AQA A Level Psychology Paper 1: Introductory Topics in Psychology June 2025 question paper 7182/1

What is meant by flexibility in the context of minority influence?

Outline the Authoritarian Personality as an explanation for obedience.

Outline one limitation of the Authoritarian Personality explanation for obedience.

A parent-toddler group meets for a trip to a soft play centre. They choose to go to MiniWorld. Julie, one of the parents, thinks MiniWorld is overpriced and would rather go to Kids’ Cave. She doesn’t say anything though, as all the other parents seem keen on MiniWorld.

Anthony always used to take his twins to Kids’ Cave. He has since joined the parent-toddler group. Anthony has heard the other parents talk about the play area at Miniworld as being better than the one at Kids’ Cave. He now takes his twins to Miniworld on the days the group does not meet.

Discuss two explanations for conformity. Refer to Julie and Anthony in your answer.

Which two of the following statements about types of long-term memory are true ?

Shade two boxes only.

A Episodic memories are sometimes referred to as ‘action memories’.

B Episodic memories do not require information about facts to be stored.

C Procedural memories are often stored below the level of conscious awareness.

D Semantic memories are more difficult to describe than procedural memories.

E Semantic memories include knowing the rules of football.

Outline the procedure and/or findings of one study in which coding in memory was investigated.

One explanation of forgetting is retrieval failure.

Suggest one revision strategy based on retrieval failure that could be used to improve performance in an exam. Justify your answer.

Another explanation for forgetting is interference.

Evaluate the interference explanation for forgetting.

In an investigation into the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, 40 participants were shown the same film of a car crash.

Following the film, they were randomly allocated to one of two conditions. Each participant was interviewed separately and was asked one critical question.

In Condition A, 20 participants were asked: ‘Did you see the set of traffic lights, Yes or No?’

In Condition B, the other 20 participants were asked: ‘Did you see a set of traffic lights, Yes or No?’

There was no set of traffic lights in the film.

The researcher chose to use a chi-squared statistical test to see whether there was a significant difference in responses to the critical question in the two conditions.

Explain three reasons for this choice with reference to this investigation.

The researcher found that significantly more participants in Condition A responded ‘Yes’ compared to participants in Condition B.

Use your knowledge of research into one factor that affects eyewitness testimony to explain this finding.

Two researchers conducted an observational study of reciprocity involving mother-infant pairs in a controlled environment.

What is meant by reciprocity in attachment?

To conduct the observation of mother-infant pairs, the researchers needed examples of reciprocal behaviours that they could record.

Suggest two examples of reciprocal behaviours that could be used as behavioural categories in this study.

Outline one way in which the reciprocal behaviours could be sampled in this study.

The two researchers compared their data to assess inter-observer reliability. This produced a correlation coefficient of +0.26

Briefly explain what a correlation coefficient of +0.26 means in terms of the reliability of the two researchers’ observations.

Outline one way in which the reliability of the two researchers could be improved.

Outline the findings of one animal study of attachment.

Outline one limitation of the study you have referred to in your answer to Question 16.

Discuss findings from studies that have investigated the role of the father in attachment.

There are four definitions of abnormality.

Which of the four definitions of abnormality would be best applied to the examples A, B, C and D below?

Write a different definition of abnormality for each example.

Outline Ellis’ ABC model of depression.

Discuss the neural explanation for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the use of drug therapy to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.