Paper 1 A03 Flashcards
(42 cards)
Explanations for conformity
P-Research support for normative in shaping behaviours such as smoking
E- Linkenback and Perkins found that teens exposed to message that peers don’t smoke were less likely too
L-Shows Support for Normative
P-Support for informational shaping social behaviour
E- Wittenbrink and Henley found that individuals exposed to a negative viewpoint on black people that was said to be the majority later reported the same views
L- shows importance of informational
P- Normative may not be detected by people when experiencing it
E- Nolan found that people thought that neighbours behaviour had least effect on their own energy conservation but results showed it actually has strongest effect
L- People rely on beliefs about what should be influencing behaviour so under detect normative influence
Research into conformity
P-Asch study may be child of its time dues to period it took place in
E- Study done during widespread suspicion of communists which meant conforming to others was important to not stand out
E-Perrin and Spencer repeated ash study with UK students and found no conformity
L- Suggest time period had influence
P-Asch study showed a lot of independent behaviour aswell
E-Only 33% conformed meaning 66% stayed independent despite being faced with a different view
L-Shows evidence of independence
P-Problems with determining effect of larger groups
E-Bond pointed out that no studies have used majority size over 9 and the average group sizes are 2-4
L- Therefore know little about effect of larger majority sizes.
Research into conformity to social roles
P- Conformity to roles isn’t automatic and does involve a choice
E- in zimbardos study there weee also good guards who did not degrade prisoners
L- shows that the guards did have to make a choice and weren’t forced to conform
P- Study could be seen as unethical
E- Clear that pps suffered distress on many ways and zimbardo even admitted study should have been stopped earlier
L- Limitaion however following debriefing sessions found no lasting affects
P-Study could have suffered from demand characteristics
E- Psycholgists claimed that pp acted the way they did because they thought that’s how the researcher wanted them to behave
E- details of study were shown to sample of students who mostly guessed the true purpose of the study
L- Behaviour may not be down to comformity
Research into obedience
P- Milgram study suffered from lack of realism, Orne and Holland claimed pps have learned to distrust experimenters
E- Perry later discovered that many of Milgrams pps didn’t think the shocks were real and the ones who did believe they were real were less likely to obey
L- Challenges validity of study
P- Study has temporal validity meaning it shouldn’t be dismissed due to being 50 years old
E- Blass analysed obedience studies carried out between 1961 and 1985 and found no relationship between the year and obedience
L- Suggest Milgram still relevant to this day
P- Study had ethical issue of deception
E- Original advertising of memory study not obedience meaning they were not aware
L- However cost benefit analysis could justify it
Explanations for obedience
P- Agentic state explanation doesn’t explain real life obedience of German doctors in aushwitz
E- Lifton argues this as the doctors changed gradually from concerned to sadistic over time
L- Experinve of carrying out the actions that change doctors behaviour not experiencing agentic shift
P- Legitmacy of authority can serve as justification for causing harm
E- I people accept authority judgement is only valid then they no longer feel moral values for how they behave
L- People may engage it massively destructive behaviour as they are unquestioning to authority
P-Research supporting legitimacy of authority from causes of plane crashes
E- Tarnow found that excessive dependence was put on the captains authority so errors were ignored which led to large proportion of plane accidents
L- Real life demonstration of legitimate authority
Authoritarian personality
P- Social context is more important than a persons personality when it comes to obeying
E- Milgram showed that variations in social context like the proximity or location were primary causes in levels of obedience not personality
L- Relying on personality explanation lacks flexibility to account for these variations (Nature vs nurture argument)
P- Lack of education could be actual cause of obedience as it may determine authoritarianism
E- Research found that less educated people are more authoritarian than well educated people. Additionally Milgram found that pps with less education were more obedient
L- Suggest education is actual cause of obedience
P- F scale is methodologically flawed as items are worded in a particular direction
E- Possible to get authoritarian personality by marking all boxes on one side which could mean people are just marking those deliberately
L- Reduces credibility
Social support resistance method
P- Research support that shows importance of social support
E- Rees and Wallace found that people who had majority of friends who drank alcohol were able to resist pressure too drink if they had another friend who resisted
L- Shows how social support decreases social influence
P- Research support from Allen and Levine
E- Did Asch type study and found that conformity decreased when there was a dissenter in the group as it enables the pp to be free from pressure in the group
L-Strengthens social support as an idea
Locus of control
P- Locus of control doesn’t help resist all types of social influence
E- Spector found that internals were more likely to resist normative social influence but were influenced just as much when facing informational social influence
L- Internality only helps resist the pressure to gain approval
P- Supportive research for Locus of control
E- Holland repeated milgrams study and measured internals vs externals and found 37% internals didn’t continue to end compared too 23% externals
L- Shows internality makes less likely to obey
