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

This guide covers 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 section is Section C of Unit 4: Approaches and application, the synoptic unit. The specification says Unit 4 is a 1 hour 30 minute written exam worth 90 marks and 30% of the International A-level, and that Section C carries 30 marks of compulsory questions.

Use it with the revision notes and the practice questions. The 9685 course hub and 9685 checklist show the rest of the course. Conformity and social influence from Unit 1, which feed into groupthink, are in the Unit 1 introductory topics guide.

Coverage table

Syllabus reference	What you must know or be able to do (from the document)	Where assessed
3.4.3 bullet 1	Group processes and individuals: social facilitation, social loafing; group decision-making: group polarisation, risky shift and groupthink; group membership effects: deindividuation and social identity theory, including in-group favouritism and out-group bias	Unit 4, Section C
3.4.3 bullet 2	Communication at work: non-verbal communication, including eye contact, facial expression and personal space; cultural universals in facial expression and cultural differences in personal space; effects of e-mail communication: lack of non-verbal cues, egocentrism and feedback	Unit 4, Section C
3.4.3 bullet 3	Job motivation and satisfaction: need theory, expectancy theory, goal-setting theory; job characteristics and well-being (Warr)	Unit 4, Section C
3.4.3 bullet 4	Workplace stress: the effects of workload and control; the job demands-resources (J D-R) model	Unit 4, Section C
3.4 (all Unit 4)	Demonstrate knowledge (AO1), apply it in a range of contexts (AO2), analyse, interpret and evaluate concepts, theories and studies (AO3)	Unit 4

The specification gives approximate Unit 4 weightings of AO1 9%, AO2 8% and AO3 13% of the International A-level, so evaluation carries most weight. It asks for synoptic use of the course in Sections A and B, not Section C.

Group processes: facilitation and loafing

Social facilitation is the change in performance when others are present, as an audience or as co-actors. Triplett (1898) found cyclists rode faster when racing others, and children wound string faster when competing. Zajonc’s (1965) drive theory says others raise arousal, which makes the dominant response (the best-learned one) more likely. On easy tasks it is correct, so performance improves; on hard or new tasks it is often wrong, so performance worsens. Cottrell (1972) added evaluation apprehension: arousal comes from expecting to be judged. Michaels et al. (1982) found skilled pool players did better when watched, and weak players worse.

Social loafing is reduced individual effort when contributions are pooled. Ringelmann (1913) found people pulled less hard on a rope in groups. In Ingham et al.’s (1974) pseudo-groups, the others only pretended to pull, yet effort still fell, so the loss was motivational, not poor coordination. Latané, Williams and Harkins (1979) found the same with shouting and clapping. In a meta-analysis, Karau and Williams (1993) proposed the collective effort model, which says people work hard in a group only if they expect their effort to matter for an outcome they value. Earley (1989) found that people with collectivist values, in the United States and China, loafed less.

Evaluation. Both effects replicate well, but tasks like rope pulling lack mundane realism for real jobs. The collective effort model predicts remedies: make contributions identifiable, make the task meaningful, keep teams small. Earley’s work warns against assuming loafing is universal.

Worked paragraph. “Social loafing is reduced effort when contributions are pooled (knowledge). The eight sales staff share one target, so nobody’s own figures are visible (application). The collective effort model predicts loafing because no one’s effort seems to change the result (analysis). However, Earley found collectivists loafed less, so a team with strong shared identity may not (evaluation).”

Group decision-making

Risky shift is when group decisions are riskier than the average of members’ private decisions. It began with Stoner’s (1961) master’s thesis; Wallach, Kogan and Bem (1962) studied it with choice-dilemma problems. Later studies found some groups became more cautious. Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) named the wider effect group polarisation: discussion pushes a group further in the direction it already leaned, risky or cautious.

Explanations: social comparison (people take a position slightly more extreme than the average to be seen positively) and persuasive arguments theory (discussion supplies new arguments mostly for the side already favoured), which Burnstein and Vinokur (1977) argued explains most of the effect.

Groupthink (Janis, 1972; revised 1982) is when a cohesive group’s desire for agreement overrides realistic appraisal. Janis used case studies such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and Pearl Harbor. He listed eight symptoms in three types: overestimating the group (illusion of invulnerability, belief in the group’s morality); closed-mindedness (rationalising warnings, stereotyping opponents); and pressure to conform (self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, direct pressure on dissenters, self-appointed mindguards). Antecedents: high cohesion, structural faults such as insulation or a directive leader, and stress. Remedies: an impartial leader, a devil’s advocate and outside experts.

