Psychology · Study Guide

Exam 6 Study Guide

This guide covers two chapters. Chapter 11 asks what makes you, you. Chapter 12 asks how other people change you. Work one chapter at a time. Read the "what to know" part. Then cover the right side of each table and rebuild it from memory. Walk through the worked examples. Finish each chapter with its ten self-test items. Use the cram sheet at the end for a last review.

Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Cram sheet Read Chapter 11 Read Chapter 12

What this guide covers

Chapter 11: what personality is, Freud and the neo-Freudians, defense mechanisms, the humanists, trait theory and the Big Five, social-cognitive theory, and how personality is measured.
Chapter 12: attribution and its biases, attitudes and cognitive dissonance, the two routes to persuasion, conformity and obedience, group effects, prejudice, helping, and aggression.

Chapter 11Personality

The big ideas

Personality is a person's characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It is typical of that person, and it keeps showing up. It is built on temperament, the early, biology-based style you can see even in babies.

Personality is consistent in two ways. Consistency over time, also called rank-order stability, is strong. You keep your place compared with others as you age. Consistency across situations is weaker. In 1968, Walter Mischel showed that one situation only weakly predicts another. This started the person-situation debate. The answer was interactionism: the person and the situation work together. Traits predict well when you average many moments.

The chapter uses four main lenses. Each one asks a different question.

The psychodynamic lens comes from Sigmund Freud. He said most of the mind is unconscious. He split personality into three parts. The id wants pleasure now. The superego is the conscience. The ego is the go-between that deals with reality. When they clash, the ego feels anxiety. It uses defense mechanisms to cope. Only sublimation is seen as mature. The neo-Freudians kept the unconscious but stressed social forces. They were Jung, Adler, Horney, and Erikson.

The humanistic lens is hopeful. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers said people are basically good and want to grow. The goal of growth is self-actualization. Maslow ranked needs in a hierarchy. Rogers said health needs congruence between the real self and the ideal self. Unconditional positive regard helps it grow.

The trait lens counts and measures. Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck each proposed a list. The field settled on the Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN). Each is a sliding scale. The model describes how people differ, not why.

The social-cognitive lens adds thinking. Albert Bandura's reciprocal determinism says behavior, thoughts, and setting all shape one another. Julian Rotter's locus of control is your belief about who controls your results. Self-efficacy is your belief that you can do a specific task.

Last comes measurement. A self-report inventory, like the MMPI, asks clear questions. It is scored against norms and has validity scales. A projective test, like the Rorschach or TAT, shows an unclear picture. It is hard to fake, but scorers often disagree. The Barnum effect explains why vague "readings" feel so accurate.

Lock these in

Consistency over time is strong. Consistency across situations is weaker.
Id = pleasure principle. Ego = reality principle. Superego = conscience.
Sublimation is the one mature defense.
Jung: collective unconscious. Adler: inferiority. Horney: basic anxiety. Erikson: eight lifespan stages.
Maslow's top need is self-actualization. Rogers's key is unconditional positive regard.
Big Five = OCEAN. Each trait is a scale, not a box.
Locus of control is general. Self-efficacy is task-specific.
Self-reports are reliable but can be faked. Projective tests are hard to fake but less reliable.

Freud's mind, drawn

Figure 1. Only the tip of the iceberg is conscious. The id stays fully below the water. The ego and superego reach across all three levels.

The defenses worth memorizing

Defense	What it does	Clue in a question	Example
Repression	Pushes upsetting thoughts out of awareness	No memory of something others recall	No memory of an embarrassing party
Denial	Refuses to accept a painful fact	"That can't be true"	A smoker says warnings do not apply
Projection	Sees your own urge in others	Accusing others of your own wish	A cheater accuses a partner of cheating
Displacement	Moves an urge to a safer target	A new, weaker target	Yelling at the dog after a bad day at work
Rationalization	Gives a sensible-sounding excuse	"I didn't want it anyway"	Rejected, then "the job was boring"
Reaction formation	Shows the opposite feeling	Over-the-top, opposite behavior	Extra sweet to someone you resent
Regression	Goes back to childlike habits	Acting younger under stress	An adult throws a tantrum
Sublimation	Turns an urge into a valued activity	A healthy, useful outlet	Aggression channeled into boxing

