Psychology A Unit 3 AQA - 17th June 2011

I think you have an A grade essay there if you evaluated in detail too. I did Eating Behaviour and Relationships:

In relationships I also talked about Bowlby; his primary attachment theory with monotropy, internal working model, continuity hypothesis etc... I then went on to talk about Ainsworth and Bell's similar ideas, then Kaplans ideas such as direct observation, social facilitation, and instruction. I talked about Gabriel and Tarde's social hypothesis of close proximity, imitation of superiors, understanding of concepts and role model behaviour. I then went on about Hazan and Shaver's 'Love Quiz' published in the Rocky Mountain News.

It seems you have decent evaluation in that question, I think you should of perhaps (if you didn't) mentioned about most of the research in this field being emic constructs (primarily made in a Western culture) and then being used as imposed etics. I think you mentioned determinism? - the idea our previous child-parent relationship determines our future adult ones removes our autonomy. I would have mentioned about most of the research being observation so to directly infer cause and effect is difficult etc... I wouldn't worry, you have a much better essay structure than most people, you should be hitting an A grade at least with that; especially due to the lower grade boundaries of Psychology.

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I was quite fond of the relationships question. The first five marker was 'Outline' not 'explain', so providing back up research wouldn't have gained you any extra marks, but if you were borederline, may have persuaded the examiner up one. I talked again about Gabriel and Tarde's (1912) original hypothesis on the social learning theory. And I did actually provide back up research about how media plays an influence which can be explained through social learning by Fearn on the Island of Fiji and the media coming into effect before and after 1995 etc... If in your answer you outined fully the approach and gave an example of how it works you'll be hitting 4-5 marks; if you didn't, you'll be hitting around 2/3-4 marks.


I'm glad the evolutionary question came up, it has so many flaws it's easy to find evaluative points. I originally talked about Darwin and the fact our behavioural traits must portray an advantage or make no difference to survival and reproduction and then related it to our modern day society eating behaviours (including all the EEA stuff), I explained all what you did in the first part of your essay; so that's all good! I also talked about Davis and Desor; it's great research, I didn't know anyone else would find it! I also talked about Dunbar's hypothesis on Dietary (with Hladik on smell and taste preferences), Mental Maps and Extractive Foraging hypothesis (with Mercader's research in West Africa and the Kung San, Tazmanian Aborigines tribe) and then Social hypothesis by Stanford on Meat Sharing etc... I like your evaluative points, I also mentioned Karl Poppers falsification principle, determinism, I evaluated at the start how evololutionary theory is the biological approach and the weaknesses of that too.

In principle, you have done well, and included a nice balance of research and evaluation; most people don't mention a lot of research and some completely forget most of the marks are in evaluation and application. I would bet money on you obtaining an A grade, I don't know what you need, if you're looking for an A* or not as that too, is possible. To really analyse what mark you got I'd have to read your real paper, but I'd stop worrying about because you've definitely done fine!

Welll.
I want to kill myself. That was possibly the worst exam in the world? I did sleep, relationships and gender.

Nature of sleep? What an awful question. Then the disrupting biological rhythms apparently needed a lot of A02/A03 and I definitely didn't do that much of those

Relationships wasn't too bad, I did about divorce, peers, attachment and like caregivers. That was about it, reading some other peoples answers for that makes mine feel like crap though

Then gender, the androgyny question Bleurgh. I managed to write about developmental and the lenses of gender and the behavioural but oh my God I did not like that question at all! We weren't actually taught about any of that, it was just extra reading that I did which I am sooo glad I did!
The second gender question wasn't horrible cos I quite like cultures but I just don't feel like I wrote enough tbh.

How does everything else feel about it?

Am I the only one who didn't talk about Bowlby in the relationships question?

I just did what the early experiences chapter in relationships said.... continuity hypothesis; secure types good at making friends/SLT/hazen and shaver/and then some arguments against the view that early attachment types are fixed and things......

No, it sounds like you wrote exactly the same as me. I didn't mention Bowlby's internal working model - just about the continuity hypothesis
then just the same studies as you did.

