1.

Social conformity has been studied by psychologists since the birth of the field however
interest particularly saw growth in the aftermath of World War 2. Seeing the ability of
National Socialism to cause an entire nation to conform with barbaric social norms and
ideas, along with the ability to put their soldiers in a position to be morally okay with
committing atrocities fascinated and put fear in many. An adaptive response in psychological
terms is a reaction in regard to external stimulus, in this case social stimulus.

There are many examples of social conformity functioning as an adaptive response, one
early example would be the Robbers Cave experiment by Muzafer Sherif et al (1954)where
22 middle class American schoolboys were split into two groups and taken to a 200-acre
park where the two groups formed two camps. Originally the two groups were unaware of
the others presence. The two groups were then given competitive tasks where one group
would receive a reward and the other none such as competitive baseball. They would also
be set up in situations where one group gained, and the other group lost such as one group
arriving early to a picnic and eating all the food. The animosity between the two groups
would eventually grow to a point where the researchers had to physically separate members
of the two groups to prevent violence. When the experiment had concluded and after a
cooling-off period the two groups were interviewed about the group they had come from
and the other group of boys, the participants tended to refer to themselves positively and
the others negatively. This experiment demonstrated how social groups can be made over
competition, real or perceived, and how quickly it can be taken to a point of violence. Taking
into account this experiment it can be seen that social conformity in this situation was an
adaptation to the experimentally induced competition between the two groups and that
total conformity was achieved through pitting the two against each other. This experiment
however has also been the source of criticism, there are clear ethical violations with
deception and potential long-term harm that was not followed up on. It is also debatable
how ecologically valid the experiment is seeing that it is one culture of one age group of one
race of children, being used to explain the behaviour of a racially and culturally diverse world
of adults.

Another such example of social conformity is an experiment conducted by Solomon Asch

(1951) wherein a participant was led to believe that the group of people involved in the
experiment were confederates and not actors. The participants were then shown a series of
obvious line judgement tasks under the guise of a vision test. Each member of the group was
to state their answer aloud and the fake participants would all give the wrong answer. The
study showed that 1/3rd of the participants involved would conform on any given answer and
that over the course of the 12 trials around 3/4 th’s of those involved would eventually
conform. When interviewed after the experiment it was found that many did not want to
stand out and look ‘peculiar’ in the eyes of the crowd, others believed that the others may
know something more than they did, whilst some genuinely believed that they were giving
the right answers. The explanation for this phenomenon has been developed since this
experiment was conducted in the 1950s. For those that conformed due to not wanting to
seem out of place would fall under normative influence which is a behaviour ingrained in
humans as social animals not wanting to feel ostracized for their decisions and wanting to
follow the norms of the group. For those that believed the others knew something further
would fall under informational influence as it is a key behaviour as the situation would be
new to the individual and in order to adapt to the new situation they are attempting to learn
from those who may be more experienced in their surroundings. The final group will have
fallen under a distortion of perception which can occur when there is a unanimous group
 that goes against the individual’s position, which may genuinely change the individual’s
perception of, in this case, the line test. All of these situations show an adaptive change in
the individual’s behaviour due to the need to conform socially and the experiments though
old do demonstrate key information and starting points for the research into social
conformity and its functions as an adaptive response to external stimuli.

2. The reminiscence bump is a period on the lifespan retrieval curve which plots the number of
memories against the age at which they were encoded. The bump occupied the early middle
portion of the graph taking place from approximately 10 to 30 years old. The prior part of
the curve is childhood amnesia and the latter a portion known as the period of recency. The
reminiscence bump has been observed experimentally in various ways and is often
described as an increase in memory storage capabilities due to the period of time in which it
arises. During this time period the individual is often exposed to various important periods of
their life such as; marriage, falling in love, having children, etc. these events among others
are important for building the individuals identity, this concept is known as the life script.

Another reason for this bump the life narrative hypothesis which was constructed via a study
in which participants rated many memories on their emotional impact (positive or negative),
the importance to the individual of the memory, and their level of control over the event
taking place in the memory. This study demonstrated that the bump primarily focused on
memories that the individual felt they had a high level of control over. The memories of this
period are key to forming the individual’s life narrative and like the prior life script is vital in
forming the identity of the individual as based on prior life experiences.

Generational identity also occurs during the reminiscence bump where the individual
ascribes themselves to a certain cultural generation and may have an increased level of
shared memories because of this. A study by Conway and Haque (1999) demonstrated this
well among a Bangladeshi population where a second bump was observed among the
generation of Bengalee people that lived through a period of conflict with Pakistan, the
study found that increased level of memory encoding was reserved for highly self-relevant
experiences regardless of the age period that they may take place in, which further supports
the idea that between the ages of 10-30 where the most universal bump occurs is when the
most relevant and important memories for an individual are formed.

The bump however may not appear in the same time and place for everyone as there are
differences in gender and culture. Within gender it has been observed that there is a
variance in when the bump begins and ends for males and females. Research by Janssen,
Chessa and Murre (2010) suggests that women will reach their reminiscence bump peak
roughly three years earlier than males, and this may be explained by a difference in levels of
hormones as the sexes experience puberty. Though the bump is experienced universally at
roughly the same time across different cultures the content of the memories experienced
often differ. Studies have shown that in Western cultures the content of the individuals’
memory may focus on the self, in Eastern cultures the memories may focus more on a group
event or such orientation.

3. TV has long been looked at as an influence on individuals when it comes to aggression. Some
of the earliest work into this comes from Albert Bandura (1961) with the bobo doll
experiments. Bandura found that children often imitated what they would see others,
particularly adults doing, so when put into a room with a bobo doll after having seen an
adult display aggression against the doll by hitting it the children would follow suit and also
display aggression against the doll. This method of imitation is called social learning.
Limitations of this research are apparent however, bobo dolls are made to be hit and pushed
around as a toy thus this may prompt the children to do so rather than the supposed social
learning. The bobo doll experiment has been repeated where the children did not see
directly an adult show aggression against the doll but rather a recording on film of an adult
being aggressive toward the doll and the results remained the same in both cases, leading to
suggest that social learning does not require physical observation and can occur via a
recording.

A 1982 report by the National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S. reported the following
findings due to many follow up studies strengthening the links between children viewing
violence on television. That children may become less empathetic and caring of the suffering
of those around then, that children may become more afraid of the world and their
environment, and that children may be more likely to act in a violent and aggressive manner
towards peers and others. Research by Huesmann and Eron demonstrated further links
between television and aggression in their studies in this period by finding that children that
watched more violent television in elementary school would demonstrate higher levels of
aggression once they had become teenagers, and even further found that those who
watched more violent television as children were more likely to be arrested as an adult.

Further research by Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski and Eron (2003) would go on to

strengthen the theoretical and experimental links between aggression, social learning, and
television. One such longitudinal study published in 2003 demonstrated the significance of
violent TV with children and its links with adult levels of violence. By locating as many of
those in a prior 1977 study they were once again interviewed, and members of their
family/friends interviewed and found that those children exposed to higher levels of same-
sex aggressive TV characters had significant correlation with adult levels of aggression.
Interestingly the study also found a positive relationship between early childhood aggression
and further TV violence viewing. However, this relationship was found to be insignificant,
demonstrating that it may be the case that more aggressive children may seek to watch
more violent television, that it is however more likely that the exposure to the violent
television is the cause of the aggression and not the symptom. Furthermore, the study found
gender differences between male and female when it came to the expression of the
aggression with males more likely to engage in physical aggression and criminal acts, and
females to instead display more cases of indirect aggression. Despite this both sexes were
found to have similar levels of verbal aggression and aggression toward spouses. All of these
findings were found to hold after application of controls taking into account the various
differences between the participants of the original study, lending more strength to the
generalizability of the findings to a wider population.

Further research into television media as a driving force in the development of aggression in
children has led some to believe that as much as it is a key factor, it is not the driving force
that some studies may suggest. Gentile and Bushmann (2012) suggest that a consequence of
this research is that a disproportionate amount of the blame was put on television and that
media violence though a factor in later displays of aggression was only one of many factors
involved in the child’s upbringing that could lead to heightened displays of aggression as a
teenager or adult. Instead in their reassessment of media violence study they came to the
conclusion that rather than a disproportionate level of importance being found in media
violence as the aforementioned longitudinal study might propose that instead a ‘gestalt-like’
effect takes place where the combination of several risk factors such as; participants sex,
victimization parental monitoring, and prior aggression, including media violence better
explained their findings of aggression.