Evaluation. Polarisation is well supported in lab studies. Groupthink rests mainly on retrospective case studies chosen because they went wrong, so it risks hindsight bias, and tests of whether cohesion and leadership style predict it give mixed support. Its remedies are cheap, though.

Worked paragraph. “Groupthink is a drive for agreement that overrides realistic appraisal (knowledge). The board is close-knit, the chair announced her view first and the one doubter stayed silent, which is self-censorship (application). A directive leader in a cohesive group is a key antecedent (analysis). But Janis’s evidence is retrospective case studies, so the theory is better at explaining failures than predicting them (evaluation).”

Group membership: deindividuation and social identity

Deindividuation is reduced self-awareness and accountability, often in crowds or under anonymity. Festinger, Pepitone and Newcomb (1952) introduced the term. Diener et al. (1976) found Halloween trick-or-treaters who were anonymous and in groups took extra sweets more often than named children alone. Johnson and Downing (1979) found participants in Ku Klux Klan-style robes gave more shocks and those dressed as nurses fewer, so anonymity does not simply release aggression. The SIDE model (Reicher, Spears and colleagues) argues that anonymity makes group identity more salient, so people follow the group’s norms, good or bad.

Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) says part of our self-concept comes from group membership. Its processes are social categorisation, social identification (adopting the group’s identity) and social comparison (favourable comparison to raise self-esteem). This produces in-group favouritism and out-group bias. In minimal group studies, Tajfel (1970) and Tajfel et al. (1971) divided participants on trivial grounds, such as preferring paintings by Klee or Kandinsky. Participants favoured their own group, often maximising the difference between groups rather than total gain.

Evaluation. Minimal group findings replicate well, but the tasks are artificial; real departments have history and status. The theory is weaker at predicting when favouritism becomes hostility.

Worked paragraph. “Social identity theory says self-esteem partly comes from group membership (knowledge). After the merger, staff call themselves ‘old Dalton’ and give their own side the better projects, which is in-group favouritism (application). Comparing favourably with the other side raises their self-esteem (analysis). Minimal group studies support this, though their trivial groups lack the history of real firms (evaluation).”

Communication at work

Non-verbal communication (NVC) is meaning sent without words.

• Eye contact. Kendon (1967) found speakers tend to look away as they start and back at the listener near the end, signalling a turn change. Argyle and Dean (1965) proposed that eye contact and distance balance each other to keep intimacy comfortable. In some cultures, avoiding a senior person’s eyes shows respect.
• Facial expression. Ekman and Friesen (1971) found the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, with little exposure to Western media, still matched faces to emotional stories, supporting cultural universals in six basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. Display rules are learned norms about who may show which emotion, to whom and when. Jack et al. (2012) challenged universality. With 30 Western and Eastern participants and computer-generated faces, they found Westerners represented the six emotions with distinct facial movements while Easterners did not.
• Personal space. Hall (1966), in The Hidden Dimension, described four zones: intimate (up to about 46 cm), personal (about 46 cm to 1.2 m), social (about 1.2 m to 3.7 m) and public (beyond). Distances vary by culture: across 42 countries, Sorokowska et al. (2017) found preferred distance from strangers was over 120 cm in Romania, Hungary and Saudi Arabia, and under 90 cm in Argentina, Peru, Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Effects of e-mail. E-mail removes non-verbal cues such as tone, gesture and facial expression. In five experiments, Kruger, Epley, Parker and Ng (2005) found people overestimated how well they could convey tone, such as sarcasm, by e-mail. The cause was egocentrism: writers “hear” their intended tone and struggle to take the reader’s view. E-mail also lacks instant feedback, so a misunderstanding a puzzled face would fix at once can stand for hours.

Evaluation. Ekman versus Jack is a nature-nurture debate: biology may set expressions while culture shapes display and recognition. Personal space surveys use self-report, which may not match behaviour.

Worked paragraph. “E-mail lacks non-verbal cues (knowledge). The manager’s ‘Great job, as always’ was meant as praise but read as sarcasm (application). Kruger et al. explain why she did not foresee this: egocentrism means writers hear their own tone, and e-mail gives no instant feedback to correct it (analysis). Their controlled experiments make this causal claim strong (evaluation).”

