Studies for Paper 1

Question 1

Eagly (1978) - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 1

found that a commonly held assumption was that women would be more susceptible to social influence than men

Question 2

Milgram - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 2

• he underestimated the importance of individual differences in obedience. His research was androcentric, i.e. focused on men and therefore finding can only be applied in male obedience
• it seems implausible that, given the large numbers of participants that were fully obedient , the vast majority would have grown up in a harsh environment with a punitive father, thus lacks face validity
• Studies of obedience carried out across cultures find similarly high levels of obedience to those found by Milgram. This shows that we are, by nature, social beings, heavily influenced by our social environment and setting – the power of the social situation.

Question 3

Blass (1999) - developmental psychology obedience

Answer 3

studied 9 other replications of Milgram’s study which also had male and female participants. Consistent with Milgram’s own findings 8 out of 9 found no evidence of gender differences in obedience

Question 4

Adorno - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 4

thought that harsh upbringing and parenting affected how a child developed. Found that participants who grew up with strict parents who used physical punishments grew up to be very obedient. Under these conditions, children quickly learn to obey and develop a strong respect for authority.

Question 5

Elms and Milgram - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 5

research presented some important differences in the characteristics of the authoritarian personality and the characteristics of obedient participants, e.g. many of the obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with their parents, rather than having grown up in a very strict family environment associated with the authoritarian personality

Question 6

Pavlov - classical conditioning

Answer 6

• developed the theory of classical conditioning from his research on the salivary response of dogs: his research generated quantitative, behavioural and therefore observable data, the amount of saliva produced by dogs in response to a learned, neutral stimulus. The response is referred to as Pavlovian conditioning.
• demonstrated a conditioned response with the sound of a bell, the bell was a neutral stimulus, noting that when the neutral stimulus was in close association with the dogs’ meals the dogs learned to associate the NS with food, e.g., the mere sound of the bell induced a drooling response in the dogs. Pavlov concluded that environmental stimuli that previously had no relation to a reflex action, e.g., the sound of a bell, could, through repeated pairings, trigger a salivation reflex and that through the process of associative learning – conditioning – the conditioned stimulus leads to a conditioned response.
• there are ethical issues surrounding the use of animals, especially Pavlov’s use of dogs and the invasive procedures used to measure saliva

Question 7

Smith and Bond (1998) - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 7

collectivist cultures, such as China or Israel, tend to behave more as a collectivist group based on interdependence, meaning that cooperation and compliance are regarded as important for the stability of the group

Question 8

Hamilton and Sanders (1995) - developmental psychology: obedience

Answer 8

presented participants from US, Japan, and Russia with scenarios where a crime was either an individual’s idea or the order of a superior. Little responsibility was attributed to the person who acted criminally under orders, but that reversed when they acted on their own volition. However, cultural differences emerged: US participants attributed more personal responsibility to individuals acting criminally under orders than did the Japanese and Russian ones. Thus, obedience might be deduced to be more important in Japanese and Russian culture than US culture, i.e., obeying even criminally wrong orders might be seen as appropriate more in Japan and Russia than in the US.

Question 9

Adorno - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 9

• studied over 2000 US students from mainly white, middle-class backgrounds, interviewing them about their early childhood experiences and using projective tests such as Rorschach ink plot tests and Thematic Apperception Tests to gain access to their unconscious thoughts, to access their level of obedience and prejudice. Adorno found that authoritarian adults came from a family environment that could be characterised as cold and unloving with a hostile atmosphere. Parents were aloof and controlling and typically insisted on high levels of achievement and self-discipline. The primary strategy used by such parents to ensure their children complied with their wishes was withdrawal of affection.
• developed several scales to measure aspects of behaviour and attitudes towards others, including ethnocentrism, i.e., preference for one’s own racial group, antisemitism, and the fascism scale – F-scale. The F scale measures authoritarian personality.

Question 10

Middendrop and Meloen (1990) factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 10

found that less well-educated people are consistently more authoritarian than well-educated people

Question 11

Milgram - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 11

• also found that participants with lower levels of education tended to be more obedient than those with higher levels.
• accepted that there was some element of a dispositional or personality bias to obedience and disobedience/dissent, but he believed the situational or social context was more significant, e.g., the proximity of the victim and authority figure, the location and presence of disobedient peers. Milgram believed that the specific social situation participants found themselves in caused them to obey or disobey regardless of their personalities. He maintained that relying on an explanation of obedience based purely on authoritarianism lacks the flexibility to account for these situational variables

Question 12

Elms and Milgram (1966) - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 12

after educational attainment was statistically controlled for, the more obedient subjects were still those who had higher F scale scores, i.e., were more authoritarian.

