There are two handouts
1.
This one with exemplar answers which we will mark during the webinar.
2.
Marking grids for all assessment objectives (AOs).
You should read through the answers in this document before the session and make notes on each answer, deciding on a mark you would give it.
During the session I will talk through each answer.
After each answer we can have a short discussion if there are any questions.
(AQA have published some marked student answers with examiner commentary which you can download here: http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/AQA-71811-EX.PDF
http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/AQA-71812-EX.PDF
1

2
We are going to mark:
1.
AO1 4 mark answer
2.
AO3 3 mark answer
3.
AO2 question
4.
Essay
5.
Essay with stem
Health warning
1.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
2.
These are new mark schemes and it is my best guess.
3.
Mark schemes may change.
See AQA website http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/psychology/as-and-a-level/psychology-7181-7182/assessmentresources
Sample assessment materials and also student responses with examiner commentary.
Asch looked at the effect of variables like task difficulty, unanimity and group size on conformity. People in a group of
7/8 took turns to say which line (of 3) was the same as a target line X. All except one of the group were confederates of the researcher primed to give wrong answers on some trials. Asch recorded how many times participants conformed to an obviously wrong answer given by the majority and found conformity occurred 32% of the time.
Milgram’s mock learning experiment on obedience involved a nai ̈ve participant administering increasingly severe shocks to a stranger. The shocks were fake and the stranger was an actor. When the actor, sitting behind a screen, made mistakes in a test, the real participants had to press a shock lever. At a certain voltage the actor protested and then he fell quiet. If the participant protested the researcher used verbal prompts like ‘you must go on’. 65% of people who started to give shocks went up to the maximum ‘lethal’ voltage of 450v.
In evaluation, both studies were a ‘child of the times’ - they probably got the results they did because of social attitudes just after WW2. People had been used to working collectively during war time and so were inclined to conform and obey authority. Nowadays the same level of social influence might not occur because individualism and independent thought is more valued. Therefore we might question the temporal validity of the findings.
Both studies could also be criticised for being unethical. Asch deceived participants with his use of stooges and put them in a stressful, embarrassing situation – physiological measures indicated increased anxiety just before they gave their response. Milgram caused even greater stress as people believed they were shocking another person. In both studies participants were deceived – they were later debriefed but does this justify what was done in the first place?
On the other hand, if Milgram’s research had not been done we would not understand why real people carry out horrendous acts in an ‘agentic state’, not feeling responsible for their actions. After Milgram’s study participants said they were glad to have taken part. Perhaps we should be grateful to Asch and Milgram for telling us about human nature but also relieved that psychologists cannot conduct such research these days because there are now codes of ethical conduct from the APS and BPS.
= 397 words
AS answer 300-350 words (15 minutes)
A level answer 400-500 words (20 minutes)

