PSYC1001/PSYC1002: Introduction To Psychology – Final Exam Sample Questions

When I did PSYC1001 & PSYC1002 at The University of Sydney, the lecturers declined to provide sample final exam questions from past years. So, to help my fellow future students, I created a few of my own based on my experience of the subject:

Question 1, Developmental Psychology: Although his 2016 election was very close, when he was president Donald Trump published this tweet, commenting that “there’s a lot of red”.

According to Piaget, which stage of cognitive development had President Trump reached?

1. Sensorimotor
2. Preoperational
3. Concrete operational
4. Formal operational

Question 2, Evolutionary Psychology: A student in an online lecture makes an inappropriate, tactless anonymous comment about the female lecturer’s appearance, which leaves her feeling upset. The student is reprimanded for their inappropriate behaviour, and for their stupidity in not realising that anonymous comments in Echo360 are only anonymous to other students.

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, what primate species did the student most likely belong to:

1. Neanderthal
2. Homo erectus
3. Chimpanzee
4. Bonobo
5. Gorilla

Question 3, Learning and Motivation: Your Learning and Motivation lecturer recommends using negative punishment to manage a child having a tantrum, saying punishment will reduce the likelihood of future tantrums whereas giving in to what the child wants will only reward and reinforce undesirable behaviour.

How should you respond?

1. Use instrumental conditioning on him when he’s upset, and see how he likes it
2. Gently refer him to Jennifer Kolari’s work on Connected Parenting
3. Learn about empathy and emotional co-regulation elsewhere
4. Report him to the Department of Community Services

Question 4, Psychoanalytic Theory: Your Science and Statistics lecturer makes derisive comments about Apple, suggesting that the company and its customers are a cult. As a MacBook user, you notice that the laptop in the image for the online learning modules for the PSYC1001 Research Report major assignment is a MacBook.

According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the lecturer is probably experiencing:

1. Jealousy
2. Projection
3. Transference
4. Reaction Formation
5. Cognitive dissonance
6. Unconscious sexual desire for his mother
7. Inner conflict between his Id and his Ego

Question 5, Personality: Your lecturer suggests that a good way to avoid unproductive arguments with closed minded people is to ask: “What kind of evidence would get you to change your mind?” He adds that a good scientist should always be able to describe what kind of evidence would overturn their theory, whereas those who make silly claims will simply look stunned or confused.

Recalling his recent statement about Apple and its customers, you take his advice and ask him in the next PSYC1001 webinar: “What kind of evidence would get you to change your mind about Apple?”

Based on the 5-factor model of Personality, how do you predict he will react?

1. He’ll be angry
2. He won’t get the joke
3. He’ll look stunned and confused.
4. He’ll recognise your condescending smart ass in your research report and mark it harshly
5. You don’t need the 5-factor model to answer this question

Question 6, History of Psychology: A naïve History of Psychology student learns that: Freud believed unconscious repressed childhood emotions were the basis of adult neuroses. The radical behaviourists dismissed Freud’s ideas as unscientific and used animal experiments to conclude that all human behaviour could be studied, influenced, and predicted purely by instrumental conditioning. Recognising the limitations of this model, the cognitive behaviourists realised that thoughts also played a role in human behaviour, but neglected emotions because they were hard to measure experimentally.

While studying neuroscience, the student notices that emotions arise in a more primitive part of the brain than cognition. While reading more widely, they discover behavioural models from affective neuroscience in which emotion, not cognition, drives human behaviour. When they question their lecturers about whether cognitive behaviourism is consistent with how the human brain works, they get a mixed response and worry they will lose marks for being a troublemaker.

What processes are involved in the student learning to accept cognitive behaviourism as the dominant paradigm in modern Psychology?

1. Instrumental conditioning
2. Social learning
3. Social facilitation
4. Operant conditioning
5. Peer pressure
6. Ego integrity
7. Classical conditioning
8. Cognitive dissonance
9. Denial
10. All the above

Question 7, Science & Statistics: In a lecture critical of pseudo-science, your Science & Statistics lecturer uses a graphic titled Human Energy Systems as an example of unscientific vitalistic thinking. You notice that the author of the graphic is a female friend you met online, whose Facebook page has over 4 million followers.

What should you do?

1. Play the angry song you wrote about how she friend-zoned you
2. Accept that he has a point; she’s kinda weird and her beliefs are wacky
3. Wistfully wonder what could have been
4. Pledge your allegiance to science and join his campaign to eliminate all stupidity from humanity
5. Assume he’s jealous because she has more followers than he does

Question 8, Abnormal Psychology: Your Abnormal Psychology lecturer recommends the 2019 BBC Documentary Nadiya: Anxiety and Me as an example of the successful treatment of panic disorder with cognitive behavioural therapy.

You watch the documentary and are appalled by the cold, emotionally invalidating manner with which Nadiya is treated in therapy, and the general lack of empathy shown to another human being in the midst of mental distress. Also, you notice that by the end of the documentary her treatment using CBT is only partially successful and Nadiya concludes that she will have to learn to live with her panic attacks.

What should you do?

1. Spend 8 hours writing a lengthy rebuttal critiquing the therapy Nadiya was offered instead of working on your upcoming PSYC1001 research report
2. Make a “reaction” video where you react to Nadiya’s experience while watching the documentary, but do it after the final exam is completed
3. Reach out to Nadiya online offering emotional support and suggesting an emotionally focussed therapy would work better for her than CBT
4. Get some trauma-informed emotionally focussed therapy and keep chipping away at your own social anxiety
5. All of the above

Question 9, Forensic Psychology: You are disappointed with the mark you get for your PSYC1002 Research Report assignment. While you believe you have met all the requirements and engaged in the kind of inventive, critical thinking exemplifying in the graduate qualities the university seeks to develop in students, your tutor deducts marks for using a table to summarise the flaws in previous research and putting your hypothesis in italics.