Question 13

Burger (2009) - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 13

in a recent replication of Milgram’s experiment, found that although people who score high on empathy are more likely to protest against giving electric shock, this did not translate to lower levels of obedience.

Question 14

Spector (1982) - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 14

found that a relationship exists between locus of control and leadership style, with internals being more persuasive and goal-oriented than externals.

Question 15

Elms and Milgram (1974) - factors affecting obedience: personality

Answer 15

investigated the background of those participants classed as obedient in the first four of Milgram’s experiments. Interviews revealed that disobedient participants had a high internal locus of control and scored highly on a social responsibility scale.

Question 16

Adorno - individual differences and developmental psychology

Answer 16

• argued that the authoritarian personality possessed specific traits or characteristics that meant they were more likely to be hostile towards people of a different ethnicity, social class or group, age, sexuality or other minority category.
• used clinical interviews and questionnaires and there are methodological issues with these. However, Adorno’s research was extensive, and his theories have been supported by a lot of subsequent research.

Question 17

Rubinstein (1995) - individual differences and developmental psychology

Answer 17

measured the relationship between authoritarianism, religiosity, and gender attitudes in 165 Jewish students and found those higher in authoritarianism tended to be more religious and have more traditional attitudes to gender than did those lower in authoritarianism.

Question 18

Whitley and Lee (2000) - individual differences and developmental psychology

Answer 18

assessed attitudes to homosexuality in 216 US students along with several personality variables, including authoritarianism. Authoritarianism proved to be the personality variable most strongly associated with homophobic attitudes.

Question 19

Katz and Braly (1933) - individual differences and developmental psychology

Answer 19

questioned students at Princeton University in the US regarding their national stereotypes about other cultures. Participants had to pick five to six traits from a list of 84 personality traits – superstitious, lazy, ignorant etc. – that they thought represented the ethnic group. They found that the vast majority of participants – US students at a top US university – classified African-Americans as superstitious and ignorant, and Jews as shrewd.

Question 20

Karlins at al. (1969) - individual differences and developmental psychology

Answer 20

repeated Katz and Braly’s research and found that while some national stereotypes had changed, others persisted. This suggests that culture does affect prejudice, but as cultures change, so do the prejudices that are held.

Question 21

Tulving - long-term memory

Answer 21

describes episodic memories as a form of ‘mental diary’

Question 22

KC - long-term memory

Answer 22

After a serious motorbike accident, KC suffered damage to his EM – he was unable to form or recall many personal events in his life. However, his recollection of factual information was intact. This supports the idea of separate LTM stores.

Question 23

HM - long-term memory

Answer 23

results may not be generalisable to memory functioning in the wider population because of his unique personal experiences, such as the effects of his epilepsy on his childhood and early adulthood.

Question 24

Squire et al (1993) - multi-store model

Answer 24

found that the hippocampus is more active in long-term memory tasks, whereas the prefrontal cortex is more active during short-term memory tasks.

Question 25

Murdock (1962) - multi-store model

Answer 25

the serial position effect or serial curve effect: presented participants with a list of words at a rate of 1 per second. Murdock found that words at the beginning and end of the list were much more likely to be recalled than words in the middle of the list: this is known as the primacy and recency effect. Words at the beginning of the list have presumably had time to be rehearsed and thus transferred to LTM, from where they are recalled - primacy effect. Words at the end of the list are still currently held in STM and are recalled from there – recency effect.

Question 26

Conrad (1964) - multi-store model

Answer 26

Information is coded or held in STM in verbal or auditory form, even if we see a pineapple, we will retain the information in verbal form in STM – we will subvocalise, say in our mind, ‘pineapple’. The evidence for this comes from Conrad (1964). He noted that when participants were presented with a list of 6 consonants, e.g., BKSJLR, for ¾ of a second and then asked to recall the consonants, recall – or substitution errors – were made based on sound, e.g., there were 62 instances of B being mistaken for P, 83 of V being mistaken for P, but only 2 instances of S being mistaken for P, i.e., when the letters sound similar they are easy to confuse in STM, indicating that STM operates phonologically or acoustically or according to the sound of the information being encoded.

Question 27

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Answer 27

criticised the MSM’s concept of STM for being a unitary system and argued that STM was a much more complex and versatile store for information. They believe STM is an active store used to hold information temporarily while it is being manipulated

Question 28

Brown-Peterson (1959) - multi-store model

Answer 28

Using the Brown-Peterson (1959) technique duration of STM approximately 15 to 30 seconds before information is lost or decays. In this technique participants are given a trigram and a 3-digit number, e.g., 3 letter consonant THX and 512. Immediately after presentation of the trigram, participants must count backwards in 3s from 512.

