AP Psychology Unit 4 Practice Test
Twelve original multiple-choice questions on Social Psychology and Personality — attribution, conformity, obedience, group behavior, and the major personality theories — with instant scoring and an explanation for every answer.
Ready to test yourself?
All 12 questions focus on Unit 4: Social & Personality — shuffled every run.
Pick an answer to see instantly whether you're right and why, then move on. Your score comes at the end.
Question text
What These Unit 4 Questions Cover
The social half tests the ideas the exam loves to dress in scenarios: the fundamental attribution error vs. self-serving bias (whose behavior is being explained?), Asch's conformity vs. Milgram's obedience, cognitive dissonance, the bystander effect, social loafing, outgroup homogeneity, and groupthink. The personality half covers Freud's pleasure-principle id, the Big Five, and Bandura's reciprocal determinism.
Review any of it in the Unit 4 study guide, then retake for a new shuffle.
The Trick to Unit 4: Explain-the-Scenario Questions
Unit 4 multiple choice almost never asks for a definition. It hands you a mini-story — a committee that silences dissent, a student who aces one test and blames the next — and asks which concept explains it. When two biases feel close, check who is being judged (others → attribution error; yourself → self-serving bias) and whether the pressure comes from peers (conformity) or authority (obedience). The same skill earns points on the EBQ, where social-psychology sources are common.
Unit 4 Practice Test — FAQ
What does this Unit 4 practice test cover?
Social psychology (attribution, conformity, obedience, group effects) and personality (psychodynamic, trait, and social-cognitive theories).
How do I tell the classic studies apart?
Memorize the setup, not just the name: Asch = peers judging lines, Milgram = authority and shocks, Bandura = children imitating an adult. The exam describes the setup and asks for the phenomenon.
All 12 Practice Questions with Answers
Prefer to review instead of quiz? Every question in this set is below — open one to reveal the answer and the reasoning. (The interactive version above shuffles both questions and answer positions, so reading this list first won't spoil a retake.)
1. Overestimating personality and underestimating the situation when explaining others' behavior is the:
- Self-serving bias
- Fundamental attribution error ✓
- Just-world hypothesis
- Actor-observer bias
Why: The fundamental attribution error attributes others' actions to their disposition while downplaying situational causes.
2. The discomfort felt when attitudes and behavior conflict is called:
- Cognitive dissonance ✓
- Social facilitation
- Deindividuation
- Groupthink
Why: Festinger's cognitive dissonance is the tension from holding inconsistent attitudes/behaviors, often resolved by changing the attitude.
3. Solomon Asch's line-judgment study primarily investigated:
- Obedience
- Conformity ✓
- Bystander intervention
- Cognitive dissonance
Why: Asch showed people often conform to a unanimous majority even when the group is clearly wrong.
4. In Freud's model, which part operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification?
- Ego
- Superego
- Id ✓
- Unconscious
Why: The id demands immediate satisfaction (pleasure principle). The ego mediates reality; the superego enforces morality.
5. Which of the following is NOT one of the Big Five personality traits?
- Conscientiousness
- Agreeableness
- Intelligence ✓
- Neuroticism
Why: The Big Five are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN). Intelligence is not one of them.
6. The reduced likelihood of helping when others are present is the:
- Bystander effect ✓
- Social loafing
- Mere exposure effect
- Foot-in-the-door effect
Why: The bystander effect arises largely from diffusion of responsibility — each onlooker assumes someone else will act.
7. Milgram's famous experiments showed that ordinary people would deliver apparent shocks mainly because of:
- Financial incentives
- Orders from a perceived authority figure ✓
- Personal aggression
- Group pressure from peers
Why: Milgram's obedience studies found that a legitimate-seeming authority's instructions led most participants to continue — obedience, distinct from Asch's peer conformity.
8. Crediting your A to talent but blaming your F on an unfair test illustrates:
- The fundamental attribution error
- Self-serving bias ✓
- Cognitive dissonance
- The mere-exposure effect
Why: Self-serving bias attributes our successes to internal causes and our failures to external ones — it protects self-esteem.
9. People pull less hard in a group tug-of-war than when pulling alone. This is:
- Social facilitation
- Groupthink
- Social loafing ✓
- Deindividuation
Why: Social loafing is reduced individual effort when personal contributions are pooled and unidentifiable.
10. Believing that members of a rival school are 'all the same' while seeing your own classmates as diverse is:
- Outgroup homogeneity bias ✓
- Ingroup bias
- Scapegoating
- Stereotype threat
Why: Outgroup homogeneity is perceiving outgroup members as more alike than they are; ingroup bias is favoring your own group.
11. Bandura's reciprocal determinism says personality emerges from the interaction of:
- Id, ego, and superego
- Traits, behavior, and environment ✓
- Genes and hormones only
- Stages of psychosexual development
Why: In social-cognitive theory, personal factors, behavior, and environment continuously influence one another.
12. A cohesive committee silences doubts and makes a disastrous decision to preserve harmony. This is:
- Group polarization
- Social facilitation
- Groupthink ✓
- Obedience
Why: Groupthink is when the desire for consensus overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives; polarization is groups shifting to more extreme positions.
Keep Going
One unit left: mental and physical health.
Unit 5 Practice TestOriginal questions written for the redesigned AP Psychology course; not reproduced from any official exam. AppsychologyLab is not affiliated with the College Board.
Written and fact-checked by the AppsychologyLab Editorial Team against College Board materials. Last reviewed 2026-08-26. How we verify.