OxfordAQA International A-level Psychology (9685): 3.4.3 Applied psychology: work and the individual – Revision Notes

These notes condense the work and the individual study guide, which has the full explanations and worked paragraphs.

They cover section 3.4.3 Applied psychology: work and the individual in the OxfordAQA International AS and A-level Psychology (9685) specification, Version 3.1 (International A-level exams May/June 2020 onwards). The specification places it in Section C of Unit 4: Approaches and application, a 1 hour 30 minute written exam worth 90 marks and 30% of the International A-level, with 30 marks for this section. Test yourself afterwards with the work and the individual practice questions, and track progress on the 9685 checklist and 9685 course hub.

What the specification lists

The four bullets of 3.4.3 are your checklist:

1. Group processes and individuals: social facilitation, social loafing; group polarisation, risky shift, groupthink; deindividuation; social identity theory, in-group favouritism and out-group bias.
2. Communication at work: eye contact, facial expression, personal space; cultural universals in facial expression; cultural differences in personal space; e-mail: lack of non-verbal cues, egocentrism, feedback.
3. Job motivation and satisfaction: need theory, expectancy theory, goal-setting theory; job characteristics and well-being (Warr).
4. Workplace stress: effects of workload and control; the job demands-resources (J D-R) model.

Key terms

Term	Definition
Social facilitation	Change in performance caused by the presence of others, as audience or co-actors
Dominant response	The best-learned response, made more likely by arousal (Zajonc)
Evaluation apprehension	Arousal from expecting to be judged by others (Cottrell)
Social loafing	Reduced individual effort when contributions are pooled
Collective effort model	People work hard in groups only if they expect their effort to matter for a valued outcome
Risky shift	Group decision riskier than the average of members’ private decisions
Group polarisation	Discussion moves a group further in the direction it already leaned
Groupthink	Desire for agreement in a cohesive group overrides realistic appraisal
Mindguard	Member who shields the group from information that challenges its view
Deindividuation	Reduced self-awareness and accountability, often in crowds or under anonymity
Social identity	The part of self-concept that comes from group membership
In-group favouritism	Treating members of your own group better
Out-group bias	Negative judgement or treatment of members of other groups
Display rules	Learned cultural norms about who may show which emotion, to whom and when
Personal space	The area around a person that others should not enter uninvited
Egocentrism (e-mail)	Difficulty detaching from your own perspective when judging how a reader will interpret you
Expectancy / instrumentality / valence	Effort leads to performance / performance leads to outcome / value of outcome
Additional decrement (AD)	Warr: job feature that helps up to a point, then harms in excess
Constant effect (CE)	Warr: job feature that helps, with extra adding little but doing no harm
Decision latitude	Control over how and when work is done
Job demands	Aspects of work that need sustained physical or psychological effort
Job resources	Aspects of work that help achieve goals, reduce demands or support growth

Theories and studies at a glance

Who	What	Finding	One evaluation point
Triplett (1898)	Cyclists; children winding string	Faster with competitors	Early study; showed the effect but not why
Zajonc (1965)	Drive theory	Arousal boosts dominant response	Explains both better and worse performance
Michaels et al. (1982)	Pool players watched	Skilled better, weak worse	Real setting, supports Zajonc
Ringelmann (1913); Ingham et al. (1974)	Rope pulling; pseudo-groups	Less effort in groups, even when others only pretend	Shows loss is motivational
Latané, Williams and Harkins (1979)	Shouting and clapping	Effort per person fell in groups	Lab tasks lack mundane realism
Karau and Williams (1993)	Meta-analysis	Collective effort model	Predicts practical remedies
Earley (1989)	US and China	Collectivists loafed less	Loafing not universal
Stoner (1961); Wallach, Kogan and Bem (1962)	Choice dilemmas	Groups chose riskier options	Later groups also shifted cautious
Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969)	Attitudes after discussion	Named group polarisation	Lab attitudes, low stakes
Burnstein and Vinokur (1977)	Polarisation mechanism	Persuasive arguments explain most of it	Social comparison is the competing account
Janis (1972, 1982)	Policy fiascos	Eight symptoms of groupthink	Retrospective cases, hindsight bias
Diener et al. (1976)	Halloween children	Anonymous groups took more	Natural setting, high ecological validity
Johnson and Downing (1979)	Robes vs nurse uniforms	Klan-style robes more shocks, nurse fewer	Supports SIDE: cues and norms matter
Tajfel (1970); Tajfel et al. (1971)	Minimal groups (Klee/Kandinsky)	In-group favouritism with trivial groups	Artificial task
Tajfel and Turner (1979)	Social identity theory	Categorise, identify, compare	Weak on when bias becomes hostility
Kendon (1967)	Gaze in conversation	Look away at start, back at end of turn	Signals turn-taking
Argyle and Dean (1965)	Eye contact and distance	Balance to keep intimacy comfortable	Explains compensation at close range
Ekman and Friesen (1971)	Fore of Papua New Guinea	Matched faces to emotion stories	Supports universals
Jack et al. (2012)	30 Western and Eastern participants	Easterners did not use distinct movements for six emotions	Challenges universality
Hall (1966)	Proxemics	Four zones of distance	Descriptive; distances are approximate
Sorokowska et al. (2017)	42 countries	Preferred stranger distance varied widely	Self-report survey
Kruger et al. (2005)	Five e-mail experiments	People overestimate conveying tone	Controlled, causal; egocentrism
Maslow (1943)	Hierarchy of needs	Lower needs before higher	Wahba and Bridwell (1976): little support for ranking
McClelland (1961)	Achievement, affiliation, power	High nAch prefers moderate difficulty	Measured by TAT stories, open to interpretation
Vroom (1964)	Expectancy theory	MF = E x I x V	Assumes rational calculation
Locke (1968); Locke and Latham (1990)	Goal-setting	Specific, hard goals raise performance	Ordóñez et al. (2009): narrow goals can backfire
Warr (1987)	Vitamin model	AD and CE features	Partial support (Borkowska and Czerw, 2022)
Karasek (1979)	Demand-control model	High demand plus low control most stressful	Narrow set of predictors
Bosma et al. (1997); Marmot et al. (1997)	Whitehall II civil servants	Low control predicted heart disease; demands did not	Large, longitudinal; one country, office work
Demerouti et al. (2001)	J D-R model	Health-impairment and motivational processes	Flexible but hard to falsify
Bakker, Demerouti and Euwema (2005)	1,012 higher education staff	Resources buffered demands for exhaustion and cynicism	Not for professional efficacy

