predicted psychology paper 1

SPE procedure (7)

• 24 male, American college students

• Assessed before the study to make sure they were mentally and physically healthy

• Randomly assigned

• Took place in the basement of Stanford Uni psychology department → turned into a simulated prison

• Not allowed to use physical violence

• Arrested at home by real police

• uniform, id, strict routines : whistles, nightsticks, reflective sunglasses, number = deindividuation

SPE findings (12)

• Prisoners resistance faded

• They became anxious, withdrawn and passive

• 5 released early → severe mental breakdowns

• Guards adapted rapidly to their roles

• Imposed increasingly harsh punishments

• Removed privileges & tightened control

• Harassed prisoners

• Punished small disobedience

• 2 week study had to be stopped after 6 days

• Guards became increasingly cruel and sadistic

• Guards were disappointed when ended early → enjoyed having power

• Revealed how strongly social roles can influence behaviour → its not just who we are (our personality) but the situations we’re placed in

5 evaluation points for the SPE (help q → the prisoners were asking for help + q is p backwards)

✅ High level of control over variables

• Participants were carefully screened before → ensure emotional stability + free from psychological issues → reduces risk of individual differences

• Random allocation → helps reduce participant bias → behaviour is due to role assigned and not personality type

• Good internal validity

• Behaviour confidently linked to influence of social roles + simulated prison environment

❌ Ethical issues

• While they gave informed consent → could not have fully anticipated the intensity and emotional strain involved

• Raises questions about whether their consent was truly informed

• Caused significant psychological harm → several experienced extreme emotional distress

• Some reported that they felt they were unable to leave, compromising their right to withdraw

❌ Lack of generalisability

• Male American college students

• Findings may not reflect how individuals from different backgrounds, cultures or age groups would behave in a similar situation

❌ Presence of demand characteristics

• Since participants were aware that they were taking part in a study → may have altered their behaviour to fit in with what they thought was expected of them rather than acting naturally

• This concern is heightened by the fact that Zimbardo himself conformed to a role → failed to maintain objective researcher

❌ Questioned in terms of ecological validity

• Although environment was designed to resemble a real prison, it remained an artificial simulation

• Participants were aware that it was a study and could technically withdraw at anytime → unlike the inescapable long term nature of actual prisons

• Raises questions about how far the findings can be applied to real life

A group of employees were attending a team meeting at a large company. During the meeting, most of the team agreed with the management that working overtime at weekends was necessary to meet the project deadline. Sam refused to agree and stated that working overtime at the weekend was unfair and he said he would not be working the additional shifts.

Outline two reasons why Sam may have resisted social influence in this situation. Refer to Sam in your answer. (4)

• One reason Sam may have resisted social influence is because of internal locus of control. People with an internal locus of control believe that their behaviour is determined by their own decisions rather than by external pressures. This means Sam may have felt personally responsible for his actions and so was more confident in refusing to work unpaid weekend shifts

• A second reason is social support. Social support means that the presence of other people who do not conform reduces the pressure to conform. As the question says that “most” employees agreed, this suggests that not everyone agreed, so Sam may have gained confidence from knowing that some others also disagreed with management. This would reduce the effect of NSI

Resistance to social influence

D: ability to withstand, or hold out against , the pressure from others

Social support

• The presence of other people resisting can help you do the same

• They act as models to show us that resistance is possible

Asch 1951:

• when Asch added just 1 dissenter: 32% → 25% (whether they gave the right or wrong answer)

• Unanimity was broken

• Gave participants more confidence to trust their own judgement + freed them from the fear of standing alone

Milgram 1963:

• When participants sat with 2 disobeying confederates: 65% → 10%

Following the meeting, a psychologist wanted to investigate employees’ behaviour in the workplace. The psychologist asked employees to estimate how many days over the last six months they had worked weekend overtime. The psychologist compared the responses of full-time employees with those of part-time employees.

