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 primary and secondary socialisation and theories of gender role formation, Asch’s conformity research (normative and informational social influence), Milgram’s obedience studies and situational variations, the Stanford Prison Experiment, attitudes (the tri-component model) and Festinger’s cognitive dissonance, Janis’s groupthink, Latané and Darley’s bystander intervention model, prosocial behaviour, the general aggression model and media influences on aggression, attraction (Buss et al.) and Rollie and Duck’s phase model of relationship dissolution, attribution and the fundamental attribution error, prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination, Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory, intergroup contact, culture and acculturation, and research-ethics critique of classic studies. Aligned to the QCAA Psychology 2025 General senior syllabus.
Inside the Revizi QCE Psychology deck
Across the whole subject there are 1,838 flashcards spanning 22 topics, including 8 formula cards.
Describes how the cards in this deck are pitched — not a measure of how hard the subject is.
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: What social factors and personal characteristics influence prosocial behaviour?
Prosocial behaviour is voluntary behaviour intended to benefit others. Social factors: the reciprocity principle is the norm that we should help those who have helped us; the social responsibility norm is the expectation that we should help people who depend on us or are in need, regardless of any return. Personal characteristics: empathy (feeling with another person) increases helping; mood matters — people in a good mood are generally more likely to help; competence — people who know how to help (e.g. trained first-aiders) are more likely to step in; and altruism is helping motivated by concern for others with no expectation of reward, sometimes at a personal cost.
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 (1970) 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: According to the reciprocity principle, people are less likely to help someone who has previously helped them.
Answer: FALSE
The reciprocity principle is the norm that we should help those who have helped us, so a previous favour makes helping more likely.
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 unit — conformity, obedience, attitudes, group processes, prosocial behaviour, aggression, relationships, prejudice and culture — explain real-world phenomena from peer pressure and workplace behaviour to intergroup conflict and the experience of migration. 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. The science-understanding subject matter of Unit 4 can be assessed in the external examination, and the Unit 4 research investigation (IA3) asks you to evaluate a claim relevant to this unit. The ethical-evaluation skills developed by critiquing classic studies (Milgram, Zimbardo) also equip you for contemporary debates about research ethics.
Key Concepts
Conformity and Obedience
Understanding the classic studies by Asch (conformity) and Milgram (obedience), their findings, methodology and ethical implications is central to this unit. Be able to explain the factors that increase or decrease conformity and obedience, and to evaluate the ethics of these landmark studies.
Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance
The tri-component model of attitudes (ABC) and Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory explain how attitudes form, persist and change. Practise applying cognitive dissonance to novel scenarios and explaining attitude change using specific theoretical frameworks.
Interpersonal Processes
Groupthink, diffusion of responsibility, prosocial behaviour, the general aggression model, attraction and relationship dissolution show how other people shape individual behaviour. Being able to identify these processes in case studies and make predictions from models such as the GAM is a key 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. Practise applying these models to real-world scenarios and evaluating 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.
- Putting the phases of Rollie and Duck’s model in the wrong order — the sequence is intrapsychic, dyadic, social, grave-dressing and resurrection.
- 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 — evaluate classic studies against contemporary ethical standards as well as reporting their findings.
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 — identify which type of social influence is operating in each 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).
Key Concepts to Master
Related Topics
Exam Prep & Study Notes
Frequently Asked Questions
What does QCE Psychology Unit 4 cover?
Unit 4 The influence of others has four topics: Topic 1 Social psychology (socialisation, gender, group social influence, status, roles and power, obedience, conformity and social norms), Topic 2 Interpersonal processes (bystander intervention, prosocial behaviour, groupthink, aggression, attraction and relationship dissolution), Topic 3 Attitudes (the tri-component model, cognitive dissonance, social identity theory, attributions, biases, stereotypes and prejudice) and Topic 4 Cross-cultural psychology (sense of community, culture, acculturation, racism and reducing prejudice).
Are these flashcards aligned to the QCAA syllabus?
Yes — every flashcard and quiz question is mapped to Unit 4: The influence of others in the QCAA Psychology 2025 General senior syllabus.
What key studies should I know for QCE social psychology?
Studies named in the syllabus include Asch’s research on conformity, Milgram’s (1963) obedience study, Haney, Banks and Zimbardo’s (1973) Stanford Prison research on status, roles and power, Latané and Darley’s (1969) bystander intervention study, Buss et al. (1990) on attraction, and Bargh, Chen and Burrows (1996) on stereotype priming. Know the method, findings and ethical evaluation of each.
Last updated: 9 October 2026 · 20 sample flashcards · 20 sample quiz questions · Content aligned to the QCAA Syllabus