Unit 4: Motivation, wellbeing and health

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: what motivation is and the four sources named in the SCSA syllabus, physiological, cognitions, emotions and social, with examples of how several sources combine to drive one behaviour.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory (1985), the difference between amotivation, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, strengths and limitations, and applying the theory to school, sport and work.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1954), deficiency and growth needs, the expanded eight-level hierarchy (1970) with cognitive, aesthetic and transcendence needs, self-actualisation and the characteristics of a self-actualised person, with strengths, limitations and applications.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Diener's (1984) model of subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction and affective balance), Ryff's (1989) six factor model of psychological wellbeing, how the two models differ, how wellbeing is measured, and applying both to a person's life.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Selye's definition of stress, the difference between distress and eustress, the four types of stressors named by SCSA (environmental, psychological, social, cultural) and how the nature, duration and strength of a stressor affect the stress response.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome as a model of stress as a response, the alarm, resistance and exhaustion stages, changes in heart rate and breathing rate, how to read and draw the GAS graph, and the model's strengths and limitations.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: stress as a stimulus, how Holmes and Rahe's (1967) Social Readjustment Rating Scale uses life change units to estimate the risk of stress-related illness, how to calculate and interpret a score, and the scale's strengths and limitations.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional theory of stress and coping, stress as an interaction between the person and the environment, primary and secondary appraisal, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and the model's strengths and limitations.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: the short-term and long-term physical and psychological health consequences of stress, the difference between adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, examples of each, and how to recommend coping strategies for a scenario.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: the evolutionary and restorative explanations of the purpose of sleep, the evidence for each, their limitations, and how to apply both to animal and human sleep patterns.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: the four stages of NREM sleep and REM sleep, how sleep state, heart rate, eye movement and muscle tension change in each, the roughly 90-minute sleep cycle, and how deep sleep and REM sleep shift across a typical night.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: the four causes of sleep deprivation named by SCSA (shift work, drugs, sleep environment, stressors), the effects of partial sleep deprivation on mood, attention, reflex speed and vision, and the health effects of chronic sleep deprivation (heart disease, obesity, insomnia, anxiety).

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: the three sleep hygiene techniques named by SCSA (managing devices, consistent sleep patterns, a healthy sleep environment) and the designated study He et al. (2020) on restricting bedtime phone use, with aim, method, findings, contribution and limitations.

WACE Year 12 Psychology science inquiry: the role of ethics committees, the eight ethical guidelines for human participants named by SCSA, the replacement, reduction and refinement principles for animal research, and how to apply them to a described study such as Little Albert or Pavlov's dogs.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: attachment theory, Bowlby's monotropy and internal working model, Ainsworth's Strange Situation and attachment styles, and Harlow's monkey studies of contact comfort.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: conformity, normative and informational social influence, the factors that increase or decrease conformity, and Asch's line-judgement experiments on group pressure.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: cross-cultural psychology, individualist versus collectivist cultures, enculturation and acculturation, ethnocentrism, and the etic and emic approaches to research.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: group processes including social facilitation, social loafing, deindividuation, group polarisation and groupthink, and how membership of a group alters individual behaviour.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: obedience to authority, the factors that increase or decrease it, Milgram's shock experiments, the agentic state, and the ethical evaluation of the research.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, Tajfel's social identity theory, Sherif's Robbers Cave study, and Allport's contact hypothesis for reducing intergroup conflict.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: prosocial behaviour, altruism, the bystander effect, diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance, and Latane and Darley's decision model and research on helping.

Social psychology. Covers Asch's conformity, Milgram's obedience, group processes such as deindividuation and groupthink, and prosocial and antisocial behaviour including the bystander effect with named studies.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Erikson's eight psychosocial stages and their crises, the nature-nurture debate, gene-environment interaction, and evidence from twin and adoption studies.

WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4: Piaget's four stages of cognitive development, schemas, assimilation and accommodation, object permanence, egocentrism and conservation, and evaluation of his theory.

Culture and community. Covers individualist versus collectivist cultures, Tajfel's social identity theory, prejudice and discrimination, Sherif's Robbers Cave study, and strategies to reduce intergroup conflict.

Developmental psychology. Covers Piaget's stages of cognitive development, attachment theory (Bowlby and Ainsworth), Erikson's psychosocial stages, and the nature versus nurture debate with named research.