AS Official Edexcel 1 Psychology 2017

Gender - Burger reported little differences between males and females level of obedience contrary to stereotypical beliefs. Shanab and Yahya found no significant difference between obedience levels in males and females.
Age - Shanab and Yahya found no significant difference between different ages of levels of obedience which also contradicts the belief that children are weaker and vulnerable so therefore more obedient. Milgram found a 100% obedience rate to 300 volts in males aged 20-50 suggesting adults are not stronger than children when it comes to obedience.


For cognitive I would probably do schemas or autobiographical memory as individual differences that do affect memory and behaviour and then do the process of making memories and the way in which information is encoded as two individual differences that do not affect memory/behaviour.

so i'm stuck on question and it says 'assess why case studies are a more appropriate research method for cognitive psychology in comparison to social psychology. (12)'
i just can't think of anything, i have a few points but would love to know what you would put..

I would split this up into the following:

Intro: Brief explanation as to what a case study is and the data it collects. Name some alternative research methods.

P1 -Case studies are appropriate for cognitive:
They allow us to investigate real life cases with brain damaged patients and how this can affect cognitive processes including memory. We can then link certain parts of the brain to being responsible for STM or LTM or semantic or episodic ect...This couldn't be done in a lab experiment as it would be unethical to cause brain damage upon people and these useful results would not be found. E.G HM and then i would discuss HM and how useful this case study was.

P2 - Case studies are not appropriate for cognitive:
Case studies look at small groups or individuals and therefore lack generalisability. There are so many individual differences within memory such as schemas, autobiographical memory and processing speed that investigating something on person or a small group is not representative of wider society. This limits the application of research from case studies and they are therefore inappropriate for such complex, varied processes such as memory that are susceptible to a range of individual differences. E.G HM was a rare case who had both types of amnesia and nobody with this extent of brain damage has been found.

P3 - Case studies are appropriate for social:
Case studies allow individual differences within social behaviour to be investigated for example personality or culture and gather detailed results that explain how these differences influence behaviour. E.G authoritarian personality, locus of control. Using this detailed research we can help society combat prejudice and obedience and therefore lower anti-social behaviour or discrimination and radicalisation. E.G Phineas Gage whose social behaviour completely changed after his brain damage and family members described he was "no longer Gage" and used lots of profanity.

P4 - Case studies are not appropriate for social:
Case studies gather unreliable results due to their natural environment and there are extraneous variables that mean a cause and effect relationship is not found. This leads to inaccurate results that have limited application and do not consider the confounding variables upon social behaviour for example a person's family history could results in violent/criminal behaviour (John Bowlby and maternal deprivation) but in a case study a person's family history may not even be looked at. Therefore wrong conclusions are made.

Conclusion - In conclusion case studies can be used for both cognitive and social research however they lack generalisability and reliability so may not be the best option for either approach. A lab experiment may be a better choice or self report data which is easier to conduct.





My last point was kinda rubbish as I couldn't think of anything! If you have any other ideas for why case studies are not appropriate for social research please do share!

I just did this question under timed conditions, and this answer is so much better so thanks! & for my social not appropriate i put because cog investigates into more biology, requires specific details about the processes which can only be done with brain-damaged unique patients (HM and his hippocampus), social is more general to behaviour in society and how environmental factors effect the behaviour, eg milgram as his broader aim was if germans were different, and t/f require larger samples in order to compare data in social. Not sure if that makes sense lool.

Aha thanks it took me some time to think of but I eventually got there! Ahh I see so for social behaviour you need to investigate it on bigger samples. That does make sense thanks! What other points did you include?
If you have any other challenging 12 markers please post as I find this is good revision and practice!!

I put about quan & qual data being collected so rich, detailed investigaiton on one specific individual in cog for brain damage, cog isnt appropriate b/c case studies only based on one unique individual, t/f hard to obtain same brain damage, lacks generalisability & gathers retrospective data
i don't have anymore but i have the standard one which is -

Ahh so is this just asking to compare your cognitive practical and social practical in terms of evaluation?

yep, hoping for something as easy as this tomorrow, how much revision have you done today?

I would love that type of question but I have a weird feeling that it is going to be quite a difficult one tomorrow. Who knows. Not done much to be honest. In the morning I was revising for another exam but after that I revised all of social and all of cognitive and then answered some past paper questions (just the short answers) and planned some 8 markers. How about you? Also do you have any other exams this year?

For the social approach it is unlikely to be studies for the 8 marker(s) as 2 studies came up last year for the 8 markers so I think the 8 marker is either going to be evaluate a theory or apply a theory to a scenario. For the shorter answers I think the key question is likely to come up and probably research methods and studies but not too sure about that. For the cognitive approach I have no idea but I hope there are statistical tests and graphs.
The 12 marker for the specimen paper was about questionnaires and lab experiments and the 12 marker in 2016 was about quantitative data and qualitative data so I doubt there will be another one on research methods but I have no idea what it could be since the cognitive approach and social approach dont have many links in terms of the theories and content. Do you have any ideas?

did quite alot today not gonna lie but feels like nothing helped anyway so seems abit pointless & i have biology and chemistry too what about you?

Maybe comparing laboratory experiments and field experiments for the 12 marker? Perhaps an 8 marker on the contemporary study for social too because that didn't come up at all last year!

Oh my god! Biology and chemistry on top of psychology?! Wow! Well I only have Law and Psychology which feels like nothing compared to you!! Good luck with them! When are they? Are you in year 12 then doing AS?

Thank you, they are after my psychology exams so that's kinda alright i guess, i was doing maths but dropped it and yep i'm in year 12
really not looking forward to this exam tomorrow, i just dont feel prepared :/

Ahh thats good then! I have psychology tomorrow, law on tuesday, law again on friday and then psychology on monday and then I'm done!! You'll be fine dont worry!!! You are definitely more prepared than me and just think of all the people who have not revised as much who will lower the grade boundaries for you (probably me). I would advise you stop revising now and leave it till tomorrow or you going to try and learn new things thinking that you dont know enough and then get more stressed and panicked. I dropped maths too, well I swapped from maths to another subject at the start of this year. What board do you do for biology?

I do AQA, yeah i stopped revising at 6 ish but i'm going to do some before the exam tomorrow, probably just do a few exam questions

How did it go?

12 marker was difficult. 8 markers were okay. Some shorter questions were quite hard. Ran out of time. Overall i think it was a nice paper so grade boundaries will be high but I messed up on some questions so hopefully I got a B