Level of response mark schemes are broken down into two, three or four levels, each of which has a descriptor. The descriptor for the level shows the average performance for the level. There are two, three or four marks in each level.
Before you apply the mark scheme to a student’s answer read through the answer and annotate it (as instructed) to show the qualities that are being looked for. You can then apply the mark scheme.
Step 1 Determine a level
Start at the lowest level of the mark scheme and use it as a ladder to see whether the answer meets the descriptor for that level. The descriptor for the level indicates the different qualities that might be seen in the student’s answer for that level. If it meets the lowest level then go to the next one and decide if it meets this level, and so on, until you have a match between the level descriptor and the answer. With practice and familiarity you will find that for better answers you will be able to quickly skip through the lower levels of the mark scheme.
When assigning a level you should look at the overall quality of the answer and not look to pick holes in small and specific parts of the answer where the student has not performed quite as well as the rest. If the answer covers different aspects of different levels of the mark scheme you should use a best fit approach for defining the level and then use the variability of the response to help decide the mark within the level, ie if the response is predominantly level 3 with a small amount of level 4 material it would be placed in level 3 but be awarded a mark near the top of the level because of the level 4 content.
Step 2 Determine a mark
Once you have assigned a level you need to decide on the mark. The descriptors on how to allocate marks can help with this. The exemplar materials used during standardisation will help. There will be an answer in the standardising materials which will correspond with each level of the mark scheme. This answer will have been awarded a mark by the
L ead Examiner. You can compare the student’s answer with the example to determine if it is the same standard, better or worse than the example. You can then use this to allocate a mark for the answer based on the Lead Examiner’s mark on the example.
You may well need to read back through the answer as you apply the mark scheme to clarify points and assure yourself that the level and the mark are appropriate.
Indicative content in the mark scheme is provided as a guide for examiners. It is not intended to be exhaustive and you must credit other valid points. Students do not have to cover all of the points mentioned in the indicative content to reach the highest level of the mark scheme.
An answer which does not contain anything of relevance to the question must be awarded no marks.
Examiners are required to assign each of the students’ responses to the most appropriate level according to its overall quality , then allocate a single mark within the level. When deciding upon a mark in a level examiners should bear in mind the relative weightings of the assessment objectives (included for each question and summarised on page 16) and be careful not to over/under credit a particular skill. For example, in question 11 more weight should be given to AO1 than to AO2 and AO3, whereas in question 04 equal weight should be given AO1 and AO3. This will be exemplified and reinforced as part of examiner training and standardisation.
3

[4 marks = about 5 minutes, might expect about 100-150 words, 4 key points]
Answer 1
Harlow’s study was with baby monkeys. He had observed that baby monkeys often survived better in cages without their mother if you gave them a soft cloth to cuddle. He set up an experiment to test this where there was two wire mothers. One of the mothers had a feeding bottle attached while the other one was covered in cloth. The monkeys were kept all the time in a cage just with these two wire mothers. The monkeys spent their time with the cloth covered mother not the other one which shows that contact comfort is important in attachment.
Answer 2
One study of animal attachment was a study by Harlow. There were monkeys who had a cloth model or a wire model with a feeding bottle and spent all their time on the cloth mother for comfort showing that babies attach for comfort and not food. So this proved the cupboard love theory wrong and that food is not the centre of the stage.
4

Answer 1
Learning theory is the behaviourist explanation of attachment, based on classical and operant conditioning. Harlow’s study with monkeys showed that this explanation was wrong. In this study baby monkeys had a choice of a wire mother with a feeding bottle or one covered in cloth. They choose the one covered in cloth. This shows that attachment is not related to feeding as the behaviourists predicted.
Another criticism of the learning theory of attachment is that it is only focused on behaviour and does not include other factors that may influence attachment, such as interactional synchrony.
Answer 2
One criticism is that the evidence for learning theory is based on animals. This means that it may not really apply to people. We can’t generalise from animals to humans. Though one study (Harlow) with monkeys did show that feeding didn’t create attachment, so that was with animals but monkeys are quite similar to people. Bowlby’s theory is better than learning theory because it is based on humans. Bowlby suggested that attachments are related to survival.
Conditioning isn’t all wrong because rewards may be part of attachment, just not feeding.
5

( http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/AQA-71811-EX.PDF
)
6

Answer 1
Phobias are a class of mental disorder associated with high levels of anxiety and avoidance of the phobic object. The behavioural approach to treating phobias is based on explaining phobias using the behavioural approach.
Classical conditioning can be used to explain how they are acquired and the same thing can be used in their treatment. The method is called systematic desensitisation. This is based on the principles of conditioning, which is a behaviourist idea.
The steps involved are (1) Patient taught to relax, (2) Create a hierarchy, (3)
Start with least feared object and relax, (4) work way to most feared. This can be done through flooding instead where the hierarchy is missed out and you just go start to the most feared object. This has the difficulty of being quite traumatic and then the patient may just give up, meaning that the therapy is not successful at all.
This has proved to be a good therapy and it makes sense because if people learn a phobia because of conditioning then it can be unlearned. Many patients like this kind of therapy because you don’t have to think about it. It’s also good because you don’t actually need a therapist to do it. If you read about it you could use it yourself to overcome a phobia.
On the negative side, as I have already said, some patients may find it quite unpleasant and if they give up this means it won’t be a very useful therapy.
Behaviourist ideas are based on research with animals. In fact systematic desensitisation comes from experiments that were first done with cats, so the question is whether it really can be applied to humans. But often this is not true. An alternative might be to use drug therapies or CBT, both of which are effective ways to treat some mental disorders.
A real problem for systematic desensitisation is that it may just cure the symptoms. It could be that there was some deeper psychological cause of the disorder and this is not tackled using systematic desensitisation. All that is cured is the fear of an object rather than actual cause.
356 words
7
AQA sample paper

