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Questions about AS/A2 Level Psychology?

I'm currently in the middle of choosing what to do at Sixth Form. I have no clue of what job I want to do in the future or if I want to go to Uni so I'm just choosing subjects that I either enjoy, take interest in or think would be a good all round subject that will help me in the future. The subjects I'm considering are Business Studies (this is the only one I'm 100% sure I'm taking!), Media Studies, Photography, English Literature, Maths and Psychology. I have a few questions about choosing Psychology:

1) What topics will be covered? (the exam board is AQA)
2) I'm quite squeemish and have anxiety so I hate subjects like Biology or things to do with blood/gore/diseases etc(I fainted during sex ed and biology-.-) so I was just wondering if it'd be a bad idea choosing it?

I am interested in taking this course and one of the careers I'm considering in the future is something like counselling or dealing with mental health, it's just that I'm a bit unsure of the contents and if I'd be able to deal with it.
I did AQA AS psychology last year and loved it. I wouldn't say there was anything squeamish but you might be uncomfortable with some of the experiments, for example there was one we studied where participants were placed in a prison and there were no windows or clocks so they lost track of time and there was some violence and a lot of them suffered psychological harm from this. But overall a good subject and I am a bit sad I didn't continue with it but there's a fair amount of essay writing involved in A2 and i'm not a great fan of essays :P
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Sophieeexxx
AS- developmental psych. - ie childhood attachments and memory
- research methods
- cognitive psych I think? Includes stress, can't remember what else there is :smile:
A2- it varies at each college I think, it's whatever the teachers choose ,unit 4 at least :smile:
We do : u3- research methods
- schizophrenia, and something else
U4- relationships
- biorhythms and sleep
- agression

I'm squeamish too, there wasn't really anything I found bad, maybe a tiny section about lobotomy, but I found it fine :smile: AS I really enjoyed, mainly the developmental, A2 not as much, but it's much more essay focused than AS, and I'm no good at essays :smile: you'll be fine with psychology if you find it easy to remember studies and can evaluate things well I think :smile: hope this helps :smile:


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1) topics I did for AS:

-memory, including eye witness testimony
-attachment including daycare and when attachment fails to form
- research methods (which sucks but hey every subject has that one sucky topic right)
- abnormality including mental illness (very briefly not one in great detail but generally when someone 'fails to function', and the drugs that go with it)
- conformity including obedience to authority and conformity within a group (loved this topic)
- stress, including biological and psychological explanations for it (this is heaviest of AS I think, lots of biology about hormones, neurotransmitters, dungs and such, nothing really biological like we don't learn about organs or blood stuff or anything it was just the name of the hormone or neurotransmitter and what it does, really interesting topic though)

A2 topics:
- cognitive development including the development of a child's sense of self, others and morality
- eating behaviors including success and failure of dieting, an eating disorder (we did anorexia, but there's a choice between that, bulimia and obesity)
- schizophrenia including issues with diagnosis and explanations for it (could also do depression or anxiety I think for this one)
- either media or addictive behavior (haven't decided on this one yet, hoping to do addictive behavior but we're going to vote on it when we've finished the topic we're on now)
- aggression including institutional aggression (prison and genocide) deindividuation, genetic and biological explanations for aggressive behaviour (super interesting, quite heavy, quite ****ed up, so everything i want in a psychology topic basically :P)
- and the last one we haven't started yet but I think it's basically a more complicated version of research methods from AS, yay -.-

2) I guess the only diseases you really come across are mental ones, and the biology is comparatively light with reference to hormones and neurotransmitters but that's it really... the only one you might have a problem with is anorexia if you're super squeamish because that is kinda a physical as well as mental illness and some of the pictures in the textbook are a bit grim but genreally you should be fine it's not a blood and gore topic its all about the mind and how it works :smile:
(for Psychology A btw no idea about B)

I'd highly recommend psychology, it's really interesting and you learn a lot that you can apply and use in real life, I love it personally, so I'd go for it if I were you!

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