Question 29

Reitman (1974) - multi-store model

Answer 29

showed participants 5 words for 2 seconds and for the next 15 seconds asked them to listen for a faint tone presented through earphones – tone detection requires effort and attention and prevents rehearsal to some extent. Reitman found that recall of the 5 words declined by about 24% over the 15 second period. Memory performance had declined due to trace decay, nevertheless, STM duration was longer than previously thought.

Question 30

B F Skinner - operant conditioning

Answer 30

• unlike classical conditioning, which is learning through association, operant conditioning is learning through consequence. It was famously pioneered by B F Skinner and involved his research using mainly pigeons and rats in a device he developed called the Skinner box.
• described the ABC model of operant conditioning using his Skinner box: A is antecedent – the box or chamber could present a stimulus, lights, noise, levers etc, that triggers behaviour, i.e., thing that comes before or triggers behavioural response. B is behaviour – a response that could be observed and measured as a result of the antecedent, e.g., pressing a lever. C is consequence – a reward or punishment followed the behaviour, e.g., pressing lever could mean reward – food, or punishment – electric shock.
• positive reinforcement – this is giving something perceived as rewarding or pleasurable after the desired behaviour has been exhibited. For example, with Skinner, after a rat pressed a lever in the Skinner box it received food. This results in behaviour being repeated.

Question 31

Carol and Melvin Ember (1992) - prejudice

Answer 31

social anthropologists Carol and Melvin Ember (1992) have observed that in tribal societies intergroup hostility increases when social or natural conditions mean that competition for resources is necessary (e.g. natural disaster makes food scarce, or one social group wants to become more dominant). During periods of famine or natural disasters, warfare was more likely to ensure access to resources for the victor.

Question 32

Sherif - prejudice

Answer 32

noticed that in-group/out-group hostility could be mitigated when groups worked together for a common aim. This reduced tension between groups and lead to greater harmony. Sherif referred to this concept as superordinate goals – where, in order to reduce hostility between groups, all members of each group need to co-operate in order to achieve the intended outcome: goals can only be achieved by co-operation of all group members.

Question 33

Aronson et al (1978) - prejudice

Answer 33

tested realistic conflict theory by introducing co-operation in classrooms where competition was rife. Using the ‘jigsaw’ technique, where students where divided into small groups that had to succeed in one group task in order to ensure the success of the overall class project, they found that levels of competition decreased. This demonstrates that the removal of competition decreases prejudice and increases liking between class members. This is similar to the superordinate goals task at the end of the Robber’s Cave experiment.

Question 34

Lemyre and Smith (1985) - prejudice

Answer 34

following the minimal group paradigm procedure, found similar results to Tajfel and also found that discriminating participants had improved self-esteem following the experiment. This supports the notion that personal identity is bound up with social identity, and that discrimination enhances both personal and social identity.

Question 35

Weatherell (1982) - prejudice

Answer 35

suggests that we should not conclude from the research that intergroup conflict is the inevitable consequence of group membership and identification. In her observations of New Zealand Polynesians, she found them much more likely to favour the out-group than to show bias towards their own in-group. Cultures that emphasise collectivism and co-operation are less likely to demonstrate such group prejudice.

Question 36

Bartlett - reconstructive memory: schema theory

Answer 36

• According to Bartlett, we store memories in terms of our past experiences or schemas. Schemas are units of information about a specific event or object: a mental ‘script’ we have developed through our experiences of the world and which can aid our interpretation of our surroundings and new information.
• most famous example of ‘effort after meaning’ and reconstructive memory is the Native American folk tale The War of the Ghosts. 20 participants read the story twice and their recall of the story was tested using repeated reproduction – recalling the story after several minutes, weeks, months and even years: the longest time lapse was 6 ½ years. Bartlett found that participants’ account of the story become more consistent with a Western worldview.
• One criticism of Bartlett is that his materials, e.g. The War of the Ghosts has little relevance to everyday memory and was deliberately used as a way to generate evidence in support of schema theory. He used folk tales as he assumed this would be less meaningful to people of other cultures, but he had no objective measures of meaningfulness – scientific criteria
• argued that the schemas we have about certain situations can lead us to make recall errors, we open up an existing schema which will be stereotypical and based on preconceived notions and therefore flawed. We tend to remember information which confirms our stereotypes and ignore information which contradicts it.

Question 37

Cohen (1993) - reconstructive memory: schema theory

Answer 37

argues the concept of a schema is too vague to be useful, schema theory overemphasises that fallibility of memory and ignores the fact that quite complex events can sometimes be remembered accurately and in detail, and schema theory does not adequately explain how schemas are acquired in the first place.