The four lenses, compared

Lens	Key people	Main idea	Main weakness
Psychodynamic	Freud, Jung, Adler, Horney, Erikson	Hidden, unconscious conflict and early life	Hard to test; weak research support
Humanistic	Maslow, Rogers	A drive to grow toward self-actualization	Ideas are vague and hard to measure
Trait	Allport, Cattell, Eysenck, Big Five	A few stable dimensions everyone has in some amount	Describes but does not explain
Social-cognitive	Bandura, Rotter	Thoughts, behavior, and setting shape one another	Can play down emotion and biology

The Big Five

Trait	High scorer	Low scorer	Linked with
Openness	Curious, creative	Traditional, practical	Creativity, love of learning
Conscientiousness	Organized, reliable	Spontaneous, careless	Job success, longer life
Extraversion	Outgoing, energetic	Reserved, quiet	Positive mood, bigger social circle
Agreeableness	Warm, cooperative	Blunt, competitive	Low scores: more conflict
Neuroticism	Anxious, moody	Calm, emotionally stable	High scores: more stress, relationship trouble

Reciprocal determinism, drawn

Figure 2. Bandura's three-way loop. A student who believes effort pays off (personal factor) studies more (behavior), gets praise (environment), and believes it even more.

Two ways to measure

Feature	Self-report inventory	Projective test
What you see	Clear statements	Unclear pictures
How you answer	Fixed choices	Free, open answers
Scoring	Objective, against norms	Judgment of a trained scorer
Examples	MMPI, NEO-PI, 16PF	Rorschach, TAT
Strength	Reliable, quick, has validity scales	Hard to fake
Weakness	Faking, social desirability, poor self-insight	Low reliability, disputed validity

How to reason through the question types

Question type 1: name the defense mechanism

A question tells a short story and asks which defense it shows.

Step 1: find the real feelingWhat is the person truly feeling or wanting? Anger, guilt, attraction, hurt?

Step 2: ask where it wentMoved to a safer target? Displacement. Seen in someone else? Projection. Flipped to the opposite? Reaction formation. Hidden behind an excuse? Rationalization. Turned into something useful? Sublimation.

Worked example"Nadia secretly dislikes her lab partner. She gives him gifts and praises him all the time." The real feeling is dislike. It came out as the opposite. Answer: reaction formation.

Question type 2: which theory is speaking?

A question quotes someone and asks which perspective it fits.

Step 1: listen for the key wordHidden, childhood, conflict = psychodynamic. Growth, potential, acceptance = humanistic. Score, dimension, scale = trait. Belief, expectation, setting = social-cognitive.

Worked example"I know I can learn to code if I keep at it." That is a belief about a specific task. Answer: self-efficacy, from social-cognitive theory.

Question type 3: internal or external locus?

Step 1: find the cause the person namesIs it their own effort or choice? That is internal. Is it luck, fate, a teacher, or the boss? That is external.

Worked example"I lost the game because the refs were against us." The cause is outside the person. Answer: external locus of control.

Traps people fall into

Mixing up projection and displacement. Projection gives your feeling to someone else. Displacement aims your feeling at someone else.
Calling Erikson's stages psychosexual. Erikson's are psychosocial. Freud's are psychosexual.
Thinking repression of trauma is proven. Most real trauma is remembered. Recovered memories are debated.
Treating the Big Five as types. Each trait is a scale. No one is "an O."
Mixing up locus of control and self-efficacy. Locus is general, about who controls results. Self-efficacy is about one task.
Thinking reliable means valid. A test can give steady scores and still measure the wrong thing.
Trusting a reading that feels accurate. That feeling is the Barnum effect, not proof.

Chapter 11 self-test: ten items

1. What two words in the definition of personality do the most work, and what does each mean?

Characteristic and enduring. Characteristic means typical of that person and different from others. Enduring means it keeps showing up over time.

2. How did interactionism settle the person-situation debate?

It said behavior comes from the person and the situation together. Traits predict well when you average many moments, even if one moment is a poor guide.

3. Which part of Freud's model is fully unconscious, and what principle does it follow?

The id. It follows the pleasure principle. The ego and superego work at all three levels of awareness.

4. A student who failed a test says, "That class doesn't matter for my major anyway." Name the defense.

Rationalization. It is a sensible-sounding excuse that hides the real hurt of failing.

