AQA Psychology Topic Posters: Relationships, Stress, and Forensic Psychology

Social Influence Fundamentals

Conformity is basically giving in to group pressure, and there are three main types you need to know. Internalisation means you actually adopt the group's beliefs as your own - like genuinely starting to love a band your friends introduced you. Identification is when you only change around certain people, whilst compliance is just going along publicly whilst privately disagreeing.

Two key forces drive conformity: informational social influence (wanting to be right, so copying others) and normative social influence (wanting to be liked and fit in). Think about asking for directions versus wearing trendy clothes - different motivations, same result.

Social change happens when entire populations shift their beliefs over time. Minority influence is the main driver here - small committed groups can create a snowball effect that eventually changes laws and attitudes. The shift in views on sexuality and race shows how powerful this can be, though it's slow and many people resist change.

Key Point: Understanding these influences helps explain everything from fashion trends to major social movements throughout history.

Obedience and Resistance

Obedience isn't just about following rules - it's about psychological states that make us comply. The agentic state occurs when you believe someone else takes responsibility for your actions, like "I was just following orders." Legitimacy of authority determines how credible the authority figure seems - you're more likely to obey someone in uniform or in a high-status location.

Authoritarian personality types, according to Adorno, are more likely to obey completely. This stems from childhood experiences and makes some people naturally submissive to authority figures.

Your locus of control determines how resistant you are to influence. People with internal locus of control believe they control their own lives and resist conformity better. Those with external locus of control think fate controls them and are more susceptible to obedience and conformity.

Minority influence succeeds through commitment and flexibility - the minority must be passionate but willing to compromise. This combination makes majorities take notice and consider new perspectives.

Remember: Your personality and beliefs about control significantly impact how easily you're influenced by others.

Classic Studies: Asch and Zimbardo

Asch's conformity study used 123 male American students in groups with confederates (fake participants). They had to match line lengths - a simple task with obvious answers. Yet 40% conformed to obviously wrong answers, with 75% conforming at least once. Only 1% got it wrong in control conditions, proving eyesight wasn't the issue.

Group size matters - conformity jumped to 30% with three or more confederates. Task difficulty also increases conformity because we look to others when uncertain. However, the study lacks ecological validity (too artificial) and population validity (only American male students).

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment randomly assigned 24 male students to guard or prisoner roles. The results were shocking - guards became aggressive and power-hungry whilst prisoners became submissive and institutionalised. The study was stopped early due to psychological disturbance.

This study changed how US prisons operate but suffered from demand characteristics, ethical issues, and poor generalisability. Modern ethical standards would never allow such research.

Critical Thinking: These landmark studies reveal disturbing truths about human nature but raise serious questions about research ethics.

Memory Models and Processes

The Multi-Store Memory Model shows memory as three separate stores: sensory memory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM). STM holds 7±2 items for 18-30 seconds using acoustic coding, whilst LTM has unlimited capacity, lifetime duration, and semantic coding.

Baddeley's study proved STM codes acoustically and LTM semantically by testing recall of similar-sounding versus similar-meaning words. The Working Memory Model focuses on active STM with four components: central executive (limited attention control), phonological loop (sound processing), visuospatial sketchpad (visual/spatial info), and episodic buffer (temporary storage).

Long-term memory has three types: episodic (personal events), semantic (facts/knowledge), and procedural (skills). Understanding these helps explain why you remember your first day at school differently from how to ride a bike.

Forgetting happens through interference (memories disrupting each other) or retrieval failure (missing cues). Proactive interference means old memories disrupt new ones, whilst retroactive interference works the opposite way.

Study Tip: These models aren't just theory - they explain why revision techniques like spaced repetition and environmental cues actually work.

Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Reliability

Eyewitness testimony seems reliable but is surprisingly flawed. Leading questions suggest certain answers - Loftus and Palmer showed how changing verbs (smashed vs. hit) dramatically affected speed estimates in car crash videos. More forceful words led to higher damage estimates.

Post-event discussion between witnesses can contaminate memories. Anxiety affects accuracy through weapon focus - Johnson and Scott found people focused more on bloody knives than faces, reducing identification accuracy.

The cognitive interview improves recall through four techniques: report everything, context reinstatement, change perspective, and reverse order. Whilst time-consuming, it produces better recall than standard interviews.

Environmental factors during encoding and retrieval matter hugely. Internal cues (your physical/mental state) and external cues (surroundings, smells, sounds) act as retrieval triggers. This explains why returning to your revision location can improve exam recall.

Memory isn't like a video recording - it's reconstructive and influenced by suggestion, emotion, and discussion. Understanding these limitations is crucial for legal proceedings and everyday reliability.

Real-World Application: These findings have revolutionised police interview techniques and court procedures, showing psychology's practical impact.

Attachment Theory Foundations

Attachment forms the foundation of all future relationships. Reciprocity (two-way interaction) and interactional synchrony (coordinated responses) between infant and caregiver create secure bonds that shape personality development.

Schaffer and Emerson's study of 60 Glasgow babies identified four attachment stages: asocial (0-6 weeks), indiscriminate (6 weeks-7 months), specific (7+ months), and multiple (10+ months). Sensitive responsiveness from caregivers mattered more than time spent together.

