AP®︎ Psychology: Unit 4 Practice Test
Prepare for your quiz, test, or the AP exam with focused practice questions on Unit 4 of AP Psychology – Social Psychology and Personality.
Questions List
Unit 4 (All Topics)
Question 1 Topic 4.1Easy
This question tests the following: 4.1.A.1
What type of attribution is made when someone believes a person acts due to their personality?
What You’re Being Tested On:
Explore the learning objectives taken directly from the College Board’s AP® Psychology Curriculum. Ensure you’re prepared for the exact topics covered on the AP® exam, in-class tests, and quizzes, and gain confidence in your mastery of the material.
Unit 4: Social Psychology and Personality
This unit examines how social context influences behavior and how personality develops and is expressed. Topics include social perception, group dynamics, major personality theories, and emotional and motivational processes.
Topic 4.1: Attribution Theory and Person Perception
Learning Objective: 4.1.A
Explain how attribution theory applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.A.1
Attributions are how people explain behavior and mental processes of themselves and others. Dispositional attributions relate to internal qualities of others (such as intelligence or personality) while situational attributions relate to external circumstances that are experienced.
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.A.2
People demonstrate a predictable pattern of attributions called explanatory style. Explanatory style is how people explain good and bad events in their lives and in the lives of others. Explanatory style can be optimistic or pessimistic.
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.A.3
People are subject to biases in their attributions. Those biases include actor/observer bias, fundamental attribution error, and self-serving bias, all of which can affect behavior and mental processes.
Learning Objective: 4.1.B
Explain how locus of control (internal and external) applies to behavior and mental processes.
Learning Objective: 4.1.C
Explain how person perception applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.C.1
People’s perception of how much they like something can be influenced by the mere exposure effect. The mere exposure effect occurs when people are exposed to a stimulus repeatedly over time, which causes them to like the stimulus more.
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.C.2
People can behave in ways that elicit behaviors from others that confirm their beliefs or perceptions about themselves or others (self-fulfilling prophecy).
Essential Knowledge: 4.1.C.3
Social comparison is a type of person perception that occurs when people evaluate themselves based on comparisons to other members of society or social circles. Social comparison can be upward or downward. People often judge their own sense of deprivation relative to others (relative deprivation).
Topic 4.2: Attitude Formation and Attitude Change
Learning Objective: 4.2.A
Explain how stereotypes and implicit attitudes contribute to the behaviors and mental processes of prejudice and discrimination.
Essential Knowledge: 4.2.A.1
A stereotype is a generalized concept about a group. Stereotypes can help reduce cognitive load when making decisions or judgments. Stereotypes can be the cause and/or result of biased perceptions and experiences and are frequently the basis of prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behaviors.
Essential Knowledge: 4.2.A.2
Implicit attitudes are those that individuals hold but may be unaware of or may not acknowledge. Research has focused on how implicit attitudes reflect negative evaluations of others, as demonstrated by the just-world phenomenon, out-group homogeneity bias, in-group bias, or ethnocentrism.
Learning Objective: 4.2.B
Explain how belief perseverance and cognitive dissonance apply to attitude formation and change.
Essential Knowledge: 4.2.B.1
Belief perseverance occurs when a belief persists even if evidence suggests it is not accurate. People experiencing belief perseverance may engage in confirmation bias, thereby clinging to an attitude or belief regardless of the evidence for or against it.
Essential Knowledge: 4.2.B.2
Cognitive dissonance refers to the mental discomfort that occurs when actions or attitudes are in conflict. People are motivated to reduce the discomfort by changing either actions or attitudes to be more in line with each other.
Topic 4.3: Psychology of Social Situations
Learning Objective: 4.3.A
Explain how the social situation affects behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.1
Social norms define expectations and roles a society may have for its members in individual and social situations.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.2
Social influence theory proposes that social pressure to behave or think in certain ways can be normative or informational.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.3
Persuasion refers to the techniques applied to convince the self or others of particular ideas, actions, or beliefs.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.3.i
Persuasion can depend on the route to persuasion. The elaboration likelihood model outlines two main routes to persuasion: central and peripheral. The halo effect is an example of a peripheral route to persuasion.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.3.ii
Persuasion can depend on how information is presented, as demonstrated by the foot-in-the-door and the door-in-the-face techniques.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.4
Research on conformity clarifies the conditions that strengthen the likelihood of people adhering to unspoken rules, norms, or expectations.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.A.5
Research on obedience clarifies the conditions that strengthen the likelihood of people complying with the directives of an authority figure.
Learning Objective: 4.3.B
Explain how being in a group can affect an individual’s behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.1
Cultural phenomena such as individualism, collectivism, and multiculturalism can influence how one perceives and behaves towards oneself and others.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.2
Being a member of a group can influence how one behaves or experiences mental processes via group polarization, groupthink, diffusion of responsibility, social loafing, and deindividuation.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.3
Performing a mental or physical behavior in front of a group can lead to social facilitation.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.4
People often overestimate the levels to which others agree with them, known as the false consensus effect.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.5
Superordinate goals serve to unite disparate groups under a common goal and help reduce negative affect and stereotyping among groups. Social traps occur when individuals do not unite and act in their own self-interest to the detriment of the group.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.B.6
Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologists study how people perform in the workplace. I/O psychologists study best practices in management of work, relationships among people working together or for a common company or program, and how people feel about work (burnout).
