SECTION B:
Answer ONE of the following essays.
Please remember to use ideas and examples relevant to psychological science to support your answers
You should aim to spend at least one hour on your answer.
- What is cognitive psychology able to tell us about emotion?
- ‘There seems to be nothing to explain about sensation: wherever we look, we effortlessly see the world around us’. Respond to this statement, explaining what psychology tells us about sensation.
- Are attractive faces only average, or do other factors contribute to facial attractiveness? Discuss.
- Critically evaluate the evidence for heuristics in reasoning and give an example of ONE heuristic’s potential impact in everyday life.
- Evaluate the evidence for size constancy using visual illusions.
Remember that you need to use evidence, ensure that points can contribute to an analysis, and develop a discussion that is able to deliver an overall conclusion. For example, in each paragraph or section it is useful to be setting out a key issue, exploring it using evidence, and then drawing an implication for your ongoing analysis before moving on to the next section. Strategies such as this can help with the structure and addressing the question efficiently and effectively within the time limits of the examination. If you are having difficulty with structuring the essay, you may wish to refer to the psychology skills learning repository (the Moodle pages set up by Paul Penn and Ian Wells). Psychology’s Learning and Achievement Assistants can help with essay writing and planning, and provide the benefit of having been through psychology degrees themselves: search for ‘uel laa’ on the net or email Josephine Calabrese [email protected] . The University’s SkillZone team (search ‘uel skillzone’) can also help point you in the right direction if you are having difficulty finding information or wish to find out more about support for writing.
