Areas of Psychology

Question 1

Social area

“The scientific investigation of how thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others”

Answer 1

Key terms-
- environment, situational factors, group dynamics, conformity, social context, obedience, peers
Core studies-
- Milgram, shows how pressure from another person could lead people to administer fatal shocks to another individual and how they could be lead to do this in spite of their evident discomfort
- Bocchairo, investigates if there are any personality differences distinguishing those who were obedient, disobedient or whistle blowers
- Piliavin, seeking to investigate the impact of other people on helping behaviour
- Levine, found cultural differences in altruism, further seeking the impact of other people on working behaviour

Question 2

Cognitive

“Looking at how we process information we receive and how the treatment of this information leads to our responses. Looks into how our minds link a stimulus to a response”

Answer 2

Key terms-
- cognitive processes, computer analogy, input-process-output, internal mental processes, problem solving, memory, cognition, thinking patterns, schema, mechanistic, attention
Core studies-
- Moray, studies attention, comprises of three experiments, one of which studies the ‘cocktail party effect’ and what kind of information breaks the inattentional barrier
- Simons and Chabris, builds on Moray’s work, investigates visual attention. Explains why we cannot recall information we see but do not pay attention to
- Loftus and Palmer, studies memory, a cognitive process
- Grant, studies if memory (a cognitive process) is is recalled better in the same context as it was first encountered

Question 3

Developmental

Answer 3

Key terms-
- lifespan, typical development, moral development, emotional development, predetermined stages, maturation, systematic changes, innate
Core studies-
- Bandura, due to the way in which it shows how children’s behaviour can be influenced by the behaviour of adult role models
- Chaney, illustrates another way that children’s behaviour can be influenced by external factors
- Kohlberg, investigates how people get older, how their nature of ,oral thinking is evolved
- Lee, shows the impact of a child’s age on their evaluations of lying and truth- telling