Psych

• Personal factors affecting bystander intervention


  • Competence
  • Mood
  • Similarity
  • Personal and Cultural differences
  • Altruism
• Conformity


  Change of behavior as a result of real or imagined group pressure or norms
• Types of Conformity


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalization
• Situational factors affecting conformity

  • Size of the majority
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty/Ambiguity
  • Deindividuation
• Personal factors affecting conformity


  • Locus of Control
• How to resist conformity


  • Change the situation
  • Change the individual characteristics
• Normative Influence


  Conformity based on one's desire to fulfill others' expectations and gain acceptance
• Informational influence


  Conformity under acceptance of evidence about reality which has been provided by others
• Obedience to authority


  The tendency people have to try to please those in charge
• Milgrams findings: Wearing uniforms triggered agentic state (-Carrying out the orders of an authority figure), Autonomous state (-being individual and independent)
• Factors affecting obedience


  • Proximity
  • Legitimacy
  • Authority figure
  • Social support
  • Momentum of Compliance
  • Authoritarian personality
  • Agentic state
  • Autonomous state
• Prosocial behaviour


  Behaviour that is seen as helpful, kind, cooperative and peaceful
• Antisocial behaviour


  Behaviour that is unhelpful, destructive and aggressive
• Field experiments


  Experiments that are conducted in an natural environment
• Lab experiments


  Experiments that take place in artificial settings, often with an artificial task
• Strengths of field experiments

  • Behavior is more likely to reflect real life because of the natural setting (higher ecological validity than a lab experiment)
  • Participants are people going about their normal daily life
  • Less likelihood of demand characteristics
• Weaknesses of field experiments

  • Less control over extraneous variables
  • Difficult to get consent from participants
  • Cause of psychological harm (breaks ethical guidelines)
• Strengths of lab experiments

  • The researcher has more control over situational variables → high level of precision is achieved
  • Cause and effect can be established
  • They can be replicated → repeated by other experimenters → high in reliability
  • Procedures can be repeated easily
• Weaknesses of lab experiments

  • Low ecological validity as they use artificial environments different from real life → Hard to apply results
  • Demand characteristics → People may respond to features of…the experiment (guess the aim)
  • Experimenter effects may be present → interaction with the researcher may affect the results
• Case study


  A research method studying an individual or a small group and gathering in-depth and detailed information using different means
• Strengths of case studies

  • Can be used in situations that would be unethical to set up experimentally
  • In Depth information about somebody
  • Can find new psychology areas that may not be found unless rare individuals are studied
• Weaknesses of case studies

  • Cannot be repeated, since everyone is unique, unreliable
  • May not be applied to some people, ungeneralizable
  • Interpret the findings differently to others, researcher bias
• Structure for answering 12 mark questions

  • A01 Paragraph- KNOWLEDGE - what do you know about field experiments? (can provide definition)
  • A02 Paragraph - APPLICATION - Link to the scenario in the question
  • A03 Paragraph - ANALYSIS & EVALUATION - Give strengths and weaknesses and link to a field experiment you already know from the unit. Using GRA(O)VE to help with evaluation
• Sleeping clears and refreshes your mind; not sleeping leaves your mind murky
• Sleep is an elegant design solution to the brains most basic needs
• Waste needs to be cleared in the brain to stay healthy
• No lymphatic vessels in the brain so unable to clear waste like other parts of the body do
• Brain clears waste


  1. Dumps it from inside the brain to outside the brain into CSF

  2. CSF gets pumped back into the brain along the outside of the blood vessels
• Fluid rushes through the brain when sleeping
• When the brain is awake and busy, it puts off cleaning the waste from the spaces between the cells till later
• Amyloid beta (can cause alzeimers) is a waste that gets cleared when sleeping
• Functions and Benefits of Sleep

  • Memory consolidation
  • Energy conservation
  • Clearing brain of amyloid beta that is linked with Alzheimer's
  • Helps prevent certain diseases
  • Regeneration, repair
• A sleep cycle lasts 90 mins
• Sleep is measured with an EEG machine
• Stages of a sleep cycle

  • NREM sleep (Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Stage 4)
  • REM sleep
• NREM sleep


  The phase of sleep that is considered the quiet or restful phase - non rapid eye movement
• REM sleep


  Resembles waking activity - vivid dreams
• Internal influences on sleep

  • Internal body clock - circadian rhythm
  • Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
  • Hormones
• Sleep helps to reset hormones and what we do in the day affects our hormone levels
• Suprachiasmatic nucleus


  Found in the middle of the brain and it controls circadian rhythms