UGC NET Psycology Social Psychology Syllabus

Social Psychology syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Social Psychology in UGC NET Psycology, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Nature, Scope and History of Social Psychology

   1 topic

   • Traditional Theoretical Perspectives
     • Field Theory
     • Cognitive Dissonance
     • Sociobiology
     • Psychodynamic Approaches
     • Social Cognition
2. 2

   Social Perception

   2 topics

   • Communication
   • Attributions
3. 3

   Attitude and its Change within Cultural Context

   1 topic

   • Prosocial Behavior
4. 4

   Group and Social Influence

   4 topics

   • Social Facilitation
   • Social Loafing
   • Social Influence
     • Conformity
     • Peer Pressure
     • Persuasion
     • Compliance
     • Obedience
     • Social Power
     • Reactance
   • Aggression
5. 5

   Group Dynamics, Leadership Style and Effectiveness

   overview

   Examined as a single unit within Social Psychology — no further topic split in the official outline.

6. 6

   Theories of Intergroup Relations

   6 topics

   • Minimal Group Experiment and Social Identity Theory
   • Relative Deprivation Theory
   • Realistic Conflict Theory
   • Balance Theories
   • Equity Theory
   • Social Exchange Theory
7. 7

   Applied Social Psychology

   3 topics

   • Health
   • Environment and Law
   • Personal Space, Crowding, and Territoriality

Social Psychology flashcards for UGC NET Psycology

22 of 53 cards from the Social Psychology deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. How did Gordon Allport (1954) define social psychology?

   The scientific study of how individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

2. Name the major traditional theoretical perspectives in social psychology.

   Motivational (need/drive-based), Learning/behaviorist, Cognitive, Decision-making (cost-benefit), and Sociocultural perspectives.

3. What does the cognitive perspective in social psychology emphasize?

   That behavior is shaped by how people perceive, interpret, remember, and mentally represent social information (schemas, attributions, social cognition) rather than the objective situation itself.

4. In communication, what are the core elements of the Shannon-Weaver model?

   Source (sender), encoder, message, channel, decoder, receiver, noise, and feedback.

5. Distinguish verbal from nonverbal communication and name key channels of nonverbal communication.

   Verbal uses spoken/written words; nonverbal uses wordless cues. Key channels: kinesics (body movement/gestures), facial expressions, paralanguage (tone/pitch), proxemics (use of space), haptics (touch), and eye contact (oculesics).

6. What are the main functions of nonverbal communication?

   To repeat, complement, accent, regulate, substitute for, or contradict verbal messages, and to convey emotion and interpersonal attitudes.

7. What is attribution, and who introduced attribution theory?

   Attribution is the process by which people explain the causes of their own and others' behavior. Fritz Heider (1958) introduced attribution theory with his idea of 'naive psychology'.

8. In Heider's attribution theory, what is the key distinction between types of causes?

   Internal/dispositional causes (the person's traits, ability, effort) versus external/situational causes (the environment, luck, task difficulty).

9. What does Jones and Davis's Correspondent Inference Theory explain?

   How we infer that a behavior corresponds to a stable disposition. Inferences are stronger when behavior is freely chosen, produces non-common (unique) effects, is low in social desirability, and is high in personal relevance/hedonic relevance.

10. What three types of information does Kelley's Covariation Model use to make attributions?

    Consensus (do others act the same way?), Distinctiveness (does the person act this way only toward this stimulus?), and Consistency (does the person act this way across time/situations?).

11. Define the Fundamental Attribution Error.

    The tendency to overestimate dispositional/internal causes and underestimate situational/external causes when explaining others' behavior; also called correspondence bias.

12. What is the Actor-Observer Bias in attribution?

    The tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational factors while attributing others' behavior to their dispositions.

13. What is the Self-Serving Bias?

    The tendency to attribute our successes to internal/dispositional factors and our failures to external/situational factors, to protect self-esteem.

14. Distinguish prosocial behavior from altruism.

    Prosocial behavior is any act intended to benefit others; altruism is a subset—helping motivated purely by concern for the other, with no expectation of personal reward.

15. What is the bystander effect and who demonstrated it?

    The phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help a victim when other people are present. Demonstrated by Bibb Latané and John Darley, prompted by the Kitty Genovese case (1964).

16. List the five steps in Latané and Darley's decision model of bystander intervention.

    1) Notice the event, 2) Interpret it as an emergency, 3) Assume responsibility, 4) Know the appropriate form of help, 5) Decide to implement help. Failure at any step stops helping.

17. What is diffusion of responsibility?

    The reduction in felt personal responsibility to act when others are present, because responsibility is perceived as shared among all bystanders—a key cause of the bystander effect.

18. What is Batson's Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis?

    When we feel empathic concern for a person in need, we are motivated to help for purely altruistic reasons (to relieve the other's distress) rather than to reduce our own distress.

19. Define social facilitation and identify the pioneering study.

    Social facilitation is the tendency for the presence of others to enhance performance on tasks. Norman Triplett (1898) found cyclists rode faster when competing with others than alone—the first social psychology experiment.

20. How does Zajonc's drive theory explain social facilitation and impairment?

    The mere presence of others increases physiological arousal, which strengthens the dominant response—improving performance on simple/well-learned tasks but impairing it on complex/novel tasks.

21. What is social loafing and what is the Ringelmann effect?

    Social loafing is the tendency to exert less effort on a task when working in a group than when working alone. The Ringelmann effect is the related finding that individual effort in rope-pulling decreased as group size increased.

22. Name factors that reduce social loafing.

    Making individual contributions identifiable/evaluable, increasing task meaningfulness, smaller groups, group cohesion, high personal involvement, and expecting co-workers to perform poorly.

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