8
There are two main explanations for resistance to social influence. They are social support and locus of control. In the question Jack thinks it is due to personality, which is related to locus of control, and Sarah thinks it is social support.
According to locus of control there are two kinds of people, externals and internals. In fact it is a continuum with these at other end and then people are located somewhere between the two extremes, as measured by a questionnaire such as the one written by Rotter. People who are internals are more confident and are more likely to resist social influence. On the other hand people who are externals are believe their fate is controlled by others and they are less likely to resist social influence. An interesting point is that this has been changing in recent years. Young people today are more likely to external than they used to be (Twenge).
The other explanation, supported by Sarah, is social support – the presence of others.
This was seen in Milgram’s study of obedience. Milgram had a number of variations of his original study. In the original study the ‘teacher’ (who was the true participant) delivered increasingly strong shocks to a learner following the orders of an
‘experimenter’. In one variation the teacher had a partner – someone else who refused to continue to deliver shocks, In this condition obedience fell from 65% to
10%.
In Asch’s study of conformity there was a similar condition. In this study participants were asked to match the length of a line to three possible answers. Sometimes the group choose the wrong answer and the true naïve participant was the last to answer and went along with the wrong answer 33% of the time. In a variation where there was another participant who went against the others conformity fell to 5%.
Both of these studies show how much having someone else who is resisting conformity makes a difference to whether someone can resist social influence.
So which of these explanations is better? Is Jack right or is Sarah right? This is difficult to judge because both explanations have research support. For example Gamson’s study of resistance to obedience showed that given the chance most groups did not follow orders. Holland repeated Milgram’s study and found that internals were more like not to obey than externals.
Rotter suggested that locus of control may actually be a more limited explanation because it is more important in situations which are novel. Your past behaviour has a greater influence. For example if you are in a similar situation to one previously and you obeyed in that situation, then you are likely to do that again. But if you have never been in that situation then the fact that you are an internal means you would possible disobey.
This research has important real-world applications because it is important to encourage people to resist social influence.
487 words

9
AO1 content:

Locus of control, social support in specification.
 Also could use being in an autonomous state; previous experience; gender; culture; high level of moral reasoning; reactance/the ‘boomerang effect’.
AO2 Possible application:

Jack suggests that dispositional factors in resisting social influence are more important
 Sarah indicates that situational factors are more powerful
 ‘strong personality’ could be read as having an internal locus of control that makes someone better able to resist social influence.

‘what other people are doing at the time’ relates to whether ‘they’ are seen to be conforming/obeying, suggesting social support is influential in resisting social influence.
AO3 Possible discussion points:
 commentary on two explanations of resistance to social influence
 use of evidence to support/illustrate the influence of the explanations chosen, eg specific
 studies of defiance/non-conformity and/or variations of Asch`s and/or Milgram`s basic
 experiments that demonstrated increased resistance
 use of real-world examples to illustrate the explanations
 other social psychological concepts/processes used to support discussion of the explanations, eg influence of social support may be explained by reduced normative pressure, minority influence 
 • comparison/analysis of the relative power of the explanations
 discussion/analysis of different forms of resistance, eg independent behaviour vs anti-conformity.

