AS
AS Paper 1: Social Influence and Memory
Conformity and minority influence, obedience and social change, memory models, eyewitness testimony and forgetting, plus research methods and statistics.
Questions
Question 1 [3 marks]
Research Methods and Statistics
A researcher records the number of words recalled by five participants: 12, 15, 9, 18, 16.
Calculate the mean number of words recalled.
Question 2 [3 marks]
Conformity and Minority Influence
Outline the effect of task difficulty on conformity, as investigated in variations of Asch's research.
Question 3 [4 marks]
Memory Models and Multi-Store Memory
Outline what is meant by 'capacity' and 'duration' as ways of comparing STM and LTM.
Question 4 [4 marks]
Obedience and Social Change
Outline what is meant by 'graduated commitment' as a factor helping to explain continued obedience in Milgram's study.
Question 5 [4 marks]
Eyewitness Testimony and Forgetting
Mrs Cole witnesses a bicycle being stolen outside her shop. A week later, a police officer asks her, 'How fast was the bike going when it smashed through the gate?', even though there was no gate.
Use your knowledge of research into leading questions to explain how this question might affect Mrs Cole's later recall.
Question 6 [4 marks]
Memory Models and Multi-Store Memory
Explain the role of the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer in the working memory model.
Question 7 [4 marks]
Research Methods and Statistics
A psychologist carries out a content analysis of 200 magazine adverts and finds that 45 adverts show a stereotypically 'masculine' image.
Calculate the percentage of adverts that do NOT show a stereotypically 'masculine' image, to 1 decimal place.
Question 8 [5 marks]
Eyewitness Testimony and Forgetting
A police officer interviewing a witness to a burglary asks her to describe absolutely everything she can remember, even small or seemingly unimportant details.
Use your knowledge of the cognitive interview to explain why the officer is using this technique.
Question 9 [5 marks]
Obedience and Social Change
During a historical inquiry, soldiers who took part in following unlawful orders during a wartime atrocity commonly stated afterwards that they were 'only following orders' and did not feel personally responsible.
Use your knowledge of the agentic state explanation of obedience to explain this common response.
Question 10 [6 marks]
Conformity and Minority Influence
Discuss research into minority influence, including reference to at least one named study.
Question 11 [6 marks]
Research Methods and Statistics
Discuss ethical issues involved in observational research, and ways researchers can address them.
Question 12 [6 marks]
Conformity and Minority Influence
Discuss how minority influence can lead to social change, with reference to the role of consistency and social cryptomnesia.
Question 13 [6 marks]
Conformity and Minority Influence
Discuss the role of consistency in minority influence, using research evidence, and evaluate the extent to which findings can be generalised to real-world social change.
Model solutions
| Question 1[3 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| adding the five values, 12 + 15 + 9 + 18 + 16 = 70 | M1 |
| dividing the total by the number of participants, 70 / 5 | M1 |
| a mean of 14 words | A1 |
| Final answer: Mean = 14 words | |
| Question 2[3 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying task difficulty as a variable investigated in variations of Asch's research | 1 |
| stating that conformity increased when the task was made harder, e.g. by making the comparison lines more similar in length | 1 |
| explaining this rise using informational social influence, since a harder task increases uncertainty about the correct answer | 1 |
| Final answer: Conformity rose as the task got harder (e.g. more similar comparison lines), because the increased uncertainty made participants rely more on informational social influence from the group. | |
| Question 3[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying capacity as the amount of information a memory store can hold | 1 |
| identifying that STM has a limited capacity, e.g. around 7 plus or minus 2 items, whereas LTM capacity is thought to be potentially unlimited | 1 |
| identifying duration as how long information can be held in a store before it is forgotten | 1 |
| identifying that STM duration is very brief without rehearsal, whereas LTM duration can last a lifetime | 1 |
| Final answer: Capacity is how much a store can hold: STM holds a limited amount (around 7 plus or minus 2 items) while LTM is thought to be unlimited. Duration is how long information lasts: STM is very brief without rehearsal, while LTM can last a lifetime. | |
| Question 4[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying that Milgram's procedure began with a very small, low-voltage shock | 1 |
| identifying that the shock level was then increased in small steps, one at a time | 1 |
| explaining that having already agreed to a small step makes it psychologically harder to refuse the next, only slightly larger, step | 1 |
| concluding that this gradual escalation, rather than a single high-voltage demand, helps explain why participants continued to the maximum level | 1 |
| Final answer: Milgram's shocks started very low and increased in small steps; having agreed to each small increase, participants found it psychologically harder to refuse the next, only slightly larger step, which helps explain their continued obedience up to the maximum level. | |
| Question 5[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the question as a leading question that presupposes a detail (the gate) that did not happen | 1 |
| linking this to research on how verb choice/presupposition can affect eyewitness memory | 1 |
| explaining that Mrs Cole may come to falsely recall or report a gate being present because of the misleading detail | 1 |
| noting this reflects the substitution or response-bias explanation of how post-event information distorts testimony | 1 |
| Final answer: The leading question presupposes a gate; Mrs Cole may misremember or report a gate as being there, showing how misleading post-event information can distort eyewitness testimony. | |
| Question 6[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the visuo-spatial sketchpad as a component that processes visual and spatial information | 1 |
| a suitable example, e.g. picturing a route around a familiar building | 1 |
| identifying the episodic buffer as a later-added component that integrates information from the other components | 1 |
| elaborating that the episodic buffer also links working memory to long-term memory | 1 |
| Final answer: The visuo-spatial sketchpad processes visual/spatial information, e.g. picturing a route; the episodic buffer, added later to the model, integrates information from the other components and links working memory to long-term memory. | |
| Question 7[4 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| finding the number of adverts that do not show the image, 200 - 45 = 155 | M1 |
| setting up 155 / 200 x 100 | M1 |
| correct calculator evaluation before rounding | M1 |
| 77.5% | A1 |
