AQA-A-Level-Psychology-Example-Answers-Paper-1-2019.pdf

SOCIAL INFLUENCE Question 01 One explanation for the resistance to social influence is locus of control. When individuals have an internal locus of control, they are less likely to blindly obey authority figures as they are less likely to make the shift to agentic state because they believe they are responsible for their actions. They are also less likely to demonstrate normative social influence as they are less influenced by what others think. Another explanation for the resistance to social influence is social support. Asch’s research demonstrated that when there is a dissenter in the group who supported the naïve participant and disagreed with the majority levels of conformity went down. This is similar to Milgram who fund that a disobedient ally who refused to continue decreased levels of obedience. Question 04 In 1987 not as much was known about the harmful effects of smoking and therefore the group norm was to smoke as it was fashionable. This meant that young people would be influenced by normative social influence to smoke or risk rejection from the group. However, as a minority of individuals began to understand the harmful effects and used minority influence processes to enact social change. This involves using internalisation to convince individuals of their beliefs using informational influence and people’s desires to be correct. This might involve the formation of anti-smoking pressure groups which research by Moscovici has shown would need consistency in their message to be successful as he demonstrated that it was possible for a minority of confederates to influence a majority of naïve participants to believe slides were a different colour. This could be done, for example, by keeping to the message of the harmful effects on the body. In addition, this research showed that demonstrating a commitment to the message by putting yourself at risk in some way (augmentation principle) also helps to convince the majority to listen to the message, for example with strikes demonstrations. Finally, a degree of flexibility is useful such as asking people to cut back, use nicotine patches or not smoke in public places first. This makes the majority listen and take the message seriously, making them internalise the message. This acts as a snowball, slowly gathering members until there becomes a tipping point and the minority becomes the majority and uses the social pressure of normative social influence such as young people today who are more concerned with health than smoking and frown on peers who smoke. This then results in social crypto amnesia where people don’t remember that it was ever acceptable to smoke in public places and that it was fashionable. (304 words) Question 05 Social influence research has issues with the deception of its participants which leads to a further issue of a lack of informed consent to take part. For example, in Asch’s study on majority influence participants were told they were taking part in a test of visual perception and in Milgram’s research into obedience they were told it was a study into the effects of punishment on learning. However, these levels of deception are necessary in social influence research as telling the participants that your will be studying their levels of conformity to a social group, or their levels of obedience would result in demand characteristics and invalidate the results obtained. Social Influence research has also been criticised for the lack of protection for its participants. For example, in both Zimbardo and Milgram’s research the participants learned that they were This study source was downloaded by from CourseH on :22:33 GMT -05:00 Example Answers for AQA A-Level Psychology: Paper 1 (2019) capable of harming another human being, in addition some of the prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment suffered severe distress – being humiliated and exhibiting psychosomatic illnesses. However, whilst these effects are distressing for the participants at the time the cost benefit analysis of what was gained from this research might argue that the harm was worth it for what we learnt about the dangers of taking on these social roles, which was used in the investigations of the Abu Ghraib solders and the dangers of blind obedience to authority and the fact this was not isolated to Nazi Germany. Finally, social influence research has been criticised for lacking a right to withdraw with participants not always aware of their right to leave. For example, in the prison experiment participants were pressurised to stay and were made to apply for the right to leave, and in Milgram’s research the four prods made it seem as though they had to continue with the study. However, what has to be acknowledged is these studies were all conducted a t a time when the ethical guidelines as we know them were not in place and they had been approved using the guidelines of the time. MEMORY Question 07 The effectiveness of the cognitive interview can be shown in comparison to the standard interview by looking at the amount of correct information recalled. Kohnken et al (1999) found in a metaanalysis of 50 studies that the cognitive interview consistently provided more correct information than a standard interview. On average there was an 81% increase in correct information, showing that the technique is effective. In addition, Milne and Bull (2002) found that each technique within the cognitive was equally as valuable and contributed to this increase. However, it should be acknowledged that whilst the cognitive interview yields more correct information, it also increases the amount of incorrect information too, with Kohnken et al (1999) finding an increasing of 61% in false information. This may jeopardise the appropriateness of the interview technique as police cannot rely on all the information remembered be accurate. In addition, the cognitive interview is a very time-consuming technique to use, requiring additional training and time to dedicate to all the techniques. Therefore, the technique may not be appropriate to use for all police forces and all crimes where the time and resources of a full cognitive interview cannot be given. Question 08 The multistore model of memory was the first attempt at creating a theoretical model of human memory and described memory of a linear process with three unitary stores. The model suggested that environmental stimuli arrives at the brain and enters the sensory register. This information is stored in modality specific ways for less than half a second before the trace decays and is forgotten. If attention is paid to a specific environmental input, then it is transferred to the shortterm memory where a rehearsal loop can be undertaken to keep the memory trace active. This store has a limited capacity of between 5 to 9 items – after which the earlier memories are displaced in favour of newer ones. It also has a limited duration of about 30seconds – after which the memory decays. Finally, the memory is encoded acoustically. If a longer or more purposeful period of rehearsal takes place, then the memory can be transferred to the long-term memory. This, in comparison, has a potentially unlimited capacity and potentially unlimited duration where memories are theoretically only temporarily inaccessible due to retrieval failure and interference. This study source was downloaded by from CourseH on :22:33 GMT -05:00 Example Answers for AQA A-Level Psychology: Paper 1 (2019) Once long-term memory is stored it can be retrieved into the short-term memory in order to recalled. When trying to remember PIN numbers they are well within the ability of the average person to remember whereas when trying to remember an 11-digit phone number this is longer than most people can achieve in short term memory (5-9 items). However, these longer phone numbers can be recalled by using the rehearsal loop ‘saying it to themselves several times’. However, as is stated, any disruption to that rehearsal process (such as someone talking to you) would displace the numbers from the STM and it would be forgotten. When doing this people will sometimes find they remember the beginning – which has been rehearsed a lot – and then end – which is fresh in the STM. However, they may forget the middle. People can make this easier to achieve by “chunking” the information into less overall pieces. For example, knowing a mobile begins 07 or an area code is 01162 or by remembering the numbers in pairs 26 rather than 2 and 6. There is a wealth of evidence to support the separation of the STM and LTM with experimental studies showing that the two stores have different capacities, duration and encoding. For example, Jacobs found the capacity of STM to be 7±2, by using the serial digit span technique. Peterson & Peterson found that when learning nonsense trigrams with a distractor task which prevented rehearsal the duration of STM was roughly 18-30seconds. Finally, Baddeley used substitution errors to investigate the learning of material in STM and LTM showing that when using STM there were more errors made for acoustically similar words whereas when in LTM these errors disappeared but were replaced by error in semantically similar words. He suggested this was due to the confusion of similarity in the mode which was being used to encode the memories. These studies shown that the two types of memory are qualitatively different to each other, as the model suggests. In addition, case studies such as HM have shown in that the assumptions about the linear nature of the MSM are valid. HM had his hippocampus removed in an attempt to cure his epilepsy and as a result suffered anterograde amnesia. He was able to function in the short-term memory loop of about 30 seconds and had most of his memories from prior to the operation intact. However, he was unable to create new long-term memories as the process by which information was transferred from one store to another was now broken. This supports the unitary nature of the MSM and the linear nature of committing a memory to the LTM.