AP Psychology Essay Options for Thinking and Language Unit, Mods 23, 24
1. You are the commissioner of a state lottery system that sponsors daily and
weekly drawings. Lottery tickets have not been selling well over the past few weeks.
Describe four ways you could take advantage of people’s use of the availability
heuristic in order to boost sales. Explain why you would judge your tactics to be fair
or unfair to your customers.
 Commissioner has to get people to hear about someone winning the
lottery
 create commercials with real lottery winners
 get lottery winners on the news
 make smaller lottery where people win smaller amounts more often
 put up posters of winners
 show what the winners have bought
 frame the lottery statistics to make them look more appealing
Some of the ideas such as posters and the lottery winners on the news are fair
because they are just showing who has won, whereas all of the other methods
are making the lottery look more easily won than it actually is.
2. Heike’s older brother has suffered from chronic depression for several years.
Unfortunately, Heike has been incorrectly informed by her parents that there is a 40
percent chance she will also suffer from depression. Explain how the availability
heuristic, framing, confirmation bias, and belief perseverance might lead Heike to
conclude that she will definitely be a victim of a severe depressive disorder.
Heuristic: She is going to remember that she has a chance of getting depression
and she will probably always remember it is 40%. She’ll also connect the chance of
getting depression to her brother, which makes that chance even more realistic.
Confirmation Bias: If she has a bad day, a bad experience, or has feelings she
doesn’t exactly understand, she may automatically assume she has depression
because she was told she has a chance of suffering from depression.
Belief Perseverance: If she is told otherwise by a doctor or psychologist, she will
have a hard time letting go of the 40% chance her parents had told her about.
Framing: Since her own parents told her she has a chance of depression, and she
knows her brother has a severe case, the fact she has a chance will also affect her.
The way her parents told her is also framing, because they told her the chance she
will get depression, instead of the 60% she has of not getting depression.
3. After returning from a shopping trip with his mother, little Tommy reported, “I
goed to the store and eated candy.” Why might a behaviorist such as B. F. Skinner
have had some difficulty explaining Tommy’s incorrect grammatical construction?
What does his error suggest about the process of language acquisition?
 Skinner would have tried to use operant conditioning which would be using
thought process and reasoning. reasoning would show that to say past tense
actions the use of “ed” is common. It doesn't explain what tommy is doing
because tommy wouldn't be reinforced for improper grammar.
 Tommy is experimenting with language, even though it is non proper
 Chomsky’s idea of innate language is put to test, tommy didn't learn to
speak this way, we must have some programmed information.