Thank you so much, that's really reassured me! I got 184/200 last year, so to get an A I need 136/200 but I'm really really pushing for the A* Perhaps it is in sight!

Thank god! Starting to worry. To be honest I always put down different studies to everyone else it seems! Plus I spent SO long on bio rhythms!!! I had to literally rush relationships and eating. Didn't have time to plan answers either. Oh well, hopefully I have at least 82 UMS to get my A* ...

Thank god! Starting to worry. To be honest I always put down different studies to everyone else it seems! Plus I spent SO long on bio rhythms!!! I had to literally rush relationships and eating. Didn't have time to plan answers either. Oh well, hopefully I have at least 82 UMS to get my A* ...

Yeah, don't worry about not including Bowlby, I need 80 ums for the A*, along with Been, fingers crossed!

Ah I know, me as well...and I rushed eating behaviour so much! I hope I put enough to get some marks
what textbook did you use?

Good luck with your results ! xx

quality not quantity

Ahhh. Oh well, at least I'm INTO uni, but a £1000 law scholarship would have been nice. Didn't feel like I put much evaluation in, however I felt I did so bad in this exam the first time round (Jan 2010) and came out with a B then, so I must have done better



Nelson Thornes.
Has a man on the front. looking at something.

When I did psychology at sixth form we used a variety of text books, but mainly nelson thornes. Dog book and eye book annoyed me...

Good luck with yours too August seems ages away.

Ahhh. Oh well, at least I'm INTO uni, but a £1000 law scholarship would have been nice. Didn't feel like I put much evaluation in, however I felt I did so bad in this exam the first time round (Jan 2010) and came out with a B then, so I must have done better



Nelson Thornes.
Has a man on the front. looking at something.

When I did psychology at sixth form we used a variety of text books, but mainly nelson thornes. Dog book and eye book annoyed me...

Good luck with yours too August seems ages away.

anyone bothered enough to look at what i wrote and predict the mark i got? i'm predicting 35-45 marks. not good i know. i completely fell apart in there. i normally get 20 marks per essay in class.

i did aggression, sleep and gender

I use an independent work book outside of class by Nick and Bethan Redshaw. It is an AMAZING, very precise and user friendly book! Though they sometimes have grammar or spelling mistakes which annoy me, and occasionally a not very clear or as indepth explanation as I would like.



I'll take a look at it in a minute.

anyone bothered enough to look at what i wrote and predict the mark i got? i'm predicting 35-45 marks. not good i know. i completely fell apart in there. i normally get 20 marks per essay in class.

i did aggression, sleep and gender

it. was. horrible.

my topics were eating behaviour, relationships and sleep

sleep was okay, really did not like the fact that the whole of the evaluation was on the consequences of disruption, WHAT are you meant to write for that?! i looked in my text book after and it only had like 3 points which were the ones i wrote, but there was no way i would have got the 16 marks for it!!

relationships was the best one, just one straight essay which was good!

eating behaviours, what a load of rubbish!! first part was fine but again, with the evaluation! there were no theories, no research you could put into evolutionary explanations of food preference!!

can someone please share their wisdom with me on the evaluation points i should have added

I'm finding this very difficult to mark, I need a little more information really. For your first question I would mark that at around 6-8, as I said I haven't done this topic so without reading it in full it's difficult to accurately predict.

On your second question, bio rhythms, I can't imagine you'll get anything over 9 if you haven't mentioned names or evaluated it more in depth.

I did the same question as you on aggression, you seem to have a very decent answer, though it really would have been worth mentioning testosterone and neural approaches, such as this by Gur who compared limbic areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus against the orbital frontal cortex. You have a good answer, I would estimate that being worth a good 16-18 marks depending on what you really wrote, how much, and how well communicated it was.

Androgyny is a decent answer too, I would say around the 10ish mark?

Your last question, not as good as I'm sure you're aware. Probably 5-6 marks.

That really was a ruff mark, I wouldn't base too much upon it at all! Grade wise I would estimate borderline A grade but it could be anything from a high B to a decent A. It's a little difficult though due to the fast I don't do two of your topics, and the examiners seem to be slighty mean in Psychology exams...