AQA Psychology skills for A/A* grade

wait are you asking about the skills required to get an A/A*, or are you asking what topics/knowledge the tests will be assessing us on? i'm an straight a* student so i could answer the first bit.

skills

For an a, you need to know absolutely all the content & be able to apply your knowledge to different scenarios (which requires AO2 skills). A lot of students tend to disregard evaluations of theories & studies, & even when people know the evaluations they don't tend to structure them well at all which loses a lot of marks. A key tip for this is at the start say something like "a strength/limitation of this is...". Never make generic evaluations (so basically make sure that your evaluation couldn't be applied to anything else).
For example:

"Milgram's study investigating obedience is weak as the findings can't be generalised to the whole population."
This is a very poor evaluation, as it isn't structured well, doesn't use any key terms, & doesn't link.

"A limitation of Milgram's study investigating obedience is that the sample was not representative. Using middle class American males to test obedience ignores the impact of class, culture & gender in obeying authority figures, meaning that we cannot generalise the results to the whole population. This is because individualist cultures (such as the US) have lower rates of obedience than collectivist cultures due to social norms, so we could predict that in collectivist cultures Milgram would have found more obedience to authority figures."
While still a basic evaluation (& i did ramble too much whoops), it is structured better, uses some key terms, & goes into enough detail to make it not generic.

Speaking of studies, you also need to know them (both key studies as well as supporting/contradicting studies) in a lot of detail. My teacher is a horrendous marker, & is so tight with giving out top marks, so I've learnt to include studies everywhere - even in questions that don't ask for them.

Research methods and issues & debates are hugely underrated. A big proportion of psychology exams are research methods, so honestly i think if you only knew research methods in an A* amount of detail & nothing else from the psychology course at all, you'd be able to get a C. Definitely focus revision in research methods - especially the harder areas. Issues & debates are great too. Although they only come up in Paper 3, they're great to use in evaluations as they're easier to remember & apply than studies.

There isn't much difference in terms of knowledge or preparation between an A & an A* student, it mainly depends on the exam. It's really important to not stress too much in an exam otherwise you'll waste time. I'd suggest planning & writing answers to really awful 16 markers, as they are the worst questions to come up in an exam.

Hope this helps! Sorry, I ramble sm aha

Thank you, but none of the links work

i have exam questions sorted out by topic if you want? i might have to message it to you though or email.

That would be amazing! Are you able to PM?

yes, sure! what options do you do for the 3rd paper?

Gender, Aggression and eating behaviour Should I send over my email?

yes please

i have exam questions sorted out by topic if you want? i might have to message it to you though or email.

would you please be able to send these to me too please?

can you message this to me too, it would be very appreciated!!

i have exam questions sorted out by topic if you want? i might have to message it to you though or email.

I know this thread is a few months old but for anyone coming here now I thought my thread might help! It's easier than typing it all out again sorry 😅