Essential Psychology Concepts: Intelligence, Social Influence, and Health

Posted on Oct 31, 2025 in Psychology and Sociology

Module 20: Intelligence and IQ Measurement

This module covers fundamental concepts related to intelligence quotient (IQ) and different theories of cognitive ability.

Key Concepts in Intelligence

Intelligence Quotient (IQ): A single score that presumably indicates a person’s general ability to reason, remember, and solve complex problems.
Ratio IQ (Definition): A way of scoring IQ in children by dividing mental age by chronological age. It is the ratio of (a) the age you’d think a child would be based on their test score and (b) the child’s actual age. This ratio was multiplied by 100 to avoid decimals.
Ratio IQ (Example): A 10-year-old child who scored as well on an IQ test as a typical 13.5-year-old would get a ratio IQ score of 135. Note: This method only works for children and does not work equally well for kids of all ages.
Deviation IQ (Definition): A way of scoring IQ based on how far above or below a relevant mean a person scores on an IQ test. This method works for both children and adults.
Deviation IQ (Example): A person who scored exactly two standard deviations above the population mean on an IQ test would get a score of 130 because the mean IQ score is 100, with a standard deviation (typical variation) of 15.
g (General Intelligence): The presumed general nature of intelligence, Spearman’s idea that IQ represents a broad ability that spans all kinds of reasoning and problem-solving skills.
Absolute Pitch (aka Perfect Pitch): The rare ability to hear a single musical note out of context and name the note. This was long thought to be an inherited form of brilliance, but it turns out that anyone can be taught to do it.
Prodigy: A person with a normal IQ who is an extreme expert or genius in a specific area of complex human performance (e.g., music, art, math, sports).
Savant: A person with a disorder (such as autism spectrum) that impairs many intellectual activities but who performs at a genius level in a specific area (e.g., art, math, sports).
Multiple Intelligences: H. Gardner’s idea that there are many forms of intelligence. His original eight forms were: music, body, picture, people, self, logic, word, and nature. Gardner recently added existential (spiritual/philosophical) intelligence to the list.
Deliberate Practice: K. Anders Ericsson’s route to becoming a genius (true expert) in a specific area. It involves frequent, intense efforts to improve, often with guidance from an expert mentor.
Learning Styles: The popular but incorrect idea that people differ dramatically in exactly how they learn best (e.g., that visual learners learn best by seeing).
Fluid Intelligence: A highly flexible ability to think quickly and creatively about novel problems; it requires working memory and quick learning.
Crystallized Intelligence: A form of intelligence that people develop through extensive practice (it relies on the deep knowledge that comes from deliberate practice).

Module 26: Social Psychology and Influence

This section defines core concepts in social psychology, focusing on biases, expectancy effects, and classic studies on conformity and obedience.

Biases and Expectancy Effects

Experimenter Bias: The unconscious tendency to do things when testing an idea that create false support for the idea (e.g., treating maze bright rats better than maze dull rats when testing them in a maze).
Rosenthal & Fode (1963) Study: This classic study illustrated experimenter bias among researchers who expected some rats to learn more quickly than others.
Teacher Expectancy Effects: A bias that occurs when teachers expect some students (or rats) to be smarter than others; those believed to be smarter are unknowingly treated better, leading to superior learning.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Unknowingly making a prediction come true by testing it in ways that make it happen. This is a close cousin of both experimenter bias and teacher expectancy effects.

Core Social Psychology Concepts

Social Psychology: The scientific study of how our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other people (definition attributed to Gordon Allport).
Power of the Situation: The robust finding that much of what we think, feel, and do is shaped by strong but invisible social forces, such as the mere presence of others, the way a person is dressed, or whether your teacher believes you are bright.
Triplett’s Social Facilitation Studies: These early social psychological studies showed that the mere presence of others (e.g., competitors) increases performance, especially for simple or well-learned tasks (like cycling).
Conformity: The powerful tendency to do, think, and feel what you know others are doing, thinking, or feeling, even when no one asks you to do so.
Cognitive Dissonance: The uncomfortable state we experience when we realize that our behavior is at odds with our attitudes. To reduce this discomfort, we often change our attitudes to be more consistent with the behavior. This mechanism often justifies evil, unfair, or goofy acts.

Classic Social Influence Experiments

Sherif’s Autokinetic Studies: A set of classic studies that showed that when people judged the movement of a small (stationary) dot of light in a dark room, they were powerfully influenced by (conformed to) the judgments of other people who saw the light.
Asch’s Conformity Studies: When people were asked to make some very easy judgments about a series of lines, most people (75% of participants, at least some of the time) offered the same answers as a group of other participants, even when the group answers were obviously incorrect.
Milgram’s Obedience Studies: These studies showed that when a professionally-dressed, authoritative researcher told people to deliver electric shocks to a learner who kept making mistakes, 65% of people gave what they thought were very dangerous shocks to the learner. In fact, everyone (100% of teachers) gave much more shock (300 volts) than any reasonable person would expect.

Module 27: Stereotypes and Social Perception

This module focuses on how we interpret and categorize others, covering attribution biases and the nature of stereotypes.

