OxfordAQA A Level Psychology: Introductory Topics — Revision Notes

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

Social influence

Conformity types: compliance (public only), identification (while in the group), internalisation (public and private, lasting).

Two explanations:

• NSI — the need to be liked, giving compliance.
• ISI — the need to be right, giving internalisation.

The distinction predicts durability: NSI changes behaviour only while observed; ISI changes belief, so it persists.

Asch — conformity fell sharply with a dissenting ally and rose with task difficulty. Milgram — 65% obedience, reduced by proximity, an ordinary location, and the absence of uniform.

Agentic state — acting as an instrument of authority. Legitimacy of authority explains why setting matters.

The dispositional explanation (authoritarian personality) cannot explain whole populations obeying, since that would require an implausibly uniform personality across millions — which is why situational explanations dominate.

Resistance: social support and an internal locus of control.

Zimbardo — the prison study showed ordinary people adopting brutal guard roles purely from situational role assignment, though ethical concerns (psychological harm, unclear informed consent) and methodological criticism (demand characteristics, a small unrepresentative sample) limit what it can be taken to prove.

Minority influence works through consistency, commitment and flexibility — a minority that is consistent and appears committed to its position, while still flexible enough to negotiate, is more persuasive than a rigid one.

Memory

Multi-store model: sensory register → attention → STM (5–9 items, 18–30 s) → rehearsal → LTM.

Working memory model explains what the MSM cannot: dual-task performance. Two tasks using different slave systems can be done at once; two using the same one cannot.

Forgetting: interference (proactive — old disrupts new; retroactive — new disrupts old) and retrieval failure (cue-dependent).

Eyewitness testimony: leading questions and post-event discussion distort recall. Anxiety is contradictory — weapon focus narrows attention, yet the Yerkes-Dodson inverted U means moderate arousal can improve recall. That tension is the evaluation, not a problem to resolve.

The cognitive interview — report everything, reinstate context, reverse order, change perspective. It increases correct recall without proportionally increasing errors.

Long-term memory subdivides into episodic (personal events), semantic (facts and meanings) and procedural (skills) — a distinction supported by amnesia patients who retain procedural memory, such as learned skills, despite severe episodic impairment.

Attachment

Reciprocity and interactional synchrony in caregiver–infant interaction.

Bowlby’s monotropic theory — social releasers, a critical period, and an internal working model shaping later relationships.

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation: secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant.

Cultural variations: more insecure-avoidant in Germany, more insecure-resistant in Japan. This is the imposed etic critique — a measure developed in one culture applied elsewhere as though universal, so behaviour reflecting different child-rearing values is misclassified as insecure.

Institutionalisation — Rutter’s Romanian orphans showed disinhibited attachment and the importance of age at adoption.

Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment run asocial → indiscriminate → specific → multiple, tracking how an infant moves from showing no clear preference, to preferring several familiar people, to a single primary attachment figure, and finally to several attachments at once.

Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis — prolonged early separation from the primary caregiver risks long-term emotional and intellectual harm; supported by the 44 thieves study (affectionless psychopathy linked to early separation) but criticised for relying on retrospective data, which is difficult to verify independently.

Worked example

Explain why Asch’s findings may lack temporal validity.

Conducted in 1950s America, a notably conformist period (McCarthyism, strong pressure to fit in). Perrin and Spencer’s 1980 replication with UK engineering students found conformity in only 1 of 396 trials — suggesting the original findings may reflect that specific historical context rather than a stable feature of human behaviour. Counterpoint: engineering students were confident judging line lengths, so the sample itself may explain the difference rather than the era. Offering that counterpoint is what lifts the evaluation into the top band.

Psychopathology

Definitions of abnormality: 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 high intelligence as abnormal.

Disorder	Explanation	Treatment
Phobia	Two-process model — classical conditioning acquires, operant maintains	Systematic desensitisation, flooding
Depression	Beck’s negative triad, Ellis’s ABC model	CBT
OCD	Genetic and neural	SSRIs

The two-process model explains its own treatment: avoidance is negatively reinforced by the reduction in anxiety, so exposure without avoidance is what breaks the maintaining cycle. Stating that link is worth more than describing the therapy.

Exam traps

• Confusing NSI with ISI.
• Confusing proactive with retroactive interference.
• Describing when the question says evaluate.
• Claiming anxiety always worsens eyewitness accuracy.
• Using one definition of abnormality without its limitation.
• Giving a therapy without linking it to the explanation.
• Saying Milgram studied conformity rather than obedience.
• Treating the working memory model as replacing long-term memory rather than the short-term store.

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 exposure therapy.
6. What criticism applies to Zimbardo’s prison study, and what three factors explain minority influence?
7. Distinguish Schaffer and Emerson’s four attachment stages, and state one criticism of the maternal deprivation hypothesis.

Answers: 1. NSI is the need to be liked, producing compliance that lasts only while observed; ISI is the need to be right, producing internalisation that persists. 2. Dual-task performance — two tasks using different slave systems can be carried out simultaneously, which a single unitary short-term store cannot explain. 3. It cannot account for entire populations obeying, which would require an implausibly uniform personality type across millions of people. 4. It was developed within American child-rearing norms and applied cross-culturally as though universal, so behaviours reflecting different values are misclassified as insecure. 5. Classical conditioning creates the phobia and operant conditioning maintains it, because avoidance is negatively reinforced by anxiety reduction; exposure without avoidance therefore breaks the cycle. 6. Zimbardo’s study is criticised for ethical harm and for demand characteristics from a small, unrepresentative sample; minority influence works through consistency, commitment and flexibility. 7. The four stages are asocial, indiscriminate, specific and multiple, tracking the move from no clear preference to a single primary figure and then several attachments; the maternal deprivation hypothesis relies on retrospective data from the 44 thieves study, which is difficult to verify independently.