Research into minority influence
P- Muscovici study had low ecological validity
E-The task of identifying colours of slides would not occur in everyday life so cannot be generalised because people may act differently in real life situations
L-Reduces external validity
P- Moscovici study showed how consistency was important for minority influence which is supported by follow up research
E- Wood carried out meta analysis of 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were consistent were most influential
L-Therefore supports a finding of moscovici
Explanations for minority influence
P- Research support for role of flexibility
E-Nemeth and Brilmayer set up simulated jury for paying compensation for o someone involved in an accident and tested confederates with different levels of flexibility
E- An inflexible confederate had no influence and a compromising confederate did exert influence but one who compromised too early did not
L- Shows support for flexibility
P- Majority creates greater message processing over minority
E- Mackie argued this as we believe that the majority shares similar beliefs to us so if it expresses a different view we listen . In comparison minority influence is different so people don’t waste time on it
L- Majority may have bigger influence
Explanations for social change
P-Social change only occurs gradually through minority influence making it a limited role
E- There is Tendency for humans to conform to majority so people are more likely to maintain the status quo then engage in social change
L- therefore suggesting minority influence creates the potential for change rather than actual change
P- Weakness of minority influence social change is the that sometimes they are perceived as deviant and which limits there influence
E- means that majority want to avoid any relation to the minority as they don’t want to be considered deviant
L- means minorities face double the challenge of influencing people while also avoiding being portrayed as deviant
P- Social norms intervention majority approach doesn’t always work
E- Dejong provided students with normative info that corrected perceptions of or drinking norms but students did not report lower alcohol consumptions
L- Research against social norms campaigns
Nature of memory
P- Capacity of STM may be even more limited
E- Millers findings have been disputed by Cowan who found that the STM is probably limited to 4 chunks instead of 7
L- Reduces credibility of the research
P-The size of the chunk matters as to whether it can be remembered
E-Simon found that people have a smaller memory span for larger chunks like multi syllable words which take longer to rehearse
L- Supports view that STM has limited capacity
P- Testing STM takes place in artificial situations
E- Research revolves around remembering meaningless syllables which doesn’t reflect real life memory which has meaning
L- Reduces credibility however we we do remember some meaningless material like postcodes.
Multi store model
P- Supporting evidence from studies that show evidence of multiple stores
E- Beardsley found that the prefrontal cortex is active during STM tasks but not during LTM tasks. Additionally Squire found the opposite with the activity of the hippocampus
L- Supports idea of separate stores
P- Case study support
E- HM study who had brain damage with both hippocampi removed. After this he could not form new LTMs but could remember stuff pre surgery
L- Supports MSM
P- MSM is overly simplistic
E- Working memory model suggests STM is divided into multiple stores. Research also found different types of long term memory
L- MSM doesn’t take into account detail of the stores
Working memory model
P- Strength is that it provides explanation for dual task performance
E- Baddley and Hitch found that pps were slower in dual task that involved 2 seperate stores in comparison to task that just involved one.
L- Shows how WMM exists and how it explains dual task performance.
P- Supportive evidence from brain patients
E- KF had much greater auditory forgetting than visual forgetting. Due to his brain damage being restricted to the phonological loop only.
L- Supports ideas of separate short term stores.
P- Central executive may be too vague.
E- Study of EVR who had brain tumour removed. Found he performed well on some tests requiring reasoning but had more decision making skills despite the CE being responsible for both of these.
L- Suggest CE is more complex with multiple stores.
Types of long term memory
P- Support from case study
E- HM could still form procedural memories but not episodic. Makes sense as he had hippocampi removed which the part of the brain associated with episodic memories.
L- Supports distinction between types.
P- May be 4th type of LTM
E- Research found that implicit memories (automatic memories) also had influence on human response in a process called priming. Priming is controlled by seperate brain system
L- Suggest original theory is too simplistic
P- Has low population validity
E- because large body of evidence comes from case studies like HM which may not be representative of whole population as each indviual person is different and may be effected in various ways.
L- Reduces power of the research.
Interference explanation of forgetting
P- P- Issue with interference research being artificial
E- most studies are lab based and use artificial lists of words which could affect pps motivation to remember therefore making interference appear more influential.
Suggets research lacks ecological validity.
P- Interference only explains some instances of forgetting
E- Special conditions are required as the two memories must be quite similar therefore making inteference less common so less important
L- Means other explanations are needed
P- Real world application in advertising
E- founf that recall of advertisements was impaired when pps were exposed to 2 competing brands in same week so ad companies could learn too run multiple of the same ad on 1 day
L- Shows interference can be used effectively.
