A-Level Psychology: Cognitive to Humanistic Approaches

The second half of the approaches topic spans four very different visions of psychology, and comparison questions between them are an exam staple. This quiz covers the cognitive, biological, psychodynamic and humanistic approaches with the distinctions that comparisons depend on.

The cognitive questions test the approach's working parts: inference as the method of studying unobservable mental processes through behaviour, schemas as organising frameworks, theoretical and computer models, and cognitive neuroscience as the fusion of mental-process research with brain imaging.

The biological questions cover the genotype-phenotype distinction — genetic makeup versus its environmentally shaped expression — the logic of twin studies (comparing monozygotic and dizygotic concordance to estimate heritability), and the evolutionary claim that behaviours persist when they aided survival and reproduction.

The psychodynamic questions test Freud's structural model with the id defined by the pleasure principle, repression located precisely among the defence mechanisms, and the role of the unconscious. The humanistic questions cover the assumptions that set this approach apart — free will and the drive toward self-actualisation — plus Rogers' congruence between self-concept and ideal self as the condition of psychological health.

Multi-select questions force clean boundaries: which components genuinely belong to the cognitive approach, which assumptions are humanistic. Those boundary judgements are exactly what "compare two approaches" essay questions assess, and each explanation states the defining commitment of the approach in question. Together with the Behaviourism and Social Learning quiz, this completes the compulsory approaches content.

• Explain inference, schemas and cognitive neuroscience within the cognitive approach
• Distinguish genotype from phenotype and interpret twin-study concordance logic
• Recall Freud's structural model and locate repression among the defence mechanisms
• State humanistic assumptions: free will, self-actualisation, congruence
• Draw clean boundaries between approaches for comparison essays

Covers the compulsory Approaches content of A-level Psychology: the cognitive approach, the biological approach, the psychodynamic approach and humanistic psychology, with the defining assumptions of each.