Issues and Debates in Psychology | AQA A-Level Psychology (7182)
Issues and Debates in Psychology
- 100 questions
- 6 subtopics
- Paper 3: Issues and options in psychology
- Paper 3
Issues and Debates in Psychology is Section A of Paper 3 and is compulsory.
It covers gender and culture bias, free will and determinism, nature and nurture, holism and reductionism, and the ethical implications of socially sensitive research. The material is applied to the topics studied elsewhere rather than treated on its own.
Sample questions from Issues and Debates in Psychology
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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Gender and culture in Psychology
What is beta bias?
Show the answer
Beta bias refers to theories or research that minimise or ignore differences between males and females, often by assuming findings from studies on one sex apply equally to the other. -
Gender and culture in Psychology
What does the acronym WEIRD refer to, and why is it significant for psychological research?
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WEIRD refers to Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic societies. Much psychological research uses samples from these populations, limiting the universality of findings. -
Free will and determinism
Define environmental determinism.
Show the answer
Environmental determinism is the view that behaviour is shaped by external environmental factors, including reinforcement, punishment and conditioning experiences. -
Free will and determinism
In what way does the biological approach demonstrate biological determinism?
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By explaining behaviour in terms of genetic inheritance, neurotransmitter activity and brain localisation. -
The nature-nurture debate
How does the interactionist approach explain the relationship between genes and environments?
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It recognises that genes may influence the environments people seek out or create for themselves. -
The nature-nurture debate
What does epigenetics study?
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How environmental factors can switch genes on or off without changing the DNA sequence, affecting gene expression. -
Holism and reductionism
What is biological reductionism?
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An approach that explains behaviour in terms of underlying physiological mechanisms such as genes, neurotransmitters, hormones and brain structures. -
Holism and reductionism
Why can holistic approaches be criticised as unscientific?
Show the answer
They can be vague, making it difficult to establish cause and effect relationships.
The 6 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Gender and culture in Psychology | Alpha and beta bias, androcentrism and ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and how each distorts psychological research. | 17 |
| Free will and determinism | What free will claims, the distinction between hard and soft determinism, the three types of determinism, and the case for and against the determinist position. | 20 |
| The nature-nurture debate | What the debate concerns, how twin and adoption studies separate genetic from environmental influence, what epigenetics adds, and the diathesis-stress model. | 23 |
| Holism and reductionism | Reductionism in its biological and environmental forms, the holistic alternative, and how the two compare in scientific standing. | 18 |
| Idiographic and nomothetic approaches | The idiographic study of the individual and the nomothetic search for general laws, the methods and examples typical of each, their strengths and limitations, and how the two approaches can be combined. | 12 |
| Ethical implications of research and social sensitivity | What makes research socially sensitive, the concerns it raises beyond the participants themselves, and why the wider costs have to be weighed. | 10 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
AQA A-Level Psychology Active Recall Guide
Every topic, not just this one. 2,999 questions with their answers.