Course content:

• Social Influence

Types of conformity: internalisation, identification and compliance. Explanations for conformity: informational social influence and normative social influence, and variables affecting conformity including group size, unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch. • Conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo. • Explanations for obedience: agentic state and legitimacy of authority, and situational variables affecting obedience including proximity and location, as investigated by Milgram, and uniform. Dispositional explanation for obedience: the Authoritarian Personality. • Explanations of resistance to social influence, including social support and locus of control. • Minority influence including reference to consistency, commitment and flexibility. • The role of social influence processes in social change. 

• Memory

The multi-store model of memory: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory. Features of each store: coding, capacity and duration. • Types of long-term memory: episodic, semantic, procedural. • The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity. Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference and retrieval failure due to absence of cues. • Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: misleading information, including leading questions and post-event discussion; anxiety. • Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of the cognitive interview. 

• Attachment

Caregiver-infant interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony. Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer. Multiple attachments and the role of the father. • Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz and Harlow. • Explanations of attachment: learning theory and Bowlby’s monotropic theory. The concepts of a critical period and an internal working model. • Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn. • Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation. Romanian orphan studies: effects of institutionalisation. • The influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships, including the role of an internal working model. 

• Psychopathology

Definitions of abnormality, including deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, statistical infrequency and deviation from ideal mental health. • The behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). • The behavioural approach to explaining and treating phobias: the two-process model, including classical and operant conditioning; systematic desensitisation, including relaxation and use of hierarchy; flooding. • The cognitive approach to explaining and treating depression: Beck’s negative triad and Ellis’s ABC model; cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), including challenging irrational thoughts. • The biological approach to explaining and treating OCD: genetic and neural explanations; drug therapy. 

• Psychology in context

Students will be expected to: 

 demonstrate knowledge and understanding of psychological concepts, theories, research studies, research methods and ethical issues in relation to the specified Paper 2 content • apply psychological knowledge and understanding of the specified Paper 2 content in a range of contexts • analyse, interpret and evaluate psychological concepts, theories, research studies and research methods in relation to the specified Paper 2 content • evaluate therapies and treatments including in terms of their appropriateness and effectiveness. Knowledge and understanding of research methods, practical research skills and mathematical skills will be assessed in Paper 2. These skills should be developed through study of the specification content and through ethical practical research activities, involving: • designing research • conducting research • analysing and interpreting data. In carrying out practical research activities, students 

• Approaches in Psychology

Origins of Psychology: Wundt, introspection and the emergence of Psychology as a science. The basic assumptions of the following approaches: • Learning approaches: i) the behaviourist approach, including classical conditioning and Pavlov’s research, operant conditioning, types of reinforcement and Skinner’s research; ii) social learning theory including imitation, identification, modelling, vicarious reinforcement, the role of mediational processes and Bandura’s research. • The cognitive approach: the study of internal mental processes, the role of schema, the use of theoretical and computer models to explain and make inferences about mental processes. The emergence of cognitive neuroscience. • The biological approach: the influence of genes, biological structures and neurochemistry on behaviour. Genotype and phenotype, genetic basis of behaviour, evolution and behaviour. • The psychodynamic approach: the role of the unconscious, the structure of personality, that is Id, Ego and Superego, defence mechanisms including repression, denial and displacement, psychosexual stages. • Humanistic Psychology: free will, self-actualisation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, focus on the self, congruence, the role of conditions of worth. The influence on counselling Psychology. • Comparison of approaches. 

• Biological Psychology (including brain structure and functioning)

The divisions of the nervous system: central and peripheral (somatic and autonomic). • The structure and function of sensory, relay and motor neurons. The process of synaptic transmission, including reference to neurotransmitters, excitation and inhibition. • The function of the endocrine system: glands and hormones. • The fight or flight response including the role of adrenaline. • Localisation of function in the brain and hemispheric lateralisation: motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory and language centres; Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, split brain research. Plasticity and functional recovery of the brain after trauma. • Ways of studying the brain: scanning techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); electroencephalogram (EEGs) and event-related potentials (ERPs); postmortem examinations. • Biological rhythms: circadian, infradian and ultradian and the difference between these rhythms. The effect of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers on the sleep/ wake cycle. 

• Psychological Skills and Research Methodology 

Students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the following research methods, scientific processes and techniques of data handling and analysis, be familiar with their use and be aware of their strengths and limitations. • Experimental method. Types of experiment, laboratory and field experiments; natural and quasi-experiments. • Observational techniques. Types of observation: naturalistic and controlled observation; covert and overt observation; participant and non-participant observation. • Self-report techniques. Questionnaires; interviews, structured and unstructured. • Correlations. Analysis of the relationship between co-variables. The difference between correlations and experiments. • Content analysis

• Relationships

The evolutionary explanations for partner preferences, including the relationship between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour. • Factors affecting attraction in romantic relationships: self-disclosure; physical attractiveness, including the matching hypothesis; filter theory, including social demography, similarity in attitudes and complementarity. • Theories of romantic relationships: social exchange theory, equity theory and Rusbult’s investment model of commitment, satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment. Duck’s phase model of relationship breakdown: intra-psychic, dyadic, social and grave dressing phases. • Virtual relationships in social media: self-disclosure in virtual relationships; effects of absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships. • Parasocial relationships: levels of parasocial relationships, the absorption addiction model and the attachment theory explanation. 

• Schizophrenia

Classification of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including speech poverty and avolition. Reliability and validity in diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia, including reference to co-morbidity, culture and gender bias and symptom overlap. • Biological explanations for schizophrenia: genetics and neural correlates, including the dopamine hypothesis. • Psychological explanations for schizophrenia: family dysfunction and cognitive explanations, including dysfunctional thought processing. • Drug therapy: typical and atypical antipsychotics. • Cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Token economies as used in the management of schizophrenia. • The importance of an interactionist approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis-stress model. 

• Forensic Psychology

Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types of offender; the bottom-up approach, including investigative Psychology; geographical profiling. • Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach (atavistic form); genetics and neural explanations. • Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation; differential association theory; psychodynamic explanations. • Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and the psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour modification in custody. Anger management and restorative justice programmes. 

• Issues and Debates

Gender and culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. • Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations. • The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach. • Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in Psychology. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism. • Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation. • Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity. 

In each topic you will learn to use statistical tests to help interpret data collected in class exercises. 

How is the course assessed?

You will have 3 examinations at the end of year 2, each accounting for a ⅓ of your final grade. 

Q: What is the difference between Sociology and Psychology?

A: Sociology is a debate based subject that tries to understand how society shapes our beliefs. values and behaviour. Psychology on the other hand attempts to understand how we think, feel and behave by looking at internal processes in a scientific way. Psychology is similar to the natural sciences such as Biology, whereas Sociology is similar to History and English Literature.

Q: What subjects go well with Psychology?

A: It is important to study a broad range of subjects, so anything will go well with Psychology. Whilst Psychology will develop technical, analytical and evaluative skills and compliment Science and Maths based subjects. However, you may wish to broaden your experience with more essay based subjects such as Sociology, History or Literature.