AQA GCSE Psychology Paper 2

Asch's study

Asch's study

Conformity

Asch's aim

Asch (1955) set out to investigate how people respond to group pressure.

Asch's Method

123 American male students. Each of these naïve participants was tested with a group of between 6-8 confederates.
Shown picture attached, and asked which 2 lines matched. 18 trials and on 12 of them (the 'critical' trials) confederates all answered the same wrong answer

Asch's results

Participants conformed on 38.6% of trial
25% never conformed so 75% conformed at least once.

Asch's study Evaluation 1

May only be relevant to 1950s America. Particularly conformist time as people afraid to behave differently.
Another study by Perrin and Spencer conducted in the UK found just 1 conforming response in 396 trials.

Asch's Study Evaluation 2

Artificial tasks - Doesn't reflect everyday situations where people conform. The group formed was not like a group of friends.
Ungeneralisable.

Asch's Study Evaluation 3

Cultural Differences - It is more reflective of individualist cultures like the US and the UK.
Results can't be generalised to collectivist cultures where rates are higher (Bond and Smith)

Social factors affecting conformity

group size, task difficulty, anonymity

Group size

Asch increased the number of confederates and found it increased the number of people who conformed

Group size evaluation

group size has different effects depending on type of task. (In Asch's study the answer was obvious but when considering musical preferences, it is not.)

Anonymity

Asch altered his method so that participants answered on a piece of paper anonymously. Results showed less conformity.

Anonymity evaluation

Asch's study involved a group of strangers.
Effect of anonymity changes if group are friends (Huang and LI)

Task difficulty

Harder tasks make the answer less certain and so people feel less confident and may look to others for the answer.

Task difficulty evaluation

Does not apply as much to people with greater expertise

Dispositional factors affecting conformity

Personality and expertise

locus of control

internals believe they are in control whereas externals believe it is a matter of luck and other outside forces.

Personality

Burger and Cooper investigated effect of locus of control.
Rating funniness of cartoons and a confederate said his ratings out loud. externals likely to conform.

Personality evaluation

locus of control does not seem to have an effect on conformity in familiar situations.

Expertise

expertise increases confidence and those with it are less likely to conform.

Expertise evaluation

focusing on one single factor to explain conformity is simplistic. Being an expert is not sufficient, you may still conform due to other factors.

Milgram's study

Obedience

Milgram's aim

Investigate whether a normal person would give somebody an electric shock if told to do so by an authority figure

Milgram's Method

40 male volunteers (told it was for a study on memory)
confederate 'learner' asked questions and when answered incorrectly, participant 'teacher' told to give them a shock with an increasing voltage.

Milgram's Results

all participants went up to 300V (12.5% stopped at 300) and 65% went up to 450V. Participants displayed sign of stress such as: sweating, trembling, stutter, biting lips etc.

Milgram's Conclusion

Obedience related to social factors not disposition, e.g. location, novel situation.

Milgram's evaluation 1

Lacked realism - Perry found (by listening to recordings of the study) that participants voiced suspicions on whether the shocks were real or not.
(She concluded that the participants realised that shocks were faked but continued as they didn't want to spoil the study)

Milgram's Evaluation 2

Supported by other research - In one lab study, 100% of females delivered a fatal shock to a puppy (Sheridan and King)

Milgram's Evaluation 3

Ethical issues - Participants experienced distress

Milgrims agency theory (social factors)

Agency, Authority, Culture, Proximity

Agency

Agentic state: Follow orders with no responsibility
Autonomous state: Own free choice.

Authority

Agentic shift: moving from making own choices to following orders, occurs when someone is in authority.

Culture - social hierarchy

Some people have more authority than others.
Depends on society and socialisation.

Proximity

Participants less obedient in Milgram's study when in same room as learner, increasing 'moral strain'

Agency theory evaluation 1

Blass and Schmitt showed students a clip of Milgram's study, they blamed the experimenter rather than the participants.

Agency theory evaluation 2

Cannot explain why there is not a 100% obedience in Milgram's study

Agency theory evaluation 3

Agency theory offers an excuse for destructive, potentially dangerous, behaviour. (As seen in the trial for a Nazi commander who said he was just following orders)

Adorno's theory of the authoritarian personality (Dispositional factors)

Authortitarian personality, Cognitive style, originates in childhood, scapegoating.

Authoritarian Personality

Some people have a strong respect for authority and look down on people of lower status

Cognitive style

Rigid stereotypes and don't like change

Originates in childhood

Strict parents only show love if their behaviour is correct. These values are internalised.

Adorno's theory evaluation 1

Lack of support - Authoritarian personality measured on F-scale which has response bias
(F-scale was a questionnaire and the results formed the basis of the theory)

Adorno's theory evaluation 2

Results are correlational - Can't say authoritarian personality causes greater personality

Adorno's theory evaluation 3

Social and dispositional - German's were obedient but did not all have the same upbringing. Social factors also involved.

Piliavin's

Subway study

Piliavin's Aim

To investigate if characteristics of a victim affect help given in an emergency

Piliavin's Method

Male confederate collapsed on subway, 103 trials. The victim was either disabled (had a cane) or appeared drunk.

Piliavin's Results

Disabled victim given help on 95% of trials compared to 50% when drunk.
Help was as likely in both crowded carriages and empty carriages.

Piliavin's Conclusion

The characteristics of a victim affect whether they receive help or not. The number of onlookers doesn't affect whether help is given or not in natural settings.

Piliavin's Evaluation 1

High realism - Participants didn't know their behaviour was being studied, so acted more naturally. Increases validity

Piliavin's Evaluation 2

Urban sample - Participants were from the city so they may be used to emergencies. Isn't generalisable.