| Question 8[5 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying this as the 'report everything' technique used in the cognitive interview | 1 |
| explaining that even trivial details may trigger recall of other, more important details through associative links in memory | 1 |
| identifying that this reflects the theory that memory is made up of interconnected pieces, accessed via multiple retrieval routes | 1 |
| noting this technique aims to increase the overall amount of accurate information recalled | 1 |
| identifying at least one other cognitive interview technique, e.g. mental reinstatement of context or recalling events in a different order | 1 |
| Final answer: The officer is using the 'report everything' technique from the cognitive interview: even trivial details can trigger further memories via associative links, increasing the total accurate information recalled. | |
| Question 9[5 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying the agentic state as acting as an agent for another, an authority figure, rather than from personal conscience | 1 |
| explaining that in this state a person shifts responsibility for their actions onto the person giving the order | 1 |
| linking the phrase 'only following orders' directly to this shift of responsibility away from the self | 1 |
| noting that this agentic shift is thought to reduce the moral strain that would otherwise result from carrying out actions that conflict with personal conscience | 1 |
| a suitable further point, e.g. this explanation has been used to help understand real historical atrocities where large numbers of ordinary people obeyed harmful orders | 1 |
| Final answer: The soldiers' claim of 'only following orders' reflects an agentic state, in which responsibility for the action is shifted onto the authority figure giving the order rather than accepted personally, reducing the moral strain that disobeying conscience would otherwise cause; this explanation has been used to help understand obedience in real historical atrocities. | |
| Question 10[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying consistency (diachronic and synchronic) as key to minority influence | 1 |
| reference to Moscovici's blue-green slide study as supporting evidence | 1 |
| identifying flexibility, or the augmentation principle, as increasing minority influence | 1 |
| describing the snowball effect, where minority views gradually gain wider acceptance and lead to social change | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. Moscovici's study used an artificial task, limiting ecological validity to real-world minority influence | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. minority influence research has real-world application to understanding social change movements, which is a strength | 1 |
| Final answer: Should cover consistency (Moscovici's slide study), flexibility and the snowball effect, evaluated against the artificiality of the research versus its real-world application to social change. | |
| Question 11[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| identifying a lack of informed consent as a key ethical issue, since participants in many observations are unaware they are being observed | 1 |
| identifying privacy as a related issue, particularly when observing people in a space they might reasonably consider private even though it is technically public | 1 |
| identifying a way of addressing consent, e.g. debriefing participants afterwards where practically possible and offering the right to withdraw their data | 1 |
| identifying a way of addressing privacy, e.g. only observing behaviour in fully public spaces where people would expect to be seen by others | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. observation of clearly public behaviour is broadly considered acceptable since there is little reasonable expectation of privacy in most public settings | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. debriefing after a covert observation is not always practically possible, e.g. in a large, anonymous crowd, so the ethical issue cannot always be fully resolved | 1 |
| Final answer: Key issues are lack of informed consent and privacy; these can be partly addressed through debriefing, the right to withdraw and observing only clearly public behaviour, though debriefing is not always practically possible. | |
| Question 12[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining that a consistent minority draws attention to an issue and makes others reconsider their own view | 1 |
| outlining the augmentation principle, where a minority that persists despite personal risk appears more committed and gains influence | 1 |
| outlining social cryptomnesia, where people forget the origin of an idea once the minority's view eventually becomes the majority position | 1 |
| a suitable real-world or research example of a minority view gradually becoming accepted, e.g. attitude change brought about by a persistent campaigning group | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. research support for consistency often comes from artificial tasks, limiting generalisability to real social change movements | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. social change through minority influence is typically slow, which is hard to demonstrate within a single study | 1 |
| Final answer: Should cover consistency and the augmentation principle in gaining attention and credibility, social cryptomnesia in how the idea's origin is forgotten once it succeeds, and evaluation of the artificiality of supporting research against the slow, real-world pace of actual social change. | |
| Question 13[6 marks] | |
|---|---|
| Answer or working | Marks |
| outlining consistency, both synchronic (agreement among minority members) and diachronic (agreement over time), as a key factor in minority influence | 1 |
| reference to research evidence, e.g. Moscovici's finding that a consistent minority influenced more genuine, private colour judgements than an inconsistent one | 1 |
| outlining that consistency works by making other group members question their own position and take the minority view seriously | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. supporting research typically uses artificial tasks with no real consequence for participants, unlike genuine social or political minority movements | 1 |
| an evaluation point, e.g. real-world social change, such as environmental or civil rights movements, often takes far longer than laboratory studies can capture, questioning direct generalisation | 1 |
| a balancing point, e.g. despite these limitations, the principle that a persistent, unified minority attracts more attention and consideration is a plausible feature of many real social change movements | 1 |
| Final answer: Consistency (synchronic and diachronic), supported by Moscovici's finding that a consistent minority produced more genuine colour-judgement change than an inconsistent one, works by making others reconsider their own view; however, the artificial, low-stakes lab tasks behind this evidence and the much slower pace of real social change movements limit direct generalisation, even though the underlying principle plausibly applies to many real movements. | |