Cognitive Connie
Let's explore Social Psychology
Understand how people think, feel, and behave in the presence of others and within social contexts.
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Social Influence
Social influence describes the ways in which individuals change their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour in response to real or imagined social pressure. It is one of the oldest and most researched areas of social psychology, producing some of the discipline's most dramatic and ethically controversial findings — including Stanley Milgram's obedience studies and Solomon Asch's conformity experiments.
Conformity
Conformity is the process by which individuals adjust their behaviour, beliefs, or attitudes to match a group norm — without any explicit request to do so. It is one of the most fundamental and well-documented phenomena in social psychology, revealing the extraordinary power of social context over individual judgment.
Obedience to Authority
Obedience is compliance with a direct instruction from a perceived authority figure. Unlike conformity — where pressure is implicit and comes from peers — obedience involves an explicit command from someone with a recognised position of authority. The distinction matters psychologically: in obedience, individuals often know that the instruction conflicts with their own values, yet comply nonetheless.
Attribution Theory
Attribution theory addresses one of the most fundamental activities of social cognition: explaining why people do what they do. When we observe behaviour — a colleague snapping at us, a stranger helping someone in distress, a politician making a poor decision — we automatically construct a causal explanation. Attribution theory examines the nature of these explanations, the principles that guide them, and the systematic biases to which they are prone.
Group Dynamics
Group dynamics refers to the forces and processes that shape how individuals behave when they are part of a group. Human beings are profoundly social animals, and membership in groups — from families and friendships to organisations and nations — shapes cognition, emotion, motivation, and behaviour in ways that individual psychology alone cannot explain.
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Study guides & reading
Social Psychology: Course Goals and Exam Preparation
Knowing what Milgram found is the starting point, not the destination. What KI's learning outcomes actually require: the ability to apply findings to new scenarios, evaluate methodology, and connect individual studies to broader theoretical frameworks.
Key Concepts in Social Psychology
Conformity isn't the same as obedience. Attribution errors aren't the same as the fundamental attribution error. The distinctions matter — and getting them right is half the mark. Covers social influence, attribution theory, and group dynamics with exactly that level of precision.
Social Psychology Recommended Literature
A side-by-side look at what Karolinska Institutet (2PS003) and Stockholm University (PSPR03) recommend for their social psychology courses — and what the differences reveal about each programme's focus.