Retrieval failure
P- Research support for importance of cues
E- Gallagher tested whether including info from class in test items enhanced student performance. Found that students with cues performed significantly better
L- Shows effectiveness
P- Retreival cues dont always work.
E- in research things being remembered are just word lists but in real life things that must be memorised are much more complex whihc arent easily triggered by cues.
L- Retrieval cues cant explain all forgetting
P- Retreival is more important than interference
E- Tulving asked pps to learn word lists and the effects of interfernce were non existentent if category names were included as cues . PPs remembered 70 percent of words no matter how many they were given
L- Retreival cues overcome interference
Misleading information
P- Research support for misleading info
E- Braun used wrong ads for disney land containing bugs bunny. After being at disney land pps believd they had met bugs despite him not being there.
L- Shows misleading info power
P- Response bias may be responsible for Loftus findings
E- Study was later replicated which found that pps werent affected by misleading info if questions were presented in same order as original info which loftus didnt do.
L- Shows affect of question order
P- Loftus research lacks ecological validity.
E- Lab experiment doesnt represent real life crimes because pp may not take questions seriously.
L- Misleading info may have less influence in real life
Anxiety
P-Weapon focus affect caused by suprise not anxiety
E- Pickel study where someone would enter a salon carrying 1 of 4 items from scissors to chicken. Identification was less accurate for chicken due to suprise no threat.
L- Anxiety doesnt always cause weapon focus affect.
P- Some studies show real life crimes dont support weapon focus effect.
E- Found that victims of violent crimes had better recall compared to victims of non violent crimes
L- Disputes weapon focus reducing recall.
P- Alternating views can be explained
E- Yerkes dodson effect claims that to a certain point more anciety means more recall but after a certain point increasing anxiety leads to less recall.
L- explains the contrasting views.
Cognitive interview
P- Supporting research
E- Meta analysis by Kohnken found a 34 percent increase in correct info generated when using CI. Milne and Bull found recall was higher with just report everything and mental reinstatement.
L- CI is effective
P- CI needs large amount of time and training.
E- reported that it takes more time than police have and training takes too long. Police prefer too limit an interviews to save time and resources.
L- So CI is not widespread.
P- CI provides quanitiy but not always quality.
E- Kohnken found an increase in right and wrong information
L- Means CI results need to be treated with caution.
Role of the father
P- Support for father as playmate
E-Geiger found that fathers play interactions were more exciting compared to mothers. But mothers were more nurturing
L- Suggests role of fathers playmate and confirms mother is nurturing parent
P- Research supporting fact men aren’t biologically equipped
E- Hrdy round that fathers were less able to detect levels of infant distress in comparison to mothers due to lack of oestrogen
L- Further evidence fathers can’t be sensitive parent however could be seen as too deterministic as some fathers are able to form attachments
P- Research shows that fathers can form attachments of in intimate marriages
E- Belsky found that men who reported high marital intimacy also developed secure infant attachment and vice versa
L- Shows men can form secure infant attachments
Caregiver infant interactions
P- problems with testing infant behaviour
E- Infants mouths tend to be in constant motion so it if difficult to distinguish between general activity and actual imitated behaviours
L- therefore questions whether findings were accurate
H- Meltzoff and Moore did use observer with no knowledge of behaviour being imitated to make the judgements fair
P- Intentionality of infant behaviour is supported
E- DeYong observed infants interacting with objects which simulated tongue and mouth movements but the infants made little response
L- Suggets imitation of caregiver is deliberate
P- Individuals differences in interactional synchronicity
E- Isabella round that more strongly attached pairs showed greater synchrony
L- It is not same for all
Stages of attachment
P- Data may not be reliable due to way it was gathered
E- Schaffer info based on mother reports of infant behaviour which means they won’t be the same as some mothers will be less sensitive to infant protests
L- Creates systematic bias
P- Sample of study was bias based on time and place
E- Drawn from working class families so may not apply to other classes. Also done in 1960s and parental care has changed a lot since then
L- Results would be different today
P- Cultural variations in attachment process
E- Sagi found that infants raised in individualistic cultures were twice as close to mothers in comparison to collectivist cultures where multiple attachments were more common.
L- Stages of attachment only apply too individualistic cultures
Animal studies
P- Support from imprinting through other bird studies
E- Guiton found that chickens fed by rubber gloves became imprinted on the gloves showing how the idea that animals imprint on any living object
L- Supports Lorenz
P- Confounding variables in Harlows study
E- The heads between the two fake mothers were different as the cloth monkey had a more pleasing head which could have affected findings
L- Lacks internal validity
P- Harlows monkey study has been generalised to humans in studies
E- Schaffer and Emerson stages of attachment work found hoe important sensitive responding was in development of attachment.
L- Shows Harlows findings also work for humans
