1st AP Exam Study Guide:
Unit 1: Psychology’s History and Approaches
 What is Psychology
o Psychology’s Roots
 Prescientific Psychology
 Psychological Science is born
 Thinking about the mind’s structure
 Structuralism
 Thinking about the mind’s function
 Functionalist
o Psychological Science Develops
 Behaviorists
 Humanistic psychology
 Cognitive neuroscience
 Psychology
 Contemporary Psychology
o Psychology’s Biggest Question
 Nature-nurture issue
 Natural selection
o Psychology’s Three Main Levels of Analysis
 Biological influence
 Psychological Influence
 Social-cultural Influence
o Psychological approaches
 Biological
 Evolutionary
 Psychodynamic
 Behavioral
 Cognitive
 Humanistic
 Social-cultural
 Main questions for Unit 1
o How did psychology develop from its prescientific roots in early understandings of mind
and body to the beginnings of modern science?
o When and how did modern psychological science begin?
o How did psychology continue to develop from the 1920’s through today?
o What is psychology’s historic big issue?
o What are psychology’s level of analysis and related perspectives?
o What are psychology’s main subfields?
o How can psychological principles help you as a student?
Unit 2: Research Methods: Thinking Critically with psychological science
 The Need for psychological Science
o Do we know it all along?
 Hindsight Bias
o Overconfidence
o The Scientific Attitude
o Critical Thinking
 How do psychologists ask and answer questions?
o The scientific method
 Theory
 Hypotheses
 Operational definitions
 Replicate
o Description
 The Case Study
 The Survey
 Wording effects
 Random sampling
 Population
 Naturalistic Observation
o Correlation
 Correlation coefficient
 Scatterplots
 Correlation and Causation
 Illusory Correlations
 Perceiving order in random events
o Experimentation
 Random Assignment
 Double-blind procedure
 Placebo effect
 Experimental group
 Control group
 Independent and Dependent variables
 IV
 DV
 CV
 Statistical Reasoning in Everyday Life
o Describing Data
 Measure of Central Tendency
 Mean
 Median
 Skewed distribution
 Mode
 Measures of Variation
 Range
 Standard Deviation
 Normal Curve
o Making Inferences
 When is Observed Difference Reliable?
 Representative samples are better than biased samples
 Less-variable observations are more reliable than those that are more
variable.
 More cases are better than fewer
 When is a difference significant?
 Statistical significance
 Frequently Asked Questions about Psychology
o Psychology Applied
 Culture
o Ethics in Research
 Informed consent
 Debrief
Main questions for Unit 2:
 Why are the answers that flow from the scientific approach more reliable than those based on
intuition and common sense?
 What are three main components of the scientific attitude?
 How do theories advance psychological science?
 How do psychologists observe and describe behavior?
 What are positive and negative correlations, and why do they enable prediction but not causeeffect explanations?
 What are illusory correlations?
 How do experiments, powered by random assignment, clarify cause and effect?
 How can we describe data with measures of central tendency and variation?
 What principles can guide our making generalizations from samples and deciding whether
differences are significant?
 Can laboratory experiments illuminate everyday life?
 Does behavior depend on one’s culture and gender?
Unit 9: Developmental Psychology
 Three major issues of developmental psychology
o Nature and nurture
o Continuity and stages
o Stability and change
 Prenatal development and the newborn
o Conception
o Prenatal development
 Zygotes
 Embryo
 Fetus
 Teratogens
 Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
o The competent newborn
 Habituation
 Infancy and childhood
o Physical development
 Brain development
 Maturation
 Motor development
 Maturation and infant memory
o Cognitive development
 Cognition
 Schemas
 Assimilate
 Accommodate
o Piaget’s theory and current thinking
 Sensorimotor Stage
 Object permanence
 Stranger anxiety
 Preoperational Stage
 Egocentric
 Theory of mind
 Concrete Operational Stage
 Conservation understanding
 Formal Operational Stage
 Abstract thought
o Reflection on Piaget’s Theory
 Vygotsky
 Social Development
o Stranger anxiety
o


Origins of attachment
 Attachment
 Critical period
 Imprinting
o Attachment Differences: Temperament and Parenting
 Temperament
 Basic trust
o Deprivation of attachment
 Disruption of attachment
 Does daycare affect attachment?
o Self-concept
o Parenting styles
 Authoritarian
 Permissive
 Authoritative
o Culture and child-rearing
o Gender development
 Gender
o Gender similarities and differences
 Gender and aggression
 Aggression
 Gender and social power
 Gender and social connectedness
o The nature of gener
 X chromosome
 Y Chromosome
 Testosterone
o The nurture of gender
 Role
 Gender roles
 Gender and child-rearing
 Gender identity
 Gender typed
 Social Learning Theory
Parents and Peers
o Parents and early experiences
 Experience and Brain Development
 How much credit (or blame) do parents deserve?
o Peer influence
Adolescence
o Physical development
o

