Key questions — Edexcel A-Level Psychology

In Pearson Edexcel A-Level Psychology, a Key Question is an issue of practical importance to contemporary society explored through psychological concepts, theories, and research. Mastering key questions requires students to clearly describe the real-world issue (AO1) and apply relevant psychological concepts and empirical findings to address, explain, or provide solutions for it (AO2).

Key questions in Pearson Edexcel A-Level Psychology provide a bridge between theoretical psychology and contemporary issues affecting society. Each compulsory approach—Social, Cognitive, Biological, and Learning Theories—features an issue of public concern, requiring students to demonstrate how empirical science informs real-world problem-solving.

Mastering this topic is essential because key question prompts appear reliably across Paper 1 and Paper 2 as extended response questions (typically 8 marks). Success requires students to succinctly contextualise the issue using factual real-world details before applying accurate, precise psychological mechanisms, theories, and empirical research to formulate evidence-based solutions.

• →Societal Relevance: Explaining why an issue matters to individuals, communities, public health, or the legal system with concrete facts.
• →Theoretical Application: Using specific models (e.g., Social Identity Theory, Multi-Store Model, Evolution of Aggression, Social Learning Theory) to explain observable human phenomena.
• →Practical Interventions: Developing viable, evidence-backed strategies (e.g., Cognitive Stimulation Therapy, superordinate goals, media watershed hours) that mitigate the problem.
• →Balanced Assessment: Critically evaluating how effectively psychological theories solve the key question and recognising theoretical limitations or ethical barriers.

• Choosing a question that is current and social, and saying explicitly why society should care, through harm caused, numbers affected, financial cost or a recent named event.
• Describing the issue before any theory appears, since knowledge of the issue itself is credited and an answer that starts with theory loses those marks.
• Keeping the description of the issue and the psychological explanation clearly separated, so the examiner can see both halves.
• Judging how useful psychology has been in dealing with the issue, including what it fails to explain, which is what lifts an assess or discuss answer above a description.
• Selecting concepts from social psychology itself and naming them precisely, for example agentic state, moral strain, in-group favouritism, superordinate goals, rather than gesturing at theory in general.
• Applying each idea to a specific feature of the chosen issue, so the answer says what the theory predicts about that situation rather than what the theory says in the abstract.
• Supporting the explanation with at least one study and its finding, since a named study with no result decorates an answer without evidencing it.
• Weighing the chosen explanations against each other, saying which fits the issue better and what neither accounts for, which is what an assess or evaluate question is scored on.
• Marks for establishing the issue as a live social concern: who it affects, an estimate of scale, the cost or consequence for services, families or the courts, and why it is contested at the moment.
• Keeping the two halves of the answer visibly apart. One part says what the issue is in society, the other applies the cognitive material, and the strongest answers return to the issue in the final sentence.
• Choosing a question the topic can genuinely explain. A question about memory, attention or the reliability of recall can be answered from cognitive psychology, whereas one about aggression or obedience cannot, and no amount of good writing rescues that choice.
• Concrete, checkable detail instead of vague quantity. Naming an organisation, a policy or an estimate carries the description, while phrases such as lots of people or a big problem earn nothing.
• Credit for honesty about limits. Saying what psychology can offer the issue and what it cannot settle, such as funding or the progression of a disease, reads as assessment rather than advocacy.
• Naming the concept and the research behind it together, because a theory label on its own is description while a theory plus the finding that supports it is evidence.
• Applying explicitly rather than implying. A sentence such as, because the phonological loop holds only what can be rehearsed in about two seconds, a child with an inefficient loop loses the start of a spoken instruction, is worth more than a paragraph about the loop.
• Using findings, not names. Saying that acoustically similar lists were harder to recall immediately while meaning based similarity mattered after a delay does the work; citing Baddeley and stopping does not.
• Assessment credit for weighing the fit: what the cognitive account explains about the issue, what it ignores such as biological deterioration, economic conditions or classroom resources, and whether evidence gathered in a laboratory transfers to the setting the issue occurs in.
• Linking to issues and debates where it is natural, particularly reductionism when a social problem is reduced to one cognitive component, and socially sensitive research when the people studied are patients or children.
• Practical implication as the close: what someone should do differently because of this psychology, stated concretely enough that a teacher, clinician or court could act on it.
• Describing the issue in social terms with concrete anchors, such as the number of people on opioid substitution programmes, the cost of drug-related crime, or a sentencing hearing in which brain imaging evidence was offered in mitigation.
