SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS 2025/2026 ALL RATED A+
✔✔Central Route To Persuasion - ✔✔Occurs when interested people focus on
arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
✔✔Peripheral Route To Persuasion - ✔✔Occurs when people are influenced by
incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.
✔✔Diffusion of Responsibility - ✔✔a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups
of people above a cbertain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned.
✔✔Self-fulfilling Prophecy - ✔✔prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to
become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between
belief and behavior.
✔✔Norm - ✔✔an understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. They prescribe
"proper" behavior.
✔✔Discrimination - ✔✔(Social) unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its
members.
✔✔Reciprocity Norm - ✔✔an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have
helped them.
✔✔Social-Responsibility Norm - ✔✔an expectation that people will help those
dependent upon them.
✔✔Social Trap - ✔✔a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally
pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.
✔✔Solomon Asch - ✔✔Polish social psychologist who studied conformity. His "Asch
Experiment" has been repeated several times with similar results, demonstrating the
powerful effects of conformity on groups.
✔✔Stanley Milgram - ✔✔American social psychologist who conducted a controversial
experiment on obedience, as he was interested in the obedience of Nazi soldiers during
WWII and if their behaviors could be repeated with American citizens.
✔✔Philip Zimbardo - ✔✔American social scientist most famous for his study, the
Stanford Prison Experiment, which studied the psychological effects of being a prisoner
or prison guard, which included role playing, obedience, conformity, groupthink, etc.
, ✔✔Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love - ✔✔The 3 components of love are
passion, commitment, and intimacy
✔✔Dispositional (internal) attribute - ✔✔the explanation of one's behavior is due to
internal characteristics
✔✔Situational (external) attribute - ✔✔the explanation of one's behavior is due to
external factors
✔✔Compliance - ✔✔changing one's behavior due to the request or direction of another
person
✔✔Door-in-the-face phenomenon - ✔✔persuading someone to comply by making a
large request that the person will likely turn down, so that the person will agree to a
much smaller request
✔✔Jane Elliot's "Brown-eyed Blue-eyed study" - ✔✔demonstrated the effects of racism
in the classroom
✔✔Self-serving bias - ✔✔tendency to attribute positive outcomes to personal factors
and negative outcomes to situational factors
✔✔Ethnocentrism - ✔✔belief that your society, culture or group is superior to all others
✔✔Principle of proximity - ✔✔tendency for people to form relationships with people who
are physically closer to them
✔✔Similarity principle - ✔✔tendency to be attracted to others that are similar to
themselves
✔✔Halo effect - ✔✔occurs when a general impression of someone influences
perception of their character
✔✔Self-disclosure - ✔✔sharing private and intimate secrets about yourself with
someone
✔✔Person perception - ✔✔The processes by which individuals categorize and form
judgements about other people
✔✔deindividuation - ✔✔the loss of self awareness and self restraint occurring in group
situations that foster arousal and anonymity,
✔✔culture - ✔✔the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared
by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to next.
ANSWERS 2025/2026 ALL RATED A+
✔✔Central Route To Persuasion - ✔✔Occurs when interested people focus on
arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
✔✔Peripheral Route To Persuasion - ✔✔Occurs when people are influenced by
incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.
✔✔Diffusion of Responsibility - ✔✔a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups
of people above a cbertain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned.
✔✔Self-fulfilling Prophecy - ✔✔prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to
become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between
belief and behavior.
✔✔Norm - ✔✔an understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. They prescribe
"proper" behavior.
✔✔Discrimination - ✔✔(Social) unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its
members.
✔✔Reciprocity Norm - ✔✔an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have
helped them.
✔✔Social-Responsibility Norm - ✔✔an expectation that people will help those
dependent upon them.
✔✔Social Trap - ✔✔a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally
pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.
✔✔Solomon Asch - ✔✔Polish social psychologist who studied conformity. His "Asch
Experiment" has been repeated several times with similar results, demonstrating the
powerful effects of conformity on groups.
✔✔Stanley Milgram - ✔✔American social psychologist who conducted a controversial
experiment on obedience, as he was interested in the obedience of Nazi soldiers during
WWII and if their behaviors could be repeated with American citizens.
✔✔Philip Zimbardo - ✔✔American social scientist most famous for his study, the
Stanford Prison Experiment, which studied the psychological effects of being a prisoner
or prison guard, which included role playing, obedience, conformity, groupthink, etc.
, ✔✔Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love - ✔✔The 3 components of love are
passion, commitment, and intimacy
✔✔Dispositional (internal) attribute - ✔✔the explanation of one's behavior is due to
internal characteristics
✔✔Situational (external) attribute - ✔✔the explanation of one's behavior is due to
external factors
✔✔Compliance - ✔✔changing one's behavior due to the request or direction of another
person
✔✔Door-in-the-face phenomenon - ✔✔persuading someone to comply by making a
large request that the person will likely turn down, so that the person will agree to a
much smaller request
✔✔Jane Elliot's "Brown-eyed Blue-eyed study" - ✔✔demonstrated the effects of racism
in the classroom
✔✔Self-serving bias - ✔✔tendency to attribute positive outcomes to personal factors
and negative outcomes to situational factors
✔✔Ethnocentrism - ✔✔belief that your society, culture or group is superior to all others
✔✔Principle of proximity - ✔✔tendency for people to form relationships with people who
are physically closer to them
✔✔Similarity principle - ✔✔tendency to be attracted to others that are similar to
themselves
✔✔Halo effect - ✔✔occurs when a general impression of someone influences
perception of their character
✔✔Self-disclosure - ✔✔sharing private and intimate secrets about yourself with
someone
✔✔Person perception - ✔✔The processes by which individuals categorize and form
judgements about other people
✔✔deindividuation - ✔✔the loss of self awareness and self restraint occurring in group
situations that foster arousal and anonymity,
✔✔culture - ✔✔the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared
by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to next.
