• Psychology

Psychology: you're not memorising studies, you're building an argument

Psychology students memorise studies: name, date, method, finding. Then the exam asks them to evaluate an explanation of behaviour, and the studies sit in their head as trivia rather than as evidence — because they were learned as facts to be recalled, not as ammunition to be deployed.

Updated September 27, 20265 min readSubjects

A study is a weapon in an argument

Every study you learn should come with a purpose attached: which claim does it support, and which does it undermine? A study you can name but cannot deploy is worth one mark and no more — and one mark is not what the question is worth.

Learn each study with its weaknesses attached

Sample. Undergraduates? Western? Male? Twelve people? This is where a great many evaluation marks live and they are free.
Ecological validity. Does the lab task resemble anything a person actually does?
Demand characteristics. Did the participants work out what was wanted and oblige?
Does it replicate? Psychology has had a serious replication crisis, and engaging with it seriously is exactly the kind of thing that separates the top band. A famous study that failed to replicate is a *stronger* thing to write about, not a weaker one.

The debates are the structure

Nature/nurture, free will/determinism, reductionism/holism, individual/situational. These recur across every topic, and an answer that positions its evidence within a debate reads completely differently from one that lists findings. Learn the debates and the material stops being a pile of experiments and becomes an argument with sides.

Common questions

How do I remember all the psychology studies?

Card the specifics — names, dates, samples, findings — and learn each study attached to the claim it supports or undermines. A study you can name but not deploy is worth a single mark.

How do I get evaluation marks in psychology?

Attack the sample, the ecological validity, the demand characteristics, and whether it replicates. These criticisms are reusable across almost every study and they're where the marks are.

Should I mention the replication crisis?

Where relevant, yes — engaging seriously with whether a famous finding holds up is exactly the kind of critical thinking top bands reward.

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