AQA Psychology A-level - ALL OF PAPER 1

Flashcards for the whole of AQA Psychology Paper 1. - social influence - memory - attachment - psychopathology

Who theorised the 3 types of conformity and in what year?

Kellman-1958

What are Kellman’s 3 types of conformity

• Internalisation

• Identification

• Compliance

Explain internalisation as a definition of conformity

an individual genuinely accepts the group norms resulting in a private as well as public change of behaviour - attitudes have been internalised

Explain identification as a definition of conformity

conforming to group ideals because we value something about them, public change of behaviour but not private agreement with everything that the group stands for.

Explain compliance as a definition of conformity

simply going along with others in public but in private not changing opinions or actions - only a superficial change.

Who came up with NSI and ISI and in what year?

Deutsch and Gerard - 1955

Define Normative social influence (NSI)

people conform to social norms (standards of behaviour) to avoid being seen as stranger or being othered by the group - most likely to occur in situations with strangers

Define informational social influence (ISI)

When someone is uncertain about a decision they are likely to turn to an individual in the group who they feel has more knowledge than them in the subject. This is driven by the individual wanting to be right. Most likely to happen in situations that are new and unknown to the individual.

Give one strength and two weaknesses of Deustch and Gerard’s explanations for conformity

• Research support for ISI: Lucas asked students to complete either easy or difficult mathematics questions, there was greater conformity to confederate’s wrong answers when the question was difficult

• individual differences in NSI - doesn’t effect everyone’s behaviour the same way. Some people have a greater desire to be liked than others (nAffiliators) - therefore are more likely to conform

• ISI and NSI work together - not either one or the other

What year did Asch conduct his study into conformity

1951

Give the Aim and Method of Asch’s study

A - To see how commonly a participant conforms to an obviously incorrect answer given by a stranger in a social situation

M -Tested 123 American males, told them it was a study into perception of line length.

Placed into groups of 6-8 confederates and the naive participant

Asked to match one of three lines to an example line, the NP always went last or second to last.

The confederates gave an incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials.

Give the findings and conclusions of Asch’s study

F- the naive participant gave an incorrect answer 38% of the time. 75% of participants conformed at least once

C - Participants in a group will conform to avoid rejection of feeling ‘othered’ (normative social influence)

List Asch’s 3 variations of his experiment

• Group size

• Unanimity

• Task difficulty

What was the effect of varied group size on Asch’s experiment?

in a group of three confederates, conformity rose. But after three, the rate of conformity did not significantly change.

How did Asch vary unanimity in his experiment?

Asch added another confederate who sometimes gave the correct answer when the other gave the incorrrect one.

What was the effect of the anonymity variation on Asch’s experiment?

conformity reduced 25% - allowed the participant to behave more independently.

How did Asch vary task difficulty in his experiment ?

Asch made the example line and matching lines closer in length, making it harder to tell the difference.

What effect did varying task difficulty have on Asch’s experiment?

Conformity increased. Suggests that informational social influence plays a greater part in influencing conformity when the task is difficult.

Give 3 weaknesses of Asch’s study of conformity

• Was repeated 40 years later in England by Perrin, virtually no conformity was observed

• Artificial stimuli - task and situation was not true to real life, low ecological validity

• Limited sample, beta biased asf ☹ only male american students were part of the experiment, this means that the findings are not applicable to others who don’t fit into this category.

What year was Zimbardo’s prison experiment ?

1971

Outline Zimbardo’s method for Stanford Prison Experiment

• mock prison set up in the basement of the Stanford University psychology basement

• Student volunteers selcted for ‘emotional stability’

• Divided randomly into prisoners and guards

• Prisoners arrested at their homes, blindfolded, strip searched, deloused and assigned a number - had 16 strict rules to adhere to. Names were never used, only numbers

• Guards were given uniform, clubs and sunglasses and were told they had complete power over prisoners

Outline Zimbardo’s findings

• guards’ behaviour became a threat to prisoners physical and psychological health and study was stopped after 6 days instead of the intended 14

• after 2 days prisoners violently rebelled - guards responded with more violent treatment

• Social role divided consistently emphasised by guards punishing every small instance of behaviour severely

• Guards began to identify more and more closely with their role

• Prisoners had to be released on 1st and 4th days

Outline Zimbardo’s conclusions from the Stanford Prison Experiment

Simulation reveals power of situation to influence people’s behaviour. Guards, prisoners and researchers conformed to their social roles v easily even though they knew they were in a psychological study - they behaved as if they were in a real life prison.

