Social Cognition, Attitudes, Groups and Relationships
Attribution, attitudes, prejudice, group processes, conformity, obedience, interpersonal attraction, aggression and prosocial behaviour.
How to prepare for MRCPsych Paper A
Build mechanisms first, connect them to development and assessment, then practise distinguishing one best answer within SBA and extended-matching formats.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Social cognition includes attribution, attitudes, stereotypes and self–other processing; behaviour also changes through conformity, obedience, group norms and diffusion of responsibility.
Exam cue: Ask whether an explanation overweights personal disposition and underweights the situation.
Concept 2
Interpersonal attraction, attachment-like adult relationships, aggression, altruism and helping reflect interacting person, situation, culture and group processes.
Exam cue: In a group vignette, identify authority, unanimity, anonymity, role, norm and responsibility.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Explaining prejudice only as an individual attitude while ignoring social identity and structural context.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic group assumptions; explore individual meaning, structure, access and context.
Assuming observed conformity proves private acceptance rather than public compliance.
Guardrail: Do not select an option because it is merely associated or familiar; choose the one that answers the exact lead-in.
Memory anchors
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The tendency to overemphasise dispositional causes and underemphasise situational causes when explaining another person's behaviour.
What is cognitive dissonance?
An aversive inconsistency among beliefs, attitudes or behaviour that motivates a change restoring coherence.
What is deindividuation?
Reduced self-awareness and accountability in a group, which can make behaviour more governed by group norms.
What is diffusion of responsibility?
Each bystander feels less personally responsible to act when responsibility appears shared across a group.
How do informational and normative influence differ?
Informational influence follows others as evidence about reality; normative influence follows them to gain approval or avoid rejection.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
A supervisor attributes a trainee's late arrival to laziness while overlooking a cancelled train. Which bias is illustrated?
A person credits success to ability but blames failure on bad luck. Which bias is this?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
What is Pass Harbor?
Completely free exam prep for 247 UK exams.
- Practice questions
- Flashcards
- Study guides
- Mock exams
- No registration
- No paywall
- Start instantly
“No more expensive exam prep. Quality study tools should be accessible to everyone.”