• Explaining why the question is live rather than settled, which means setting out the competing positions and what each side stands to lose.
• Keeping the account of the issue separate from the psychology, because the credit divides between knowing the issue and applying content to it, and a blended answer usually under-serves one half.
• Choosing a question that biological psychology can genuinely address, so that the concepts brought in later have something to attach themselves to.
• Selecting content that genuinely bears on the chosen question and making the link explicit in words, rather than leaving the reader to infer why a study has been mentioned.
• Supporting the application with named research and what it found, for example reduced prefrontal glucose metabolism in offenders pleading insanity, or heritable physical aggression alongside socially transmitted indirect aggression in six-year-old twins.
• Drawing out the consequence for society, such as what a receptor-level account of relapse implies for funding substitute prescribing, or what an inherited predisposition implies for early intervention.
• Evaluating the application itself, noting that imaging evidence is correlational, that scanning samples are small, and that genetic contributions emerge only in interaction with environment.
• The key question must be introduced with concrete, real-world details, such as prevalence rates, societal costs, or affected demographics, to demonstrate its contemporary relevance.
• Psychological concepts from the learning approach, such as classical conditioning, operant conditioning, or social learning theory, must be explicitly applied to explain the chosen issue.
• Application requires linking specific theoretical mechanisms to the issue, for example, explaining how a celebrity acts as a role model whose thinness is vicariously reinforced.
• The psychological explanation must be evaluated by assessing supporting or refuting evidence, considering alternative explanations, and discussing practical implications or treatments.
• Name the theory and its mechanism in the same breath, for example that a behaviour followed by attention is positively reinforced and so becomes more frequent, which shows the concept doing work.
• Use studies as evidence rather than as decoration, so that Bandura, Ross and Ross found children who watched an adult attack a doll reproduced the specific acts they had seen, which is what makes modelling credible for imitating a celebrity.
• Select for fit and say why: conditioning explains how a fear or a habit is acquired and maintained, while social learning explains how a behaviour spreads through a group or a culture.
• Evaluate the psychology used, noting that learning explanations are reductionist and environmentally deterministic, play down genetic vulnerability and thought, and rest partly on animal work and brief laboratory exposure.
• Earn the description marks by stating the question plainly, saying why it matters now, and grounding it in something social and checkable such as rising referrals, the cost of untreated illness to health services, or a public argument about medication and young people.
• Earn the application marks by using named clinical psychology content on the question itself, so explanations of the disorder, the diagnostic manuals and their reliability, and treatment outcome evidence, each tied back in a sentence to the issue rather than described in the abstract.
• Name studies and say what they found: Becker and colleagues reported that indicators of disordered eating among schoolgirls in Fiji rose after television became widely available, with many girls saying they wanted to reshape their bodies, and work in Hong Kong described self starvation without any fear of fatness, which questions whether Western diagnostic criteria travel.
• Give both sides and then commit, saying what evidence would settle the question, because an answer that lists views without judging them cannot reach the top band.
• Show awareness that the material is socially sensitive, discussing stigma, blame, and the consequences of publishing findings about groups who are already stereotyped.
• Name the chosen issue and say why it matters in society, then signal which clinical concept, theory or study you are bringing to it, because examiners credit the selection as well as the content.
• Describe the chosen material accurately before applying it: for Rosenhan (1973) that pseudopatients reported hearing three words ('empty', 'hollow', 'thud'), and that ordinary note taking was recorded as writing behaviour.
• Apply in a sentence that names the issue, for example that a society treating a label as permanent will hold people in the sick role long after symptoms have gone.
• Use more than one level of explanation, a biological account alongside a cognitive or a social one, so the answer shows the breadth of clinical psychology rather than one favourite theory.
• Close with a short judgement on how far psychology can settle the issue, since the higher bands reward a conclusion that weighs the evidence instead of listing it.
• Credit for framing the question as a current concern for society, with the affected groups named, rather than as an academic disagreement between researchers.
• Concrete evidence of the issue earns marks: a statistic, a named case, an official report, or a documented change in policy or practice.
• Credit for explaining the consequences of getting it wrong, for example wrongful conviction, an offender left at large, loss of public confidence, or money spent on programmes that do not reduce reoffending.
• Stating the question precisely, in the form of a question, and keeping it inside criminological psychology earns the framing mark.