Give a strength and two weaknesses of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

• Control - Zimbardo and his researchers had some extent of control over the study - they selected participants for emotional stability and created the environment from ground up

• Role of disposition - only about 1/3 of the guards were actually violent, this could mean that their behaviour was down to individual disposition rather than role conformity. Most were able to excerise choices of right and wrong despite situational pressures of role conformity

• Ethical issues - particpants were subjected to serious psychological harm. One participant asked to leave and was treated as a prisoner asking to leave a prisoner rather than a participant exercising their right to withdraw from a psychological study

Outline Milgram’s (1963) study into obedience

• 40 male participants - self selecting through newspaper adverts

• determined through a rigged draw that they would be a ‘teacher’ and an actor would be the ‘learner’

• told they could leave the study at any time

• learner strapped into chair & wired w electrodes

• every time the learner made a mistake on a word pairing task - teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe electric shock. Shock levels started at 15V and rose through 30 levels to 450V

• once teacher got to 315V learner became unresponsive - absence of response was considered a wrong answer

• 4 ‘prods’ were given should the learner become hesitant

  • “please continue”

  • “the experiment requires that you continue”

  • “it is absolutely essential that you continue”

  • “you have no other choice, you must go on”

Outline Milgram’s findings

• no participant stopped below 300V - 12.5% stopped here

• 65% continued to 450V

• symptoms of serious psychological distress were observed in participants - 3 had seizures

• all participants were debriefed 84% reported they felt glad to have participated

Give two weaknesses and one strength of Milgram’s study

• low internal validity - it has been argued that Milgram’s participants didn’t actually think it was real and therefore gave the electric shocks because they knew they were not real. However Sheridan and King conducted a similar study w puppies - 100% of females and 54% of males gave what they thought were fatal shocks ☹

• high external validity - central feature of study was relationship between the authority figure and the participant - accurately reflects wider authority relationships irl. Hoffling showed that nurses’ obedience to unjustifiable demands by doctors was v high (21 out of 22)

• Social identity theory - Reicher says that obedience is down to group identification and that Milgram’s participants identified with the science of the study. first 3 prods appealed for help w the science and every time the un-science related 4th prod was used the participant quit

list the variations Milgram made to his study

location - conducted in a run down office

proximity - teacher and learner in same room

proximity - teacher forces learner’s hand onto plate

proximity - orders given over phone

uniform - no lab coat & experimenter played by member of the public

what was the baseline percentage of full obedience in Milgram’s study (before variation)

65%

list the percentages of fully obedient participants in each of milgram’s variations

location - conducted in a run down office - 47.5%

proximity - teacher and learner in same room - 40%

proximity - teacher forces learner’s hand onto plate - 30%

proximity - orders given over phone - 20.5%

uniform - no lab coat & experimenter played by member of the public - 20%

give two weaknesses and one strength of Milgram’s variations

• internal validity - variations makes it even more likely that Milgram’s participants worked out that the study was faked

• cross-cultural replications - variations have been replicated in other cultures and tend to support original findings. Suggests that Milgram’s conclusions about obedience are not limited to American males

• Obedience alibi - support of a situational explanation of obedience could be viewed as offering an excuse or ‘alibi’ for evil behaviour. Offensive for survivors of tragedies such as the holocaust by labelling people who harmed them as victims of situational factors beyond their control.

what are the two social-psychological explanations for obedience

agentic state

legitimacy of authority

Define Milgram’s ‘agentic state’

state in which someone believes themselves to be an ‘agent’ acting on behalf of an authority figure - they believe their actions to be those of the authority figure - not their responsibility. Although do experience moral strain.

Define agentic shift

shift from autonomy to agency - occurs when person perceives another as a figure of authority. People defer o those in power and shift from autonomy to agency

define autonomous state

an individual is free to behave according to their own principles - their actions are their own and they are responsible for them

Define binding factors

aspects of situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise moral strain. E.g. shifting responsibility to the victim or denying the harm they’re causing

Give two weaknesses of Milgram’s agentic shift theory

• obedience alibi revisited

• limited explanation - can’t explain why some people don’t obey - can only account for some situations of obedience

Give two strengths of legitimacy of authority as an explanation for obedience

• Real life application in explaining how obedience can lead to real life war crimes. Ex - My Lai massacre

• Accounts for cultural differences in obedience

define authoritarian personality

personality type that Adorno argued is particularly likely to obey those in authority. Also dismissive to those they consider socially inferior and submissive to those of higher status.

Outline procedure and findings of Adorno’s research into the authoritarian personality

• more than 2000 white middle class Americans

• filled in the ‘F-Scale’ - test for fascist and authoritarian personality traits and beliefs

• those who tested high on the F-Scale had more authoritarian characteristics

Give examples of authoritarian personality traits

identifying w strength and condemning weakness

conscious of status w exaggerated respect for those of higher status

scapegoating and stereotyping of those they consider to be socially inferior

conventional attitudes toward race and sex

black and white thinking

usually developed out of strict parenting, high standards and conditional love during childhood

Give three weaknesses of the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience

• political bias - testing mainly for far right tendencies, ignore far left views - politically biased interpretation

• Methodological problems - every question is worded in same direction, possible to get high score just by acquiescence. Also when participants were interviewed about childhood experiences, researchers knew their f-scale scores

• correlation not causation

what two factors might increase resistance to social influence

Social support

Locus of control

How might social support decrease conformity and obedience?

having a dissenter allows people to think more independently and act accordingly. The dissenter acts as a ‘model’ of alternate behaviour.

