Core Knowledge and Skills

• Conformity: Asch, types of conformity, explanations for conformity, Zimbardo
• Obedience: Milgram, situational variables, agentic state, legitimacy of authority, authoritarian personality, Adorno   
• Resistance to social influence, minority influence
• Origins of psychology
• The learning approach: behaviourism and social learning theory
• Cognitive approach

Enriched Knowledge

• Historical links of how psychology developed as a science
• Ethics of psychology in the 1960s

Key Vocabulary

• Introspection
• Conditioning
• Reinforcement
• Cognition

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Biological approach
• Psychodynamic approach
• Humanistic psychology
• Comparison of approaches
• Experimental method and design
• Control of variables
• Types of experiments
• Sampling and pilot studies
• Ethical issues
• Observational techniques and design
• Self-report techniques and design

Enriched Knowledge

• Developed understanding of the different approaches in the discipline

Key Vocabulary

• Self actualisation
• Harlow
• Covert and Overt
• Ecological validity
• Design

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Correlations
• Data analysis
• Mathematical content
• Introduction to stats testing
• Peer review
• Psychology and the economy
• Introduction to attachment
• Schaffer’s stages of attachment
• Animal studies
• Explanations: Learning theory
• Explanations: Bowlby’s theory

Enriched Knowledge

• Links to economic growth in the UK
• Challenges of animal studies and how they relate to human beings

Key Vocabulary

• Imprinting
• Harlow
• Lorenz
• Monotropic

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Ainsworth strange situation
• Cultural variations
• Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation
• Romanian orphan studies
• Influence of early attachment on later relationships
• Coding, capacity and duration
• Multi-store model of memory
• Types of long-term memory
• Working memory model
• Explanations for forgetting, interference and retrieval failure

Enriched Knowledge

• Real life events, how do psychologists’ approach these with the correct consideration of people involved

Key Vocabulary

• Institutionalisation
• Deprivation
• Privation
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Factors affecting the accuracy of EWT, misleading information and anxiety
• Improving the accuracy of EWT: the cognitive interview
• Definitions of abnormality
• Characteristics of Phobias
• Behavioural approach to explaining and treating phobias
• Characteristics of depression
• Cognitive approach to explaining and treating depression

Enriched Knowledge

• Mental health and its impact to society as a whole. Changing attitudes

Key Vocabulary

• Encoding specificity
• Flooding
• Desensitisation
• SSRIs
• CBT

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Characteristics of OCD
• The biological approach to explaining and treating OCD
• Case studies and content analysis
• Reliability
• Validity
• Choosing a statistical test
• Probability and significance
• Non-parametric and parametric tests
• Correlations and tests of association
• Reporting psychological investigations
• Features of science

Enriched Knowledge

• Issues and debates around how psychology continues to evolve and the methods it uses

Key Vocabulary

• Qualitative
• Quantitative
• Ratio
• Design
• Margin of error

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Nervous & endocrine systems
• Neurons and synaptic transmission
• Localisation of function in the brain
• Hemispheric lateralization and split-brain research
• Plasticity and functional recovery of the brain
• Ways of studying the brain
• Biological rhythms: circadian, Infradium and ultradian rhythms
• Endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers
• Evolutionary explanations for partner preference
• Factors affecting attraction: self-disclosure, physical attractiveness and filter theory

Enriched Knowledge

• Generalising research to real world experiences

Key Vocabulary 

• Neurotransmitters
• Neurosurgery
• Circadian
• Infradian

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Theories of romantic relationships: SET, equity theory, Rusbult’s model and Duck’s phase model
• Virtual relationships in social media
• Para social relationships
• Virtual and parasocial relationships
• SZ diagnosis and classification
• Biological & psychological explanations of SZ

Enriched Knowledge

• Ethical considerations of investigating SZ
• Influences of social media on human behaviour

Key Vocabulary

• Meta-analysis
• Phase model
• Gating
• Co-morbidity

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Diagnosis and classification of SZ
• Biological explanations of SZ
• Psychological explanations of SZ
• Biological therapy of SZ
• Psychological therapy of SZ
• Management of SZ
• Interactionist approach to SZ
• Neural and hormonal mechanisms in aggression
• Genetic factors on aggression
• Ethological explanation of aggression

Enriched Knowledge

• Difficulties in treating SZ and mental health in general

Key Vocabulary

• CBT
• Token economies
• Diathesis-stress model

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Evolutionary explanations of aggression
• Social-psychological explanations: Frustration-aggression, SLT, and de-individuation
• Institutional aggression in the context of prisons
• Media influence on aggression
• Desensitisation, disinhibition and cognitive priming
• Gender and cultural bias
• Free will and determinism
• Nature-nurture debate
• Holism and reductionism
• Idiographic and nomothetic approaches
• Ethical implications of research studies and theory

Enriched Knowledge

• Nature nurture discussions re aggression
• Cultural differences and the impact on research

Key Vocabulary

• Frustration-aggression hypothesis
• Dispositional memory

Revision and Consolidation