GCSE Psychology: Social Context and Behaviour — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Social Context and Behaviour revision notes

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Section A

1. State the two types of factor that psychologists use to explain conformity to majority influence, and give one example of each. [4]

2. Distinguish between conformity and obedience, naming the study associated with each. [4]

Section B

3. Explain two factors that increase the likelihood of a bystander intervening in an emergency, referring to Piliavin’s subway study in your answer. [6]

4. A student claims: “Thinking depends on language.”

(a) Name the theory that makes this claim. [1] (b) Explain how this position differs from Piaget’s view of the relationship between language and thought. [3] (c) Give one piece of cross-cultural evidence used to support this area of debate. [2]

5. Explain the difference between social loafing and deindividuation as explanations of behaviour in crowds. [6]

6. Outline Darwin’s evolutionary explanation of non-verbal communication, and give one piece of evidence that some non-verbal behaviour is instead learned. [4]

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Section C

7. A student is asked to explain the body’s response to a stressful situation using named psychological theory.

(a) Name the branch of the nervous system primarily responsible for the fight-or-flight response. [1] (b) Explain the James-Lange theory of emotion in relation to this scenario. [3] (c) Describe the role of the synapse in transmitting a nerve impulse from one neuron to the next. [3]

8. Compare the biological and psychological explanations of depression, referring to their associated treatments. [6]

9. (a) State four characteristics of the ICD dependence syndrome used to diagnose addiction. [4]

(b) Explain how the biological and psychological explanations of addiction differ, using named evidence for each. [4]

(c) Explain why aversion therapy and self-management programmes are considered complementary rather than competing interventions for addiction. [2]

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Answers

1. Social factors — features of the situation, such as group size or task difficulty, e.g. conformity increases as the size of the majority grows, up to a point [1] [1]. Dispositional factors — features of the individual, such as personality or expertise, e.g. a person with low self-esteem is more likely to conform [1] [1].

2. Conformity is changing behaviour in response to real or imagined group pressure, studied by Asch using a line-judgement task [1] [1]. Obedience is changing behaviour in response to a direct order from an authority figure, studied by Milgram, whose findings support his Agency Theory [1] [1].

3. Any two, 3 marks each: social factors — the presence of other bystanders reduces the likelihood of any one person helping (diffusion of responsibility), and the cost of helping (physical risk, embarrassment) also reduces intervention [1] [1] [1]. Dispositional factors — similarity to the victim increases helping, and relevant expertise (such as first-aid training) increases the likelihood and speed of intervention [1] [1] [1]. Piliavin’s subway field study found bystanders helped an apparently ill victim more often and more quickly than one who appeared drunk, supporting the role of perceived cost and similarity [1].

4. (a) The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [1]. (b) Piaget argues language depends on thought — thought develops first, and language is simply the label attached to concepts already understood [1] [1]. Sapir-Whorf argues the reverse: thinking depends on language, so the vocabulary a language provides shapes and constrains what its speakers can think about [1]. (c) Any one: cross-cultural studies showing variation in colour recognition or recall between speakers of languages with different numbers of colour terms, used as evidence that language may influence perception and memory [2].

5. Social loafing is the tendency to exert less individual effort on a task when part of a group than when working alone, because individual contribution feels less identifiable and less important [1] [1] [1]. Deindividuation is the loss of personal identity and self-restraint that can occur in a crowd, often linked to anonymity, and can lead to behaviour — including antisocial behaviour — that an individual would not show alone [1] [1] [1]. The key distinction: social loafing explains reduced effort, while deindividuation explains reduced self-control and accountability; both are social, not dispositional, explanations of crowd behaviour.

6. Darwin’s evolutionary account argues that non-verbal signals such as facial expressions are innate and universal, having evolved because they carried survival value — for example, warning others of danger without needing language [1] [1]. Evidence that non-verbal behaviour can instead be learned: Yuki’s cross-cultural study of emoticon use found that emoticon styles differ systematically between cultures (for example, emphasis on the eyes versus the mouth to convey emotion), suggesting non-verbal-style communication is shaped by cultural learning rather than being universal [2].

7. (a) The autonomic nervous system [1]. (b) The James-Lange theory proposes that the physiological (bodily) response — such as a raised heart rate — occurs first, and the subjective experience of an emotion such as fear is the brain’s interpretation of that bodily arousal, rather than the emotion causing the arousal [1] [1]. Applied to the scenario, the student’s body reacts physically to the stressor before they consciously register feeling afraid, and it is that physical reaction which produces the feeling [1]. (c) The synapse is the gap between two neurons [1]. When an electrical impulse reaches the end of the first (presynaptic) neuron, it triggers the release of neurotransmitter chemicals, which diffuse across the gap and bind to receptors on the next (postsynaptic) neuron [1], regenerating the impulse so that it continues along the neural pathway [1].

8. Biological explanation: an imbalance of neurotransmitters, particularly serotonin, in the brain — treated with antidepressant medication [1] [1]. Psychological explanation: negative schemas and attributions learned through experience — treated with cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) [1] [1]. Comparison: the biological account treats depression as something that happens to the brain (nature), while the psychological account treats it as something learned through experience (nurture) [1]; a strong answer notes that treatments are often combined in practice, and that neither explanation alone accounts for why not everyone exposed to the same risk factor develops depression [1].

9. (a) Any four: tolerance (needing more of the substance/behaviour for the same effect); withdrawal (unpleasant symptoms when use stops); compulsion to use; difficulty controlling use [1] [1] [1] [1]. (b) The biological explanation proposes a genetic vulnerability to addiction, supported by Kaij’s twin study, which found higher concordance rates for alcoholism in identical than non-identical twins [1] [1]. The psychological explanation proposes that addiction is learned through peer influence — for example, through modelling and social reinforcement within a friendship group [1] [1]. (c) Aversion therapy targets the biological/behavioural route by pairing the addictive behaviour with an unpleasant stimulus to reduce its appeal, while self-management programmes target the psychological route by building coping strategies and social support [1]; because addiction has both biological and psychological causes, treatments addressing each route in combination are more effective than relying on either alone, so the two are complementary rather than in competition [1].

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Where marks are usually lost

• Describing conformity and obedience as the same process instead of naming their distinct studies (Asch; Milgram).
• Reversing Piaget’s and Sapir-Whorf’s positions on language and thought.
• Explaining social loafing and deindividuation as if they were the same mechanism.
• Giving the James-Lange theory in reverse — stating that the emotion causes the physical response rather than the other way round.
• Naming a study (Asch, Milgram, Piliavin, Von Frisch, Penfield, Tulving, Wiles, Kaij) without being able to say what it actually found.
• Listing the biological and psychological explanations of depression or addiction without explicitly comparing them, when the question asks for comparison.

Approaching Social Context and Behaviour questions

Every topic in Paper 2 pairs a social or biological explanation with a dispositional or psychological one, and the strongest answers make that pairing explicit rather than describing one side only. When a question gives a novel scenario — a stressful situation, an addiction case study, a crowd event — identify which named theory or study it is testing before writing, since Paper 2 rewards application to unfamiliar contexts over recalled description just as much as Paper 1 does. Where a question asks you to “compare” or “explain the difference between” two explanations, structure the answer so the comparison itself earns marks, not just two separate descriptions placed next to each other.