• A brief signal that psychology has something to contribute earns credit here, without yet giving the explanation, which belongs to the application answer.
• Credit is for explicit linking, so write a sentence of concept followed by a sentence that begins with the consequence for the issue, and repeat that pairing for each idea you choose.
• Naming the source of an idea earns the knowledge mark, whether a theory, a named study with what it actually found, or a concept such as reconstructive memory or treatment readiness.
• Two or three ideas used well earn more than six listed, because each one needs its application sentence before it can score at all.
• Credit for a conclusion that weighs how well psychology explains the issue, including limits such as evidence gathered on students, in another legal system, or under conditions unlike a real crime.
• Where the question invites it, credit for a recommendation that follows from the psychology, such as a change to how interviews are conducted or how offenders are selected for programmes.
• Credit starts with a bounded issue rather than a topic heading, so state it as a question society is actually arguing over and give one piece of real world context such as childcare participation rates or adoption figures.
• Application marks come from explicit links, so name the concept, state what it predicts, then say what that means for the issue, instead of describing a theory and leaving the reader to make the connection.
• Name researchers and what they found, for instance Rutter and colleagues reporting that Romanian children adopted into British families before about six months largely caught up while later placed children did not.
• A strong ending weighs the evidence, saying which findings are correlational, which come from other cultures or other decades, and what psychology therefore cannot tell a parent or a policymaker.
• Select rather than empty the topic, because two or three pieces of psychology used in depth score more than six named in a list.
• Use the concepts precisely, so an internal working model is a template for later relationships formed from the first bond, and a sensitive period is a window in which attachment forms most easily rather than a deadline after which nothing can change.
• Attach findings to names, for example van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg finding more variation in Strange Situation classifications within countries than between them, or Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith finding that most children with autism failed the false belief question while most comparison children passed.
• Show that the research cuts both ways, since Hodges and Tizard found late adopted children did form attachments at home yet still had difficulty with peers, which supports neither a wholly optimistic nor a wholly bleak answer.
• Describing the chosen issue with evidence that it is current: prevalence figures, cost to health services, recent legislation or policy, and the groups most affected.
• Phrasing it as a question psychology can answer rather than as a topic heading, so the answer has something to argue towards.
• Applying named material precisely, for instance nicotine acting on the reward pathway to explain why dependence outlives the decision to stop, social learning to explain uptake among teenagers, and perceived barriers in the health belief model to explain why information alone changes little.
• Sustaining the link, so each paragraph names the concept and then says what follows for the issue in the same breath, which is what the application objective credits.
• Concluding with what psychology recommends and what it cannot settle, since a judgement is what lifts the answer out of description.
• Selecting material that fits the chosen question and saying why that explanation is the relevant one, rather than emptying the topic onto the page.
• Getting the biology right: an agonist mimics a neurotransmitter and an antagonist blocks its receptor, nicotine is an agonist at nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, heroin is an agonist at opioid receptors, and both increase dopamine release in the reward pathway that Olds and Milner mapped in rats.
• Getting the learning explanation right, including negative reinforcement, which is relief of withdrawal and not punishment, and vicarious reinforcement from watching a model rewarded.
• Using the social cognition models with their known limitation, that the health belief model and the theory of planned behaviour predict intention far better than they predict behaviour, so the intention behaviour gap must be acknowledged.
• Supplying research with findings rather than names, such as pooled trial evidence that nicotine replacement raises the chance of quitting by roughly half as much again compared with placebo.
• Weaving in the debates, so reductionism of a purely neurochemical account against the holism of the biopsychosocial model, and determinism against personal responsibility for health behaviour.

• 💡Key question answers are commonly set as extended items worth around eight marks with the credit split between describing the issue and explaining it, so plan two balanced halves before writing.
• 💡The question can name the topic, so revise the social key question separately from the cognitive, biological and learning ones rather than hoping a single one will serve.
• 💡Let the command word decide the shape: describe wants the issue, explain wants the psychology applied to it, and assess wants a judgement about how useful that psychology is.
• 💡Practise the same set of theories against two different key questions, because the theory is fixed and it is the application that has to be rewritten under exam conditions.
• 💡One theory applied thoroughly with a study attached scores better than four mentioned in passing, so plan for depth.
• 💡Reserve a line for what social psychology cannot account for in the issue, since the top bands ask for judgement rather than coverage.
• 💡Key question material is examined in the foundations paper as an extended response, with the marks split between describing the issue and applying concepts, theories and research to it.