Must-know distinctions

• Audience vs co-action. Facilitation can come from watchers or from people doing the same task beside you.
• Facilitation vs loafing. Facilitation is about others being present while your own performance is visible. Loafing is about pooled output where yours is hidden.
• Risky shift vs group polarisation. Risky shift is a shift towards risk. Polarisation is a shift towards whichever pole the group already favoured.
• Polarisation vs groupthink. Polarisation is a shift in average position. Groupthink is a faulty decision process with symptoms, antecedents and remedies.
• Classic deindividuation vs SIDE. Classic view: anonymity removes restraint. SIDE: anonymity strengthens group identity, so people follow the group’s norms.
• Universal expressions vs display rules. Expressions of basic emotions may be universal; when and how they are shown is cultural. This is a nature-nurture question, covered in the issues and debates guide.
• Need theory vs process theories. Need theory says what motivates. Expectancy and goal-setting explain how motivation turns into effort.
• AD vs CE. AD features (control, variety, demands) harm in excess. CE features (pay, security, equity) do not.
• Demand-control vs J D-R. Demand-control uses two variables. J D-R allows any demand and any resource, and adds a motivational process.

Mini essay plan

“Discuss the effects of group processes on decision-making at work.” [16 marks]

1. Define group polarisation, risky shift and groupthink in a sentence each (AO1).
2. Polarisation: Moscovici and Zavalloni; two explanations, social comparison and persuasive arguments; Burnstein and Vinokur favour arguments. Apply to a like-minded management team (AO2).
3. Evaluate: strong lab support, but low-stakes attitudes; real teams also face cost and accountability (AO3).
4. Groupthink: Janis, symptoms, antecedents (cohesion, directive leader, stress) and remedies (AO1).
5. Evaluate: retrospective case studies, hindsight bias, mixed empirical tests; but cheap, practical remedies such as a devil’s advocate (AO3).
6. Link: social identity theory explains why cohesive groups resist outsiders’ views (synoptic link to conformity from Unit 1).
7. Judgement: group processes can push decisions to extremes, but structure (impartial leader, outside input) reduces the risk.

Quick self-test

1. What does Zajonc’s drive theory predict for a hard task done in front of an audience?
2. Why did Ingham et al. use pseudo-groups?
3. State the collective effort model in one sentence.
4. How does group polarisation differ from risky shift?
5. Name three symptoms of groupthink.
6. What did Johnson and Downing (1979) show about deindividuation?
7. Name the three processes in social identity theory.
8. What do display rules explain?
9. Give two reasons e-mail is misread more often than speech.
10. In expectancy theory, why can a large bonus fail to motivate?
11. Give one AD and one CE feature from Warr’s model.
12. What did Bosma et al. (1997) find about job demands?

Answers

1. Worse performance, because arousal makes the dominant response likely and on a hard task it is often wrong.
2. To remove coordination loss, so any drop in effort had to be motivational.
3. People work hard in a group only if they expect their effort to matter for an outcome they value.
4. Risky shift is movement towards risk only; polarisation is movement in whatever direction the group already leaned.
5. Any three: illusion of invulnerability, belief in the group’s morality, rationalising warnings, stereotyping opponents, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, direct pressure on dissenters, mindguards.
6. Cues matter: robes like the Ku Klux Klan’s increased shocks, nurse uniforms reduced them.
7. Social categorisation, social identification, social comparison.
8. Why cultures differ in when and to whom emotions are shown, even if the expressions themselves are universal.
9. Lack of non-verbal cues; egocentrism of the writer; lack of instant feedback (any two).
10. If expectancy or instrumentality is near zero, the product is near zero however high the valence.
11. AD: personal control, skill use, variety, demands and goals, clarity, social contact. CE: pay, physical security, valued social position, supportive supervision, career outlook, equity.
12. Job demands were not related to coronary heart disease risk; low job control was.

Where marks are usually lost

• Defining social facilitation as “working better with others” and missing the hard-task prediction.
• Describing Ringelmann without Ingham et al., so the motivational explanation is never shown.
• Using “risky shift” for a group that became more cautious.
• Listing groupthink symptoms with no application to the scenario’s people and events.
• Treating deindividuation as always antisocial.
• Claiming all facial expressions are universal and ignoring Jack et al. (2012).
• Writing “e-mail lacks body language” without naming egocentrism or feedback, which the specification lists.
• Adding expectancy, instrumentality and valence instead of multiplying them.
• Saying Whitehall II shows high workload causes heart disease, when the finding was about control.
• Describing the J D-R model with only demands, leaving out resources and the motivational process.

For whole-course exam technique, see the 9685 exam preparation guide.

Official syllabus

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level Psychology (9685) specification, Version 3.1 (International A-level exams May/June 2020 onwards). Section 3.4.3 Applied psychology: Work and the individual; assessed in Unit 4: Approaches and application, Section C.