5. Match each neo-Freudian to one idea: Jung, Adler, Horney, Erikson.

Jung: collective unconscious and archetypes. Adler: inferiority complex. Horney: basic anxiety. Erikson: eight psychosocial stages.

6. List Maslow's needs from the bottom up.

Body needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization. Research supports the broad idea, but not a strict order.

7. What does Rogers mean by unconditional positive regard, and why does it matter?

Accepting a person with no strings attached. It lets the real self and ideal self match (congruence). Conditional love pushes people to twist themselves.

8. Name the Big Five. Which one best predicts job performance?

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. Conscientiousness predicts job performance and even a longer life.

9. Give an example of reciprocal determinism.

A social person seeks out parties, which make them more social. Their behavior changed their setting, and the setting changed them.

10. Why are projective tests hard to fake but weak as measures?

There is no clear right answer to aim for, so faking is hard. But scoring depends on judgment, so scorers often disagree (low reliability), and validity is disputed.

Chapter 12Social Psychology

The big ideas

Social psychology has one theme. The situation is usually stronger than it looks. Keep that in mind, and most of this chapter fits together.

It starts with attribution, which means explaining a behavior. A dispositional cause is inside the person. A situational cause is outside. When we judge others, we lean too hard on character. That is the fundamental attribution error, named by Lee Ross. The actor-observer bias means we excuse ourselves by the situation but blame others' character. The self-serving bias means we take credit for wins and blame outside forces for losses.

An attitude has three parts: a belief, a feeling, and a tendency to act. Attitudes predict behavior only loosely. Richard LaPiere showed that what people say and do can split apart. The arrow also runs backward. In cognitive dissonance, from Leon Festinger, a clash between belief and action makes us uneasy. We often fix it by changing the belief. In Festinger and Carlsmith's 1959 study, people paid $1 to lie came to believe the lie. People paid $20 did not.

Persuasion takes two roads in Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model. The central route uses strong arguments and lasts. The peripheral route uses surface cues and fades. Compliance tricks include foot-in-the-door (small yes first) and door-in-the-face (huge no first).

Conformity means matching a group. In Solomon Asch's line study, about 75 percent went along with a wrong group at least once. One ally cut conformity sharply. Normative influence is going along to fit in. Informational influence is going along because you think others know better. Obedience means following an authority. In Stanley Milgram's study, about 65 percent obeyed up to 450 volts. The Stanford Prison Experiment is now seen as deeply flawed.

Groups change people in other ways too. Social facilitation helps on easy tasks and hurts on hard ones. Social loafing means slacking when effort is pooled. Deindividuation is losing yourself in a crowd. Groupthink is bad decisions from a wish to agree. Group polarization pushes like-minded groups to extremes.

A stereotype is a belief. Prejudice is a feeling. Discrimination is an action. They grow from splitting the world into an in-group and an out-group. Tajfel's minimal group paradigm showed that a coin toss is enough to start favoritism. Allport's contact hypothesis says contact helps under equal status, common goals, cooperation, and support from leaders. Sherif's Robbers Cave study used superordinate goals.

Last, helping and hurting. Altruism is selfless help. The bystander effect means each person helps less when others are around. It runs on diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance. Aggression comes from biology, frustration, and learning by watching, as in Bandura's Bobo doll studies.

Lock these in

FAE: others' behavior blamed on character. Actor-observer: me = situation, you = character. Self-serving: wins are mine, losses are not.
Less outside reason means more dissonance, which means more attitude change.
Central route = content, lasting. Peripheral route = cues, fading.
Asch: about 75 percent conformed at least once, about 37 percent of key trials. One ally breaks it.
Milgram: about 65 percent to 450 volts. Obedience depends on the situation.
Stereotype = belief. Prejudice = feeling. Discrimination = action.
Contact needs four things: equal status, common goals, cooperation, support.
Bystander effect: diffusion of responsibility plus pluralistic ignorance. Fix it by naming one person.

Attitudes and prejudice, drawn

Figure 3. Thought, feeling, deed. A question that asks which term fits is really asking which part of the attitude you are looking at.

