Psychology

Course summary

Classed as an A Level Science, this is a well recognised and applied course. Students will study: - Research Methods: planning research, experimental and non-experimental methods, representing data, descriptive statistics and ethics in psychological research. - Social Influence: why do we obey authority? Why do people ‘follow the crowd’? - Attachment: the influence of attachment on childhood, animal studies on attachment and cultural variations in attachment - Memory and Forgetting: models of memory, the working memory model, explanations of forgetting and eyewitness testimony. - Psychopathology: what is abnormal behaviour? How do we treat phobias? Explanations for depression and OCD. - Forensics: Offender profiling, how do we identify offenders? What makes a person commit crime and what theories of offending are there? How do we treat offenders and is custodial sentencing effective? - Schizophrenia: what is Schizophrenia and how do we treat this disorder? - Gender: explanations of gender development and gender dysphoria (relationships topics may replace gender) - Issues and Debates: socially sensitive research, forms of bias in research, key debates such as Free will v Determinism and further research methods including the features of science and inferential statistics. Key approaches including biological, social learning theory, and behaviourism are embedded throughout the course. There is 10% of the course that includes Mathematical content.