AP Psychology / Social Psychology and Personality
Lesson
Situations, groups, and the stories we tell
Other people change our judgments and our actions.
Learning goals
- Explain attribution as a guess about why someone acted.
- Distinguish conformity from obedience.
Explanation
Social psychology starts with the situation. We explain other people's actions by guessing causes—personality or circumstances. The common error is overusing personality ('they are rude') and underusing context ('they just got terrible news'). That shortcut is fast and often unfair.
Groups add pressure. Conformity is going along with peers; obedience is following a directive from an authority. Both can be harmless or harmful depending on the request. Attitudes also shift to stay consistent with actions we have already taken. When a scenario names a crowd, a uniform, or a surprising explanation, you are in this unit.
Key terms
- attribution. An explanation for the cause of a behavior, often split between the person and the situation.
- conformity. Changing behavior or belief to match a group, without a formal order.
Common mistakes
- Using conformity and obedience as if they were the same word.
- Assuming a group always makes people worse; groups can also increase helping.
Practice
Original Marlow Works items. Check the answer explanation after you try.
A researcher wants to know whether people are more likely to donate to a food drive when they see a peer donate first. Design an ethical experiment: identify the independent and dependent variables, one control, and one reason random assignment matters.
Original Marlow Works item — not a College Board question.
Take your time—this is practice, not a test.
Answer explanation
A student copies the wrong answer because every teammate chose it, even though no one gave an order. What process is that?
Answer. Conformity: the student matched the group without an authority command.
Obedience needs a directive from someone with perceived authority.
Related resources
External links with reuse status. Marlow Works is independent and does not copy restricted exam or textbook material.
Official / link only
AP Psychology course page
Official five-unit framework and science practices.
College Board · All rights reserved · accessed 2026-10-01
Open sourceReference only — do not copy
OpenStax Psychology 2e
Useful psychology background, but current publisher terms restrict commercial reuse and AI ingestion.
OpenStax · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with additional restrictions · accessed 2026-10-01
Link only. Do not republish or ingest this book.
Open source