Description
This book provides clear, in-depth explanations of the topics in the AQA GCSE specification 4180 syllabus. It will prove invaluable to students at many levels on many courses and to the independent reader. It can be used as a stand-alone home study course, as a classroom text, as a reference text or just for pleasure for those who love to think about what makes people tick.
Psychology describes up-to-date research as well as some classic psychological studies and even debunks one or two psychological research myths. It leads the reader through all the topics in the syllabus as a teacher would in a classroom setting. Topics are presented as a series of lessons followed by “Check Your Understanding” sections, which are designed to help you check and retain the information in each lesson. An assessment record provided at the end of the book will help you keep track of your progress. Lessons are interactive with many opportunities to jot down your thoughts and reactions, reflect on how a topic relates to your own experience and become more involved with the contents.
Students can pinpoint the topics they are studying for GCSE by using the table mapping the GCSE specification against the lessons in this book. For those studying outside formal classrooms there are guidelines about how best to approach your studies.
The book assumes that readers have no previous knowledge of psychology and among the topics covered are:
Conformity and Obedience
Would you press a button to kill someone just because you were told to do so? Many people would, it seems.
Sex and Gender
Do girls and boys, men and women, behave so differently? If so, why?
Memory
How does memory work and how accurate is it?
Non-Verbal Communication
Do we reveal our true feelings in our body language?
Development of Personality
What exactly is Anti-Social Personality Disorder?
Prejudice and Discrimination
Are we bound to discriminate against people who are unlike us?
Learning
Remove your fear of spiders/snakes/flying/open spaces or anything else using the principles of learning.
Aggression
Is aggression born into us? Is it our hormones? Or do we learn to fight?
Research Methods and the Ethics of Psychology
Psychology is based on evidence, not just ideas. But what type of study constitutes good evidence and how should we treat the people in our studies?
About the Author
Geoffrey Shoesmith is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society with 23 years’ experience of teaching psychology to young people and adults from GCSE to Degree level. He has also spent 10 years as a government social researcher and analyst and has worked as a child care officer for Barnardos and Birmingham City Council and as a mental health liason officer for MIND. He is currently a writer and is working on analyses of data from longitudinal studies of young people, publishing findings in academic journals. He is the author of Psychology: A Complete GCSE Course (The Lutterworth Press, 2003).
Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Illustrations
Welcome to Psychology: About This Book
Key Studies
Integrating Research Methods Lessons
AQA Specification Mapped Against Lessons
Assessment Record
AQA 3.1 Unit 1: Making Sense of Other People
Memory
1. Processes of Encoding, Storage and Retrieval
2. The Multistore Explanation of Memory
3. Features of Each Memory Store
4. The Reconstructive and Levels of Processing Explanations of Memory
5. Explanations of Forgetting: Interference and Context Explanations
6. Explanations of Forgetting: Brain Damage
7. Eyewitness Testimony
Non-Verbal Communication
8. Non-Verbal Communication and Paralinguistics
9. Eye Contact
10. Facial Expression
11. Body Language
12. Personal Space
Development of Personality
13. Personality and Temperament
14. Eysenck’s Type Theory
15. Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD)
Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination
16. Definitions and Explanations
17. Ways of Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination
Methods of Investigation
18. The Hypothesis and Scientific Methods
19. The Experiment
Methods of Control, Data Analysis and Data Presentation
20. Experimental Designs
21. Target Populations and Sampling
22. Calculation of Mean, Mode, Median, Range and Percentages
23. Graphical Representations, Including Bar Charts
Ethical Considerations
24. Ethical Issues and Ways of Dealing With Them
AQA 3.2 Unit 2: Understanding Other People
Learning
25. Principles of Classical Conditioning
26. Principles of Operant Conditioning
27. Application of Conditioning Procedures to Phobias
28. Application of Conditioning Procedures to Change Unwanted Behaviour
Social Influence
29. Conformity
30. Obedience
31. Social Loafing
32. Deindividuation
33. Bystander Intervention
Sex and Gender
34. Sex Identity and Gender Identity and The Psychodynamic Theory of Gender Development
35. The Social Learning Theory of Gender Development
36. The Gender Schema Theory of Gender Development
Aggression
37. Biological Explanations of Aggression
38. The Psychodynamic and Social Learning Theory Explanations of Aggression
39. Ways of Reducing Aggression
Methods of Investigation
40. Survey Methods, Questionnaires and Interviews
41. Observation and Case Study
42. The Correlation and Scatter Graphs
Index
Endorsements and Reviews
This book is clear and succinct, well suited for teenagers within a school environment; but it can also be used as a stand-alone book for independent study. It possesses well-structured lessons with key concepts comprehensively described and illustrated. The assessment questions, with suggested feedback, are particularly helpful. I am sure this will become an invaluable resource in my role teaching GCSE Psychology to adults.
Penny Hart, Head of Psychology, Farlington School, West Sussex