Psychology AS paper 1 example student responses Questions 4 and 11
10
Exemplar Answer 1
One study of social influence is the Asch lines study where people have to match two lines that are the same length along with other people who also have to match the lines. The other people are confidents of the experimenter (Asch) and some times give the wrong answer. Asch then looks to see if the real participant who is the last to answer also gives the wrong answer because he is compliant to the others.
This study was carried out in controlled conditions so is highly reliable and repeatable but has it got ecological validity? Ecological validity means measuring what you think you are measuring. In real life people do the same as other people all the time so that they do not stand out and become the odd one in the group. So Asch can explain this.
Another study was the infamous study by Milgram where the teacher told participants to electrocute someone if he could not remember pairs of words and every time he got it wrong the shock level went up
15volts. Most went up to lethal shock levels of 450 volt even though
Milgram thought this would not happen. This was Milgram’s defence and what he used to justify his unethical experiment.
It was unethical because he didn’t give them full information beforehand and he stressed them out. Some nearly had seizures and cried. But, because of being paid this means that they felt trapped and made to carry on so paying them was another unethical point of
Milgram’s study.
252 words
Examiner comment:
Knowledge of two studies is present. The description of Asch lacks detail – the experimental task is not clear and there are no findings or conclusion. The description of Milgram is very brief and quite confused
(reference to ‘teacher’ instead of
‘experimenter’) although there are some vague findings.
There is some evaluation for each study. In the case of Asch this is limited and mostly generic. The ethical evaluation of Milgram is a little more effective.
The answer is reasonably clear and organised into paragraphs but does lack coherence.
Specialist terminology is sometimes used inappropriately –‘confidents’, ‘electrocute’,
‘ecological validity’.
This is a Level 2 answer – although the descriptions are not good there is some evaluation for each study and it is reasonably organised.
Mark awarded = 5
Exemplar Answer 2
I am firstly going to describe the Milgram study of obedience and then the Zimbardo prison study. I shall also offer an evaluation of each of these studies.
Milgram tested situational factors and how the level of obedience was affected in his very famous experiments which have been repeated since. The very first Milgram study was carried out at Yale in 1960s.
Milgram advertised on posters for participants to take part in what was advertised as a study of learning. Participants were paid a small amount of money to give electric shocks (not real) to a confederate if he failed to recall words from a pair list. With every wrong answer the shock went up to a maximum. Participants wanted to stop but even so, 65% went to the end. Milgram said that obedience depends on the circumstances.
The main criticism of Milgram’s study is ethics. Participants were made anxious and harmed by the thought that they could have killed another person. But, Milgram did ask beforehand and people said the extreme obedience would not occur. He continued because he believed that the worth of the study outweighed the harm. The cost/benefit issue is one which often arises in social influence. Other critics argue that Milgram’s study was unrealistic, showing nothing about how people behave in
My comments:
AO1 level 4
AO3 effective discussion
AO3 partly effective

