Short-answer questions look easy and quietly lose people a lot of marks. Four marks is not four sentences of everything you know; it is one idea, properly developed. Six marks in Section B is the same idea plus a scenario you must actually use.
📘 What you need to know
Section A SAQs are 4 marks and test knowledge of the biological, cognitive or sociocultural approach. No scenario is given.
Section B SAQs are 6 marks and give you a scenario. The marks come from applying psychology to it.
Describe means give a detailed account. Explain means give the reasons and causes as well.
Examples are expected. They can be real studies or hypothetical — both are accepted in Section A.
In Section B, refer to the scenario directly. An answer that ignores it is answering a different question.
Depth beats coverage. One idea developed fully outscores three ideas mentioned.
The shape of a 4-mark answer
Four short paragraphs, or one tight paragraph with four moves in it. Either is fine; the moves are what matter.
Describe and explain are not the same job
A quick test: if you can delete every “because”, “so” and “which leads to” from your explain answer and it still reads fine, you have described instead.
Take classical conditioning. Describing it means naming the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus, the conditioned response and extinction. Explaining it means saying why repeated pairing makes a neutral stimulus start producing the response — and then showing that chain in an example, such as a child developing a fear of buttons after choking on one.
Section B: the scenario is the answer
Section B hands you a study or situation and asks you to apply psychology to it. The command terms are all AO2: analyse, apply, comment, design, explain, interpret, predict, suggest. Every one of them assumes you are working on the case in front of you.
🧩 A reliable shape for a 6-mark Section B answer
Anchor in the scenario. First sentence names what the study or situation did.
Bring in the psychology that explains it, defined briefly.
Give reasons or possible causes for what the scenario found.
Show how it applies to behaviour more widely, or what it could be used for.
Check the scenario appears at least twice in your answer. If it appears once, you have written Section A.
Worked examples
WORKED EXAMPLE
Explain the role of classical conditioning in behaviour. [4 marks]
1 Define
Classical conditioning is learning by association: a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus that already produces a response.
2 Develop — the whyBecause the pairing is repeated, the neutral stimulus starts to predict the unconditioned stimulus, so it becomes a conditioned stimulus and produces the response on its own.
3 Example
A child who chokes on a button feels fear; buttons are paired with that fear, so buttons alone later trigger it.
4 Effect
The behaviour becomes automatic and can persist long after the original event, though it fades through extinction if the pairing stops.
Defined, explained, illustrated, linkedNotice how short it is. Four marks does not need a page.
WORKED EXAMPLE
In a study, MRI scans were used to determine grey matter density. Explain the use of brain-imaging techniques in understanding human behaviour. [6 marks]
Anchor in the scenario
In this study MRI produced detailed structural scans, allowing grey matter density to be measured in specific brain regions.
Bring in the psychology
Brain imaging lets researchers link structure or activity to behaviour without opening the skull, which makes it non-invasive and repeatable.
Give reasonsGreater grey matter density in a region may result from learning and repeated use, since experience can change brain structure.
Apply it
This supports neuroplasticity, which is used in health settings to design rehabilitation after brain damage.
One line of caution
A scan shows structure, not why a person behaves as they do, so the link to behaviour is inferred rather than observed.
Scenario used throughout, not just mentionedYou are not required to bring your own studies here. The scenario is the study.
💡 Exam tip
Underline the command term and the topic in the question before you start writing.
One theory, one example, done. Adding a second theory in a 4-mark answer buys nothing.
Use the exact technical vocabulary. “Conditioned stimulus” scores where “the thing they learned” does not.
In Section B, start with the scenario. It forces the application to happen immediately.
Keep to about 10 minutes for a 4-mark SAQ and 15 for a 6-mark one.
⚠ Common mix-up
Describing when asked to explain. The missing ingredient is always cause and effect.
Writing an essay for 4 marks. There is no reward for length, only for the four moves.
Naming a study instead of making a point. A study supports an idea; it is not the idea.
Ignoring the Section B scenario and reciting revision notes instead.
Leaving out the example. Examiners are told to look for examples that illustrate the point.
Up next: Writing a Strong ERQ in Paper 1 — the 15-mark concept-based essay, and the structure that keeps it from turning into a list of studies.
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