OxfordAQA IGCSE Psychology: Conformity and Obedience — 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.

These questions cover conformity and obedience only — the first two of the four strands within 3.2.2 Social Influence. Bystander intervention and prosocial/antisocial crowd behaviour are covered by a separate resource.

Related: Conformity and Obedience study guide, Conformity and Obedience revision notes

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Section A

1. Define conformity and obedience, stating the key difference between them. [3]

2. Name the researcher whose study is the reference point for: (a) conformity (b) obedience. [2]

Section B

3. Explain one social factor and one dispositional factor affecting conformity to majority influence. [4]

4. Explain how task difficulty affects conformity, and explain how anonymity affects conformity. [4]

5. Describe the basic procedure Milgram used to investigate obedience, and state one key finding. [6]

6. Explain the agentic state, and name two of the other three elements of Milgram’s Agency theory. [4]

Section C

7. Compare Agency theory and the Authoritarian Personality as explanations of obedience, referring to the type of explanation each represents. [6]

8. A student says: “A person is more likely to obey a police officer than to obey an obviously unqualified stranger giving the same order.” Using the concept of legitimate authority, explain why. [3]

9. Define precisely: (a) normative social influence (b) legitimate authority. [4]

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Answers

1. Conformity is a change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure, without a direct order to do so [1] [1]. Obedience is a change in behaviour in direct response to a command from a perceived authority figure [1]. The key difference: conformity responds to group pressure, while obedience responds to a direct instruction from someone with authority.

2. (a) Asch [1]. (b) Milgram [1].

3. Social factor: group size — conformity tends to increase as the size of the majority grows, up to a point, because a larger unanimous group creates stronger normative pressure to agree [1] [1]. Dispositional factor: personality — individuals with lower self-esteem or a higher need for social approval are more likely to conform, because they are more sensitive to the social consequences of disagreeing with the majority [1] [1].

4. Task difficulty: ambiguous or difficult tasks make individuals less confident in their own judgement [1], increasing reliance on the group’s answer and so increasing conformity [1]. Anonymity: being anonymous reduces conformity [1], because being identifiable increases the social pressure to publicly agree with the majority even when privately disagreeing, a pressure that anonymity removes [1].

5. Participants believed they were administering increasingly severe electric shocks to another “participant” (a confederate) whenever that person answered a learning task incorrectly, under instruction from an experimenter who used a standard set of verbal prods to encourage continuation [1] [1] [1]. In fact no real shocks were given, and the “participant” receiving them was not really being harmed [1]. Key finding: a majority of participants (around 65%) obeyed to the maximum voltage level, despite showing visible signs of distress, demonstrating far higher rates of obedience to a legitimate authority figure than had been predicted beforehand [1] [1].

6. The agentic state is the psychological state in which a person sees themselves as an instrument carrying out another person’s wishes, and so no longer feels personally responsible for their actions [1] [1]. Any two of the other three elements: authority — obedience depends on the perceived legitimacy of the person giving the order [1]; culture — obedience levels can vary between cultural contexts [1]; proximity — obedience falls as the physical distance between the person and the authority figure increases, but the opposite holds for the victim: obedience rises as the physical or psychological distance between the person and the victim (or the consequences of their actions) increases, so greater proximity to the victim reduces obedience [1].

7. Agency theory is a social/situational explanation: it locates the cause of obedience in features of the situation — the agentic state, and factors such as authority, culture and proximity — rather than in the individual [1] [1]. The Authoritarian Personality is a dispositional explanation: it locates the cause within the individual’s own personality traits, often linked to a strict upbringing [1] [1]. A strong answer notes that Agency theory can explain why most people in the same situation obey similarly, since it points to features of the situation rather than personality, while a purely dispositional account struggles to explain uniform obedience across a large population with presumably varied personalities [2].

8. A police officer is a legitimate authority — a figure whose right to give instructions is socially accepted because of their recognised position [1]. An unqualified stranger has no such recognised legitimacy, so their instruction carries none of the same social weight [1]. Because legitimate authority increases obedience, a person is more likely to comply with the identical instruction when it comes from the officer than from the stranger, even though the instruction itself is unchanged [1].

9. (a) Normative social influence — conforming in order to be liked or accepted by a group, rather than because the group is believed to be correct [1] [2]. (b) Legitimate authority — an authority figure whose right to give instructions is accepted because of their recognised social position (such as a scientist, teacher or police officer), which increases obedience compared to an authority figure without recognised legitimacy [1].

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Where marks are usually lost

• Treating conformity and obedience as the same process instead of distinguishing group pressure from a direct order.
• Naming Asch or Milgram without being able to describe what their research actually involved.
• Giving a social factor and a dispositional factor without stating which is which.
• Confusing Agency theory (situational) with the Authoritarian Personality (dispositional) when asked to compare explanation types.
• Giving a vague paraphrase instead of a precise definition for a named term such as “agentic state” or “legitimate authority.”
• Listing a factor affecting conformity or obedience without explaining the mechanism behind its effect.

Approaching Conformity and Obedience questions

Most questions on this content reward a consistent structure: name the factor or theory, state whether it is social/situational or dispositional, then explain the mechanism by which it produces its effect — rather than simply describing what the factor or theory is. Where a question names a specific behaviour or scenario, identify first whether it is testing conformity or obedience before answering, since the two are frequently confused despite the specification treating them as distinct. Pay close attention to command words: “identify” wants a named factor or study with no elaboration, “explain” wants the mechanism behind it, and “describe the procedure of” wants the actual method a named study used rather than its findings — answering at the wrong depth for the command word given is one of the most avoidable ways to lose marks on this content.