real life. But, participants believed the shocks were real and other studies of obedience in a real life hospital setting agree so it has validity.
Social influence was also studied by Zimbardo in a mock prison in the
1970s. Psychologically healthy volunteers were randomly given the part of prisoner or guard then acted out a role play of prison in the basement of Stanford University. Those given the role of prisoner were arrested and handcuffed and taken to the mock prison where they wore uniforms and the situation reflected a real prison. Guards could award punishment but not physical. The study should have lasted a week but was stopped early because prisoners suffered anxiety disorders. Zimbardo concluded that roles carry a set of expected behaviours and attitudes and can make people behave out of their normal character.
Unfortunately, Zimbardo took part in the study himself and so a researcher affect could have affected the outcome. Like Milgram, ethics were a problem, but then that was why the study was halted.
385 words
AO1
AO3 limited
Level 3 answer Mark awarded = 9
11
Exemplar Answer 1
Joe was separated at 6 months old. He then spent time in care until he was adopted at 7 years old. This must be why he is aggressive and troublesome at school. He does not work hard at his schoolwork and he is unkind to other children. This is because he was adopted. Also, it could have been because of his father being an alcoholic as children of alcoholics can have damage which can be biological eg genes or it could be social learning and copying the parent and his behaviour. It might be better for Joe that he was separated from alcoholic parents because he might be better adopted then. But obviously what happens in care is also a big problem and might be the cause of Joe’s bad behaviour.
There are many possible causes.
Bowlby believed that maternal deprivation occurs when we lose a bond and this then causes problems from childhood and through to adulthood. Bowlby thought the damage would be permanent so there is not a lot of hope for Joe.
Psychologist Michael Rutter thought that Bowlby confused privation and it has been criticised that Bowlby used animals to research maternal deprivation. These were Harlow’s monkeys who had a cloth model or a wire model with a feeding bottle and spent all their time on the cloth mother for comfort showing that babies attach for comfort and not food. So this proved the cupboard love theory wrong and that
Examiner comment:
Knowledge of Bowlby’s theory is very limited indeed, barely hinted at in the middle paragraph, and crucially the student does not elaborate on the ‘problems’.
A lot of what appears to be application in the first paragraph is either repetition of the stem, often a problem in applied questions, or poorly focused speculation.
With such little knowledge of Bowlby’s theory presented there is scarcely any material for the student to apply to the stem. There is attempted evaluation in the incomplete mention of Rutter’s view and the discussion about use of animal research which mostly misses the point.
The answer is not at all clear or well organised. There is very little use of specialist terminology – a lot of the answer is expressed in anecdotal terms.
This is a

food is not the centre of the stage. And so, the animal evidence does not really tell much about humans and their attachments but it does show about why baby animals make attachments so perhaps Bowlby should not have used this evidence.
283 words
Level 1 answer 
 Mark awarded = 2
Exemplar Answer 2 My comments:
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation was based on his view of attachment as having a critical period for attachment formation if it is to be successful, and attachment as monotropic with a single strong bond as the most important. He argued that if a child was separated from mother (the monotropic relationship) during the critical period
(the first few years of life) then the child would be irreversibly damaged both emotionally and cognitively.
Slightly muddled account of maternal deprivation but AQA is accepting this I believe.
He saw one consequence of maternal deprivation as low IQ as is noted that Joe struggles with his classwork indicating he has cognitive problems.
Bowlby’s view on cognitive impairment was supported by findings from research with institutionalised children, where Goldfarb noted they had lower IQs than controls – presumably due to their deprivation although others have argued it might have been general lack of stimulation that was the real problem. Perhaps this should lead us to question this aspect of Bowlby’s theory.
AO2 effective link
Effective AO3
Another likely consequence reported by Bowlby was what he called affectionless psychopathy and again we see how Joe has no empathy or regard for other people’s feelings which is a psychopathic trait .
A further consequence Bowlby argued was juvenile delinquency or criminal behaviour – he based this view on his own retrospective research with 44 juvenile thieves, many who had experienced separation from main caregiver. Joe is perhaps not old enough to have committed crimes but his behaviour is starting to be delinquent because he is often aggressive and gets into trouble at school.
AO2 effective link
AO1, maybe AO3
Bowlby’s study and his influential theory has been criticised for a number of reasons. First, the interviews were retrospective meaning the data can not be independently verified – perhaps the young people did not recall exactly what happened so maybe they had not really experienced ‘maternal deprivation’.
Effective AO3
Also, Rutter argued that Bowlby’s theory was really about effects of privation rather than deprivation, that is, Rutter argued that that never having any attachment would be much worse than temporary separation or deprivation. Rutter’s own study of delinquent boys on the
Isle of Wight showed that separation alone is not always that damaging, it is the reason for the separation eg family trauma that matters more. Other critics like Tizard have shown that damage through separation can be overcome and successful attachments can be made in later years. Despite criticism, Bowlby had huge influence on childcare, especially in the 1950s, and Joe’s case suggests it is still relevant.
Effective AO3
Effective AO3
381 words AO1 may be a bit short for 6 marks
Level 4 answer Mark awarded = 10
12