Edexcel A Level Psychology Paper 3 November 2021 question paper 9PS0/03

Explain one conclusion you can make regarding ‘extraversion’ using the data in Table 1.

Explain one conclusion you can make regarding ‘openness’ using the data in Table 1.

Explain one strength of the researchers collecting quantitative data in the Instagram study.

The researchers in the Instagram study decided to carry out follow-up unstructured interviews with the observers (group 2).

Explain two strengths of using an unstructured interview with the observers (group 2) in the Instagram study.

Navigation study

Researchers wanted to investigate whether there were sex differences in navigation strategy and efficiency.

The researchers created a virtual reality (VR) maze and placed five objects in various parts of the maze, such as a chair or a rubber duck. Participants were required to orientate themselves around the maze until they had seen all five objects, as indicated by black dots in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows an aerial view of the maze and Figure 3 shows the view a participant would have seen.

The researchers wanted to assess the strategy used by males and females after they had completed the maze.

The researchers of the navigation study decided to recruit a sample of participants from the local town.

Describe how the researchers could have used a random sampling technique to recruit the participants for the navigation study from the local town.

Explain one weakness of using a random sampling technique for the navigation study.

Figure 4 shows the strategies used by males and females in the navigation study.

A comparative bar chart to show the strategies used by males and females in the navigation study

Explain one conclusion the researchers of the navigation study could make using the data in Figure 4.

Explain two improvements that the researchers could make to the navigation study.

Scary and nasty beasts study

With animal phobias being one of the most prevalent mental health disorders researchers wanted to investigate the creatures people found most scary and revolting.

Researchers asked 1,798 participants to complete an online survey about 10 creatures, such as a spider or snail. They were shown each creature in a photograph in a random order. Participants had to rate their fear and disgust for each of the creatures on a scale from 1 (no fear/disgust) to 7 (extreme fear/disgust). A red panda was used as one of the 10 creatures shown to participants, as a control stimulus.

The results of the scary and nasty beasts study are shown in Table 4.

(Source: adapted from Polák et al. (2019))

Table 4

Explain one weakness of the scary and nasty beasts study in terms of validity.

Using research evidence, explain how far evolution and natural selection could account for the findings of the scary and nasty beasts study.

Evaluate the classic studies by Raine et al. (1997) and Watson and Rayner (1920) in terms of the role of nature and nurture.

During the college summer holiday, Rhianna went to a large music festival where she saw musicians and bands who played various genres of music. These included rock, dance, hip hop, grime, and pop music genres. Rhianna enjoyed dancing and singing with her three best friends when listening to all of the music genres at the festival. They all joined in when the artists encouraged certain behaviours such as clapping hands or singing lyrics.

When listening to music on her iPhone, Rhianna really enjoys listening to rock and pop music genres but does not really like grime or hip hop.

Evaluate how far social psychology can account for human behaviour, such as that of listening to music.

You must make reference to the context in your answer.

Assess the cultural and gender issues in psychological research.