Discussing “prevalence rates” is easy when you’re writing about psychological disorders. That’s because these disorders have standardized diagnoses. You can calculate a specific % of the population who have depression, for example, and that is your “prevalence rate.” It might be more difficult in Health Psychology. For some health problems the same is true. Obesity, cardiovascular disease and addiction are …
Cognitive explanations of one health problem: Appraisals and stress
The following content is adapted from our eBook Stress: A Student’s Guide for IB Health Psychology. Stress is one health problem that students could explain for IB Psychology’s Paper Two. In this post we’ll look at the most common cognitive explanation of stress – cognitive appraisals. Humans are different from other animals in that stress can be caused completely by …
Key Study: Stress beliefs and health problems (Fischer et al., 2016)
The following information is adapted from our eBook: IB Health Psychology – A Revision Guide. Why do people develop physical health problems? One answer could be based on stress beliefs – if you think stress is bad you might be more likely to have health problems. This was one finding from the following study. Stress is correlated with a number …
Exam Question Bank: Paper 2: Health Psychology
The following are a list of practice exam questions for IB Psychology’s Health Option in Paper Two. This list contains past exam questions and some written with our best guess as to what the probable exam questions may look like. You could watch this as a video here. READ MORE IB Psychology Exam Question Banks Paper 1: Biological approach (Link) …
Key Study: Cognitive appraisals and the stress response (Lazarus, 1963)
The most influential cognitive explanation of stress is based on “cognitive appraisals” – how we assess the relevance and potential harm of a stressor. The following study is one of many that supports this explanation. Stress is a complex phenomenon that involves biological, psychological and environmental factors. Richard Lazarus was a pre-eminent psychologist in the field of stress research. Along …
IB Health Psychology | HOME PAGE
The following is a work in progress. Health Problems: Stress The following information focuses on the “health problem” of stress. Explanations of health problem(s) Biological explanations for stress COMT gene and the Warrior/Worrier Hypothesis (Blog / Video One/Two) Key study: Key study: The Hippocampus and Stress (Blog) The PFC and Stress (Blog) Cognitive explanations for stress Appraisals (Blog / Video) …
How to get free stuff with our new rewards programme
Looking for FREE IB Psychology resources? Follow the steps below or watch the video here. (1)Go to our online store and click the ‘Rewards Program’ button in the bottom right of the screen. (2) If you already have an account on our online store click the ‘Sign in here’ link, otherwise you’ll need to create an account on our online …
The 5 best theories for the IA
In this post I’ll outline the five theories I think are the best to base your experiment on. I’ll suggest some good studies that go with those theories. We always think about the IA based on the key study being replicated. But since the most important thing is the background theory or model, maybe that’s a better place to start. …
Psych IA: An Overview
The IB Psychology IA gives you the opportunity to become a real psychologist. You’ll work in a group to plan, prepare and conduct a psychological experiment on actual participants. Let’s start at the end… The Final Report Your final IA is 1,800 – 2,200 word report summarizing your experiment. It will have four major sections: Introduction Exploration Analysis Evaluation The …
What if you get the “wrong results?”
Your IA experiment didn’t work? You were hoping to “prove” your theory right and have the same results as the original weren’t you? Never mind, this can teach you a few valuable lessons and it won’t affect your marks. Here’s what you need to do. You’ll still need to conduct your descriptive and inferential statistics. You’ll also need to explain …