• 💡Prepare one key question per topic area, written out to a time limit, because the question rarely names the issue for you and improvising one under pressure produces thin description.
• 💡Where a stem says discuss or assess, the concluding judgement is credited, so finish with how far cognitive psychology actually helps with this problem.
• 💡Plan the answer as three or four applied paragraphs, each opening with the concept and closing with what it means for the issue, so that every paragraph carries both knowledge and application.
• 💡Where the stem uses assess or discuss, reserve the last paragraph for a judgement about how far the cognitive account explains the issue compared with other approaches.
• 💡The same studies used here appear in the studies and methods sections of the paper, so learn each once with a finding attached and redeploy it.
• 💡The key question is usually worth eight marks and splits into knowledge of the issue and application of psychology, so plan two halves before writing.
• 💡Learn one quotable fact about scale or cost for your chosen question, because a number makes the relevance to society visible in a line.
• 💡Every approach in the course carries its own key question, so keep the biological one filed separately and do not import the cognitive or social example by mistake.
• 💡Force the link with a sentence stem such as this suggests that, for this issue, so that every piece of content earns its place.
• 💡Two concepts applied properly beat five concepts named, because application marks attach to the link rather than to the count.
• 💡Examiners credit counter-evidence, so keep one study that complicates the biological account ready to use in the final paragraph.
• 💡Key questions in Paper 1 are assessed as eight-mark extended response items, so structure your answer to balance description of the issue, application of theory, and evaluation.
• 💡Select one specific key question for the learning approach and memorise two or three factual details about its real-world impact to ensure the issue is grounded in contemporary society.
• 💡Ensure every paragraph explicitly connects the psychological theory back to the specific key question, avoiding long sections of pure theoretical description.
• 💡Build an evidence bank of four studies with one findings sentence each, so the right one can be dropped into any key question at speed.
• 💡When told to explain an issue using the learning approach, put a learning term and a feature of the issue into the same sentence in every paragraph.
• 💡Evaluation of the explanation usually separates a top band answer from a middle one, so include a competing biological or cognitive account.
• 💡The key question is examined in the applications paper, and the wording usually asks you to describe the issue and explain it using concepts, theories and research, so plan the answer as two blocks of roughly equal length.
• 💡Marks are split between knowledge of the issue and application of psychology, so check before you finish that both are present and that psychology is doing the explaining.
• 💡Revise one question with two named studies attached, and reuse it, because security with evidence beats breadth here.
• 💡Watch the command word: discuss and assess want a conclusion, while explain wants the mechanism by which the psychology accounts for the social issue.
• 💡The applications paper asks about key questions as extended application, so plan one paragraph per concept and keep a deliberate linking sentence inside each paragraph.
• 💡Learn one key question thoroughly rather than sampling three, because you only need one and depth of application is what separates the bands.
• 💡Keep named theories, concepts, and/or studies ready; answers can draw on concepts and theories alone, or combine them with research, as long as they are explicitly applied to the key question.
• 💡Learn one key question thoroughly rather than three thinly, and rehearse it as two separate answers, the issue and then the explanation.
• 💡On the description, budget the time: a couple of sentences of context, one piece of evidence, one sentence on consequences is usually enough.
• 💡Write in the present tense about contemporary practice and name the legal system you mean, since the courts you are describing matter to the argument.
• 💡Keep a second example in reserve in case the question specifies a focus different from the one you prepared.
• 💡Plan in two columns, the concept on the left and the consequence for the issue on the right, and start writing only when every row has both halves.
• 💡Check whether the command word asks for a judgement as well as an account, because explain and discuss are marked differently.
• 💡Quote a finding rather than a title, since what a study found is worth more than what it was called.
• 💡Stick to studies you can describe accurately, because a wrong attribution loses the knowledge mark that the application then rests on.
• 💡Prepare one key question thoroughly rather than three lightly, and rehearse it both as a short description and as a longer applied answer.
• 💡The paper may name the issue or leave it open, so make sure your prepared psychology can be bent to either wording and not only to the title you practised.
• 💡Read the stem for where the marks are, because a question asking you to explain the issue using concepts, theories or research is rewarding the links rather than the description.
• 💡Keep one page holding a concept, a theory and a study for each subtopic, since that is the shape an applied answer needs and it revises faster than full notes.
• 💡If the question names which concepts you may use, use those, because credit for an unasked theory is credit you did not need to spend time writing.