Puberty
 Primary sex characteristics
 Secondary sex characteristics
 Menarche
o Cognitive Development
 Developing Reasoning power
 Developing morality
 Preconventional morality
 Conventional morality
 Postconventional morality
 Moral feeling
o Social Development
 Forming an identity
 Identity
 Social identity
 Intimacy
 Parent and peer relationships
o Emerging adulthood
Adulthood
o Physical development
o Physical changes in middle adulthood
 Menopause
o Physical changes in later life
 Life Expectancy
 Sensory abilities
 Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
o Cognitive Development
 Aging and memory
 Aging and intelligence
 Phase I: Cross-sectional evidence for intellectual decline
o Cross-sectional studies
 Phase II: Longitudinal Evidence for intellectual stability
o Longitudinally
 Phase III: It all depends
o Crystalized intelligence
o Fluid intelligence
o Social development
 Adulthood’s Ages and stages
 Social clock
 Adulthood’s commitments
 Well-being across the life span
 Death and dying
 Reflections on three major developmental issues
o Nature and nurture
o Continuity and stages
o Stability and change
Main questions for Unit 9
 How does life develop before birth?
 What are some newborn abilities, and how do researchers explore infants’ mental abilities?
 During infancy and childhood, how do the brain and motor skills develop?
 From the perspective of Piaget and of today’s researchers, how does a child’s mind develop?
 How do parent-infant attachment bonds form?
 How have psychologists studied attachment differences, and what have they learned about the
effects of temperament and parenting?
 Do parental neglect, family disruption, or day care affect children’s attachments?
 How do children’s self –concepts develop, and how are children’s traits related to parenting
styles?
 What are some ways in which males and females tend to be alike and to differ?
 How do nature and nurture together form our gender?
 To what extent is our development shaped by early stimulation, by parents, and by peers?
 What physical changes mark adolescence?
 How did Piaget, Kohlberg, and later researchers describe adolescent cognitive and moral
development?
 What are the social tasks and challenges of adolescence?
 What I emergine adulthood?
 What physical changes occur during middle and late adulthood?
 How do memory and intelligence change with age?
 What themes and influences mark our social journey from early adulthood to death?
Unit 14: Social Psychology:
 Social Thinking
o Attributing behavior to persons or to situations
 Attribution theory
 Fundamental attribution error
o The effects of attribution
o Attitudes and Actions
 Attitudes
 Attitudes affect Actions
 Central route persuasion
 Peripheral route persuasion
 Actions affect attitudes
 The foot-in-the-door phenomenon
 Role-playing affects attitudes
o Role
 Cognitive dissonance: relief from tension
o Cognitive dissonance theory
 Social Influence
o Conformity and obedience
 Group pressures and Conformity
 Conformity
 Conditions that strengthen conformity
 Reasons for conforming
o Normative social influence
o Informational social influence
 Obedience
 Lessons from the conformity and obedience studies
o Group Influence
 Individual behavior in the presence of others
 Social facilitation
 Social loafing
 Deindividuation
 Effects of group interaction
 Group polarization
 Groupthink
o Cultural influence
 Culture
 Variation across cultures
 Norms
 Personal space

 Variation over time
o The Power of Individuals
Social relations
 Prejudice
 Stereotypes
 Discriminate
o How prejudiced are people?
o Social roots of prejudice
 Social inequalities
 Us and them: ingroup and outgroup
 Ingroup
 Outgroup
 Ingroup bias
 Emtional roots of prejudice
 Scapegoat theory
 Cognitive roots of prejudice
 Categorization
o Other-race effect
 Vivid cases
 The just-world phenomenon
o Aggression
 The biology of aggression
 Genetic influences
 Neural influences
 Biochemical influences
 Psychological and social-cultural factors in aggression
 Aversive events
o Frustration-aggression principle
 Social and cultural influences
 Observing models of aggression
 Acquiring social scripts
 Do video games teach, or release, violence?
o Attraction
 The psychology of attraction
 Proximity
o Mere exposure effect
 Physical attractiveness
 Similarity
 Romantic love
 Passionate love
 Compassionate love
o
o
o
Equity
Self-disclosure
Altruism
 Bystander intervention
 Bystander effect
 The norms of helping
 Social exchange theory
 Reciprocity norm
 Social-responsibility norm
o Conflict and peacemaking
 Conflict
 Social traps
 Enemy perceptions
 Mirror-image perceptions
 Self-fulfilling prophecies
 Contact
 Cooperation
 Superordinate goals
 Communication
 Conciliation
 GRIT
Main questions for Unit 14
 How do we tend to explain others’ behavior and our own?
 Does what we think affect what we do, or does what we do affect what we think?
 What do experiments on conformity and compliance reveal about the power of social influence?
 How is our behavior affected by the presence of others or by being part of a group?
 What are group polarization and groupthink?
 How do cultural norms affect our behavior?
 How much power do we have as individuals? Can a minority sway a majority?
 What is prejudice?
 What are the social and emotional roots of prejudice?
 What are the cognitive roots of prejudice?
 What biological factors make us more prone to hurt one another?
 What psychological factors ay trigger aggressive behavior?
 Why do we befriend or fall in love with some people but not with others?
 How does romantic love typically change as time passes?
 When are we most—and least—likely to help?
 How do social traps and mirror-image perceptions fuel social conflict?
 How can we transform feelings of prejudice, aggression, and conflict into attitudes that promote
peace?