Job motivation and satisfaction

Need theory. Maslow (1943) proposed a hierarchy: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Lower needs must be met before higher ones motivate. Wahba and Bridwell (1976) reviewed the research and found little evidence for the ranking or for a definite hierarchy. McClelland (1961) proposed three needs, achievement, affiliation and power, measured with the Thematic Apperception Test. High achievers prefer moderately difficult tasks where results depend on their own effort; effective managers tend to show high power and lower affiliation needs.

Expectancy theory. Vroom (1964) said motivation depends on three beliefs:

• Expectancy: effort will lead to performance.
• Instrumentality: performance will lead to an outcome.
• Valence: how much the person values that outcome.

Motivational force = expectancy x instrumentality x valence, so if any one is zero, motivation is zero. It explains why a generous bonus fails if staff think the target is impossible, but assumes people calculate rationally.

Goal-setting theory. Locke (1968) and Locke and Latham (1990) found specific, difficult goals raise performance more than easy goals or “do your best”. Key conditions are clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback and task complexity: on complex new tasks a learning goal works better than a performance goal. Ordóñez et al. (2009), in “Goals gone wild”, argued that narrow goals can encourage unethical shortcuts and neglect of unmeasured work.

Job characteristics and well-being (Warr). Warr’s vitamin model (1987) compares job features to vitamins. Some, like vitamins A and D, help up to a point and then harm in excess (additional decrement, AD). Others, like vitamins C and E, help and never harm, though extra adds little (constant effect, CE). The original nine features later became twelve. AD features include personal control, opportunity for skill use, externally generated demands and goals, variety, clarity of the environment, and contact with others. CE features include money, physical security, valued social position, supportive supervision, career outlook and equity. Borkowska and Czerw (2022), with 197 staff in a Polish car company, found the predicted curve for three of six AD features and the predicted linear pattern for all CE features.

Evaluation. Need theory says what motivates; expectancy and goal-setting say how effort follows. Goal-setting has strong experimental support. Warr’s model has partial support and warns job designers against “too much” control or variety.

Worked paragraph. “Expectancy theory says motivational force is expectancy x instrumentality x valence (knowledge). The technicians value the bonus, but believe the target cannot be reached, so expectancy is near zero (application). Because the terms multiply, motivation collapses however large the bonus (analysis). However, the theory assumes rational calculation, which real workers rarely do (evaluation).”

Workplace stress

Workload and control. Workload can be overload (too much or too difficult) or underload (too little, repetitive). Karasek’s (1979) demand-control model says the most stressful jobs combine high demands with low decision latitude (control). In the Whitehall II study of 10,308 London civil servants, Bosma et al. (1997) found low job control predicted new coronary heart disease: low control at two measurements gave an odds ratio of 1.93 for any coronary event versus high control at both. Job demands were not related to risk. Marmot et al. (1997) found low control made the largest contribution to higher heart disease rates in lower grades.

The job demands-resources (J D-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner and Schaufeli, 2001) is broader. Job demands need sustained physical or psychological effort (work pressure, emotional demands). Job resources help achieve goals, reduce demands or support growth (autonomy, feedback, coaching, role clarity). In the health-impairment process, high demands lead to exhaustion and burnout; in the motivational process, resources lead to engagement. Resources also buffer demands: with 1,012 higher education employees, Bakker, Demerouti and Euwema (2005) found high demands with low resources gave the highest exhaustion and cynicism in 18 of 32 combinations, but not reduced professional efficacy.

Evaluation. Whitehall II is large and longitudinal, but studied office workers in one country, largely by self-report. The J D-R model is flexible, since any demand or resource fits, but this makes it harder to falsify.

Worked paragraph. “The J D-R model says resources buffer demands (knowledge). The nurses face heavy caseloads, but one ward has supportive supervision and control over rotas (application). The model predicts less exhaustion there, because resources reduce the cost of demands (analysis). Bakker et al. (2005) support buffering for exhaustion and cynicism, though not for professional efficacy (evaluation).” Shift work is covered in the sleep study guide.

Common errors

• Saying social facilitation always improves performance. It improves simple or well-learned tasks and worsens hard or new ones.
• Describing deindividuation as automatic aggression; it follows cues and group norms.
• Writing “all facial expressions are universal”. The claim is about basic emotions, and Jack et al. (2012) dispute it.
• Adding, not multiplying, expectancy, instrumentality and valence.
• Claiming Whitehall II shows workload causes heart disease. Bosma et al. found control mattered; demands did not.

For exam technique across all four units, 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.