AQA A Level Psychology: Introductory Topics — Revision Notes

Condensed for the final weeks. For the full explanation, use the Introductory Topics study guide.

Social influence

Types of conformity: compliance (public only) and internalisation (public and private, and it lasts). (Identification was dropped from this bullet in specification version 1.4, first teaching September 2025 — background only.)

Two explanations:

• Normative social influence — the need to be liked; produces compliance.
• Informational social influence — the need to be right; produces internalisation.

The distinction predicts durability: NSI changes behaviour only while the group is watching; ISI changes belief, so the change persists.

Asch — 36.8% conformity to an obviously wrong line judgement. Conformity falls with a dissenting ally, rises with task difficulty (ISI), and is affected by group size up to about three, after which extra members add little.

Background, not specification content since version 1.4: Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment — conformity to social roles. Heavily criticised for demand characteristics, lack of realism, and serious ethical problems, and for Zimbardo’s own dual role as superintendent and researcher.

Milgram — 65% obedience to 450 V. Situational variables: proximity (obedience falls when the learner is in the same room), location (falls in a run-down office), and uniform (falls when the experimenter is an ordinary member of the public).

Agentic state — acting as an instrument of an authority figure rather than as an autonomous agent. Legitimacy of authority explains why the setting matters.

The authoritarian personality (Adorno) is the dispositional explanation, measured by the F-scale. Its weakness is that it cannot explain whole populations obeying — a dispositional account would require an implausibly uniform personality across millions of people, which is why situational explanations dominate.

Resistance: social support and an internal locus of control.

Memory

Multi-store model: sensory register (very brief) → attention → STM (5–9 items, 18–30 s, acoustic coding) → rehearsal → LTM (unlimited, semantic coding).

Working memory model (Baddeley and Hitch): central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer. Its strength over the MSM is that it explains dual-task performance — two tasks using different slave systems can be done simultaneously, two using the same one cannot.

Background, not specification content since version 1.4: LTM types — episodic (events, conscious), semantic (facts, conscious), procedural (skills, unconscious).

Explanations for forgetting: interference (proactive: old disrupts new; retroactive: new disrupts old) and retrieval failure (encoding specificity — context- and state-dependent cues).

Eyewitness testimony:

• Misleading information — Loftus and Palmer’s leading questions (“smashed” vs “hit” changed speed estimates and produced false memories of broken glass); post-event discussion causes memory conformity.
• Anxiety — the weapon focus effect narrows attention, but the Yerkes-Dodson inverted U means moderate arousal can improve recall. That contradiction is the evaluation.
• Cognitive interview — report everything, reinstate context, reverse the order, change perspective. It improves the quantity of correct information without proportionally increasing errors.

Attachment

Background, not specification content since version 1.4: caregiver-infant interactions (reciprocity and interactional synchrony) and Schaffer’s stages (asocial, indiscriminate, specific, multiple).

Animal studies: Lorenz (imprinting) and Harlow (contact comfort).

Explanations: learning theory (“cupboard love”) versus Bowlby’s monotropic theory — social releasers, a critical period of about 2.5 years, and the internal working model that shapes later relationships.

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation: secure (B), insecure-avoidant (A), insecure-resistant (C).

Cultural variations (van IJzendoorn): more insecure-avoidant in Germany, more insecure-resistant in Japan. This is the standard imposed etic critique — the measure was developed in the US and applied as though universal, so behaviour reflecting different child-rearing values is misclassified as insecure.

Maternal deprivation (Bowlby’s 44 thieves) and institutionalisation (the English and Romanian Adoptees project, led by Rutter, showing disinhibited attachment and the importance of age at adoption).

Clinical psychology and mental health

Definitions in the field of mental health: statistical infrequency, deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, deviation from ideal mental health. Each fails alone — social norms vary by culture and era, and statistical infrequency would classify a very high IQ as abnormal.

Disorder	Behavioural	Emotional	Cognitive
Phobia	Avoidance, panic	Anxiety, fear	Irrational beliefs, selective attention
Depression	Reduced activity, disrupted sleep	Low mood, anger	Negative schemas, absolutist thinking
OCD	Compulsions, avoidance	Anxiety, guilt	Obsessions, insight into irrationality

Approaches to treatment:

• Behavioural (phobias) — two-process model: classical conditioning acquires the phobia, operant conditioning maintains it through negative reinforcement of avoidance. Treated by systematic desensitisation or flooding.
• Cognitive (depression) — Beck’s negative triad and Ellis’s ABC model, treated with CBT.
• Biological (OCD) — genetic and neural explanations, treated with SSRIs.

Note the two-process model’s structure explains the treatment: because avoidance is negatively reinforced, exposure without avoidance is what breaks the cycle.

Exam traps

• Confusing NSI with ISI.
• Confusing proactive with retroactive interference.
• Describing a study when the question says evaluate.
• Giving the dispositional explanation of obedience without its population-level weakness.
• Claiming anxiety always worsens EWT — the inverted U says otherwise.
• Using a single definition in the field of mental health without its limitation.

Self-test

1. Distinguish NSI from ISI, and say which produces lasting change.
2. What does the working memory model explain that the multi-store model cannot?
3. Why is the authoritarian personality an inadequate explanation of obedience?
4. Why is the Strange Situation criticised as an imposed etic?
5. Explain the two-process model and how it justifies the treatment.

Answers: 1. NSI is the need to be liked and produces compliance, which lasts only while the group is present; ISI is the need to be right and produces internalisation, which persists. 2. Dual-task performance — two tasks using different slave systems can be performed simultaneously, which a single unitary STM cannot account for. 3. It cannot explain whole populations obeying, since that would require an implausibly uniform personality across millions of people. 4. It was developed within American child-rearing norms and applied to other cultures as universal, so behaviours reflecting different values are misclassified as insecure attachment. 5. Classical conditioning acquires the phobia and operant conditioning maintains it, because avoidance is negatively reinforced by anxiety reduction; exposure without avoidance therefore breaks the maintaining cycle.