BSEH SS Psychology common mistakes
BSEH SS Psychology · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Treating psychology as identical to common sense or as pure introspection, and picking options that describe 'reading minds' or 'spiritual explanation of behaviour' as the goal of psychology.
Intro chapters are skimmed because they feel easy, so the candidate never fixes the definition: psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes, and it explicitly rejects common sense as a source of evidence because common sense is hindsight-biased and untested.
What to do instead
Write a one-line definition and memorise the four distinguishing features of science (systematic, empirical, replicable, objective). Practise rejecting any option that uses intuition, common sense, or mind-reading as the method of psychology.
Confusing the goals of psychology in order: describing, explaining, predicting, and controlling behaviour, and choosing 'control' when the stem describes a prediction or an explanation.
The four goals are listed together in the text and candidates memorise the list without learning the discriminating cue words for each goal.
What to do instead
Attach a cue to each: description = what/when/where; explanation = why (causes); prediction = what will happen next; control = changing or modifying behaviour. Sort five stems into these four boxes before the exam.
Confusing independent and dependent variables, or failing to identify the confounding variable, when the stem describes an experiment with a control group.
Candidates read the scenario as a story rather than mapping it onto the design: they do not ask 'who manipulates what, and what is measured'.
What to do instead
Use a fixed three-step routine: (1) what does the experimenter deliberately change (IV); (2) what is measured as the outcome (DV); (3) what else differs between groups (confound). Apply it to five written scenarios until it is automatic.
Mixing up the methods of enquiry: labelling a naturalistic observation as a field experiment, a case study as a survey, or a correlational study as an experiment.
All methods are described in one chapter, and the key discriminators (manipulation, control, and whether the researcher intervenes) are not held as a checklist.
What to do instead
Build a table with columns: manipulation of IV, control group, artificial vs natural setting, depth vs breadth, and typical data. Fill it for experiment, field experiment, quasi-experiment, observation, interview, questionnaire, case study, and correlation. Then classify ten short scenarios using the table.
Reading a correlation coefficient as proof of causation, or misreading the sign and strength of r (e.g. calling r = -0.80 a weak relationship).
Everyday language treats 'associated' and 'caused' as interchangeable, and the sign is confused with magnitude.
What to do instead
Separate the two facts: the sign gives direction, the number gives strength (so -0.80 is strong and negative). Add the standard line 'correlation does not imply causation; a third variable may explain both' and practise explaining one concrete spurious correlation.
Treating Piaget's stages as fixed ages rather than as a sequence of qualitatively different cognitive structures, and misassigning a behaviour (e.g. calling object permanence a preoperational achievement or conservation a sensorimotor one).
Candidates memorise age ranges only, so they cannot place a described behaviour in the right stage.
What to do instead
For each stage memorise the signature achievement and the signature failure: sensorimotor - object permanence; preoperational - symbolic thought, egocentrism, irreversibility; concrete operational - conservation, classification, seriation; formal operational - hypothetical-deductive reasoning. Test yourself by placing ten described behaviours.
Confusing classical and operant conditioning terms, especially calling the conditioned stimulus the 'response', or saying that reinforcement always increases and punishment always decreases behaviour without checking whether the consequence is added or removed.
The terminology is dense and the four operant contingencies (positive/negative reinforcement, positive/negative punishment) look similar in wording.
What to do instead
Draw the two-process diagram for classical conditioning (US–UR, then CS–CR) and use a 2x2 grid for operant conditioning: added vs removed, and pleasant vs aversive consequence. Note that negative reinforcement strengthens behaviour by removing something aversive, so 'negative' does not mean punishment.
Treating the three memory stores as one system, or confusing the capacity and duration figures for sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
The numbers are memorised as an undifferentiated list, and the term 'short-term memory' is used loosely for anything not long-term.
What to do instead
Build a store-by-store table with capacity, duration, encoding, and cause of forgetting. Anchor the key figures (sensory memory very brief; short-term around 7 plus or minus 2 chunks and seconds in duration; long-term essentially unlimited). Then explain one example of transfer from STM to LTM using rehearsal.
Using 'therapy' and 'disorder' vocabulary interchangeably - for example, matching a disorder to the wrong therapy, or describing psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy, and behaviour therapy with the same generic 'talking cure' sentence.
The two chapters are studied separately, so the candidate never links aetiology to treatment, and the distinctive techniques (free association, systematic desensitisation, cognitive restructuring) blur together.
What to do instead
Make a two-column matching sheet: disorder or problem on the left, the therapy and its signature technique on the right, with one sentence on the mechanism each assumes. Learn the defining technique names exactly.
Explaining social behaviour with individual-level concepts - attributing conformity, obedience, or prejudice to personality alone, or confusing prejudice (attitude), discrimination (behaviour), and stereotype (belief).
Social psychology terms overlap in everyday speech, and candidates answer from intuition rather than from the tri-component model of attitudes (cognitive, affective, behavioural).
What to do instead
Fix the triad: stereotype = belief/cognition, prejudice = attitude with a negative affective component, discrimination = behaviour. For conformity and obedience, learn the situational factors (group size, unanimity, presence of an ally; proximity and legitimacy of authority) and name the classic paradigms generically without relying on memorised story details.