.

Next, contrast the two kinds of influence. Normative influence is about social approval; informational influence is about deciding what is correct. A person may conform for both reasons, but the distinction gives you a way to explain why the influence occurs. Asch’s finding is a proportion of responses on critical trials, not a claim that every participant conformed on that proportion of occasions. The Milgram card likewise anchors its figure to one specific original baseline condition; do not generalise that result to every variation of the study.

The group-behaviour cards separate mechanisms that can produce inaction. Diffusion of responsibility is about a person’s reduced sense of individual responsibility when others are present. Pluralistic ignorance is about interpreting other people’s apparent calm as evidence that nothing is wrong. They can occur together, but they are not synonyms. Social loafing concerns effort on a collective task, not helping behaviour in an emergency.

Finally, keep the intergroup terms in their proper categories: belief, attitude and behaviour. Allport’s contact conditions are a set of favourable conditions, not a promise that any contact will reduce prejudice. When recalling the list, name all four and add the qualification; that final detail prevents an overly absolute answer.

The must-not-miss core

After the full deck, use this compact checklist to find gaps. Try to retrieve each line without reading it first; if you miss one, return to its related card and grade it down.

A compact core checklist cut from this deck looks like this:

Must not miss coreSocial Psychology
Attribution: the fundamental attribution error concerns underweighting the situation when explaining another person; Kelley’s cues are consensus, distinctiveness and consistency.
Influence: normative means approval or avoiding rejection; informational means using others as evidence about what is correct.
Group behaviour: Asch’s classic experiments produced conformity on about 36.8% of critical-trial responses; Milgram’s original Yale baseline had 26 of 40 participants reach 450 volts.
Keep mechanisms distinct: diffusion of responsibility concerns shared responsibility; pluralistic ignorance concerns reading others’ apparent calm; social loafing concerns individual effort in a collective task.
Intergroup relations: stereotype is belief, prejudice is attitude, discrimination is behaviour; Allport’s facilitating conditions are equal status, common goals, cooperation and institutional support.

Turn missed answers into another test

Use the review ratings to spend more time on facts that are not yet retrievable. If you mark a card Again or Hard, explain the distinction in your own words before you move on. When a written practice answer repeatedly loses the same point, turn that precise gap into a question rather than rereading a whole chapter. For example, if you name responsibility but fail to distinguish it from pluralistic ignorance, practise stating both mechanisms side by side.

A targeted remediation prompt for that recurring mix-up could be:

Remediation tray

You lost this mark twice: in an emergency, how does diffusion of responsibility differ from pluralistic ignorance? Give the mechanism for each.

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How MySummaries helps

Build a revision board from your own social psychology notes, then generate flashcards from that material and review them with spaced repetition. You can start at portal.mysummaries.app.