Should I take psychology SL?

[Jenny7096]

what is IB psychology about? I heard that you have to write a report, how many words is that?

Also, is there a lot of biology in psychology because I'm not good in biology?

Thanks for answering!

[ellie]

IB Psychology is both an easy and a difficult subject. It's great advantage is that you know your exam questions (all of them!) ahead, and for the exam, you just need to memorise answer essays (about 40, of which 10-15 are long answers, about 800 words I think, and the rest are short answers, a few hundred words). Might seem like a lot, but two years are sufficient to learn them all.

 

There are four to six parts of the course: three levels of analysis (biological, cognitive, sociocultural)––graded in Paper 1, plus one option for SL and two for HL (e.g. sports psych, developmental psych, health)––in Paper 2. HL also does a third paper about qualitative methods in psychology. You learn about memory, emotions, hormones, culture, etc, and for each topic you have one or more exam questions, answers to which consist of theory and one or more empirical studies. Say I needed to write a short answer about a model of a cognitive process for Cognitive Level of Analysis (CLOA), then I'd start by defining cognition, memory and the multi-store memory model. I'd go on to a study that I've learned, say Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), write up the key parts of it, and finish with a conclusion where I'd connect the theory and the study and comment on the importance of that theory. 

 

Answering honestly, there is a decent amount of biology in IB Psychology. You need to study all parts of the brain, their functions and malfunctions. Yet it's much much less content than in Biology SL, so it's fairly manageable.

 

The 'report' you've heard of may be the Internal Assessment (IA) where you have to do a simple psychological study and write it up (2000 words) in highly scientific language. There's 2000 words of writing for the IA in almost every IB subject though.

 

There's no big difference between SL and HL: in the latter, there's one more option plus Paper 3 which we haven't studied yet but I've heard isn't very difficult (but is often taught insufficiently). If you're good at memorisation and interested in how the mind works, it's a good choice. I'm a bit dissatisfied with taking Psychology because I hate how much structure and memorisation there is, but thinking back, I learned a lot of fascinating things in the first year alone. 

 

Good luck!

[Jenny7096]

IB Psychology is both an easy and a difficult subject. It's great advantage is that you know your exam questions (all of them!) ahead, and for the exam, you just need to memorise answer essays (about 40, of which 10-15 are long answers, about 800 words I think, and the rest are short answers, a few hundred words). Might seem like a lot, but two years are sufficient to learn them all.

There are four to six parts of the course: three levels of analysis (biological, cognitive, sociocultural)––graded in Paper 1, plus one option for SL and two for HL (e.g. sports psych, developmental psych, health)––in Paper 2. HL also does a third paper about qualitative methods in psychology. You learn about memory, emotions, hormones, culture, etc, and for each topic you have one or more exam questions, answers to which consist of theory and one or more empirical studies. Say I needed to write a short answer about a model of a cognitive process for Cognitive Level of Analysis (CLOA), then I'd start by defining cognition, memory and the multi-store memory model. I'd go on to a study that I've learned, say Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), write up the key parts of it, and finish with a conclusion where I'd connect the theory and the study and comment on the importance of that theory.

Answering honestly, there is a decent amount of biology in IB Psychology. You need to study all parts of the brain, their functions and malfunctions. Yet it's much much less content than in Biology SL, so it's fairly manageable.

The 'report' you've heard of may be the Internal Assessment (IA) where you have to do a simple psychological study and write it up (2000 words) in highly scientific language. There's 2000 words of writing for the IA in almost every IB subject though.

There's no big difference between SL and HL: in the latter, there's one more option plus Paper 3 which we haven't studied yet but I've heard isn't very difficult (but is often taught insufficiently). If you're good at memorisation and interested in how the mind works, it's a good choice. I'm a bit dissatisfied with taking Psychology because I hate how much structure and memorisation there is, but thinking back, I learned a lot of fascinating things in the first year alone.

Good luck!