Edexcel A Level Psychology Paper 1 October 2020 question paper 9PS0/01

Mrs King asked her class of 29 students to stop talking whilst she explained to them what they were required to do during that lesson. The students did not follow the instruction given by Mrs King and continued talking.

Using social impact theory, describe why the students ignored Mrs King’s instruction and continued to talk.

Jake wanted to find out if people obeyed the 30 miles per hour (mph) speed restriction in his local town. He recorded the driving speed of 200 cars on a Saturday afternoon and plotted the data on a frequency distribution curve.

Identify the measure of central tendency shown at data points A, B and C on the frequency distribution curve for Jake’s data, shown in Figure 1.

A frequency distribution curve to show the driving speed of cars (mph)

Measure of central tendency shown at data point A_........

Measure of central tendency shown at data point B_........

Measure of central tendency shown at data point C_........

Interpret the data Jake gathered about driving speeds in his local town.

Two netball teams were playing in the cup final of an international netball tournament. Several supporters from each team became aggressive and violent towards each other. The home team supporters chanted and shouted negative comments at the opposing team supporters, and some of them got into a fight.

Using realistic conflict theory, explain the behaviour of the netball team supporters.

In social psychology you will have learned about one of the following contemporary studies in detail:

• Burger (2009)

• Reicher and Haslam (2006)

• Cohrs et al. (2012).

Evaluate your chosen contemporary study in terms of reliability and validity.

Becca is trying to memorise the name and location of different organs in the human body for a Biology test.

Describe one feature of the working memory model (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) that could help Becca revise effectively for her test.

Using an example, describe what is meant by semantic memory as proposed by Tulving (1972).

Explain one strength of Tulving’s (1972) explanation of long-term memory.

Charles investigated the influence of an interference task on recall from short-term memory.

The same participants had to recall a word list after an interference task (Condition A) and later recall a word list with no interference task (Condition B).

The results from Charles’s investigation are shown in Table 1.

Complete Table 1 and calculate the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test for Charles’s study.

Wilcoxon T value_........

Using the Wilcoxon T value that you calculated for 7(a), determine whether Charles’s data were significant at p≤0.025 for a directional (one-tailed) hypothesis.

Assess whether case studies of brain-damaged patients are an effective method for investigating human memory.

David was in a restaurant with his girlfriend who was talking to another man. He felt the other man was being too friendly towards his girlfriend. David got into a fight with the other man.

Describe how evolution and natural selection could account for David’s aggression.

Explain one weakness of the role of evolution and natural selection as an explanation of David’s aggression.

Lauren is a Psychology student at university. For her research project, Lauren wants to investigate whether aggression could be related to hunger. She has permission from her tutor to conduct her investigation on the university campus.

Describe how Lauren could use a correlational research method to investigate whether aggression could be related to hunger.

Evaluate Freud’s psychodynamic explanation of aggression.

When Arthur was three years old a chicken chased him and pecked at him. This frightened Arthur and made him cry, resulting in alektorophobia (a fear of chickens).

Identify the conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditioned response (CR) from the scenario.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)_........

Conditioned response (CR)_........

In your studies of learning theories you will have conducted a practical investigation.

Describe the procedure from your learning theories practical investigation.

Explain two improvements that you could make to your learning theories practical investigation.

Astrid has a fear of flying. She experienced a flight with heavy turbulence when returning from a holiday and since then has been unable to board a plane. Astrid has tried going on a flight simulator to help her with her fear of flying, however this made her panic and the simulator had to be stopped for Astrid to get off.

Her friend is getting married overseas next year. Astrid wants to attend the wedding and will need to fly there, so she is considering systematic desensitisation to reduce her fear of flying.

Discuss how systematic desensitisation could be used to help Astrid with her fear of flying.

Assess how far learning theories have developed over time.

Evaluate issues of social control from social and biological psychology.