You must show an understanding that social psychology is about aspects of human behaviour that involve the individual’s relationship to other persons, groups and society, including cultural influences on behaviour. What you need to learn:
Obedience and majority and minority influence, as forms of social influence on behaviour.
Theories of obedience, including agency theory and social power theory.
Research into obedience, including Milgram’s (1963) research into obedience and three of his variation studies: rundown office block (Experiment 10), telephonic instructions (Experiment 7), ordinary man gives orders (Experiment 13) as they demonstrate situational factors that encourage dissent.
Factors affecting obedience and dissent/resistance to obedience, including individual differences (personality and gender), situation and culture.
Types and explanations of conformity.
Research into conformity including Asch (1951) and his variation studies (1952, 1956).
Minority influence (Moscovici, 1976).
Factors affecting conformity and minority influence, including individual differences (personality), situation and culture.
Designing and conducting questionnaires and interviews, considering researcher effects.
Primary and secondary data.
Unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews, open, closed (including ranked scale) questions.
Alternative hypotheses.
Random, stratified, volunteer, and opportunity sampling techniques.
(List A) Analysis of quantitative data: calculating measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode), data tables (frequency tables and summary tables), graphical presentation (bar chart, histogram), measures of dispersion (range and standard deviation), percentages, ratios, fractions.
Normal and skewed distribution.
Analysis of qualitative data using thematic analysis.
British Psychological Society (BPS) code of ethics and conduct (2009), including risk management when carrying out research in psychology.
Moscovici et al. (1969) Influence of a Consistent Minority on the Responses of a Majority in a Color Perception Task.
Burger (2009) Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?
Yi Huang et al. (2014) Conformity to the opinions of other people lasts for no more than 3 days.
One practical research exercise to gather data relevant to topics covered in social psychology. This practical research exercise must adhere to ethical principles in both content and intention. In conducting the practical research exercise, you must:
design and conduct a questionnaire to gather both qualitative and quantitative data to look for a difference in the data
consider questionnaire construction, sampling decisions and ethical issues
collect and present an analysis of quantitative data using measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode as appropriate, measures of dispersion, (including range and standard deviation as appropriate), table and graphical representations (summary table, frequency table, bar graph, histogram, as appropriate)
collect and present an analysis of qualitative data using thematic analysis
consider strengths and weaknesses of the questionnaire
write up the procedure, results and discussion section of a report.
A questionnaire to see if males perceive themselves to be more obedient than females.
A questionnaire into self-reported levels of conformity based on scenarios.