Give a strength of social support as a factor affecting resistance to social influence.

research support - Asch and Milgram’s variations

Define locus of control

The sense we have about what directs us and events in our lives. Those with internal loci of control believe they are responsible for their actions, achievements and failures whereas externals tend to believe it’s all down to fate or other external influences and they have little to no control over their life events.

How might locus of control effect resistance to social influence?

people with an internal locus of controll are more likely to resist social influence and less likely to obey or conform. Externals are more likely to be influenced and conform/ obey.

Give a weakness of locus of control as an explanation of resistance to social influence

Twenge did a meta analysis of locus of control studies over 40 years - over time people have been become more external but also more resistant to social influence this isn’t what it should correlate as.

what 3 things must a minority be in order to have influence

• consistent - both synchronic (same thing) and diachronic (long time)

• committed - showing serious commitment to the cause. Augmentation principle: ‘wow they must really believe in what they’re saying, maybe I should too’

• flexibility - consistency can come off as stubborn and be off-putting. Flexibility strikes a better balance and portrays the minority as reasonable

define minority influence

A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs and behaviours.

define the snowball effect

over time increasing numbers of people switch their viewpoint to the minority viewpoint. The faster this happens, the quicker the process of change.

Give a brief outline of Moscovici’s study

a group of 6 people was asked to view 36 blue slides of different shades and asked to state whether the slides were blue or green. In each group there were 2 confederates who stated that the slides were green on 2/3 of the trials. agreement with the minority occurred 8.2% of the time - 32% of the participants gave the same wrong answer as the minority at least once. when a consistent minority was tested agreement fell to 1.25% and with no minority it was 0.25%

Give a weakness and a strength of minority influence

• consistency proven to be important by Moscovici’s study

• Moscovici’s study used artificial stimuli, therefore the study and the theory it supports lack ecological validity

list the 6 steps of minority influence

• drawing attention

• consistency

• deeper processing

• the augmentation principle

• snowball effect

• social cryptomnesia

Give two reasons minority influence may not be effective.

• indirectly effective - delayed and take a really long time to come into play. The majority is only influenced by factors relating to the issue not the the issue itself.

• Barriers to social change - The majority can sometimes be averse form identifying with the minority and their viewpoint, viewing them as radicals.

define encoding

the conversion of information into a form that can be stored by the brain

define capacity

the number of 'chunks' of information a specific memory store can hold at one time.

define duration-

the length of time that a specific memory store can hold information without rehearsal

Define rehearsal and state the two types-

rehearsal is the repetition of information to ensure it stays present in a memory store.Elaborative and maintenance.

What did Baddely investigate and in what year-

The encoding of STM and LTM - 1966

What was Baddely's method-

4 groups of participants: semantically similar, semantically dissimilar, acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar all asked to learn a list of words, they were then asked to recall them after a short time, and then after a long time.

What were Baddely's results and conclusions?-

the acoustically similar group did worse at recall after a short time and the semantically similar group did worse at recalling the list after a long period of time. STM encodes acoustically and LTM encodes semantically.

What did Joseph Jacobs investigate and in what year

-The capacity of STM (digit span test) - 1887

What was Jacob's method-

Participants were given a random list of 20 figures (either letters or numbers). Had to read first figure, look away and say it out loud and then look at the 2nd and say out loud (1st then 2nd etc). Until they couldn't remember and made a mistake

Jacobs' results-

average for letters is 7.3 average for numbers is 9.3

Who theorised the multi store model of memory?-

Alan Baddely

briefly outline the multistore model of memory-

three stores

• sensory register - iconic and echoic storage, capacity massive duration tiny

• paying attention to sensory info = transfer into STM

• STM - capacity = 7±2 duration about 30 seconds without maintenance rehearsal. Encoded acoustically

• maintenance rehearsal keeps info in our STM enough rehearsal transfers to LTM

• LTM - capacity is unlimited, coding is semantic, duration is massive

• when we want to recall info we have to transfer it back to STM - retrieval

Proactive Interference-

When old information makes it difficult to remember new information

Mcgeoch and Mcdonalds aim-

To discover if the similarity of memories effects interference

Mcgeoch and Mcdonalds method-

Had participants learn a list of 10 words and asked to learn it until they could recall it 100% accurately and then split participants into 6 groups with a new 10-word list, each group had a different condition

Mcgeoch and Mcdonalds results-

When participants were asked to recall the original list again, the group they were in for the second list affected their performance

Mcgeoch and Mcdonalds conclusions-

Interference is at its worst when memories are similar

Give one weakness of interference theory-

Artificial stimuli used in supporting research. This means the research has low ecological validity and is therefore not necessarily applicable to real life

Give two strengths of interference theory.-

• Research Support: Baddely et.al conducted the rugby study. Players were asked to recall all the teams they had played since the beginning of the season. Players that had taken part in less matches could remember a team they had played for example, 3 weeks ago better than players who had played lots of games since. This is because they had less new information causing proactive interference.