Piliavin's evaluation 3

Qualitative data - Observers noted remarks from passengers, giving deeper insights into why.

Social factors affecting prosocial behaviour

presence of others, cost of helping

dispositional factors affecting prosocial behaviour

Similarity to victim, expertise

Presence of others

The more people present the less likely someone will help.
Darley and Latane found that 85% on their own helped someone with a seizure but only 31% helped in a group of four.

Cost of helping

Includes danger to self or embarrassment. Also costs of not helping e.g. guild or blame

Similarity to victim

Help is more likely if vctim is similar to self, e.g Manchester fans helping people wearing Man U shirt (Levine et al.)

Expertise - affecting prosocial behaviour

People with specialist skills more likely to help in emergencies, e.g. registered nurses helping a workman (Cramer et al.)

Presence of others evaluation

Depends on situation - In serious emergencies response correlated to severity of situation (Faul et al. )

Cost of helping evaluation

Interpretation of situation - If it is a married couple only 19% intervened versus 85% intervened if attacker appeared to be a stranger

Similarity to victim evaluation

High costs - High costs or ambiguous situation means help isn't forthcoming

Expertise (affecting prosocial behaviour) Evaluation

Affects only quality of help. Red cross trained were no more likely to give help than untrained people, but gave higher quality help (Shotland et al)

Reicher

studied a riot. Damage was limited to the main target. Other damage was unintentional. As soon as the police withdrew, the violence stopped.
Group's behaviour was rule-driven.

Social factors affecting crowd and collective behaviour

Deindividuation, Social loafing, Culture

Dispositional factors affecting crowd and collective behaviour

Personality, Morality

Deindividuation

Where group norms determine crowd behaviour

Social loafing

When working in a group people put in less effort as you can't identify individual effort
Latane et al. found participants individually shouted less when in a group of 6 than when tested alone

Culture

Earley found Chinese people (a collectivist culture) put in the same amount of effort even if the amount can't be identified. Not true of Americans (individualists)

Personality (affecting crowd and collective behaviour)

High locus of control enables individuals to be less influenced by crowd behaviour

Morality

A strong sense of right and wrong helps resist pressure from group norms.

Deindividuation Evaluation

Crowding - Being packed tightly together is unpleasant, may explain antisocial behaviour (Freedman)

Social loafing evaluation

Depends on task - On creative tasks, e.g. brainstorming, people individually produce more when in groups.

Culture evaluation

Overgeneralised - People belong to more than one culture so hard to make predictions.

Personality (affecting crowd and collective behaviour) Evaluation

Whistleblowing (One person willing to speak out despite the silence of the crowd to an unethical study) - Personality made no difference (Bocchiaro et al.)

Morality Evaluation

Real examples - Sophie Scholl sacrificed her life rather than following group behaviour

Language and thought: Piaget's theory

We learn through developing schemas (mental structures.) (Language depends on thought)

Language depends on thought

Thought and understanding first. Language develops after.

Young children

Can have language without understanding but will not be able to use it effectively

The development of language

Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years): Children start to speak
Pre-operational stage (2-7 years): Talk about things not present

Logical thinking

Concrete operational stage (7-11): Children develop own ideas

Language & Thought (L&C): Piaget's theory evaluation

Supporting evidence - The order of children's phrases shows understanding ("Mommy sock") (Cromer 1974)

L&C: Piaget's theory evaluation 2

Language comes first - Sapir-Whorf hypothesis challenges Piaget suggesting that sometimes language comes first.

L&C: Piaget's theory evaluation 3

Schemas - These are intangible ideas that cannot be scientifically measured and thus decreases their validity

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Not possible to think about something you have no words for. Came up with a strong version and a weak version.

Thinking depends on languge

Language comes first, thought afterwards.

Strong version: Language determines thought

If there are no words for an object or idea, then you can't think about it.

Weak version: Language influences thought

Words help to 'carve up' the world. You can still imagine things with no words for them

Better version? (L&C: Sapir-Whorf)

Weaker version is preferred. We have limited memory for things we have no words for

Sapir-Whorf evaluation 1

Differences are exaggerated - Inuit culture may only have two words for snow not twenty-seven, English has four (Pellum)

Sapir-Whorf evaluation 2

Thoughts come before language - If there is lots of snow then this changes the way we perceive the environment

Sapir-Whorf evaluation 3

Restricted and elaborated code - Working-class children use restricted language which affects their ability to think, explaining lower intelligence (Bernstein)

Native Americans: The Hopi (recall of events)

Hopi don't distinguish between past, present and future. This affects the way they think about time

Language affects recall of events

Memory for pictures affected by labels given (Carmichael et al.) (Look at revision guide for more details)

Hopi evaluation

Limited sample - Whorf's conclusions were based almost entirely on one individual from the Hopi. The results may not be true for the rest of the Hopi and thus the conclusions cannot be applied to the Hopi

Carmichael's study evaluation

Ambiguous material - Carmichael's study not reflective of everyday life because less ambiguity.

Native Americans: The Zuni (recognition of colours)

Zuni people have only one word for shades of orange and yellow, and in a research study had difficulty distinguishing between them (Brown and Lenneberg)

Language affects recall of colour

Bernimo people had difficulty recalling colours as they only have five words for colour (Roberson et al.)

Zuni evaluation

Difficulties with cross-cultural understanding - Participants from other cultures may misunderstand the task or fail to communicate their answers correctly.

Language affecting recall of colour evaluation

Opposite results - Dani people had no problem matching colour despite only having two words for colour (Rosch and Oliver)

Von Frish's

bee study - changed the way scientists thought about animal communication.

Von Frisch's Aim

To describe dances of honey bees to understand their communication