Introduction to Social Approach

The social approach asks: how do other people and the situation shape what we do, think and feel? It looks outside the individual to the social environment.

Assumption 1 — Behaviour, cognitions and emotions are influenced by social contexts, social environments and groups.

• Who we are with, and the group or situation we are in, changes how we behave (e.g. people may obey an authority figure or help a stranger differently depending on the setting).

Assumption 2 — Behaviour, cognitions and emotions are influenced by the actual, implied or imagined presence of others.

• Others affect us even when they are not physically acting on us — their presence is enough (e.g. a bystander in the carriage, an experimenter standing nearby).

The key consequence: the social approach favours situational explanations — it argues that the situation, not just the person's character, drives behaviour. This is the central debate you will use again and again here.

Why the wording matters. A 2-mark "outline one assumption" question is pure recall — write the assumption and give a quick example, and you bank both marks.

Your textbook teaches the studies; this section gives you the social psychology behind them so you can explain them.

1. Obedience. Following a direct order from a perceived authority figure. Milgram explained high obedience using the agentic state — people shift from acting on their own conscience (the autonomous state) to seeing themselves as an agent carrying out an authority's wishes, so they feel less personally responsible. Legitimate authority (e.g. a scientist at Yale) increases obedience.

2. Conformity. Changing behaviour/beliefs to match a group (a different kind of social influence from obedience — group pressure rather than an order).

3. Situational vs dispositional explanations. A situational explanation says behaviour is caused by the environment/situation (the social approach's preferred view); a dispositional explanation says it comes from the person's character/personality. Milgram tested the dispositional 'Germans are different' idea and found a situational cause instead.

4. The bystander effect & diffusion of responsibility. Lab studies suggested people are less likely to help when more bystanders are present, because responsibility is diffused ('someone else will help'). Piliavin tested this in the real world — and found it did not hold in a face-to-face subway emergency.

5. The arousal: cost–reward model (Piliavin). Seeing someone in distress creates unpleasant arousal; bystanders then weigh the costs (effort, danger, disgust) and rewards (praise, relief) of helping vs not helping, and act to reduce their arousal in the least costly way.

Build a one-line 'hook' for each.

Study	Topic / 'psychology investigated'	Headline finding
Milgram (1963)	Obedience; social pressure	65% of ordinary men obeyed an authority figure to a (believed) 450V shock
Perry et al. (2015)	Personal space; oxytocin; empathy	Oxytocin made high-empathy people prefer closer distance; low-empathy people preferred more distance
Piliavin et al. (1969)	Bystander behaviour; helping	An ill ('cane') victim was helped far more than a drunk victim; no diffusion of responsibility on the subway

How they fit the assumptions: all three show behaviour shaped by the social situation and the presence of others — an authority figure (Milgram), another person's distance (Perry), a collapsed stranger and other passengers (Piliavin).

The social studies cover a wide methodological range:

• Controlled observation (lab) — Milgram (obedience measured in a controlled setting; he described obedience as the 'dependent variable' but there was no independent variable in the baseline study; he also used observation and interviews).
• Laboratory experiment, double-blind, placebo-controlled, repeated measures — Perry et al. (oxytocin vs placebo, given to the same participants on different days; empathy measured by the IRI).
• Field experiment with covert observation — Piliavin et al. (staged emergencies on a real subway; behaviour observed naturally).

Why this matters for A:* link a method to a strength/weakness, e.g. "Piliavin's field experiment has high ecological validity because passengers behaved naturally in a real emergency — but it sacrifices control, since the researchers could not control who was in the carriage."

Relate each core study to the relevant issues and debates:

• Individual vs situational explanations (the headline debate). The social approach stresses situational causes — the situation (Milgram's authority; Piliavin's victim type) drives behaviour. But Perry shows an individual factor (empathy) interacting with a hormone — a nice 'both' example.
• Application to everyday life. Milgram → understanding (and resisting) destructive obedience and atrocities; Perry → understanding social difficulties (e.g. autism, social anxiety) and the possible use of oxytocin; Piliavin → understanding helping behaviour and emergencies.
• Ethics (very prominent here). Milgram (deception, lack of informed consent, psychological harm, pressure to continue) and Piliavin (no consent, deception, potential distress, no right to withdraw). Discuss the cost–benefit balance.
• Nature vs nurture. Perry adds a biological factor (oxytocin) interacting with individual empathy.

Exam phrasing tip: when a question names an issue (e.g. "…about the ethics" or "…individual and situational explanations"), you must include it to reach the top band.

Paper 1 (Approaches, Issues and Debates) is 1 hour 30 minutes, 60 marks, testing AO1, AO2 and AO3.

Section A — short-answer questions test recall of the studies and social-influence ideas. Command words: state, outline, describe, identify, suggest, explain.

Section B — extended response & essay asks you to describe a study (~6 marks) and evaluate it (8–10 marks), and may compare studies.

The key skill — the 'evaluate' answer:

1. Two strengths and two weaknesses (not a long list).
2. Include the named issue (often ethics or ecological validity in this approach).
3. Be in context — every point uses evidence from that study.
4. Use a PEEL chain: Point → Explain → Evidence → Link.

A point like "it was unethical" scores low. "Milgram deceived participants into believing they were giving real 450V shocks, causing extreme distress (sweating, trembling, seizures), so they were not protected from psychological harm" scores high — specific and explained.