AP®︎ Psychology: Topic 4.1 Practice Test
Prepare for your quiz, test, or the AP exam with focused practice questions on Topic 4.1 of AP Psychology – Attribution Theory and Person Perception.
Questions List
Topic 4.1
Question 1 Easy
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.
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).
