A Level Psychology

Research Methods: Foundations

The scientific toolkit – and a strand that runs through every paper. Work explores laboratory and field experiments, aims and null, alternative, directional and non-directional hypotheses, independent, dependent and controlled variables, independent measures, repeated measures and matched pairs designs, counterbalancing and random allocation, sampling techniques, and the ethical guidelines that govern research with human participants and with animals.

The Biological Approach

Behaviour as biology. Work explores the assumptions of the biological approach through three core studies: Dement and Kleitman on eye movements, sleep and dreaming, Hassett et al. on sex differences in rhesus monkeys’ toy preferences, and Hölzel et al. on mindfulness practice and grey matter density in the brain.

The Cognitive Approach

The mind as an information processor. Work explores the cognitive approach through Andrade’s study of doodling and attention, Baron-Cohen et al.’s ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test and theory of mind, and Pozzulo et al. on children and adults as eyewitnesses in target-absent line-ups – alongside the problem of studying mental processes that cannot be observed directly.

Research Methods: Beyond the Experiment

Other ways of gathering evidence. Work explores questionnaires and structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, observations from participant and non-participant to overt, covert, structured and naturalistic, case studies, correlations and longitudinal studies, the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how validity, reliability and replicability are judged.

The Learning Approach

How experience shapes behaviour. Work explores classical and operant conditioning and social learning through Bandura et al. on the transmission of aggression, Fagen et al. on positive reinforcement training for a trunk wash in Nepal’s working elephants, and Saavedra and Silverman on the treatment of a button phobia.

The Social Approach

The influence of other people. Work explores Milgram’s obedience research, Piliavin et al.’s subway field study of bystander helping, and Perry et al. on oxytocin, empathy and preferred interpersonal distance – and what each reveals about the power of the situation.

Issues & Debates

The questions beneath the studies. Work explores the application of psychology to everyday life, individual and situational explanations, nature versus nurture, and the ethics of using children and animals in psychological research – applied back across all twelve core studies, as Paper 1 demands.

Research Methods: Data & Planning

Turning findings into evidence. Work explores quantitative, qualitative, subjective and objective data, mode, median and mean, range and standard deviation, bar charts, histograms and scatter graphs and their interpretation, and the planning and justifying of an original investigation – the skill assessed in Section B of Paper 2.

AS Revision & Exams

Psychology on paper. The twelve core studies revisited approach by approach, the issues and debates rehearsed against each, research methods scenarios and planning questions practised, command words unpicked, and past papers worked through before students sit Papers 1 and 2.

Consumer: The Physical Environment

Straight into A2. After the AS exams, Consumer Psychology begins with the shop itself: store exteriors and window displays, grid, freeform, racetrack and virtual store layouts, the effect of background music on restaurant spending and of noise on how food tastes, and retail atmospherics through Mehrabian and Russell’s pleasure-arousal-dominance model, including the effects of odour and crowding on shoppers.

Consumer: The Psychological Environment

The invisible architecture of choice. Work explores wayfinding in shopping malls and the movement patterns of different types of shopper, the psychology of menu design from eye-tracking to primacy, recency and position effects and the power of food descriptions, and personal space in consumer settings – including the key study by Robson et al. on table spacing in restaurants, and how people defend their place in a queue.

Consumer: Decision-Making

How choices are actually made. Work explores utility theory, satisficing and prospect theory, compensatory, non-compensatory and partially compensatory strategies, and internet shopping and website design; the heuristics shoppers rely on – availability, representativeness, recognition, take-the-best and anchoring – and point-of-purchase tactics such as multiple unit pricing; and the mistakes those shortcuts produce, from system 1 and system 2 thinking to the key study by Hall et al. on choice blindness for taste and smell.

Consumer: The Product

From shelf to basket. Work explores gift-wrapping, food package design through the key study by Becker et al. on packaging and taste perception, shelf position and the central gaze cascade; sales techniques, disrupt-then-reframe and Cialdini’s six ways to close a sale; and the buying process itself – the Engel Kollat Blackwell model, store choice by age and gender, and post-purchase cognitive dissonance.

Consumer: Advertising

The option closes with persuasion itself. Work explores the Yale model of communication, print, television, internet and smartphone advertising measured through eye-tracking and EEG, and Lauterborn’s 4 Cs marketing mix; how advertising interacts with consumer personality in the key study by Snyder and DeBono, and product placement in films; and brand recognition in children, brand awareness and image, and what makes an effective slogan.

Health: The Patient-Practitioner Relationship

Health Psychology begins in the surgery. Work explores non-verbal communication such as practitioner clothing and verbal communication and patients’ understanding of medical terminology, disclosure and false positive and false negative diagnoses, doctor-centred and patient-centred consultation in the key study by Savage and Armstrong, and the misuse of health services – delay in seeking treatment, Munchausen syndrome and malingering.

Health: Adherence to Medical Advice

Why treatment is not always followed. Work explores types of non-adherence, rational non-adherence and the health belief model; subjective, objective and biological ways of measuring adherence, from clinical interviews to pill counting, medication dispensers and blood and urine samples; and strategies to improve it, including work with children, behavioural techniques such as contracts and prompts, and the key study by Yokley and Glenwick on community interventions to increase immunisation.

Health: Pain

Understanding what hurts. Work explores acute, chronic and phantom limb pain and mirror treatment, specificity and gate control theories, the measurement of pain through clinical interview, the McGill pain questionnaire, visual analogue scales and the UAB pain behaviour scale – including the key study by Brudvik et al. comparing how doctors, parents and children rate a child’s pain – and the biochemical, cognitive and alternative techniques such as acupuncture and TENS used to manage it.

Health: Stress

The body under pressure. Work explores sources of stress from the general adaptation syndrome to life events, work stress and the Type A personality; biological measures such as fMRI recording and salivary cortisol alongside self-report questionnaires; and preventing and managing stress through biofeedback, imagery – the key study by Bridge et al. on relaxation and imagery during medical treatment – and stress inoculation training.

Health: Health Promotion

Changing behaviour at scale. Work explores strategies for improving health such as fear arousal and the provision of information, health promotion in schools and worksites from healthy eating to health and safety, and the individual factors behind changing health beliefs – unrealistic optimism, positive psychology and the pleasant, good and meaningful life, and the key study by Shoshani and Steinmetz on a positive psychology programme in schools.

Issues, Debates & Methods Across Both Options

Bringing the two options back together. Work revisits the issues and debates through consumer and health contexts – application to everyday life, individual and situational explanations, nature versus nurture, the use of children in research, cultural differences, reductionism versus holism, determinism versus free will and idiographic versus nomothetic approaches – alongside the A Level research methods needed for Paper 4: randomised control trials, postal questionnaires and rating scales, psychometric tests, temporal validity, and planning an applied study in full.

Revision & A Level Exams

The final stretch. Revision is active: both specialist options revisited topic by topic, the key studies and the issues and debates rehearsed against each, the Paper 4 planning question practised in full, and past papers worked through before students sit Papers 3 and 4 – turning two years of Psychology into confident, exam-ready understanding.