AP Psychology Essays
On Wednesday Dec. 14 you will have to answer one of the following:
1. A professional entertainer is well known for attention getting behaviors; he regularly
changes his hair color, has numerous and conspicuous tattoos and is consistently quoted
in the media expressing very extreme, highly controversial views.
Discuss the basic points of emphasis of each of the following psychological perspectives, and
tell how proponents of each might account for the entertainer’s behavior.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Biological perspective
Trait/type perspective
Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective
Behavioral perspective
Humanistic perspective
2. A researcher designs an experiment to study the effect of an audience on individual
college students during their performance of a difficult manual dexterity task. He will
assign 20 students to each of two conditions. In one, the students will use a pair of
tweezers to place small cubes of wood into a box (which has one tiny opening at the top)
while being observed by an “audience” of 30 peers; in the second condition, a different
set of volunteers will perform the task with no audience present. All participants will
have 30 seconds to place as many cubes of wood into the box as possible. The researcher
hypothesizes that the group that performs the task with no audience present will
outperform the group which works in front of an audience.
Refer specifically to this research scenario in responding to each of the following:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
Discuss an issue of operational definitions in this study
Discuss an appropriate procedure for choosing and assigning participants
Identify an experimental group
Identify the control group
Identify the independent variable
Identify the dependent variable
Discuss appropriate controls for any one possible confounding variable
Discuss appropriate controls for possible experimental bias.