SCIENCE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION VICTORIA 2023
TRIAL EXAMINATION
SOLUTIONS BOOK
PSYCHOLOGY
UNIT 2
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Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
Use this page as an overlay for marking the multiple choice answer sheets. Simply
photocopy the page onto an overhead projector sheet. The correct answers are open boxes
below. Students should have shaded their answers. Therefore, any open box with shading
inside it is correct and scores 1 mark.
ONE ANSWER PER LINE
ONE ANSWER PER LINE
ONE ANSWER PER LINE
1
18
35
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© STAV 2023
Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
SECTION A – Multiple-choice questions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
D
A
D
D
B
D
A
D
B
B
11
12
13
14
15
16
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18
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20
A
B
B
D
D
D
A
B
C
A
21
22
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24
25
26
27
28
29
30
C
B
C
D
D
C
C
D
A
B
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
B
C
A
B
B
C
C
D
C
C
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
B
A
B
C
C
A
D
B
A
A
SECTION B
Question 1
a.
Answer
• Type of feedback participants received (positive for success group vs negative for failure
group)
• Type of attribution made (internal: high IA score vs external: low IA score)
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
b.
Answer
• Between subjects design
• Strength: each participant is exposed to just one condition, avoiding practice effect
• Limitation:
- requires larger participant numbers than within subjects design
- if groups are not sufficiently similar, cannot determine if the change in the DV was due to
the manipulation of the IV, rather than to group differences
3 marks
Students name the design and outline a strength and a limitation
2 marks
Students make two of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
c.
Answer
• Markers were ‘blind’ to the group to avoid experimenter effects
1 mark
Students make the above point
d.
Answer
• Not possible to conduct this experiment without deception: participants’ knowledge of the true
purpose of the study would have affected their responses.
• Researchers must provide full debriefing.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
e.
Answer
• Experimenters must have
- followed informed consent procedures
- ensured voluntary participation
- ensured withdrawal rights
- ensured confidentiality
1 mark
Students provide one ethical requirement that must have been met
3
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f.
Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
Answer
Group
Participants
Western backgrounds
Non-Western backgrounds
‘Success’
group
I did well because I am good at maths
or
I studied really hard
I did well because I had a really good maths
teacher
‘Failure’
group
I did badly because I had a bad maths
teacher
or
the test was just too hard
I did badly because I am bad at maths
or
I did not study hard enough
g.
4 marks
Students provide appropriate attributions for all four situations
3 marks
Students make three of the above points
2 marks
Students make two of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Answer
• Possible to conclude that Western and non-Western students differ in the types of attributions
they make, with the difference particularly large for Western students (IA score of 18 vs 10).
• However, not possible to generalise from this study to the general population since the sample
is not representative of the population.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 2
Answer
• Cognitive component: belief that gambling causes harm to families.
• Affective component: feeling angry when seeing media ads promoting gambling.
• Behavioural component: voting for a politician who is also anti-gambling.
2 marks
Students identify and discuss two components
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 3
Answer
• Confirmation bias: Kim may seek information that confirms her views and may avoid / dismiss
conflicting information.
• False-consensus bias: Kim may overestimate the extent to which others shared her views.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 4
a.
Answer
• Heuristics are ’short-cuts’ used to guide decision-making and problem-solving; they are based
on prior experience and cannot guarantee a correct outcome.
1 mark
Students make the above point
b.
Answer
• The availability heuristic relies on immediate examples that come to a person’s mind when
evaluating a specific idea.
• Because Max repeatedly sees ads about lucky winners, it is this information that is at the front
of his mind, and that leads to his false beliefs about winning.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
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Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
Question 5
Answer
• Normative influence: Rohan’s behaviour was guided by the social norms relevant to a
particular situation. Since everyone was standing and clapping, he felt obliged to do so as well.
• Informational influence: Given the positive response of others, Rohan may have started to
doubt his initial opinion and used the group response to guide his own.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 6
a.
Answer
• Positive effects:
- Source of information that can be disseminated quickly.
- Social media provide special interest groups.
• Negative effects:
- Anonymity of social media facilitates antisocial behaviour, such as bullying and racism.
