Topic 8: Health psychology — Edexcel A-Level Psychology
Test yourself on Topic 8: Health psychology with PEARSON EDEXCEL A-Level practice questions.
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Topic 8: Health psychology explained
Engel's biopsychosocial model frames this whole topic: what people do about their bodies is traced to physiology, to the way they think about risk and reward, and to the company they keep, and the topic asks you to move between those levels rather than pick one.
Read the full explanation
In practice that means reading drug misuse three ways at once, as dopamine release along the reward pathway, as expectancy and self-efficacy, and as peer norms and advertising. The second half of the topic is the applied half, so campaigns, treatment programmes and government messaging are judged on whether behaviour actually changed, which is where methodology earns marks. Evaluation hangs on reductionism against holism and on determinism, since a purely neurochemical story about addiction quietly removes the responsibility that any campaign has to assume.
Individual differences and developmental psychology must be considered when learning about peer influence or labelling as explanations for drug misuse, and biological and learning explanations for drug misuse.
Two compulsory strands run through every account of drug misuse in this topic, and the marks come from using them rather than mentioning them. The individual differences strand answers why two people in the same friendship group do not both become dependent, and it answers with personality, notably sensation seeking and the extraversion and neuroticism dimensions Eysenck described, with inherited vulnerability, and with gender differences in both rates and pathways. The developmental strand answers why misuse so often begins in adolescence, and it answers with a reward system that matures ahead of the control system, with the rising weight of the peer group, and with how a young person who is labelled a user takes on the identity. Fold both into a learning or biological explanation and the evaluation stops being a list and becomes an argument.
Your focus
- Students must show understanding that health psychology is about understanding health from a biological, cognitive and social basis and that health psychology is about promoting good health.
- Individual differences and developmental psychology must be considered when learning about peer influence or labelling as explanations for drug misuse, and biological and learning explanations for drug misuse.
Topic 8: Health psychology exam tips
Marking Points
- Naming the three levels with a concrete example of each for the same behaviour, for instance receptor change at the biological level, outcome expectancy at the cognitive level and perceived peer norms at the social level.
- Crediting Engel (1977) with the biopsychosocial model and contrasting it with the biomedical model that treats illness as bodily malfunction alone.
- Showing the promotion half, so a named model of health behaviour such as the health belief model of Rosenstock and Becker or the theory of planned behaviour from Ajzen, used to explain why a campaign message did or did not shift behaviour.
- Showing interaction rather than addition, which in practice means a diathesis-stress argument in which inherited vulnerability only shows itself where the drug is available and using is normal.
- Judging effectiveness by evidence, so uptake figures, verified abstinence and follow-up rather than whether an advert was memorable.
- Using individual differences on peer influence, so noting that conformity is not uniform and that those high in sensation seeking or low in self-efficacy are more susceptible, while others select friends who already use.
- Using development on the same explanation, so Gardner and Steinberg (2005) found that the mere presence of peers raised risky decisions in a simulated driving task among adolescents and young adults but not among adults, which makes peer influence a developmental phenomenon rather than a general one.
- Handling labelling properly, so Becker described deviance as a career in which the label is applied, accepted and then lived out, with a self-fulfilling prophecy and deviance amplification, and individual differences deciding who accepts the label at all.
- Bringing both strands to the biological explanation, since twin and adoption work suggests around half the variation in risk of alcohol dependence is heritable, and adolescent brain maturation explains the timing of first use.
- Bringing both strands to the learning explanation, since models are imitated most when they are similar in age and gender, which is why Bandura predicts different role models for a thirteen year old and for an adult.
- Closing with diathesis-stress, in which vulnerability and environment are stated as necessary together rather than as rival answers.
Examiner Tips
- 💡This framing statement is rarely a question on its own; it is the structure examiners expect in the longer essays and in the key question, so use it as a plan.
- 💡In an applied stem, label each detail with the level it belongs to before writing, and then answer in that order.
- 💡Pearson sets a key question essay that asks you to apply concepts and studies to a real-world issue, so practise linking one model to one campaign and one piece of outcome evidence.
- 💡Pearson prints these compulsory links in the specification itself, so questions can name them directly, for example asking how individual differences apply to a learning explanation of nicotine addiction.
- 💡In an applied stem, mine the details of age, sex and personality and quote them back, since application marks are given for using the stem rather than the textbook.
- 💡Keep one adolescent study and one personality study that you can deploy in any explanation question, so the strands never cost you writing time.
Common Mistakes
- Writing the three bases as three sealed paragraphs and never showing how they interact, which is the point the specification is making.
- Assuming health psychology only studies illness, so the promotion half goes unlearned and campaign questions cannot be answered.
- Confusing a biological explanation with a biological treatment, and so answering a question about mode of action with a paragraph about methadone.
- Describing a campaign without any measure of whether it worked, which leaves the evaluation with nothing to weigh.
- Bolting the strands on as a final sentence rather than using them to explain a finding, which the specification asks for explicitly.
- Assuming peer pressure means direct coercion, when the evidence points to selecting like-minded friends and to misperceived norms, which is why campaigns that correct those norms can work.
- Reading a heritability estimate as the proportion of one person addiction rather than as variation within a population.
- Asserting that labelling causes addiction without giving the mechanism by which the label changes behaviour.