QCE Psychology · Unit 4
QCE Psychology Unit 4: The Influence of Others — Flashcards & Quiz
QCE Psychology Unit 4 The Influence of Others explores how the presence and behaviour of others influence individual thought, feeling and action. These 20 free flashcards and 20 true/false quiz questions cover Asch's conformity research (normative and informational social influence), Milgram's obedience studies and situational variations, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, attitudes and attitude change (cognitive, affective, behavioural components), the Elaboration Likelihood Model (central vs peripheral routes), Festinger's cognitive dissonance, Janis's groupthink, group polarisation, social loafing, deindividuation and SIDE theory, prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination, Tajfel and Turner's Social Identity Theory, Allport's contact hypothesis, the fundamental attribution error and actor-observer bias, Darley and Latané's bystander effect and five-step decision model, aggression and social learning (Bandura), prosocial behaviour, research-ethics critique of classic studies, and research-methodology evaluation. Every card aligns with the QCAA senior Psychology syllabus.
Key Terms
- Normative Social Influence
- Conformity motivated by the desire to be accepted — public compliance without necessarily internalised belief change.
- Informational Social Influence
- Conformity motivated by the belief that others have accurate information — produces internalised belief change.
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Festinger's concept — the uncomfortable state produced by inconsistent cognitions, motivating reduction through attitude or behaviour change.
- Social Identity Theory
- Tajfel and Turner's framework — self-concept is partly derived from group membership through categorisation, identification and comparison.
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- The tendency to overestimate dispositional and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behaviour.
- Bystander Effect
- The reduced helping observed when others are present, driven by diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance and evaluation apprehension.
- Groupthink
- Janis's concept — dysfunctional decision-making in cohesive groups that prioritise consensus over critical evaluation.
Sample Flashcards
Q1: Describe Asch’s conformity experiments and their key findings.
Asch (1951) tested conformity by asking participants to judge line lengths in a group setting where confederates deliberately gave incorrect answers. Key findings: 75% of participants conformed at least once; the overall conformity rate was ~37%. Conformity increased with group size (up to 3–4 confederates), unanimity (one dissenter reduced conformity dramatically) and task difficulty. Participants reported conforming due to normative social influence (desire to fit in) and informational social influence (believing the group might be correct).
Q2: Describe Milgram’s obedience study and its key findings.
Milgram (1963) investigated obedience to authority by instructing participants to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to a "learner" (a confederate). Key findings: 65% of participants administered the maximum 450V shock despite the learner’s screams and apparent distress. Factors increasing obedience: proximity of authority figure, prestige of institution (Yale), perceived legitimacy of authority, absence of dissenting peers. Factors decreasing obedience: physical proximity to the victim, remote authority, presence of disobedient peers. Milgram identified agentic state (surrendering personal responsibility to authority) as a key mechanism.
Q3: What are attitudes and how do they form?
An attitude is a learned evaluation of a person, object, event or idea that influences thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The tricomponent model of attitudes has three components: Affective — emotional response (how you feel). Behavioural — how you act toward the object. Cognitive — beliefs and thoughts about the object. Attitudes form through: direct experience, classical conditioning (pairing a stimulus with positive/negative feelings), operant conditioning (reinforcement for holding certain views), observational learning (modelling attitudes of parents, peers, media) and cognitive evaluation.
Q4: Explain cognitive dissonance theory and its effects on behaviour.
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) is the psychological discomfort experienced when holding two contradictory beliefs, or when behaviour contradicts beliefs. To reduce dissonance, people may: change their belief to match their behaviour, change their behaviour to match their belief, add new cognitions to justify the inconsistency, or trivialise the importance of the inconsistency. Dissonance is strongest when the belief is important and the inconsistency is large.
Q5: Explain social loafing and the factors that influence it.
Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone. Causes include: diffusion of responsibility (individual effort is less identifiable), reduced evaluation apprehension (less fear of being judged), perceived dispensability (belief that individual contribution doesn’t matter). Factors reducing social loafing: smaller group size, individual accountability, intrinsically interesting tasks, group cohesion, cultural values emphasising collectivism.
Q6: Explain the bystander effect and Latané and Darley’s model.
The bystander effect: the probability of helping decreases as the number of bystanders increases. Latané and Darley’s (1968) cognitive model of bystander intervention identifies five steps: (1) Notice the event, (2) Interpret it as an emergency, (3) Accept personal responsibility, (4) Know how to help, (5) Decide to act. Failure at any step prevents helping. Key barriers: diffusion of responsibility (others can help), pluralistic ignorance (everyone looks calm so it must not be an emergency) and evaluation apprehension (fear of embarrassment if you are wrong).
Q7: What is attribution theory and how does it explain behaviour?
Attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967) explains how people determine the causes of others’ behaviour. Internal (dispositional) attributions: behaviour is caused by personal characteristics (personality, ability, effort). External (situational) attributions: behaviour is caused by environmental factors (luck, task difficulty, social pressure). Kelley’s covariation model uses three types of information: consensus (do others behave similarly?), distinctiveness (does the person behave this way in other situations?) and consistency (does the person behave this way every time?).
Q8: What is the fundamental attribution error?
The fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) is the tendency to overestimate dispositional (internal) factors and underestimate situational (external) factors when explaining other people’s behaviour. Conversely, the actor–observer bias means we tend to attribute our own behaviour to situational factors but others’ behaviour to dispositional factors. The self-serving bias involves attributing our successes to internal factors (ability, effort) and our failures to external factors (bad luck, task difficulty).
Sample Quiz Questions
Q1: In Asch’s conformity experiments, the majority of participants never conformed to the incorrect group response.