- Encourages conformity.
- Normalises behaviours previously considered to be unacceptable, e.g. gambling or
pornographic sex.
- Full of misinformation (fake news).
- Manipulative.
- Excessive social comparison can lead to dissatisfaction with one’s life, appearance, etc.
2 marks
Students give a valid positive and negative effect of social media use
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
b.
Answer
• Being aware of the influence of social media and how social media operates may reduce the
impact.
1 mark
Students make the above point
Question 7
Answer
• ‘Divided attention’ refers to the act of distributing attentional resources to perform two or
more tasks at the same time, e.g. trying to read text messages on a mobile while watching a
film.
• ‘Selective attention’ refers to the act of focusing on a particular stimulus and ignoring
irrelevant information, e.g. focusing on the film and ignoring the text messages.
2 marks
Students use appropriate examples to explain each concept
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 8
a.
Answer
• Closure: If presented with a stimulus that contains missing elements (such as the image above),
the mind will unconsciously fill in those gaps to create the perception of a ‘whole’.
• Thus, even though this stimulus is just a set of lines, we perceive a zebra.
or
• Proximity: Individual elements that are close to each other are perceived as belonging
together.
• Because the black lines are close together, they are grouped and perceived as a ‘whole’: in this
case, as a zebra.
or
• Similarity: elements that look similar to each other are perceived as belonging together.
• Because the lines are black, they are grouped and perceived as a ‘whole’: as a zebra.
2 marks
Students name and define a relevant principle and describe how it operates in this
situation
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
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b.
5
Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
Answer
• Top-down processing is the process of using context, memory, motivation, general knowledge,
etc form hypotheses about what a stimulus represents.
• In this case, we are provided with sufficient information to ‘guess’ that the image represents a
zebra and we fill in the gaps.
2 marks
Students make both of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 9
a.
Answer
• pictorial cues
1 mark
Students make the above point
b.
Answer
• Texture gradient: size of pebbles gets smaller (detail is less defined) as we move further away.
• Linear perspective: railway lines appear to converge as they recede into the distance.
• Height in the visual field: the mountains are perceived to be far away from us because they are
close to the horizon.
2 marks
Students identify and describe the use of two pictorial cues
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 10
a.
Answer
• The cue is retinal disparity.
1 mark
Students make the above point
b.
Answer
• Because the eyes are separated, the images sent to the brain are different.
• The images are combined and compared in the brain and the disparity (difference) is used as
information to estimate depth/distance. The smaller the disparity, the further the stimulus is
from the observer.
2 marks
Students adequately describe the operation of retinal disparity
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 11
a.
Answer
• Perceptual set is a mental predisposition or readiness to perceive stimuli in a particular way,
based on previous experiences, expectations, beliefs, and / or context.
1 mark
Students make the above point
b.
Answer
• From past experience we know that, in general, pink coloured fruit is riper (therefore sweeter)
than green-coloured fruit.
• Our expectations then influence how we perceive the two drinks.
2 marks
Students identify a relevant component of perceptual set and describe how it
operates
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Question 12
a.
Answer
• When hungry, participants will recall more food related words than neutral words.
• When hungry, participants will recall more food-related words than when sated.
2 marks
Students identify both parts of the hypothesis
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
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b.
c.
6
Psychology Unit 2 Solutions
Answer
• Study used within subjects (repeated measures) design.
• Because the participants were exposed to both experimental conditions they may have
- learned from the experience
- developed expectations
- become fatigued, etc
• To avoid learning effects, two different lists of equal difficulty were used.
• To reduce ‘order’ effects, experimenters should have used counterbalancing,
3 marks
Students name the design, identify an issue and discuss one way of addressing it
2 marks
Students make two of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
Answer
• Predictions
- when hungry, participants will recall more food-related words than when sated.
- when hungry, participants will recall more food-related words than neutral words.
• Explanation: Hunger will produce a perceptual set: hungry participants will be motivated by
their hunger to attend to food-related stimuli.
3 marks
Students make two correct predictions and explain them in terms of perceptual
set factors, e.g. motivation
2 marks
Students make two of the above points
1 mark
Students make one of the above points
END OF SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS