The AQA Social Influence Questions That Trip Students Up (and How to Answer Them)
By Georgie M, AQA A-Level Psychology tutor (MA Political Psychology, BSc Criminology, First)
In short: after every exam series, AQA publishes examiner reports explaining where students gained and lost marks on each question. I read every one, and I've pulled together the Social Influence questions that tripped students up between November 2020 and June 2025. The pattern is clear: students rarely lose marks because they don't know Asch or Milgram. They lose marks because they answer the topic instead of the question.
How it's examined: Social Influence is one of the four 24-mark sections on Paper 1. Questions range from 2-mark outlines to 16-mark essays, and Research Methods can be examined inside the topic too.
What are AQA examiner reports, and why do they matter?
Examiner reports are AQA's own commentary on how students answered each question in a paper. They say which questions were done well, which were "not done well", and the specific mistakes that cost marks. They're free, but most students never read them.
Every year, I go through each report and note the questions students found hardest. For Social Influence, I picked out the questions where the report showed that around half or more of students didn't reach the higher mark levels, or said clearly that many students made the same mistake. Those questions became my free Tricky Questions workbook, so you can practise them before your exam rather than meet them for the first time in it.
What keeps going wrong in Social Influence?
Reading the reports side by side, the mistakes fall into three groups.
Answering the topic, not the question. Students know Social Influence well, and that's part of the problem. In June 2023, asked to discuss research into minority influence, a significant number wrote about conformity in general, which "struggled to score any marks". In June 2025, answers on the Authoritarian Personality drifted into prejudice instead of explaining obedience. And when a question asks why people obey, long descriptions of Milgram's procedure and his ethics earn very little: in June 2022, the examiners said detailed accounts of ethical issues "rarely earned marks".
Evaluation and application that aren't made to count. This is the biggest message across five years of reports. Students criticise a study ("it was a lab experiment", "the sample was all male") without saying what that means for the explanation, and AQA's mark schemes only credit that kind of point when it's made relevant to the question. Application has the same problem: in the June 2025 conformity essay, many answers lifted quotes from the scenario and named a concept without explaining why the behaviour fits it.
Research Methods in disguise. Some of the hardest Social Influence questions are really about features of science, primary data or questionnaire validity. These are often where confident students lose marks without realising, and that's where this worked example comes from.
Worked example: Asch and the features of science
This is one of the trickiest questions in the workbook, because it combines a study everyone knows with a Research Methods idea many students can't apply.
AQA, November 2020, Paper 1, Q03 [3 marks] Researchers have identified different features of science, including replicability, theory construction and hypothesis testing. Explain how Asch's conformity research illustrates one of these features of science.
What the examiners said
The report said the question "was not done well". Replicability was the most popular choice, but some students confused it with actual replications, where other researchers repeated the study. Most knew standardised procedures mattered, but a significant number didn't use any details from Asch's study.
Evidence note: November papers have far fewer entries than summer papers, so treat this as a useful warning rather than a firm statistic.
What the question is really asking
"Explain how ... illustrates" is application (AO2), not description. You need one feature, what it means, and specific details from Asch's procedure or findings that show it. The mark scheme asks for "explicit contextualisation" for 3 marks. If you define the feature well but only hint at Asch, you're capped at 2.
Where students lost marks
Here's a typical weak answer:
"Asch's research is replicable because other researchers have done it again, such as Perrin and Spencer who found less conformity. This shows it is scientific."
This would get 1 mark at most. It confuses replicability (the study can be repeated because the procedure is standardised) with a replication (someone did repeat it). It gives no detail of Asch's procedure, and "this shows it is scientific" doesn't explain anything.
Success criteria
Name one feature.
Explain what it means in one clear sentence.
Use at least two specific details from Asch's research.
Explain why those details show the feature.
A model answer (replicability)
Replicability means that a study's procedure is standardised and recorded in detail, so it can be repeated in exactly the same way to check whether the findings are consistent. Asch's research illustrates this because his procedure was highly standardised: every naive participant saw the same standard line and three comparison lines, sat with a group of confederates who had been told in advance which wrong answer to give, and completed the same 18 trials, 12 of which were critical trials. Because these details were fixed and recorded, the study can be repeated exactly, which allows other researchers to check whether the 36.8% conformity rate on critical trials is a reliable finding.
Why it works: one feature, defined in one sentence; several specific details from Asch; and a final sentence that says why those details show replicability. That last step is what turns a 2 into a 3.
Test yourself on all of them
The Asch question is one of nine in my free Social Influence Tricky Questions workbook. Each one is a real AQA question that students found hard, with what the examiners said, success criteria, a step-by-step build, and a "twin" question to practise the same skill. The separate answer book has model answers for everything.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I find AQA examiner reports?
They're published on AQA's website alongside past papers and mark schemes for each exam series. The workbook does the sifting for you for Social Influence.
Which Social Influence questions do students find hardest?
In the reports from November 2020 to June 2025, the hardest were questions that needed a precise focus: minority influence, the Authoritarian Personality as an explanation for obedience, what situational variables tell us about why we obey, and Research Methods questions set in a Social Influence context.
What does Social Influence cover on the current AQA specification?
Types of conformity (internalisation and compliance); explanations for conformity (informational and normative social influence) and the variables Asch investigated (group size, unanimity and task difficulty); explanations for obedience (agentic state, legitimacy of authority, situational variables such as proximity, location and uniform, and the Authoritarian Personality); resistance to social influence (social support and locus of control); and minority influence (consistency, commitment and flexibility). If you're using older past papers, stick to these.
Which features of science do I need to know?
The specification lists objectivity and the empirical method, replicability and falsifiability, theory construction and hypothesis testing, and paradigms and paradigm shifts. They sit in Research Methods but can be examined in any topic.
About the author
I'm Georgie M, a specialist AQA A-Level Psychology tutor. I've supported over 400 students across more than five years of teaching, and I hold a Master's in Political Psychology and a First in Criminology.
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