Answer: FALSE
75% of participants conformed at least once during Asch’s experiments, with an overall conformity rate of approximately 37%. Only 25% of participants never conformed across all trials.
Q2: In Milgram’s original obedience study, 65% of participants administered the maximum 450-volt shock.
Answer: TRUE
In the original baseline condition, 65% of participants obeyed the experimenter’s instructions and administered all shocks up to and including the maximum 450 volts, despite the apparent distress of the learner.
Q3: Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two consistent beliefs that reinforce each other.
Answer: FALSE
Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two contradictory (inconsistent) beliefs, or when their behaviour conflicts with their beliefs. This inconsistency creates psychological discomfort that motivates the person to reduce the discrepancy.
Q4: In the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study, participants paid $1 showed greater attitude change than those paid $20.
Answer: TRUE
Participants paid only $1 experienced greater cognitive dissonance because they lacked sufficient external justification for lying. To reduce dissonance, they changed their attitude to believe the boring task was actually enjoyable. The $20 group had adequate justification (the payment) and did not need to change their attitude.
Q5: Social loafing increases when individual contributions within a group are identifiable.
Answer: FALSE
Social loafing decreases when individual contributions are identifiable because accountability is increased. Social loafing is more likely when individual efforts are lost in the group’s output (diffusion of responsibility) and when there is low evaluation apprehension.
Why It Matters
Social psychology reveals the powerful yet often invisible influence that other people have on our thoughts, feelings and actions. The concepts covered in this topic — conformity, obedience, attitudes, group dynamics and prejudice — explain real-world phenomena from peer pressure and workplace behaviour to political movements and intergroup conflict. Understanding why people conform to incorrect majorities (Asch), obey harmful instructions from authority figures (Milgram) and fail to help in emergencies (bystander effect) provides critical insights into human behaviour that are directly assessed in the QCAA external exam. These concepts also have practical applications in areas such as marketing, leadership, conflict resolution and social policy, making social psychology one of the most applicable topics in the entire QCE Psychology course. The ethical-evaluation skills developed by critiquing classic studies (Milgram, Zimbardo) also equip you for contemporary debates about research ethics in fields from clinical psychology to consumer research.
Key Concepts
Conformity and Obedience
Understanding the classic studies by Asch (conformity) and Milgram (obedience), their findings, methodology and ethical implications is core QCAA content. Exam questions frequently require you to explain the factors that increase or decrease conformity and obedience, and to evaluate the ethical considerations of these landmark studies.
Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance
The tricomponent model of attitudes (ABC) and Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory explain how attitudes form, persist and change. QCAA tests your ability to apply cognitive dissonance to novel scenarios and to explain attitude change using specific theoretical frameworks.
Group Dynamics
Social loafing, groupthink, deindividuation and group polarisation demonstrate how group membership influences individual behaviour. Being able to identify these phenomena in case studies and suggest evidence-based interventions is a key exam skill.
Bystander Behaviour and Attribution
Latané and Darley’s five-step model of bystander intervention and attribution theory (including the fundamental attribution error) are essential content. QCAA expects you to apply these models to real-world scenarios and evaluate their explanatory power.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Saying the fundamental attribution error over-weights situational factors — FAE over-weights DISPOSITIONAL factors.
- Claiming the bystander effect means more people help faster — helping likelihood DECREASES as bystanders increase.
- Describing the central-route ELM as producing weak, temporary change — central-route change is stronger and more durable.
- Mislabelling Asch as informational conformity — Asch's unambiguous line task triggers normative conformity; Sherif's ambiguous task demonstrates informational conformity.
- Omitting ethical evaluation of Milgram and Zimbardo — QCAA analyses must include contemporary ethical critique.
Study Tips
- Create a key studies table: Asch, Milgram, Festinger & Carlsmith, Latané & Darley, Sherif, Janis — with columns for aim, method, findings, conclusions and ethical evaluation.
- Practise distinguishing between normative and informational social influence using novel scenarios — QCAA commonly asks which type of social influence is operating in a given situation.
- Walk through Latané and Darley’s five-step model using different bystander scenarios — identify which step is disrupted in each case and explain the mechanism (diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, evaluation apprehension).
- Know the differences between the fundamental attribution error, actor–observer bias and self-serving bias — practise identifying each in exam-style scenarios.
- Evaluate Milgram’s study from both ethical and scientific perspectives: ethical issues (distress, deception, withdrawal) and scientific contributions (understanding obedience, agentic state, factors affecting obedience).
- Link social psychology concepts across topics: conformity connects to attitudes (normative influence), group dynamics connect to bystander behaviour (diffusion of responsibility), and prejudice connects to attribution (stereotyping as cognitive shortcut).
Related Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
What does QCE Psychology Unit 4 cover?
Unit 4 The Influence of Others covers social influence (conformity, obedience, compliance), attitudes and persuasion, group dynamics (social loafing, groupthink, deindividuation), bystander behaviour, attribution theory (internal vs external), and prejudice and discrimination, all aligned to the QCAA syllabus.
Are these flashcards aligned to the QCAA syllabus?
Yes — every flashcard and quiz question is mapped to the QCAA senior Psychology syllabus for Unit 4 The Influence of Others.
What key studies should I know for QCE social psychology?
Essential studies include Asch’s conformity experiments (1951), Milgram’s obedience study (1963), Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), and Latané and Darley’s bystander research (1968). Know the method, findings and ethical evaluation of each.
Last updated: March 2026 · 20 flashcards · 20 quiz questions · Content aligned to the QCAA Syllabus