Attribution biases

Bias	Whose behavior	What we do	Example
Fundamental attribution error	Someone else's	Blame character, ignore situation	"He's just rude"
Actor-observer bias	Mine vs. yours	Situation for me, character for you	"I'm stressed; you're mean"
Self-serving bias	Mine	Credit wins, blame losses on others	"I aced it" vs. "unfair test"
Just-world bias	A victim's	Assume people get what they deserve	Blaming a crime victim
Ultimate attribution error	A whole group's	Good acts by "them" are flukes; bad acts show character	"Typical of them"

Group effects

Effect	What happens	Key name	Clue in a question
Conformity	Match the group against clear evidence	Asch	Peers, no orders
Obedience	Follow an authority's orders	Milgram	A direct command
Social facilitation	Better on easy tasks, worse on hard ones, with an audience	Triplett, Zajonc	Being watched
Social loafing	Less effort when work is pooled	Ringelmann, Latané	Group grade, no one singled out
Deindividuation	Lose self-control in an anonymous crowd	Mob behavior	Masks, crowds, excitement
Groupthink	Bad decisions from a wish to agree	Janis	No one speaks up
Group polarization	Like-minded talk makes views more extreme	Discussion research	Views get stronger after talking

The five steps to helping, in order

Latané and Darley's model is a chain. A "no" at any step means no help.

Notice the event. Blocked by hurry and distraction.
Interpret it as an emergency. Blocked by pluralistic ignorance.
Take responsibility. Blocked by diffusion of responsibility.
Know how to help. Blocked by feeling unqualified.
Decide to act. Blocked by fear of the costs or of looking foolish.

Figure 4. Helping is five decisions, not one. Pluralistic ignorance breaks gate 2. Diffusion of responsibility breaks gate 3.

How to reason through the question types

Question type 1: which attribution bias?

Step 1: whose behavior is it?Only someone else's: think FAE. Mine compared with yours: actor-observer. Only mine, success vs. failure: self-serving.

Step 2: what is being blamed?Character or situation? Check whether the person ignores an obvious outside cause.

Worked example"When Kai wins at chess, he says he is smart. When he loses, he says he was tired." It is his own behavior, success vs. failure. Answer: self-serving bias.

Question type 2: normative or informational?

Step 1: does the person privately agree?If they know the group is wrong but go along, it is normative. If they truly change their mind, it is informational.

Step 2: is the situation clear or unclear?Clear tasks (like Asch's lines) point to normative. Unclear tasks (like Sherif's light) point to informational.

Worked example"At a fancy dinner, Rosa watches which fork others use and copies them." She is unsure and thinks others know. Answer: informational influence.

Question type 3: dissonance, predict the attitude

Step 1: find the clashWhat does the person believe, and what did they do that goes against it?

Step 2: check the outside reasonBig reward or strong threat? Little dissonance, so little change. Small reward or mild threat? Big dissonance, so the attitude moves toward the behavior.

Worked example"Two groups write essays praising a policy they oppose. One group is paid $50. The other is paid $2." The $2 group has little outside reason. Answer: the $2 group will like the policy more afterward.

Traps people fall into

Mixing up conformity and obedience. Conformity follows peers with no order. Obedience follows a direct command.
Mixing up Asch's two numbers. About 75 percent conformed at least once. About 37 percent of key trials were conforming.
Thinking bigger rewards change attitudes more. In dissonance, the smaller reward changes attitudes more.
Mixing up social facilitation and social loafing. Facilitation is about being watched. Loafing is about being hidden in a group.
Mixing up stereotype and prejudice. A stereotype is a belief. Prejudice is a feeling.
Thinking contact alone ends prejudice. It needs equal status, common goals, cooperation, and support.
Thinking crowds never help. Each person helps less, but a crowd often still has someone who acts.
Citing the Stanford Prison Experiment as strong proof. It is now seen as deeply flawed.

Chapter 12 self-test: ten items

1. Define the fundamental attribution error and give an example.

Giving too much weight to character and too little to the situation when explaining someone else. Example: calling a slow cashier lazy without noticing she is the only one working.

2. How is the actor-observer bias different from the self-serving bias?

Actor-observer is about point of view: situation for me, character for you. Self-serving is about outcomes: credit for wins, blame for losses.

