In the first term of year 12, we study two topics along side each other: Attachment and Social Influence. Here is an overview of what we have covered so far:
ATTACHMENT:
In A-Level psychology so far, we have covered the topic of Attachment. In this topic we learned about the importance of your early years, and the attachment that you make to your primary caregiver (often the mother), provided by Meltzoff and Moore’s study of interactional synchrony and reciprocity. As well as this, we learned about the stages following that initial attachment, which Schaffer and Emmerson researched. In Schaffer and Emmerson’s study we learned about the 4 stages of attachment known as Asocial, Indiscriminate, Specific and Multiple – between the ages of 0-12 months old (infancy). Following this we learned about the important role of the father, looking at arguments for fathers being an economic supporter who helps their child to adventure and grow through activities, as well as arguments for fathers being just as good as mothers at the primary caregiver with a more emotional role. To support what we learned about human attachment, we looked at animal attachment and how that can relate to/be similar to us, looking at Harlow’s study on monkeys and Lorenz’s study on geese. Following this we looked into two opposing theories of attachment – the evolutionary theory by Bowlby and the learning theory. After learning to evaluate both of these arguments we looked onto the different forms of attachment, and focused on Mary Ainsworth’s study, The Strange Situation. The strange situation was a controlled study which looked at how children react to the time with and without their monotropic figure (their mother/primary attachment). Following this we looked at Van Ijzendoorn’ meta-analysis of these studies around the world and how culture effects attachment. Finally, we studied the case of the Romanian orphans and how institutionalisation can lead to maternal deprivation (an aspect of Bowlby’s evolutionary theory), due to the importance of a strong internal working model at a young age.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
One topic that we have learnt about in Psychology A-level so far is social influence. In this topic, we have learnt about the types and explanations of conformity, explaining why we follow the actions of others. Within this topic, we learnt about Asch investigation on the role of task difficulty on conformity. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment was also taught to us as an additional study into the role of social influence. This experiment provides us with an interesting insight into how social roles and influences impact people’s actions, even in a negative way. Along with conformity, we explored obedience, focusing on dispositional explanations for obedience, such as having an authoritarian personality, as well as Milgram’s study, in which he examined whether people would follow extreme commands even if doing so caused suffering to others. Following this, we learnt about ways in which social influence is resisted, mainly exploring social support and locus of control. The final topic we covered is about minority influences. We learn about the main components of a minority influence (consistency, commitment and flexibility) as well as how minority influences impact societal change in the real world.