MCAT Psych/Soc study guide
MCAT Psych/Soc · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is the standardized exam the AAMC administers for people preparing to apply to medical school. Per the AAMC, it "assesses your knowledge of natural and social sciences concepts and your critical thinking and scientific problem-solving skills required to begin the study of medicine," and about 95,000 people take it each year. The MCAT Psych/Soc study guide has 4 sections and about 1,389 words.
01Sensation, Perception, and Attention (Foundational Concept 6)
Sensation is the transduction of stimulus energy into neural signals; perception is the selection, organization, and interpretation of those signals. Almost every question here is easier if you first ask which of the two the stem describes.
347 words, about 2 min02Learning, Motivation, Emotion, and Stress (Foundational Concept 7)
Non-associative learning covers habituation (declining response to a repeated harmless stimulus) and sensitization. Classical conditioning pairs a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) until the CS alone elicits a conditioned response; know acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination, and blocking.
329 words, about 2 min03Self, Social Cognition, and Social Influence (Foundational Concept 8)
Self-concept is the set of beliefs about who one is; self-esteem is its evaluative component; self-efficacy is a task-specific belief about capability; locus of control is the generalized expectation that outcomes follow one's own actions (internal) or outside forces (external). The self-serving bias credits the self for successes and blames situations for failures; self-handicapping creates an excuse in advance.
342 words, about 2 min04Social Stratification and Access to Resources (Foundational Concept 9)
Social stratification is the ranking of groups by unequal access to valued resources. Socioeconomic status usually combines income, education, and occupational prestige; it is closely related to, but not identical with, Weber's three dimensions of class (economic), status (social honor), and party (power).
371 words, about 2 min