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Free AP Psychology Practice Questions, Explained

Ten multiple-choice questions spread across the units of our AP Psychology practice exams. Multiple choice is the part of the AP exam you can drill, and every wrong option here says why it is wrong.

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Read this, then answer the questions about it.

Researchers recruited 120 undergraduate volunteers and assigned each by lottery to one of three groups for five consecutive nights. The eight-hour group was given a normal night's sleep, the six-hour group was woken two hours early, and the four-hour group four hours early. Participants slept in the laboratory so that sleep time could be verified rather than reported.

Each morning participants completed a task in which a light appeared at an unpredictable interval and they pressed a key as quickly as they could. The researchers recorded mean reaction time in milliseconds and the number of lapses, defined in advance as any trial with no response within half a second. Participants also rated their own sleepiness on a nine-point scale.

The table reports performance on the fifth morning. The researchers noted that the volunteers were students who answered a campus advertisement, and that all testing took place between seven and nine in the morning.

Performance on the fifth morning, by group
GroupnMean reaction time (ms)LapsesSelf-rated sleepiness
8 hours402481.23.1
6 hours402974.85.0
4 hours4038611.65.4
Lapses are trials with no response within 500 ms. Sleepiness is self-rated from 1 (fully alert) to 9 (fighting sleep).

Question 1

In this study, the independent variable is
  1. A. the amount of sleep each group was permitted
  2. B. the participants' self-rated sleepiness
  3. C. the number of lapses recorded on the fifth morning
  4. D. the mean reaction time in milliseconds
Show the answer

The answer is A. The independent variable is what the researchers set and varied between groups — here, hours of sleep allowed. Everything measured afterward is a dependent variable.

  • B is wrong: Sleepiness ratings are measured after the manipulation, so they are a dependent variable.
  • C is wrong: Lapses are an outcome the researchers measured, not something they set.
  • D is wrong: Reaction time is the main outcome being measured.

Question 2

Assigning participants to groups by lottery matters chiefly because it
  1. A. makes the sample representative of undergraduates generally
  2. B. guarantees that the three groups will produce different mean reaction times
  3. C. distributes pre-existing differences among participants across the three groups
  4. D. removes the need to measure sleepiness separately
Show the answer

The answer is C. Random assignment spreads unmeasured differences — natural sleep need, caffeine habits, baseline speed — evenly across conditions, so a difference at the end is attributable to the manipulation rather than to who ended up where.

  • A is wrong: That would be random sampling, which concerns who enters the study, not which group they land in.
  • B is wrong: Random assignment permits a causal conclusion; it does not guarantee any result.
  • D is wrong: Sleepiness is a separate measure and is still recorded.

Question 3

A student reads a phone number once and repeats it under her breath until she can dial it. She is using
  1. A. the method of loci, which attaches items to imagined places
  2. B. elaborative rehearsal, which links new material to what is already known
  3. C. maintenance rehearsal, which holds information in working memory without deepening it
  4. D. chunking into larger units
Show the answer

The answer is C. Repeating something to keep it available is maintenance rehearsal. It keeps the number alive long enough to dial and typically leaves nothing behind afterward.

  • A is wrong: The method of loci is a deliberate imagery technique in which items are mentally placed along a familiar route. Nothing in the description involves imagery.
  • B is wrong: Elaborative rehearsal means connecting material to existing knowledge, which is what produces durable memory. Simple repetition does not do that.
  • D is wrong: Chunking would mean regrouping the digits into meaningful units, such as recognizing a year within them. Repeating the number as heard is not chunking.

Question 4

After a car accident, a witness is asked, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" Compared with witnesses asked about cars that "hit" each other, this witness will most likely
  1. A. recall the color of the cars more accurately than the speed
  2. B. give a higher speed estimate and more often report broken glass that was never there
  3. C. recall the event with greater accuracy because the question is more vivid
  4. D. refuse to answer the question
Show the answer

The answer is B. This is the misinformation effect, demonstrated by Loftus and Palmer. Wording introduced after the event is absorbed into the memory itself, raising speed estimates and generating confident recall of details that never occurred.

  • A is wrong: Memory for peripheral detail such as color is not improved by the wording of a question about speed.
  • C is wrong: Vividness in the question does not improve accuracy. The whole finding is that the stronger verb makes the memory less faithful to what happened.
  • D is wrong: Witnesses in these studies answer readily and are unaware they have been influenced, which is precisely what makes the effect so difficult to guard against.

Question 5

A toddler watches a toy be hidden under a blanket and immediately reaches for it. According to Piaget, she has acquired
  1. A. the ability to reason abstractly
  2. B. object permanence
  3. C. conservation
  4. D. theory of mind
Show the answer

The answer is B. Object permanence is understanding that things continue to exist when out of sight. Reaching for the hidden toy is the standard demonstration that it has developed.

