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A-Level Psychology — Core Studies & Applied Psychology

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Complete Specification·Notes·90 min read

OCR Psychology H567 Complete Specification

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OCR A Level Psychology (H567)

Complete Specification — A/A* Revision Notes

Current qualification note: H567 remains available for first teaching in September 2026 with final assessment in summer 2028. OCR's replacement H569 begins first teaching in September 2027. Keep this file strictly H567.

Assessment

H567/01 Research Methods

  • 2 hours
  • 90 marks
  • 30%

H567/02 Psychological Themes Through Core Studies

  • 2 hours
  • 105 marks
  • 35%

H567/03 Applied Psychology

  • 2 hours
  • 105 marks
  • 35%

All components contain synoptic assessment.

Component 01 — Research Methods

OCR expects knowledge and application of four principal techniques:

  • self-report;
  • experiment;
  • observation;
  • correlation.

Experimental Method

Laboratory experiment

IV manipulated in controlled setting.

Strengths:

  • high control;
  • replication;
  • cause/effect.

Weaknesses:

  • artificiality;
  • demand characteristics;
  • low ecological validity.

Field experiment

IV manipulated in natural setting.

Strength: higher ecological validity.

Weakness: less control, consent problems.

Quasi-experiment

Naturally occurring IV; cannot randomly allocate.

Natural experiment

Naturally occurring event/change creates IV conditions.

Experimental designs

  • independent measures;
  • repeated measures;
  • matched participants.

Independent: no order effects but participant variables.

Repeated: controls participant variables but order effects.

Matched: reduces participant variables but matching difficult/time-consuming.

Variables

IV: factor changed or naturally varying.

DV: measured outcome.

Extraneous: uncontrolled variable capable of affecting DV.

Confounding: varies systematically with IV and threatens explanation.

Operationalisation: define exactly how a construct is manipulated/measured.

Sampling

  • opportunity;
  • volunteer/self-selected;
  • random;
  • systematic;
  • stratified.

Evaluate:

  • representativeness;
  • practicality;
  • sampling bias.

Self-report

Questionnaire: written questions.

Interview: spoken questions.

Open: qualitative, detailed, harder coding.

Closed: quantitative, easy compare, limited depth.

Interviews:

  • structured;
  • semi-structured;
  • unstructured.

Problems:

  • social desirability;
  • response bias;
  • interviewer effects.

Observations

  • naturalistic;
  • controlled;
  • participant;
  • non-participant;
  • overt;
  • covert.

Behavioural categories should be:

  • operationalised;
  • observable;
  • non-overlapping where possible.

Event sampling: record each target behaviour.

Time sampling: record at predetermined intervals.

Inter-observer reliability: compare observers' coding consistency.

Correlation

Association between co-variables.

Positive/negative/zero.

Does not establish causality because:

  • directionality;
  • third variables.

Case Studies

In-depth investigation of individual/small group.

Strengths: rich data; rare cases.

Weaknesses: researcher bias; low generalisation; retrospective inaccuracies.

Longitudinal and Cross-sectional

Longitudinal: same participants over time. Strength: developmental change. Weakness: attrition/time.

Cross-sectional: different age/groups at one time. Strength: faster. Weakness: cohort effects.

Types of Data

  • quantitative;
  • qualitative;
  • primary;
  • secondary.

Levels:

  • nominal;
  • ordinal;
  • interval/ratio where appropriate.

Descriptive Statistics

  • mean;
  • median;
  • mode;
  • range;
  • standard deviation;
  • percentages.

Mean affected by extremes. Median useful for skew/ordinal. Mode useful nominal.

Graphs

  • bar chart: categories;
  • histogram: continuous grouped;
  • scattergram: correlation;
  • line graph: trends/continuous x.

Inferential Statistics

Sign test

Difference, related data, nominal direction.

Wilcoxon

Difference, related, ordinal+.

Mann-Whitney U

Difference, unrelated, ordinal+.

Spearman's rho

Correlation, ordinal+.

Chi-square

Association/difference using frequencies/categories.

OCR can also require interpretation of significance/critical tables.

Null hypothesis: no significant difference/association beyond chance.

If calculated statistic exceeds/fulfils required critical criterion according to test table: reject/fail to reject null appropriately.

Reliability

  • inter-rater/inter-observer;
  • test-retest;
  • standardisation.