• Supporting research- Mcgeoch and Mcdonald

Central Executive-

coordinates activity of WMM, processes information and send it to the correct slave system to be processed.

Episodic buffer-

a temporary store for info of all kinds

Phonological Loop-

Processes auditory information, consists of two parts

Phonological Store-

The ‘echo’, processes sound

Articulatory Control System-

allows for maintenance rehearsal to take place

Visuo-Spatial sketchpad-

processes visual information and spatial information when required, can be divided into two parts

Visual Cache-

Stores visual data

Inner Scribe-

Stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Give 2 strengths and a weakness of the working memory model-

+: Clinical Evidence - In a case study in which an individual suffered from brain damage, they were not able to process auditory information, but could still process visual information. This proved the separation of the two in the brain.

+: Dual task performance - A study conducted by Baddely himself showed that participants found it harder to perform two visual tasks at the same time than to perform a visual and auditory task at the same time.

-: Lack of clarity over the Central Executive - Some psychologists argue that because Baddely hasn’t given much clarity of how the central executive actually works: it’s difficult to apply it to research and our everyday processing of information.

define interference

forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one or both to be distorted or forgotten

proposed mainly as an explanation for forgetting in LTM

once info is in LTM it’s more or less permanent - therefore any experienced 'forgetting’ is more likely to be an inability to gain access to the memories, not the loss of them

define proactive interference-

forgetting occurs when older memories, already stored, disrupt the recall of new memories - degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar

retroactive interference-

forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored - degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar

outline procedure for McGeoch and McDonald’s study (1931)-

studied retroactive interference by changing similarity between two sets of materials

• participants learnt list of words until they could recall with 100% accuracy

• then they learned a new list - six different groups each learned a different second list

  • group 1 - synonyms of originals

  • group 2 - antonyms of originals

  • group 3 - words unrelated to originals

  • group 4 - consonant syllables (nonsense)

  • group 5 - 3 digit numbers

  • group 6 - no new list; rest condition

• then recalled original list

Outline findings for McGeoch and McDonald’s study (1931)-

when participants then recalled original words, their performance depended on the nature of the second list

most similar material (synonyms) produced the worst recall - interference is therefore strongest when memories are similar

Give two strengths and a weakness of retrieval failure theory-

supporting research uses artificial stimuli - low ecological validity

studies into memory can be over in a sort period of time - whole process of learning and recalling can be over in an hour or so - not representative of real life memory

supported by real life research - Baddely and Hitch found rugby player’s recall of teams they’d played was not so much impacted by time since the match, but by how many teams they had played since.

• however, rugby players are susceptible to head injuries and are not a reliable or generalisable sample for normal memory.

Retrieval Failure-

an absence of cues

Encoding Specifity Principle-

If we use a cue to remember, it must be present at both the time of encoding and the time of retrieval

Context dependent forgetting-

Forgetting due to lack of similarity between environment of encoding and environment of retrieval

State dependent forgetting-

Forgetting due to a lack of similarity between the physiology of your body at the time of encoding and recall

Godden and Baddelys method and findings-

Divers learnt a list of words either on land or underwater and were then asked to recall in either the same condition they learnt it in, or the opposite

accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions

Carter and Cassadys method and findings-

Participants learnt a list of words either on a dose of antihistamine or on no drug at all and then recalled either in same or opposite condition

accurate recall rates significantly lower in non-matching conditions

Give two weaknesses of retrieval failure theory-

• Context needs to be very different to have an impact on retrieval

• logical fallacy, circular reasoning makes it difficult to actually prove or disprove this theory as you can formulate it to cater to any situation.

Give a strength of retrieval failure theory-

• Supporting evidence - Carter and Cassaday + Godden and Baddely.

Name the three factors affecting eyewitness testimony

• Leading questions

• Post - event discussion

• Anxiety

Leading questions - What was Loftus' aim-

Discover effects of leading questions on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Leading questions - What was Loftus' method-

Participants watched a video of a car crash and were then asked to answer some questions about it. One of these questions was how fast were the cars going when they insert word. Eg: contacted, smashed