Bowlby's monotropic theory argues attachments are innate and adaptive for survival. His ASCMI framework explains how social releasers (baby behaviours) unlock adult caring responses. The critical period suggests attachment must form early, or development suffers. Monotropy emphasises one primary attachment forming an internal working model for future relationships.

Ainsworth's Strange Situation identified three attachment types: secure (confident exploration, easily soothed), insecure-avoidant (independent, little separation anxiety), and insecure-resistant (clingy, difficult to soothe). However, this only measured mother relationships and raised ethical concerns.

Life Impact: Your early attachment style influences romantic relationships, parenting approaches, and emotional regulation throughout life.

Learning Theories and Animal Studies

Learning theory explains attachment through conditioning rather than innate bonds. Classical conditioning suggests babies associate food (unconditioned stimulus) with caregiver presence, eventually forming attachment. Operant conditioning proposes crying behaviour is reinforced by caregiver attention.

Harlow's monkey experiments challenged this food-focused theory dramatically. When given choice between wire 'mothers' providing milk and cloth 'mothers' providing comfort, monkeys chose comfort. This proved contact comfort matters more than food for attachment formation.

Monkeys raised with only wire mothers showed severe developmental problems - poor social skills, aggression, and mating difficulties. This demonstrated secure attachment's crucial role in healthy development, though the research involved serious ethical breaches.

Lorenz's imprinting studies with geese showed critical periods exist for attachment formation. However, bird attachment systems differ significantly from mammalian ones, limiting generalisability to humans.

The role of fathers emerges later - Schaffer and Emerson found 75% of infants formed secondary attachments to fathers by 18 months, typically involving play rather than caregiving.

Ethical Consideration: These studies provided crucial insights but involved animal suffering that wouldn't be acceptable today, highlighting the tension between scientific knowledge and ethical responsibility.

Mental Health: Definitions and Disorders

Abnormality has four main definitions, each with limitations. Statistical infrequency uses standard deviations from population norms but wrongly assumes rare traits are negative. Failure to function adequately considers personal impact but can stigmatise differences. Deviation from social norms relies on cultural standards that vary hugely. Deviation from ideal mental health sets unrealistic standards most people couldn't meet.

Phobias show three characteristic patterns: behavioural (panic, avoidance, endurance), emotional (anxiety, fear), and cognitive (selective attention, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions). The behavioural approach explains phobias through classical conditioning (initial fear association) and operant conditioning (avoidance reinforcement).

Depression involves behavioural changes (activity levels, sleep patterns), emotional symptoms (low mood, anger, poor self-esteem), and cognitive patterns (absolutist thinking, poor concentration, negative focus). Beck's cognitive theory identifies faulty information processing, negative self-schemas, and the cognitive triad of negative thoughts.

OCD combines behavioural compulsions and avoidance, emotional distress and anxiety, plus cognitive obsessions whilst acknowledging their irrationality. Biological explanations focus on genetic vulnerability and neurotransmitter imbalances, particularly serotonin.

Understanding: These disorders aren't personal failings but complex conditions with multiple contributing factors requiring professional treatment.

Psychological Approaches: Behaviourism and Social Learning

Psychology's origins trace from Descartes' mind-body dualism through Wundt's introspection to modern scientific approaches. Behaviourism rejected subjective introspection, focusing on observable behaviour through conditioning principles.

Classical conditioning works through association - Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate to bells paired with food. The process involves unconditioned stimulus (food) becoming associated with neutral stimulus (bell) to create conditioned response (salivation). Extinction occurs without reinforcement, whilst generalisation spreads responses to similar stimuli.

Operant conditioning shapes behaviour through consequences. Positive reinforcement adds rewards, negative reinforcement removes unpleasant stimuli, both increasing behaviour likelihood. Punishment decreases behaviour frequency.

Social Learning Theory bridges behaviourism and cognitive approaches. Bandura's Bobo doll study showed children copying aggressive models, proving learning occurs through observation. Four mediational processes enable social learning: attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation. Vicarious reinforcement means we learn from others' consequences without direct experience.

These approaches explain everything from phobia treatments to educational techniques, though they may underestimate human cognitive complexity and free will.

Real-World Applications: These theories directly inform therapy techniques, educational methods, and behaviour modification programs used today.

Advanced Approaches: Cognitive, Biological, and Psychodynamic

The cognitive approach treats the mind like a computer, using theoretical models and analogies to understand mental processes. Schemas act as mental shortcuts, organizing knowledge but potentially creating biases. Cognitive neuroscience combines psychology with brain imaging, making the field more scientific but sometimes overly abstract.

The biological approach sees behaviour as physiologically determined. Behavioural genetics studies inherited traits through genotype (genetic makeup) versus phenotype (expression). Natural selection shapes behaviours that aid survival, explaining evolutionary psychology. This approach enables drug treatments but risks biological determinism.

Freud's psychodynamic approach emphasizes unconscious conflicts and psychic determinism. His tripartite personality includes the id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and superego (morality principle). Psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) shape adult personality through fixations.

The Oedipus/Electra complexes explain gender development through same-sex parent identification. Whilst influential in therapy development, psychodynamic concepts are difficult to test scientifically and may be culturally biased.

Each approach offers unique insights but works best when integrated with others for comprehensive understanding.

Integration: Modern psychology combines all approaches rather than viewing them as competing theories - human behaviour is far too complex for single explanations.