Cambridge Past Paper Questions

'Medical techniques, such as drugs, are all a person needs to reduce long-term stress.'

‘There are no positive outcomes of group conflict.'

From the study by Laney et al. who investigated whether new information about liking asparagus can change old information:

In the study by Pepperberg (parrot learning), a principal trainer and secondary trainers were used during the 'test procedures'.

Adelia wants to replicate the Epinephrine Misinformed (Epi Mis) condition from the study by Schachter and Singer (two factors in emotion) and needs...

The study by Yamamoto et al. (chimpanzee helping) is from the social approach.

In the study by Baron-Cohen et al., one variable was the score on the Eyes Test.

A psychologist is investigating whether a person's happiness depends on whether people around them are happy.

One part of the investigation by Dement and Kleitman (sleep and dreams) involved a correlational study measuring a range of times spent in REM slee...

In a study about helping, participants were told the study was about visual tracking. They played a computer game in which they could help other pl...

Before the study by Pepperberg (parrot learning), most research on animal learning had been conducted on primates, such as chimpanzees.

Describe what is meant by 'experimental conditions' and 'control conditions' in research, using any examples.

Maria is conducting a self-report study into obedience using school children as participants. Her questions are: Question 1 How many times this wee...

Richard is conducting an experiment to investigate whether daydreams are affected by the type of background noise. He has two groups who are both g...

Jasper conducted an observational study of children's behaviours in their school common room. Jasper's data is shown in Table 9.1. Table 9.1 Behavi...

Jason is a university lecturer and is interested in doodling behaviour. One day, Jason sees one of his students, Karen, doodling. Jason is especial...

Section A Answer all questions in this section.

In the study by Canli et al. (brain scans and emotions), participants watched scenes presented to them on a screen. They responded to these scenes ...

Andrade conducted an experiment on doodling. Alternatively, she could have conducted a case study.

At the start of the study by Bandura et al. (aggression), the children were scored numerically on their behaviour in the nursery school.

Section B Answer all questions in this section. Mark is planning a natural experiment to investigate the short-term effect of noise on classroom pe...

Rachel is correlating two variables: helping behaviour and communication skills.

Perry has collected data about intelligence. He has measured the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) of a large sample of participants.

Section C Answer all questions in this section. Cecil is studying a family. The mother, father and both of their sons all have a phobia of trees.

Describe the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.

The study by Piliavin et al. (subway Samaritans) was conducted in a subway train.

The study by Saavedra and Silverman (button phobia) was a case study. Explain the two reasons that the case study method was chosen, using examples...

Baron-Cohen et al. (eyes test) collected data from several standardised tests.

Descriptive statistics used in studies can include the range and the standard deviation.

Describe the use of the ethical guidelines of 'numbers' and 'housing' in relation to animals in research, using any examples.

Jodie is investigating attitudes to doodling in class. She wants to obtain a sample that includes students and teachers.

Todd is using a questionnaire to investigate personality, such as being a calm or anxious person.

Arjun and Mary have collected data about aggression in adults using an observation.

Kenley is studying whether manipulating participants' mood (to 'good' or 'bad') will make them better at identifying positive facial expressions su...

Newspaper headline: Treatment for schizophrenia is successful. Sensky et al. (2000) conducted a longitudinal study and found that cognitive-behavio...

‘There has been little attempt to understand the influence on children of branded products that appear in television programs and movies. A study e...

The Wong-Baker faces pain rating scale for children. [Figure 3.1]

Wedley and Field (1984) proposed that the decision-making process of any group can be improved using a pre-decision support system. Their model of ...

(a) Design a study to investigate which type of phobia the general public think is the most common. (b) Explain the psychological and methodologica...

(a) Design a study using a questionnaire to investigate whether people prefer a customer-focused approach or a product-focused approach when buying...

(a) Design a study using an interview to investigate what the students in a school understand by the terms 'acute pain' and 'chronic pain'. (b) Exp...

(a) Design a study using observations to investigate which followership type is the most common in an organisation producing toys. (b) Explain the ...

'Symptom assessment of schizophrenia using virtual reality will one day remove the need for a doctor.' To what extent do you agree with this statem...

'The theory of planned behaviour: if you plan to buy and you intend to buy, you definitely will buy.' To what extent do you agree with this stateme...

'Health promotion strategies developed in one country, such as those in the five-city project (Farquhar et al., 1985), can never generalise to othe...

'Errors in group decision-making are always due to the cognitive limitations of an individual rather than to being part of a groupthink situation.'...

The use of nalmefene, a biochemical treatment, is believed by Grant et al. (2008) to help reduce the urge to gamble. To test its effectiveness, par...

From the study by Robson et al. (2011) on consumers' responses to table spacing in restaurants: [Figure 2.1]