  • A is wrong: Abstract reasoning belongs to the formal operational stage in adolescence. A toddler retrieving a toy is reasoning about a physical object in front of her.
  • C is wrong: Conservation is knowing that quantity survives a change in shape, such as pouring liquid into a taller glass. It appears years later, in the concrete operational stage.
  • D is wrong: Theory of mind is understanding that other people hold beliefs that can differ from one's own. No other person's beliefs are involved here.

Question 6

A child is shown two identical glasses of juice, then watches one be poured into a taller, narrower glass and insists the taller glass now has more. This child is
  1. A. in the preoperational stage and has not yet grasped conservation
  2. B. in the sensorimotor stage and lacks object permanence
  3. C. in the concrete operational stage but reasoning about a hypothetical
  4. D. in the formal operational stage and testing the experimenter
Show the answer

The answer is A. Failing to conserve is the signature of the preoperational stage, roughly ages two to seven. The child centers on the single striking dimension of height and cannot yet mentally reverse the pouring.

  • B is wrong: Sensorimotor children are infants who cannot answer a question about quantity at all. This child is old enough to watch, judge and reply.
  • C is wrong: A concrete operational child would answer correctly. Grasping conservation is what marks the transition into that stage.
  • D is wrong: Formal operational adolescents conserve easily. Reading the error as deliberate misreports what these children say when questioned.

Question 7

A driver cuts you off and you conclude he is reckless and selfish. The next week you cut someone off yourself and explain that you were late for a hospital visit. This pattern illustrates
  1. A. the fundamental attribution error, applied to others but not to oneself
  2. B. deindividuation
  3. C. cognitive dissonance
  4. D. the mere exposure effect
Show the answer

The answer is A. The fundamental attribution error is overweighting personality and underweighting situation when explaining other people. We reverse it for ourselves, because our own circumstances are vivid to us and invisible in others.

  • B is wrong: Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness in a group that permits behavior a person would not show alone. Both incidents involve a lone driver.
  • C is wrong: Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs or acting against one's attitudes. This driver feels no such tension; each explanation is comfortable.
  • D is wrong: The mere exposure effect is increased liking for something because it has become familiar. Nothing here becomes more likable through repetition.

Question 8

Participants who were paid one dollar to tell someone a boring task was interesting later rated the task as more enjoyable than participants paid twenty dollars. This is explained by
  1. A. cognitive dissonance, since the small payment gave no adequate justification for lying
  2. B. the effect of larger rewards on motivation
  3. C. conformity to the experimenter's expectations
  4. D. the self-serving bias
Show the answer

The answer is A. Twenty dollars justifies the lie, so no tension arises. One dollar does not, so the only way to resolve the dissonance between "I am honest" and "I just lied" is to decide the task really was rather interesting.

  • B is wrong: This predicts the opposite result. The participants paid more should then have liked the task more, and they liked it less.
  • C is wrong: Both groups faced the same experimenter and the same request. Conformity cannot explain why the payment amount changed the outcome.
  • D is wrong: The self-serving bias is taking credit for successes and blaming circumstances for failures. Neither group is explaining a success or a failure.

Question 9

Selye's general adaptation syndrome describes the body's response to prolonged stress in the order
  1. A. alarm, exhaustion, and then recovery
  2. B. exhaustion, alarm, resistance
  3. C. alarm, resistance, exhaustion
  4. D. resistance, alarm, exhaustion
Show the answer

The answer is C. The sequence is alarm as the body mobilizes, resistance as it sustains a high level of coping, and exhaustion as reserves run out and vulnerability to illness rises.

  • A is wrong: Selye's third stage is exhaustion, and the model does not include a recovery stage; the concern is precisely that resources are not replenished.
  • B is wrong: Exhaustion is the depletion that follows a long period of coping. Placing it first reverses the whole model.
  • D is wrong: Resistance cannot precede alarm, because it is the phase in which the body sustains the mobilization that alarm began.

Question 10

A student facing a difficult exam makes a study schedule and asks the teacher for help. This is best described as
  1. A. emotional coping
  2. B. a defense mechanism
  3. C. learned helplessness
  4. D. problem-focused coping
Show the answer

The answer is D. Problem-focused coping acts on the stressor itself. It tends to work best when the situation is actually within the person's control, as an upcoming exam is.

  • A is wrong: Emotion-focused coping manages the feelings the stressor produces, for instance by exercising or seeking reassurance, without changing the situation.
  • B is wrong: Defense mechanisms are unconscious distortions of reality in psychoanalytic theory. Making a schedule is a deliberate, conscious strategy.
  • C is wrong: Learned helplessness is giving up after repeated uncontrollable failure. This student is doing the opposite by acting on the problem.
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