Attribution Station
A student blames a classmate's bad grade on laziness without considering that the classmate was sick.
What is Fundamental Attribution Error?
A student seeks only information supporting an existing belief and ignores evidence against it.
What is confirmation bias?
A student wears the same outfit as friends to avoid standing out. What type of social influence is this?
Normative social influence
Students contribute less effort to a group project than they would individually. Identify the phenomenon.
Social loafing.
A student automatically believes members of their own school are more trustworthy than students from a rival school. Identify the bias.
In-group bias.
A basketball player credits personal skill for a win but blames the referee for a loss. Identify the bias.
What is self-serving bias?
A student cheats despite believing cheating is wrong, then decides the exam was unfair.
What is cognitive dissonance reduction - changing a belief to reduce discomfort from conflicting behavior.
A student follows classmates' directions because they believe the classmates know more. Identify the influence.
Informational social influence.
After discussing an issue with like-minded classmates, students develop even stronger opinions. What is this?
Group polarization.
A student describes all members of a rival club as basically identical. What bias is this?
Out-group homogeneity bias.
After failing a quiz, one student says, "I can improve by studying differently." What type of locus of control is demonstrated?
What is Internal Locus of Control?
After repeatedly watching videos of airplane accidents, a student overestimates how often crashes occur. Identify the mental shortcut.
Availability heuristic
In Asch's line experiments, what change significantly reduced conformity.
Having even one dissenter who disagreed with the majority.
A student who is normally respectful becomes aggressive while feeling anonymous in a crowd. Identify the phenomenon.
Deindividuation.
A student performs worse on a test after being reminded of a negative stereotype about their group. What is this?
Stereotype threat.
A student assumes most classmates agree with their unpopular opinion. Identify the cognitive bias.
What is False Consensus Effect?
A student hears that a new classmate is outgoing and later incorrectly remembers that classmate talking constantly. What cognitive structure influenced memory?
Schema - an existing mental framework shapes how information is remembered.
In Milgram's experiment, participants continued administering shocks because an experimenter instructed them to. What concept was demonstrated?
Obedience to authority
A committee approves a poor proposal because members prioritize agreement over criticism. Identify the phenomenon and one prevention strategy.
Groupthink; encourage dissent, independent evaluation, or alternative viewpoints.
A student dislikes members of a rival school simply because they attend that school, even though they have never met them. What concept is this?
A student receives a B+ but feels unsuccessful because their friends all earned A's. Identify the comparison process and the resulting feeling of disadvantage.
A teacher expects a student to struggle, gives them fewer opportunities, and interprets their poor performance as proof. Identify the process and explain the cycle.
Self-fulfilling prophecy - expectations influence treatment, which influences behavior that confirms the original expectation.
Explain why a participant might obey less in a Milgram-style experiment if the authority figures gives instructions remotely.
The authority figure's reduced physical presence can weaken pressure to obey.
An audience improves a student's performance on an easy, familiar task but makes a difficult new task harder. Identify the phenomenon and explain.
Social facilitation - the presence of others strengthens dominant responses, improving well-learned tasks but potentially impairing difficult new ones.
Two rival teams must cooperate to organize a fundraiser that neither can complete alone. Identify the conflict-reduction concept.
Superordinate goals - shared goals requiring cooperation can reduce intergroup hostility.