How to plan ERQ essays for Paper 2 (DP IB Psychology)

How to plan ERQ essays for Paper 2

• For Paper 2 you will answer questions on two option topics if you are studying the HL syllabus and one option topic if you are studying the SL syllabus

• The more you practise writing ERQs, the more confident you will feel and the better your essays will be

• What follows is one ERQ essay plan which you can use to help guide your own revision

  • Use this plans as a guide to help you put together your own ERQ essay plans for other topics across the IB specification

  • Time yourself when writing practice ERQ essays - one hour in total

• Please note that the theories and studies selected for this question have been chosen by the author of this page - you may have covered different studies, in which case just replace the studies used here for the studies you are familiar with

• An ERQ should be around 800 words long
  

Essay plan - bystanderism (Human Relationships option)

Question: Discuss factors influencing bystanderism [22 marks]

• ‘Discuss’ requires you to offer a considered and balanced review that includes a range of arguments, factors or hypotheses

Plan for the introduction:

• What is bystanderism and how is it relevant to social responsibility?

• Give a very brief example of the passive bystander e.g. Kitty Genovese

• Identify both factors that will be covered in the essay: 

  • Diffusion of responsibility

  • Just-world hypothesis

Plan for the main body of the essay:

Theory 1: Diffusion of responsibility (DOR)

• Describe and explain DOR in terms of bystanderism

Study 1: 

• Describe Latane & Darley (1968) - the smoke-filled room study

  • Aim, Procedure, Results, Conclusion

• Explain the strengths of the study

  • Use of naive participants increases validity and mundane realism

  • Generated new insight into bystanderism i.e. people not willing to save themselves in face of group behaviour/inhibition

• Explain the limitations of the study:

  • Some participants may have guessed that the smoke was fake which lowers internal validity

  • Could not be replicated today due to ethics

  • Small sample size which lowers generalisability

Theory 2: Just-world hypothesis (JWH)

• Describe and explain JWH in terms of bystanderism

Study 2:

• Describe Piliavin et al. (1969) - New York subway study 

• Aim, Procedure, Results, Conclusion

• Explain the strengths of the study: 

  • Large sample increases robustness of quantitative data (reliability) and generalisability (external validity)

  • Both quantitative and qualitative data = easy to analyse (quantitative) plus insightful (qualitative)

  • Replicable procedure via use of a ‘travelling lab experiment’ conducted in the field

  • High in ecological validity due to naive participants in a real setting

• Explain the limitations of the study: 

  • Ethically invalid due to lack of consent and other ethical issues 

  • Difficult to replicate exactly each time due to use of behavioural variables

  • Some participants may have seen the procedure more than once or guessed that it was fake = low internal validity

  • The act of helping may differ in collectivist cultures = ethnocentric

Plan for the conclusion:

• A victim may be denied help in an emergency due to both DOR and JWH

• Social, rather than biological or personal factors determine who gets help

• One lab experiment and one field experiment have both supported the idea that specific factors (DOR and JWH respectively) can influence bystanderism

• Neither study shows helping across time and different contexts though, only a one-off snapshot of helping behaviour 

• The act of helping may also differ according to culture so more research should be done to explore this