Identify a suitable statistical test for this study. Explain three reasons for your choice in the context of this study. (4)

• a suitable statistical test is the Mann-Whitney U test

• One reason is that the psychologist is looking for a difference between two groups, not a correlation

• A second reason is that the study uses an independent groups design, because the full-time and part-time employees are two separate groups of people

• A third reason is that the data can be treated as ordinal, because employees estimated how many days they worked over time, so the data can be ranked but the intervals between values cannot be assumed to be equal

• Team A shows a negatively skewed distribution because the mean and median are lower than the mode

• Team B shows a positively skewed distribution because the mean and median are higher than the mode

Discuss factors affecting conformity as investigated by Asch (8)

AO1:

• Group size - conformity increased with group size up to 3 confederates, then plateaued - showing the pressure of NSI increases

• The conformity rate with 1 confederates was 3%, 2 confederates 13% and 3 confederates 32% - showing increased group size increases conformity

• Unanimity - conformity rate decreased to 5% when the majority opinion was broken by a dissenting confederate

• Task difficulty - conformity increased when the task became more ambiguous (line lengths were closer together)

AO3:

• One strength is that Asch’s experiment was conducted in an highly controlled environment. This meant that he could carefully manage variables. This control made is possible to replicate the study reliably and isolate specific factors that affected conformity. It allowed researchers to explore cause and effect in a scientific way boosting the study’s internal validity

• One major criticism of Asch’s study is its low ecological validity. The situation in the experiment of matching line lengths is very simple and artificial lacking the complexity & emotional stakes in real-life social pressure. In everyday lives conformity often involves meaningful decisions such as yielding to peer pressure related to drugs or bullying. These situations carry real consequences and emotional involvement, unlike the trivial perception line judgement task that Asch used

• A key limitation of the study is population bias. This is because all the participants were male American students. This means that we cannot confidently assume that the findings would apply equally to women, older adults or individuals from different cultural backgrounds. Research has indicated that women might be more focused on social relationships and therefore may show conformity in different ways compared to men

Outline two techniques used in the cognitive interview (4)

• One technique used in the cognitive interview is reinstating the context. This involves asking the witness to mentally recreate both the environment and emotional context of the event, such as weather, sounds or how they were feeling, in order to provide retrieval cues

• A second technique is report everything. This involves encouraging the witness to recall every detail of the event, even if it seems unimportant, because one small detail may trigger memory of another useful information

Briefly evaluate the WMM (4)

• One strength of the working memory model is that there is research support for separate stores in the short-term memory. For example, the case of KF showed that verbal and visual information may be processed separately, supporting the existence of different components such as the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad

• However, one limitation is that the central executive is vague and difficult to test scientifically. It is not clearly explained how it works, which reduces the validity of this part of the model

Discuss the multi-store model of memory. Refer to Sophie’s experiences in your answer (16)

AO1:

• The multi-store model, proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin, suggests that memory is a linear information-processing system made up of three separate unitary stores: the sensory register, short-term memory and long term memory

• The sensory register receives information from the environment and stores it briefly in the same form it is received

• If attention is paid to this information, it passes onto the STM

• STM has a limited capacity of 7 ± 2 items, a short duration of about 18-30 seconds, and mainly codes information acoustically

• Information can be maintained in STM though rehearsal, known as maintenance rehearsal

• If rehearsal continues for long enough, the information is transferred into the LTM

• LTM has potentially unlimited capacity and duration, and information in it is mainly coded semantically

AO2:

• In Sophie’s case, the instructions she hears from her teacher and the notes she sees on the music would first enter the sensory register as auditory and visual information

• Her difficulty remembering the correct finger positions and timing suggests that STM has a limited capacity and duration, so she cannot hold all of the new information for very long

• Her inability to play the piece off by heart at first suggests that the information had not yet been transferred from the STM into LTM

• However, practicing the same piece regularly over several weeks acts as rehearsal, allowing the memory to move into LTM so that Sophie can eventually play it accurately without looking at the music

AO3:

• One strength of the MSM is research support for the idea that STM and LTM are separate stores. For example, Baddeley found that participants tended to recall acoustically similar words less accurately in STM, but semantically similar words less accurately in LTM. This suggests that STM mainly codes acoustically whereas LTM mainly codes semantically, exactly as the model predicts. Therefore, this increases the validity of the MSM as an explanation of how memory is organised which strengthens the model

• One limitation of the multi-store model is that it assumes STM is a unitary store, which may be too simplistic. Evidence for this comes from the case study of KF, who had poor recall of verbal information but much better recall of visual information after brain damage. If STM were a single store, all types of ST info would be affected in the same way but this was not the case. This suggests that STM is made up of separate components for processing different types of information, rather than just one single store. The WMM provides a better explanation of this by proposing different subsystems. Therefore, this weakens the multi-store model because its description of STM is oversimplified, reducing its validity as an explanation of how STM actually operates

• A final limitation of the MSM is that much of the research supporting it was conducted in artificial laboratory conditions, which may reduce its ecological validity. For example, studies of coding, capacity and duration often asked participants to remember digit spans, trigrams or unrelated words, which do not reflect the way memory is normally used in everyday life. In real-life situations, information is usually more meaningful, and this can affect how well it is remembered. This means participants’ performance in these experiments may not accurately represent how STM + LTM operate outside the laboratory and the findings from these studies may be less generalisable to everyday memory tasks. Therefore, this weakens the MSM because some of the evidence used to support it may not truly reflect how memory works in real-world situations

Briefly evaluate learning theory as an explanation of attachment (4)

• One limitation of learning theory is that it is reductionist. It reduces attachment behaviour to simple learning processes such as conditioning, even though attachment is a complex emotional bond between infant and caregiver

• A second limitation is that it is environmentally deterministic, because it suggests attachment is learned entirely from the environment and ignores biological influences

Outline the procedure of Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’ (4)

• Ainsworth’s Strange Situation is a controlled observation carried out in a laboratory with a caregiver and infant

• The procedure consists of seven structured episodes, each lasting about three minutes

• During these episodes, the caregiver and a stranger enter and leave the room, so the infant experiences separation and reunion

• The infant’s behaviour is then observed in terms of exploration, safe-base behaviour, separation anxiety, stranger anxiety and reunion behaviour

Discuss the stages of attachment, identified by Schaffer (16)

AO1:

• Schaffer and Emerson said attachment develops in four stages

• In the asocial stage from 0-6 weeks, infants respond in a similar way to objects and people

• In the indiscriminate stage from 6 weeks to 7 months, infants prefer human company but do not yet show separation anxiety

• In the specific attachment stage from around 7-9 months, infants form one primary attachment and begin to show separation and stranger anxiety

• In the multiple attachments stage from about 9 months, infants form secondary attachments to other familiar adults

• Schaffer and Emerson based this on a longitudinal study of 60 Glasgow infants aged 5 to 18 months. They used naturalistic observations and interviews with mothers to identify attachment behaviours

AO3:

• One strength of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages is that the research had high ecological validity. The infants were studied in their normal everyday environments using naturalistic observation, so the attachment behaviours recorded were more realistic than behaviour seen in an artificial lab study. The longitudinal design also meant the researchers could see how attachment changed over time in the same children. Therefore, the findings are likely to be a valid description of how attachments develop in real life

• However, one limitation is that the findings may be affected by cultural bias and low temporal validity, the study only looked at working-class infants from Glasgow in the 1960s, so the results may not apply to other cultures or to modern families. Today, many infants experience more shared caregiving and more daycare, which could affect how attachments are formed. Therefore, Schaffer’s stages may not be a universal explanation of attachment development

• A methodological limitation of Schaffer and Emerson’s study is its reliance on mothers’ self-report data. This is a problem because mothers may not have recalled their infant’s attachment behaviours accurately, or they may have been influenced by social desirability bias. As a result, behaviours such as separation anxiety and stranger anxiety may not have been recorded completely accurately. Therefore, this reduces the validity of the findings and weakens support for Schaffer’s stages of attachment.