• 💡Practise reducing each study to two sentences, one for what was done and one for what it showed, which is the length an applied answer can afford.
• 💡Key questions are usually set as a short description of the issue followed by a longer question asking you to explain it with psychology, so prepare a paragraph of description and three applied points.
• 💡Treat concepts, theories and research as three separate hooks and take one of each into the exam: one model, one explanation and one study with an actual finding.
• 💡The application objective is where marks are lost, so name the concept and then state what it predicts about the issue in the same sentence rather than in separate paragraphs.
• 💡Application questions on a key question are usually worth around eight marks and expect roughly balanced knowledge and application, so pair every point of theory with a sentence about the issue.
• 💡Carry one study with a number for each drawer, so the answer rests on evidence rather than assertion.
• 💡The command word explain signals application, while assess and evaluate signal that you must judge how well the concept accounts for the issue, so read it before planning.
• 💡Allocate time carefully: In an 8-mark key question essay, split your response approximately 50/50 between describing the real-world issue (AO1) and applying psychological knowledge (AO2).
• 💡Use accurate terminology throughout: Replace vague statements like 'they forget things' with precise terms such as 'retrograde amnesia', 'retrieval failure', or 'central executive overload'.
• 💡Clearly link each psychological concept back to the stem or scenario to prevent your evaluation from reading like a disconnected theory essay.

• Choosing an academic dispute, for example whether laboratory obedience studies lack ecological validity, which the specification explicitly excludes because it is not an issue for society.
• Writing an essay on social identity theory that names the key question only in the opening line, so almost nothing is applied to the issue.
• Offering no evidence that the issue is current, so the answer reads as personal opinion; one date, statistic or named event fixes it.
• Importing material from outside the topic, such as biological explanations of aggression, when the question restricts the answer to social psychology.
• Describing theory at length and applying it only in the closing sentence, which collects knowledge credit and forfeits the application credit.
• Listing every theory in the topic briefly instead of developing two or three, so nothing is applied in enough depth to be convincing.
• Writing an essay on a theory and calling it a key question, which leaves the marks for describing the issue completely unclaimed.
• Choosing an issue that belongs to a different approach, so the concepts applied are borrowed from social or biological psychology and cannot be credited in this section.
• Describing the issue at length and then applying psychology to a slightly different question, for instance describing dementia care and then explaining only how memory works.
• Treating the word contemporary as decoration and using an example with no current relevance or no evidence that anyone is currently concerned about it.
• Listing studies in sequence with no sentence connecting any of them to the issue, which reads as revision notes and scores as description.
• Evaluating the methods of the studies at length, which belongs in a studies question, instead of assessing how far the explanation accounts for the issue.
• Offering a single concept when the specification asks for concepts, theories and research, so the range of knowledge credit is capped from the start.
• Applying a model in a way it cannot support, such as using the multi store model to explain why a dyslexic child struggles with spoken instructions when the working memory model is the one with the relevant component.
• Writing an essay about theory and mentioning society only in the final sentence, which leaves the description half unrewarded.
• Picking something so broad, such as why people are violent, that no specific evidence can be applied to it.
• Describing the issue with no concrete referent at all, so the later application has nothing to bite on.
• Repeating the same material in the description and in the application, which cannot be credited twice.
• Listing studies with no statement of what they imply for the issue, which is knowledge without application and is capped accordingly.
• Borrowing content from another approach, such as social learning, without saying so, when the question asks for material from this part of the specification.
• Overstating the evidence into claims such as genes cause aggression, when concordance is always partial.
• Leaving out evaluation altogether, so the answer reads as advocacy for the biological approach rather than an argument.
• Writing a generic essay on a learning theory (like social learning theory) with only a brief, superficial mention of the contemporary issue, which fails to meet the application requirements.
• Selecting a key question that cannot be adequately explained using the learning approach, making it difficult to apply relevant concepts like conditioning or reinforcement.
• Failing to evaluate the psychological explanation, such as omitting discussion of the limitations of the learning approach in fully explaining complex social issues.
• Describing all three learning mechanisms in turn without applying any of them to the issue, which scores knowledge and no application.
• Muddling negative reinforcement with punishment when explaining avoidance, when escaping the feared situation removes discomfort and therefore strengthens the avoidance.
• Naming a study with no findings attached, so the marker sees a surname and a year instead of evidence.
• Turning the answer into an academic essay about a theory and never touching society, which loses the description credit outright.