When you point out to him that tables and italics are recommended by APA 7th Style as required in the assignment description, he responds that it’s the grandiose way you’ve used them that he didn’t like. You secretly suspect that pointing out that a lot of Psychology research isn’t grounded in neuroscience and fails to replicate has pissed him off, and that’s affected your mark.

What should you do?

1. Request a remark
2. Lodge an appeal to the Student Appeals Body
3. Stop being such a smart-arse and learn to write a proper research report
4. Wait until your PhD to critique Psychology research methods
5. Focus your argument better so it fits the word count limit next time
6. Investigate his family trauma history to find out why he’s so triggered by grandiosity

Question 10, Emotional Intelligence: Your first-year Psychology lecturers all neglect to mention the universal basic human emotions underlying all human behaviour.

What are they?

1. Fear
2. Anger
3. Joy
4. Sadness
5. Disgust
6. Surprise
7. Contempt (maybe)
8. Guilt
9. Shame

Question 11, Cognitive Processes: Despite nailing every other section, you score poorly on the Cognitive Processes section of the PSYC1002 final exam and miss out on a High Distinction as a result. When you query the lecturer responsible on whether your mark is correct, he responds saying that marking that section was “one facepalm after another as seemingly intelligent students gave the wrong answer again and again.”

What cognitive process could account for students of his most excellent teaching consistently giving incorrect answers to his finely handcrafted questions?

1. Reaction Formation
2. A Self-defeating Schema
3. Boredom
4. Unconditional Negative Regard
5. Repressed Anger
6. Childhood Trauma
7. Hair Splitting
8. Denial

Question 12, Neuroscience: After 7 straight 12-hour days studying your Psychology notes and reviewing lecture recordings and learning outcomes, you notice a dramatic drop in your motivation 2 days prior to your PSYC1001 final exam worth 65% of your mark.

What neurotransmitter are you likely to be lacking?

1. Dopamine
2. Serotonin
3. Acetylcholine
4. Norepinephrine
5. GABA
6. Givashitanine
7. Sleep
8. All the above

Question 13, Cognitive Processes: Your Science and Statistics lecturer keeps banging on about Nobel Prize-winner Linus Pauling’s advocacy of Vitamin C being an example of the argument from authority fallacy. You do some research of your own and find a literature review suggesting that regular supplementation with Vitamin C reduces the duration of the common cold by almost a day.

When you query him about it publicly on Piazza, he stands his ground and claims that the research you cite supports his position that Vitamin C is a useless placebo. You disagree, and when you find research showing that taking placebos resulted in colds that were shorter and less severe anyway, you decide to keep taking it.

Which process or theory best explains the lecturer’s reaction to having his beliefs publicly challenged?

1. Cognitive Bias
2. Cognitive Dissonance
3. Reaction Formation
4. Piaget’s theory of developmental Accommodation vs Assimilation
5. Social Facilitation
6. The Argument from Authority fallacy
7. Common sense: You critiqued him publicly; what the hell were you expecting?

Question 14, Emotional Intelligence: Your PSYC1001 lecturer highly recommends OLET1668: Developing Your Emotional Intelligence to his students. You take his advice and do the unit online during the August intensive. While you enjoy it, you feel disappointed with the large number of typos it contains.

According to Gross’s Process Model of Emotional Regulation, how could you best down-regulate your disappointment?

1. Situation Selection – Avoidance: Withdraw from the unit before census date so you don’t get charged for it
2. Situation Modification – Instrumental social support: Send the OLET1668 coordinator a brief, polite email pointing out the most egregious examples that bother you, and hope the Faculty of Science include basic affective neuroscience in PSYC1001 in future
3. Attention Deployment – Distraction: Read about the new COVID delta strain outbreak on the ABC News website, and feel anxious about that instead
4. Cognitive Change – Reappraisal: Remind yourself that everyone is doing their best under difficult circumstances, and this is only Psychology after all
5. Response Modulation – Social sharing: Share about it in your satirical mock PSYC1001 final exam questions

Question 15, Attachment Theory: Studying Psychology at Sydney Uni really makes you angry because the lecturers keep emphasising cognitive behaviourism and downplaying the vital role of emotions in all human behaviour. This unconsciously reminds you of your emotionally dismissive mother, with whom you never felt safe to be angry. When you eventually realise that your feelings about the lecturers are really just displaced infantile rage toward your mother, even reading Bowlby isn’t enough to soothe your deep-seated resentment and inner terror.

What should you do?

1. Confront every lecturer with questions about where emotions fit in
2. Send them a copy of Affective Neuroscience by Jaak Panksepp
3. Read The Healing Power of Emotion by Diana Fosha et al during your summer holidays
4. Secretly ruminate about how psychologists have disappointed you, including your ex-girlfriend
5. Drop your Psychological Science major and apply for a Bachelor of Music because you think it will be more fun
6. Accept that lecturers for subjects with over a thousand students are not in a position to offer emotional support
7. Contact the Student Counselling Service and get some counselling, because you need help dude
8. Channel your anger passive-aggressively into comedy by writing a list of faux PSYC1001/PSYC1002 Final Exam sample questions.