Validity

  • internal;
  • ecological;
  • population;
  • face;
  • construct.

Ethical Guidelines

  • informed consent;
  • right to withdraw;
  • protection from harm;
  • confidentiality;
  • deception;
  • debriefing.

Use BPS-style principles: respect, competence, responsibility, integrity.

Science

Psychology as science:

  • objectivity;
  • empirical evidence;
  • falsifiability;
  • replication;
  • control;
  • hypothesis testing.

Component 02 — Psychological Themes Through Core Studies

OCR groups 20 studies into 10 classic/contemporary pairs across five areas.

SOCIAL AREA

Theme 1 — Responses to People in Authority

Milgram (1963) — Obedience

Aim: investigate obedience to destructive authority.

Method: controlled laboratory procedure.

Sample: adult males from New Haven area, broad occupations.

Procedure: participant assigned teacher role, learner received apparent shocks; experimenter used standardised prods.

Findings: high levels of obedience despite visible distress.

Conclusion: ordinary people may obey legitimate authority even when actions conflict with personal values.

Strengths:

  • highly standardised;
  • replicable;
  • generated extensive situational research.

Weaknesses:

  • deception/stress;
  • artificial setting;
  • possible demand characteristics;
  • historically/culturally specific.

Bocchiaro et al. (2012) — Disobedience and Whistleblowing

Investigated whether students would obey unethical request, disobey or whistleblow.

Key point: predictions about own behaviour differed greatly from actual behaviour.

Comparison:

  • both authority paradigms;
  • Bocchiaro contemporary/student/cross-gender sample;
  • Milgram focused destructive obedience;
  • Bocchiaro added disobedience and whistleblowing.

Change in understanding: shows people overestimate resistance and that whistleblowing is rare despite moral intentions.

Theme 2 — Responses to People in Need

Piliavin et al. (1969) — Subway Samaritan

Field experiment/observation on New York subway.

Manipulations included victim type such as ill vs drunk.

Findings: helping influenced by perceived costs/rewards and victim characteristics.

Strength: high ecological validity.

Weakness: low control; passengers lacked informed consent.

Levine et al. (2001) — Cross-Cultural Altruism

Compared helping behaviour across cities/countries using standardised helping tasks.

Conclusion: helping varies cross-culturally and relates to social/economic/cultural features.

Comparison: Piliavin = within one urban transit context; Levine = broad cross-cultural comparison.

COGNITIVE AREA

Theme 3 — Memory

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Investigated effects of leading questions on eyewitness memory.

Procedure: participants watched traffic accidents then answered speed questions using verbs such as hit/smashed.

Finding: verb affected speed estimates and later reports of broken glass.

Conclusion: memory is reconstructive and post-event information can alter reports.

Evaluation: high control, but artificial films; ethical deception minor relative to Milgram; major application to legal interviewing.

Grant et al. (1998)

Context-dependent memory.

Participants learned/read material in silent/noisy environment and recalled under same/different context.

Finding: matching study/test context improved performance.

Conclusion: environmental context serves as retrieval cue.

Paired-theme judgement: both show memory is influenced by external context, but Grant extends theme from reconstructive post-event effects to retrieval context.

Theme 4 — Attention

Moray (1959)

Dichotic listening.

Participants shadowed one auditory channel and generally recalled little unattended material except subjectively important items such as own name.

Conclusion: attention is selective.

Simons and Chabris (1999)

Inattentional blindness.

Basketball-pass counting while unexpected gorilla/other event appeared.

Finding: many participants failed to notice unexpected event.

Conclusion: focused attention can produce striking failures of awareness.

Comparison: auditory vs visual; both show unattended information often not consciously processed.

DEVELOPMENTAL AREA

Theme 5 — External Influences on Children's Behaviour

Bandura et al. (1961)

Bobo doll observational learning.

Children exposed to aggressive/non-aggressive adult models.

Finding: children imitated aggressive acts, with model/child variables affecting behaviour.

Conclusion: aggression can be learned through observation.

Evaluation: controlled and influential; artificial aggression measure; ethics of exposing children to aggression.

Chaney et al. (2004)

Funhaler study.

Applied operant/reward principles to improve children's asthma inhaler adherence.

Finding: fun device increased adherence/positive experience.

Conclusion: reinforcement principles can improve health behaviour.

