The A Level Psychology Course – Q and A

Here are a few questions we have answered that were asked by younger pupils about Psychology:   What fields of psychology are there?   Clinical psychology – this would involve diagnosing and treating mental health disorders   Counselling psychology – this would involve helping people cope with challenges they face in their daily lives   […]

What We’ve Learnt So Far

In the first term of year 12, we study two topics along side each other: Attachment and Social Influence. Here is an overview of what we have covered so far: ATTACHMENT: In A-Level psychology so far, we have covered the topic of Attachment. In this topic we learned about the importance of your early years, […]

A level Research Project Winners

We had 3 winners of the best independent research project this year – read on for their project summaries…   The Effect of Stress on Dreams – Zaynab Ul Haq Dreams have always been particularly interesting due to them teetering over the sub-conscious and unconscious parts of our mind. This research is conducted on dreams […]

Investigating the Effect of Location on Memory

How does where you learn something affect your ability to remember it? Aim: To investigate how context affects memory. Hypothesis: Changing context (location) of learning affects ability to recall learnt information. Introduction: We chose to investigate whether changing the location between memorising and then recalling a list of words effects the number of words you […]

The psychology of dance

It is simple enough for me to say that dance, like most forms of exercise, can improve our mental health, but I wanted to know what actually happens in our brains and our bodies that makes dance so beneficial. We know that when we dance, our brain releases endorphins – hormones which can trigger neurotransmitters […]

12 Observation Studies Summaries

In the A level Psychology course, we have a few oppurtunities to conduct our own psychological studies. One of these oppurtunities was the year 12 students planning, carrying out and writing up our own observations in the school, on any topic that we wanted to. This was incredibly fun – and at some times very […]

Sixth Form Brain Day

Brain Day was an event at which all Year 12 and 13 psychology students enjoyed fascinating insight into the rapidly developing world of psychological research and technology. Aside from a thought-provoking lecture about what the future of psychology holds, the Year 13s had a day of sessions with Dr Guy Sutton in which he discussed […]

Year 13 Summer Project Summaries

Investigating the effect of physical appearances on our unconscious biases during decision making – Sasha Hawksworth The study used 35 individuals from the ages of 17-55 and assessed their responses to their preferences in hiring in the workplace. Participant’s responses were obtained through a questionnaire consisting of a set of 10 pairs of photos testing […]