• Choosing a question so broad that no clinical psychology attaches to it, such as whether people are getting sadder.
• Describing two studies at length and never linking either of them to the question asked.
• Inventing precise statistics. A defensible general statement about rising referrals or long waits earns the same credit and cannot be contradicted.
• Preparing a different key question for each topic and learning none of them properly, when one well evidenced question can be adapted.
• Writing a general essay on schizophrenia or depression and leaving the key question sitting in the title, so the application marks are never opened.
• Describing a study or theory in detail and then applying it in three words, when the application is a significant part of the credit.
• Choosing an issue so broad that no specific concept or theory fits it, then talking in generalities about stigma with no named psychological material attached.
• Stating that Rosenhan's pseudopatients reported hearing a single word, rather than the specific three words ('empty', 'hollow', 'thud').
• Writing the psychology instead of the issue, so the description becomes a summary of a theory with no society in it and the evidence marks go unawarded.
• Choosing a question so broad, such as why people commit crime, that nothing in the answer can be evidenced in the space available.
• Giving no evidence at all that the issue is current and real, which caps the answer however fluently it is written.
• Using the same material in both parts of the assessment, so the application answer has nothing left to say.
• Describing studies at length and adding one closing sentence of application, which puts the balance wrong from the opening line because the marks sit in the links.
• Drawing concepts from another topic area, such as social influence or memory models, when the specification requires material from criminological psychology.
• Contradicting the description given in the first part, for example arguing that the issue is overstated after presenting it as urgent.
• Leaving evaluation out entirely, so an answer that asks how far psychology explains the issue cannot reach the top band.
• Spending most of the answer describing the issue and adding one sentence of psychology at the end, which leaves nearly all of the application credit unclaimed.
• Choosing an issue so broad that no study is relevant to it, such as whether childhood matters, rather than a decision somebody actually has to make.
• Quoting statistics with no source and treating them as research findings, when the evidence marks are for named psychological studies.
• Listing studies with no statement of what they found, which reads as a revision list and earns no application credit.
• Treating Strange Situation classifications as fixed traits of the child rather than ratings of one relationship observed on one occasion.
• Importing material from another topic area such as social or biological psychology when the question restricts you to the child psychology content.
• Choosing an issue with no health psychology behind it, which leaves the candidate summarising the news for most of the answer.
• Writing a theory essay with the issue named only in the opening sentence, which caps the application marks however accurate the theory is.
• Offering no evidence of relevance, so the claim that this matters to society today is simply asserted.
• Reusing one memorised paragraph about the biopsychosocial model for whatever question comes up, without tailoring a single sentence to the issue.
• Listing every theory in the option instead of choosing the two or three that actually explain the chosen issue.
• Describing a model accurately and stopping there, which earns knowledge credit and no application credit.
• Muddling agonist with antagonist, or describing nicotine as a depressant, which loses the biological marks outright.
• Treating the theory of planned behaviour as proven because it predicts intentions well, when the gap between intention and action is its central weakness.
• Citing a study by name and date with no finding attached, which the examiner cannot credit as research.
• Treating the essay as a sociology or general studies question by writing opinions without explicitly citing psychological theories, concepts, or named studies.
• Writing exclusively about psychological theories and studies while ignoring the context and societal stakes of the key question itself.
• Assuming there is only one correct key question per approach; while the exam specification provides suggested key questions, teachers may select alternative contemporary issues provided they align with the approach's core principles.

1. 1Week 1, Day 1-2: Audit the key question for each core topic (Social, Cognitive, Biological, Learning) and compile real-world statistics and context for each.
2. 2Week 1, Day 3-4: Construct a two-column summary table for each key question linking the societal problem directly to 2-3 psychological concepts and empirical studies.
3. 3Week 2, Day 1-2: Practice writing timed 8-mark answers using a PEEL (Point, Explain, Evidence, Link back to key question) structure.
4. 4Week 2, Day 3-4: Self-assess your answers against official Edexcel mark schemes, checking for balanced AO1/AO2 distribution and accurate psychological terminology.

• 📋8-mark Discuss/Evaluate Key Question essays in Section A/B/C/D of Paper 1 and Paper 2.
• 📋Short 3-4 mark AO2 application questions asking how a specific theory from the approach can be used to resolve a stated real-world problem.
• 📋Synoptic key question prompts in Paper 3 that require integrating perspectives from multiple psychological approaches.