Change: moves behaviourist learning from laboratory aggression to useful real-world health intervention.

Theme 6 — Moral Development

Kohlberg (1968)

Longitudinal moral-development research using moral dilemmas.

Proposed stages progressing from:

  • pre-conventional;
  • conventional;
  • post-conventional reasoning.

Evaluation: longitudinal strength; male/cultural bias; moral reasoning ≠ moral behaviour.

Lee et al. (1997)

Compared Chinese and Canadian children's evaluations of lying/truth telling in prosocial/antisocial contexts.

Finding: cultural differences in moral evaluation.

Conclusion: moral judgement affected by socialisation/cultural values.

Change: challenges universal stage interpretations by demonstrating cultural shaping.

BIOLOGICAL AREA

Theme 7 — Regions of the Brain

Sperry (1968)

Split-brain patients.

Visual/tactile information presented to separate hemispheres.

Findings: hemispheric specialisation and role of corpus callosum.

Strength: rare natural/quasi-experimental cases provide causal clues.

Weakness: tiny unusual sample; epilepsy/surgery confounds.

Casey et al. (2011)

Neural correlates of delayed gratification/self-control.

Follow-up of individuals differing in delay ability using behavioural and neuroimaging tasks.

Finding: differences associated with control/reward-related brain regions, including inferior frontal gyrus/ventral striatal systems.

Change: adds modern imaging and longitudinal evidence linking behaviour to neural circuitry.

Theme 8 — Brain Plasticity

Blakemore and Cooper (1970)

Kittens raised in restricted visual environments.

Finding: early visual experience altered later perception and neural responsiveness.

Conclusion: early experience shapes developing visual cortex.

Ethics: significant animal welfare concerns.

Maguire et al. (2000)

London taxi drivers.

MRI comparison associated taxi-driving/navigation experience with hippocampal structural differences.

Finding: posterior hippocampal volume related to navigation experience.

Conclusion: adult human brain shows experience-related plasticity.

Comparison: animal developmental deprivation vs adult human occupational experience.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AREA

Theme 9 — Understanding Disorders

Freud (1909) — Little Hans

Case study interpreted childhood horse phobia using psychodynamic theory and Oedipal conflict.

Strength: rich qualitative detail/historical influence.

Weakness: subjective interpretation; indirect reporting through father; unfalsifiable claims; single-case generalisation.

Baron-Cohen et al. (1997)

Advanced Theory of Mind / Eyes-style task in adults with autism/Asperger syndrome, comparison groups.

Finding: autistic group showed difficulty on advanced mental-state attribution despite intelligence controls.

Conclusion: supports theory-of-mind differences.

Evaluation: quasi design; diagnostic-group sampling; socially sensitive implications.

Theme 10 — Measuring Differences

Gould (1982)

Critical analysis of Yerkes-era intelligence testing.

Conclusion: tests were culturally/educationally biased and used to justify damaging social claims.

Themes: psychometrics, bias, socially sensitive research.

Hancock et al. (2011)

Language of psychopaths.

Compared narratives of psychopathic vs non-psychopathic homicide offenders using linguistic analysis.

Findings: psychopathy associated with characteristic linguistic patterns.

Strength: objective computer-assisted language analysis.

Weakness: specialised offender sample; classification/social sensitivity.

Areas, Perspectives and Debates

Five Areas

Social

Behaviour shaped by others/social situations.

Cognitive

Internal information processing.

Developmental

Changes across age/development and environmental effects.

Biological

Brain, genes, physiology.

Individual Differences

Ways individuals/groups differ from norms or each other.

For each area know:

  • assumptions;
  • core-study evidence;
  • strengths;
  • weaknesses;
  • applications;
  • comparison with other areas.

Perspectives

OCR links studies to perspectives such as:

  • behaviourist;
  • psychodynamic.

Know defining assumptions and compare with areas.

Debates

  • free will vs determinism;
  • reductionism vs holism;
  • nature vs nurture;
  • individual vs situational explanations;
  • usefulness;
  • ethnocentrism;
  • socially sensitive research;
  • sampling bias;
  • ethical considerations.

Component 03 — Applied Psychology

Compulsory: Issues in Mental Health

Historical context

Changing explanations/treatments:

  • supernatural;
  • institutional;
  • medical;
  • psychological;
  • community approaches.