3. Why did the $1 group in Festinger and Carlsmith's study change their attitude?

One dollar was too little reason to lie, so they felt dissonance. They eased it by deciding the boring task had been fun.

4. Which route to persuasion creates lasting change, and who is it most likely to reach?

The central route. It reaches people who care about the topic and can focus on the arguments.

5. A salesperson first asks you to try a free sample, then asks you to buy. Name the technique.

Foot-in-the-door. A small yes makes a bigger yes more likely.

6. What single change most reduced conformity in Asch's studies?

One other person breaking from the group. Having an ally sharply cut conformity.

7. Name three features of the situation that raised obedience in Milgram's studies.

Any three: an authority who seemed legitimate, the authority in the room, a prestigious setting, passing the blame upward, and a victim far away.

8. What is groupthink, and how could a team prevent it?

Bad decisions in a close group, where the wish to agree overrides a realistic look at facts. A team can prevent it by inviting outside views, naming someone to argue the other side, and having the leader share views last.

9. List Allport's four conditions for contact to reduce prejudice.

Equal status, common goals, cooperation, and support from leaders or the law.

10. Name the two mechanisms behind the bystander effect and the best way to beat them.

Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance. Beat them by pointing to one person and giving a clear job, such as "You, call 911."

One pageCram sheet

Everything from Chapters 11 and 12 in one place. Cover the right column and rebuild each row from the left.

People to know

Person	What to say about them
Sigmund Freud	Psychoanalysis; unconscious; id, ego, superego; psychosexual stages
Anna Freud	Described defense mechanisms in detail
Carl Jung	Collective unconscious, archetypes; his types led to the Myers-Briggs
Alfred Adler	Inferiority complex; striving to become capable
Karen Horney	Basic anxiety; challenged Freud's view of women
Erik Erikson	Eight psychosocial stages across the lifespan
Abraham Maslow	Hierarchy of needs; self-actualization
Carl Rogers	Self-concept, congruence, unconditional positive regard
Gordon Allport	Cardinal, central, secondary traits; also the contact hypothesis
Raymond Cattell	Factor analysis; sixteen source traits (16PF)
Hans Eysenck	Extraversion and neuroticism, tied to arousal
Walter Mischel	1968; person-situation debate
Albert Bandura	Reciprocal determinism, self-efficacy, Bobo doll
Julian Rotter	Locus of control; I-E Scale (1966)
Hermann Rorschach	Inkblot test (1921)
Murray and Morgan	Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Fritz Heider	Attribution; people as everyday scientists
Lee Ross	Named the fundamental attribution error
Jones and Harris	Castro essays; the FAE in action
Richard LaPiere	1930s; attitudes and behavior split apart
Leon Festinger	Cognitive dissonance; with Carlsmith, the $1 vs. $20 study (1959)
Petty and Cacioppo	Elaboration likelihood model; central and peripheral routes
Freedman and Fraser	Foot-in-the-door
Solomon Asch	Line study; conformity
Muzafer Sherif	Autokinetic effect; Robbers Cave and superordinate goals
Stanley Milgram	Obedience; about 65 percent to 450 volts
Philip Zimbardo	Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), now seen as deeply flawed
Robert Zajonc	Social facilitation through arousal
Irving Janis	Groupthink; Bay of Pigs
Henri Tajfel	Social identity theory; minimal group paradigm
Elliot Aronson	Jigsaw classroom
Daniel Batson	Empathy-altruism hypothesis
Latané and Darley	Bystander effect; five steps to helping
Leonard Berkowitz	Refined frustration-aggression; weapons effect

Numbers to know

Finding	Number	Note
Asch, at least once	About 75 percent conformed	About 37 percent of key trials
Asch, alone	Under 1 percent errors	The task is easy
Milgram	About 65 percent to 450 volts	26 of 40 in 1963
Festinger and Carlsmith	$1 vs. $20	$1 group liked the task more
LaPiere	Over 90 percent said no by letter	Yet served the couple in person
Seizure study	85 percent helped alone; 31 percent with four others	Diffusion of responsibility
Smoke-filled room	75 percent alone; 10 percent with two calm actors	Pluralistic ignorance
Forer's Barnum study	4.26 out of 5	Everyone got the same profile
Big Five	Five traits	Cattell had 16; Eysenck stressed 2
Erikson	Eight stages	Freud had five