Social and Personality Psychology

Secondary

Why people do what others do, become who they become, and stay who they are — from conformity pressure to personality stability.

This collection covers social influence, group behavior, interpersonal relationships, personality theories and assessment, culture and gender, motivation, and emotion. Aligned with the IPsyO (International Psychology Olympiad) syllabus.

Academic primerSocial and personality psychology

Earn4CreditsinPsychology

4Modules13Sessions183Cards56Quizzes

Modules in this Collection’s System

Hover a module to read it directly

1. Social Psychology

Social influence and group behavior — conformity, compliance, obedience, and the relationships built on or against them.

3Sessions

2. Personality

Personality as structure and as trajectory — what the Big Five captures and how traits remain recognizable across a lifespan.

3Sessions

3. Multiculturalism and Gender

Culture, gender, and diversity — how WEIRD sampling, individualism-collectivism, and intersectionality reshape what counts as 'universal' in psychology.

4Sessions

4. Motivation and Emotion

Motivation and emotion — the theories that explain why behavior starts, directs, and persists, and what role affect plays in all of it.

3Sessions

What You'll Walk Away With

1social influence mechanisms map distinguishing conformity (normative vs. informational), compliance (foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face), and obedience with the key findings that established each
1Big Five personality reference card listing OCEAN dimensions with anchor adjectives, measurement instruments, and life outcomes each trait predicts
1cross-cultural comparison matrix on individualism-collectivism, power distance, self-construal, and attribution styles so students read findings in cultural context
1attribution error catalog listing fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, self-serving bias, and just-world belief with the cognitive function each serves
1motivation and emotion theories grid laying James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer (emotion) and drive-reduction, Maslow, SDT (motivation) side-by-side with their testable differences

You'll Have Answers To

?When a group of people all agree with an obviously wrong answer, are they conforming to fit in or because they think the group knows better?
?Why does the fundamental attribution error happen — and why does it happen less when we explain our own behavior?
?Is personality actually stable across decades — and what exactly does 'stable' mean?
?What does it mean for psychology that most of its findings come from WEIRD samples?
?What's the real difference between the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter-Singer theories of emotion — and how would you design a study to tell them apart?

Critical Concepts Explored

Conformity (normative vs. informational)Compliance techniques and obedience (Milgram)Fundamental attribution error and self-serving biasThe Big Five / OCEAN personality traitsRank-order vs. mean-level personality stabilityIndividualism vs. collectivismWEIRD samples and generalizabilityIntersectionalityDrive-reduction, Maslow's hierarchy, self-determination theoryJames-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer theories of emotion

Editor's Note

“Social psychology that takes situations seriously”

This collection earns its 'social and personality' framing by keeping both halves honest: personality is real (the Big Five replicates), but so is situational power (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo). The WEIRD and intersectionality sections are particularly sharp — they force readers to see that much of what psychology calls 'human nature' is culturally specific findings mislabeled as universals.

Editor's Brief

Who it's for: Students preparing for IPsyO, AP Psychology social/personality unit, or any introductory social or personality psychology course that expects you to reason about situations, traits, culture, and diversity as interacting forces.
What stands out: The collection refuses to split 'social' and 'personality' into separate silos — situational influence and stable individual differences are taught as complementary lenses on the same behaviors, with cross-cultural and intersectional material woven throughout.
Read if: You want to understand why people conform, comply, obey, and cooperate — and why they remain recognizably themselves through decades of situational pressure.

Gold Quotes

The fundamental attribution error — overweighting disposition and underweighting situation — is not a random bias. It's how social cognition has to run given the information available to an observer.

When you watch someone act, the person is salient and the situation is background — you see them, not the pressures on them. From the inside, you feel the pressures; from the outside, you see only the actor. This asymmetry produces the actor-observer divergence, the self-serving bias, and most of what lay theories of personality get wrong about other people's behavior.

Much of what 'psychology' knows about humans comes from a sample that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic — about 12% of the world. Many findings do not travel.

Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan's 2010 review showed that WEIRD participants differ systematically from most other populations on moral reasoning, visual illusions, spatial cognition, self-concepts, and cooperation games. Generalizing WEIRD findings as 'human universals' has been one of psychology's most consequential measurement errors.

Personality is stable in rank-order across decades, and it also shifts in mean-level across the lifespan. Both statements are true, and they answer different questions.

Rank-order stability asks whether the most conscientious 20-year-old is still among the most conscientious at 70 — yes, strongly. Mean-level stability asks whether adults on average become more conscientious, agreeable, and emotionally stable as they age — yes, also strongly ('the maturity principle'). Folk intuitions about personality collapse these two and end up contradicting themselves.

About the Curator

IInternational Psychology Olympiad

International Psychology Olympiad is the editorial voice behind LearningFirst's IPsyO-aligned collections — producing rigorous, exam-ready primers on core psychological science for learners preparing for competitions and introductory university coursework.

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