Psychology is the science of the mind and behaviour. The most important quality for anyone wanting to study psychology is to find people fascinating. Are you intrigued by why people act in the way they do? If so, Psychology is likely to capture your imagination and you will never look at people in the same way again!

Students will study two units at AS, one examined in January and the other examined in June.

You will learn about five major approaches to psychology in the AS course. In each one you will discover a key topic of research, learn about important studies related to that topic and find out how research is conducted in that area of psychology. You will learn to use statistical tests to help interpret data collected in class exercises.

Unit 1 covers Social and Cognitive Psychology Social Psychology investigates how our behaviour changes because of the way we relate to people around us. You will study two themes: what makes people obey orders, even when the orders are known to be wrong and what prejudice is.

In Cognitive Psychology you will again study two themes: memory, how it is created and how it is organised and why people forget.

Unit 2 covers The Psychodynamic, Biological and Learning Approaches Within the Psychodynamic Approach you will study Freud’s view of how early childhood experiences and relationships with our parents create our personality and our gender identity.

In the Biological Approach you will learn why some psychologists see our genes as the main source of differences in thinking style and behaviour between males and females.

In contrast, other psychologists see differences between males and females as mainly due to learned behaviour. How such learning occurs is covered in the Learning Approach.