Learning Objective: 4.3.C
Explain how prosocial behavior affects behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.C.1
Altruism refers to selfless behavior, but some researchers suggest that people act in prosocial ways due to incurring social debt. The social reciprocity norm and the social responsibility norm explain this type of behavior.
Essential Knowledge: 4.3.C.2
The bystander effect demonstrates that situational and attentional variables predict whether someone is likely to help another person.
Topic 4.4: Psychodynamic and Humanistic Theories of Personality
Learning Objective: 4.4.A
Explain how the psychodynamic theory of personality defines and assesses personality.
Essential Knowledge: 4.4.A.1
According to the psychodynamic theory of personality, unconscious processes drive personality. Exclusion: The stage theory of psychosexual development is out of scope for the AP Psychology Exam.
Essential Knowledge: 4.4.A.2
Ego defense mechanisms (denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation) serve to protect the ego unconsciously from threats.
Essential Knowledge: 4.4.A.3
Psychodynamic personality psychologists assess personality using projective tests that are designed to probe the preconscious and unconscious mind.
Learning Objective: 4.4.B
Explain how the humanistic theory of personality defines and assesses personality.
Essential Knowledge: 4.4.B.1
According to humanistic psychology, personality focuses on unconditional regard and the self-actualizing tendency as primary motivating factors. Exclusion: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Topic 4.5: Social-Cognitive and Trait Theories of Personality
Learning Objective: 4.5.A
Explain how the social-cognitive theory of personality defines and assesses personality.
Essential Knowledge: 4.5.A.1
According to social-cognitive theory, reciprocal determinism shapes personality. Reciprocal determinism explores self-concept (how one views themselves and in relation to others) and how self-efficacy and self-esteem both contribute to self-concept.
Learning Objective: 4.5.B
Explain how trait theories of personality define and assess personality.
Essential Knowledge: 4.5.B.1
Trait theories of personality conclude that personality involves a set of enduring characteristics that lead to typical responses to stimuli.
Essential Knowledge: 4.5.B.2
The Big Five theory of personality proposes that traits of agreeableness, openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability make up one’s personality. These traits are measured by specialized personality inventories that use factor analysis to organize item responses.
Topic 4.6: Motivation
Learning Objective: 4.6.A
Explain how theories about motivation apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.A.1
Some theories about motivation focus on behavior and mental processes that seek to address physical needs and desires such as drive-reduction theory and arousal theory. Drive-reduction theory addresses how certain behaviors help maintain homeostasis while arousal theory addresses how people seek an optimal level of arousal when they behave (as demonstrated by the Yerkes-Dodson Law).
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.A.2
Self-determination theory proposes that people are motivated by intrinsic (internal) or extrinsic (external) motivations. Incentive theory explores the role of rewards (an extrinsic motivation) in motivating behavior.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.A.3
Many non-human animals are motivated by instincts (innate, typically fixed patterns of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli). Humans do not seem to demonstrate instinctual behavior or mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.A.4
Lewin’s motivational conflicts theory proposes that choices create conflicts one must resolve as the basis of motivation. The type of conflicts faced include approach-approach, approach-avoidance, and avoidance-avoidance.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.A.5
Sensation-seeking theory proposes that one’s level of need for varied or novel experiences is the basis of motivation. The types of sensation seeking are experience seeking, thrill or adventure seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility.
Learning Objective: 4.6.B
Explain how eating and belongingness motivate behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.B.1
Eating is a complex motivated behavior that demonstrates how physical and mental processes interact.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.B.1.i
Hormones, such as ghrelin and leptin (regulated by the hypothalamus via the pituitary gland), regulate feelings of hunger and satiety.
Essential Knowledge: 4.6.B.1.ii
External factors like the presence of food, time of day, or social gatherings around meals also influence the behavior of eating.
Topic 4.7: Emotion
Learning Objective: 4.7.A
Explain how theories of emotion apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 4.7.A.1
Emotion, or affect, is a complex psychological process that is distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. Emotions reflect internal and external factors affecting an individual. Early 20th century psychological theories of emotion parsed the distinction between the physiological and cognitive experiences of emotion. Some theories proposed that the physiological and cognitive experiences occurred in succession while others proposed that they occurred simultaneously. Other theories emphasize that the cognitive label is required to experience an emotion. The facial-feedback hypothesis suggests that the experience of emotion is influenced by facial expressions, which supports theories that propose the physiological experience of emotion precedes the cognitive appraisal, and research testing this hypothesis has produced mixed results. Exclusion: Specific names of theories of emotion are outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Essential Knowledge: 4.7.A.2
The broaden-and-build theory of emotion proposes that positive emotional experiences tend to broaden awareness and encourage new actions and thoughts. Negative emotions tend to reduce awareness and narrow thinking and action.
Learning Objective: 4.7.B
Explain how social norms and experiences influence the expression of emotions.
Essential Knowledge: 4.7.B.1
Research has explored whether the expression of emotions is universally common. Some emotions that may be commonly experienced across cultures include anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise, and fear. Research on the universality of emotions shows mixed results.
Essential Knowledge: 4.7.B.2
Display rules and elicitors for emotional expression can differ among cultures. Display rules and elicitors may regulate how people from different genders, ages, or socioeconomic classes within a culture can display and interpret emotions.