Social Perception and Attribution

Social Perception: Making sense of other people. We sometimes do so by using automatic heuristics, stereotypes, or scripts. But sometimes we make careful (controlled, logical) attributions.
Attribution: A causal judgment. In making attributions about people, we should consider both situational (the floor was slippery) and dispositional (he is clumsy) reasons. However, this process is often subject to the correspondence bias.
Correspondence Bias: The tendency to offer dispositional explanations for the behavior of others, even when situational explanations (e.g., she was paid $100,000 to say the product is great) are more logical.
Discounting: Making a less dispositional attribution (causal judgment) than you otherwise would because a situational force contributed to the behavior you’re trying to explain.
Augmenting: Making a more dispositional attribution than you otherwise would because a situational force interfered with the behavior you’re trying to explain.

Stereotypes and Biases

Script: A prototypical (average, simplified) event sequence. Scripts tell us what events to expect and in what order. Examples include scripts for baseball games, weddings, and dining out.
Stereotype: According to Gordon Allport, this is a false or overgeneralized and typically negative belief about the members of a group.
Prejudice: Positive or negative feelings we have about social groups (researchers usually study negative ones).
Discrimination: Treating the members of a group unfairly. Such unfair action is still discrimination (legally and psychologically) even if the unfairness was unintended.
Physical Attractiveness Stereotype: The widely held belief that physically attractive people possess many positive traits (e.g., sociability, honesty, intelligence) not possessed by unattractive people.
Facial Babyishness Biases: The tendency to assume that people with baby faces possess the properties of babies (being naive and innocent but incompetent).
Implicit Personality Theory: Our unstated (automatic, unconscious) assumptions about exactly which physical and psychological traits tend to go together.
Three Functions of Stereotypes: Stereotypes exist, in part, because they:
1. Simplify a complex world.
2. Justify poor treatment of certain groups.
3. Identify (tell us who we are).

Module 34: Health Psychology and Stress Response

This module examines the psychological factors influencing physical health, focusing on stress, adaptation, and the benefits of social support.

Stress and Adaptation

Stressors: Harmful physical or psychological events, to which our minds and bodies respond with defenses (e.g., an immune system attack on a virus).
Stress: The felt experience of battling a threat to one’s physical or mental health.
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): H. Selye’s model of our response to stress. It begins with:
1. Alarm (over the threat).
2. Resistance (both behavioral and immunological).
3. Exhaustion (if the threat continues so long that we cannot overcome it).
Health Psychology: The study of how psychological events, especially social ones, influence all aspects of physical well-being.

Key Health Psychology Studies

Cohen et al. (1991) Common Cold Study: A classic study that showed that the stress levels people were experiencing prior to being exposed to live cold viruses influenced the likelihood that they became infected with a cold (while wholly quarantined).
Cortisol-Stressor Study: Showed that the number of stressful events people experienced on a given day influenced their cortisol (stress hormone) levels on that day.
King & Reis (2012) Marriage Study: This research followed coronary bypass surgery patients for 15 years. Even after controlling for many other health risks, they found that those who were married, as opposed to unmarried, were more likely to survive.
House et al. (1988) Social Support Summary: A summary of five large longitudinal studies that tracked middle-aged people over an average of about 10 years. People who had below-average levels of social support were at substantially increased risk of death over the course of the studies.
The Brown et al. (2003) Helping Study: This team followed more than 800 seniors for five years to see who survived. Even after controlling for more than 20 health risks, the team found that people who reported helping other people a lot at the beginning of the study were more likely to be alive five years later. Helping others seems to be good for us.

Module 35: Climate Change Psychology

This module explores the psychological barriers and solutions related to public perception and action regarding climate change.

Perception and Cognitive Barriers

Pelham (2009) Public Opinion Study: This study of 127 nations showed that when more people in a nation believe that global warming is caused by human activity, the country was more energy efficient, suggesting that public education about climate change matters.
Experiential Thinking: Intuitive, heuristic thinking, trusting what you can see or feel. This is a barrier to saving the planet because people have trouble appreciating massive, global problems they can’t see or touch.
Rational Thinking: Logical thinking, based on careful observations. It is problematic that we don’t engage in more of this, as understanding and combatting climate change requires it.
Experiential Thinking (A Solution): If we show people vivid images of what climate change has done (e.g., melted glaciers, catastrophic flooding), this may prove to be an effective way to spur positive activism.
Optimistic Bias: Another barrier to saving the earth from climate change is the well-documented optimistic bias (the belief that “it won’t happen to me”).
Availability Heuristic: Judging the frequency of something, like warm days, based on how easily you can remember it. This means that in countries with fewer hot days, fewer people believe in the reality of global warming. Likewise, in the winter there is more skepticism about global warming than in the summer.
George Mason 2011 Weather Reporter Study: Only 19% of TV weather reporters believed in climate change. This seems to be because they can’t predict the weather for certain in Baltimore next week, which is very different than predicting changing yearly global averages.

Behavioral Solutions

The Status Quo Bias: The tendency to do what you’ve long been doing (or to do nothing if asked to change). This can be harnessed for good by making the default the environmentally friendly option. Example: Setting copy machines to the default of 2-sided copies.
Figure 36.7 & Public Skepticism: Between 2007 and 2016, U.S. public skepticism about climate change decreased (Google searches for things like “climate change hoax” decreased). A 2024 Gallup public opinion survey shows the same trend. Climate change skepticism is getting lower.