Defining mental illness

Consider:

  • statistical infrequency;
  • deviation from norms;
  • dysfunction;
  • cultural context.

Medical model

Mental disorders treated as illnesses with biological causes/diagnosis.

Strengths:

  • systematic diagnosis;
  • treatment access;
  • biological research.

Weaknesses:

  • labelling;
  • reductionism;
  • cultural validity;
  • symptom overlap.

Alternatives

Behaviourist

Maladaptive behaviour learned by conditioning. Treatment via conditioning principles.

Cognitive

Dysfunctional beliefs/processing cause distress. Treatment via cognitive restructuring.

Classification/diagnosis

Evaluate:

  • reliability;
  • validity;
  • culture;
  • comorbidity;
  • labelling.

Applied methodological debates

Nature/nurture, reductionism/holism, usefulness, social sensitivity.

Option 1 — Child Psychology

Students select this OR other applied options; file includes all.

Key applied themes include:

  • attachment/caregiving;
  • intelligence/development;
  • risk-taking/adolescent brain;
  • advertising/media effects;
  • interventions.

Brain development and risk taking

Adolescent reward/control systems mature at different rates.

Key research example: Barkley-Levenson and Galván-style neural valuation research.

Application: strategies to reduce risky behaviour through environment, timing, education and decision supports.

Advertising and stereotyping

Children may learn gendered/social roles from advertising.

Key research: Johnson and Young-style gendered voices in children's advertising.

Applications: advertising regulation, media literacy.

Option 2 — Criminal Psychology

What makes a criminal?

Biological, cognitive and social explanations.

Collection/processing of forensic evidence

Eyewitnesses, interviews and evidence quality.

Jury decision making

Characteristics of witness/defendant can influence guilt judgements.

Key research: Dixon et al. — accent/context and perceived guilt.

Application: jury instructions, awareness of bias.

Crime prevention

Neighbourhood environment and social cues.

Wilson and Kelling: broken-windows theory.

Evaluate: correlational assumptions, policing ethics, community impacts.

Option 3 — Environmental Psychology

Stressors

Noise, crowding, density and environmental demands.

Biological rhythms

Circadian rhythms, shift work and jet lag.

Key research: Czeisler et al. — rotating shift schedules and circadian principles.

Application: forward rotation, light timing, schedule design.

Territory/personal space

Workplace personalisation and wellbeing.

Key research: Wells — office personalisation.

Applications: office design, control, privacy.

Environmental behaviour

How psychological principles can encourage pro-environmental behaviour.

Option 4 — Sport and Exercise Psychology

Arousal and performance

Theories:

  • drive;
  • inverted-U;
  • catastrophe/individual-zone concepts where specified.

Anxiety

Cognitive vs somatic anxiety; measurement.

Aggression in sport

Biological, social learning and situational accounts.

Motivation

Intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, goal setting.

Exercise adherence

Barriers, social support, self-efficacy.

Applications:

  • imagery;
  • goal setting;
  • relaxation;
  • attentional control;
  • coaching strategies.

OCR Core Study Revision Template

For every study store these fields:

study: name: year: area: theme: classic_or_contemporary: background: aim: method: design: sample: sampling_method: procedure: controls: data_type: results: conclusion: strengths: weaknesses: ethics: validity: reliability: usefulness: social_sensitivity: nature_nurture: freewill_determinism: reductionism_holism: comparison_with_pair: change_in_understanding:

This is critical for H567/02.

OCR Exam Language

Study question

If asked procedure/results, do not drift into conclusion.

Compare

Must make a direct comparison and support both sides:

“Milgram used an all-male community sample, whereas Bocchiaro used male and female university students…”

To what extent has the contemporary study changed understanding?

  1. identify what classic study established;
  2. state contemporary extension/challenge;
  3. support both with specific evidence;
  4. judge degree of change.

Area/perspective question

State defining assumption, then use core study evidence.

Applied question

Use: background → key research → application to novel scenario.

High-Frequency OCR Lost Marks

  • mixing result with conclusion;
  • naming a method without explaining design;
  • comparing two studies separately rather than directly;
  • generic ethics without study detail;
  • saying case study = experiment;
  • correlation ≠ causation;
  • social area explanations must use social/situational processes;
  • core-study evidence must be specific enough to prove point;
  • "useful" means practical/theoretical contribution, not simply interesting;
  • contemporary study questions require explicit judgement about change.