A and D

Describe how systematic desensitisation is used as a way of treating phobias (6)

• Systematic desensitisation is a behavioural therapy used to treat phobias

• It is based on classical conditioning and aims to replace the fear response with relaxation, which is called counterconditioning

• First, the therapist and client create an anxiety hierarchy, which is a list of situations involving the phobic stimulus from the least to most frightening

• The client is then taught relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing

• After this, the client is gradually exposed to the phobic stimulus, starting with the least frightening situation while staying relaxed

• This works through reciprocal inhibition, because a person cannot feel anxiety and relaxation at the same time

• One definition of abnormality is failure to function adequately, which means a person is unable to cope with the demands of everyday life. James may not be considered abnormal by this definition because he can hold down a full-time job and says he is content with his lifestyle. However, the fact that he did not go for a promotion because it involved networking suggests that his anxiety does affect his functioning to some extent.

• A second definition is deviation from ideal mental health, which is when a person does not meet criteria such as coping with stress, forming positive relationships and self-actualisation. James may be considered abnormal by this definition because he feels anxious in social situations, avoids socialising and may not reach his full potential if he avoids promotion opportunities.

Outline two ethical issues which researchers must consider when studying patients with mental health disorders and what researchers must do when considering the issue (6)

• One ethical issue is informed consent

• This is important because patients with mental health disorders may not always fully understand the study

• Researchers should explain the study clearly and make sure participants have the capacity to consent, or get consent from a guardian if needed

• Another ethical issue is protection from harm

• People with mental health disorders may be more vulnerable to distress during research

• Researchers should reduce the risk of harm, monitor participants carefully and provide support or debriefing if necessary

Evaluate the biological explanation of OCD (4) 3 points

• One strength of the biological explanation of OCD is supporting evidence from twin and family studies. Research has shown that CR for OCD are higher among identical twins than non-identical twins, and that OCD runs in families. This suggests that there is a genetic component to OCD, as individuals who share more DNA are more likely to develop the disorder. Therefore, this supports the biological explanation for OCD and increases its validity as an explanation of the disorder

• A further strength of the biological explanation of OCD is the effectiveness of drug therapy. SSRIs, which work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain, have been shown to significantly reduce OCD symptoms in many patients. If biological treatment targeting serotonin is effective in reducing symptoms, this suggests that low levels play a role in causing OCD. Therefore, the effectiveness of SSRIs provide indirect support for the biological explanation, increasing its credibility

• One limitation of the biological explanation of OCD is that it is reductionist. It reduces a complex disorder to biological factors such as genetics or neurotransmitter levels, ignoring psychological and environmental factors such as traumatic life events or learned behaviours that may also contribute to OCD. This means that the biological explanation may only provide a partial account for OCD. Therefore, this limits the explanation as it is unlikely that biology alone can fully account for such a complex disorder

What 4 things would you have to mention in this question: “describe how the psychologists could have counterbalanced the students across the experiments conditions” (4)

• half the students (use data)

• One group: condition A → condition B

• Other group: condition B → condition A

• THE STUDENTS SHOULD BE RANDOMLY ALLOCATED

Explain when a median would be most appropriate (2)

• When data is ordinal (1-10)

• When the range is large → so that it is not affected by extreme data

Consent form (6)

I agree to take part in this study investigating whether…

I understand that i will be…

At the end i will…

I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I can withdraw at any time

I understand that my data will be kept anonymous and confidential

I understand that i will be debriefed at the end of the study

Name:______

Signature:_______

Date:________

Explain what it would mean if the results in this study were significant at the 0.5 level (2)

(Make sure you include that the null hypothesis should be accepted)

• if the results were significant at the 0.05 level, this would mean there is less than a 5% probability that the difference in … occurred by chance

• … so the null hypothesis would be rejected

Briefly explain the process of peer review (3)

Peer review is when a research report is submitted to an academic journal and then assessed by other psychologists who are experts in the same field. They check the quality of the research, such as the methodology, analysis, conclusion and ethics. They then decide whether the report should be accepted, rejected or sent back for revisions before publication