Question 38

Carli (1999) - reconstructive memory: schema theory

Answer 38

showed that participants memories became more stereotypical because of schemas. Participants were either told a story which ended abruptly, or one which ended with a rape. In the latter scenario participants tended to have a more distorted recollection of events than in the first. The character committing the rape was described in more sinister terms prior to the rape by the participants in the 2nd condition.

Question 39

Steyvers and Hemmer (2012) - reconstructive memory: schema theory

Answer 39

argue that the experimental conditions of such research deliberately induce errors in recall leading to the view that memory is unreliable. Their research demonstrates than in a real context, without manipulated material, schematic recall can be very accurate. Therefore, we should be cautious when assuming eye witness testimony lacks reliability.

Question 40

Milgram - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 40

• proximity – in Milgram’s variation if both teacher and learner were in the same room, obedience fell to 40%. Teacher required to force learner’s hand onto shock plate, obedience fell to 30%. When the researcher (authority figure) left the room, after initially giving instructions, and subsequent orders were given over the phone, obedience fell to 21%. In this variation, some participants even went as far as repeatedly giving the lowest shock level despite telling the researcher they were following the correct procedure.
• In another variation on Milgram’s original obedience experiment, participants had to sign a contract that said that they are taking part of their own free will and relinquishing any legal responsibility from Yale University – obedience fell to 40%

Question 41

Slater et al. - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 41

asked participants to play the role of teacher, interacting with a virtual learner and administer electric shocks at wrong answers via text messages. Using text messages to administer shocks resulted in all participants going to the highest level on the shock generator. Consistent with Milgram’s research, participants who could see the animated victim were less obedient that those who only communicated with the victim via text.

Question 42

Bickman (1974) - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 42

92% of pedestrians obeyed an order to either pick up litter or give a stranger money for a parking meter when the researcher was dressed as a security guard, compared to only 49% when the same man was dressed in ‘civilian’ clothing. This suggests that legitimate authority can be denoted by the use of a uniform.

Question 43

Bushman (1988) - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 43

used a similar technique to Bickman – a female researcher dressed in either a ‘police-style’ uniform, or as a business executive or as a beggar, stopped people in the street and told them to give change to a male researcher for an expired parking meter. When dressed in police-style uniform, 72% of people obeyed, compared with 48% when dressed as a business executive and 52% dressed as a beggar. When interviewed afterwards, people claimed they had obeyed the woman in uniform because she appeared to have more authority.

Question 44

House et al. (1991) - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 44

suggests that charismatic leaders have excellent communication skills, a high level of concern for the needs of their followers and mastery of impression management, i.e., making others us how we wish them to see us. These attributes all help in obtaining obedience.

Question 45

Berson et al (2001) - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 45

a study by Berson et al. (2001) of 141 community leaders and their communities, a strong correlation emerged between charisma and the strength of their ‘vision’.

Question 46

Cherulnick et al. (2001) - situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 46

showed that facial expressions, intensity of smiling and directly looking at the audience affected the emotional responses of the audience.

Question 47

Cook (1988) - social learning theory

Answer 47

found that Rhesus monkeys raised in captivity displayed fear of snakes, after previously showing no fear, when they observed the anxious reactions of wild rhesus monkeys to snakes.

Question 48

Bandura - social learning theory

Answer 48

is most closely associated with social learning theory. He believed that social learning was only achieved if 4 criteria were met: attention, retention, reproduction and motivation.

Question 49

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) - working memory model

Answer 49

gave participants digit strings to rehearse, starting with 2 digits and going up to 6. At the same time the participants had to perform a verbal reasoning task, e.g., true or false: B is followed by A; BA. Even with 6 digits to recall – very close to STM capacity of 7 +/- 2 – participants performed well on both tasks with no effect on accuracy of both tasks, although slight slowing down on reasoning task.

Question 50

Logie (1995) - working memory model

Answer 50

suggests that the visuo-spatial scratchpad can be divided into a visual cache which stores information about visual items, e.g., form and colour, and an inner scribe which deals with spatial relations which stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field and acting as visual rehearsal mechanism.

Question 51

Baddeley et al (1991) - working memory model

Answer 51

• Alzheimer’s disease and the role of the central executive – carried out various dual task experiments on young, elderly and Alzheimer’s patients – ethics? – using verbal and visual tasks simultaneously or separately. The performance of the Alzheimer’s group did not differ significantly from the other groups when the visual and verbal tasks were performed separately. However, there was a significant impairment when they were performed together. Baddeley argues that as the central executive is responsible for the co-ordination and allocation of the ‘slave’ or subsystems of WM, the poor performance of the Alzheimer’s groups on the simultaneous dual task indicates problems with the functioning of the central executive.
• The complexity of the central executive, as Baddeley himself admits, makes it very hard to investigate. As a result, this aspect of the WMM has been subjected to far less research and so the evidence for its existence is far less concrete