AP Psychology Sample Free-Response Question

This study used the experimental research method. I know it was an experiment because there were two groups. One group got one kind of praise, and the other group got a different kind of praise.

This response earns 1 point because the student correctly identified the method used in the study as an experiment.

In this study, the researchers measured learning motivation by checking to see what kind of future problems students chose. Some students chose the performance goal option, and some chose the learning goal option. That choice is the operational definition of learning motivation.

This response would score 1 point because the student correctly identifies how learning motivation is measured (operationally defined) in the study (through the participants’ choice of the type of future problem to solve).

According to data from the study, the students who were praised for their effort were much more likely to choose the learning goal than the performance goal: 92% of these students chose the learning goal. Students who were praised for their intelligence were more likely to choose the performance goal: 67% of these students chose the performance goal.

This response would score 1 point because the student accurately identified the statistic—the percentage of students in each group who chose each kind of goal—and explained that difference in the context of the study.

In this study, one of the potential ethical problems might be whether the students might be harmed in the long term because of the kind of praise they received during the study. They got informed consent from the parents and that’s good, but what if some students end up changing their learning motivation permanently because of the praise? Did they debrief later with the students?

This response would score 1 point because the student actually identified more than one ethical element of the study: the student mentioned informed consent and the possibility of long-term harm.

This study is probably generalizable because the researchers were pretty careful about the students they chose. They got a pretty big group (128 kids), and they chose them from two different kinds of schools: a small, midwestern school and a large, East Coast school. So these results can probably be generalized to all young students.

This response would score 1 point because the student used relevant evidence—the number of students and the kinds of schools the students were selected from—to explain why they think this participant sample convinces them that the findings are generalizable.

These findings definitely support what the researchers wanted to figure out in this study. In the introduction, the summary states that the researchers wanted to figure out what the impact is for praising students for how hard they tried versus praising students for their intelligence. They definitely did that. Their results show that praising kids for their effort leads them to choose tasks that they might actually learn from, and praising them for their intelligence just leads them to choose tasks that will increase the perception of how smart they are.

This response would score 2 points because the student used relevant evidence—the results that show the impact for praise vs. effort. They use this evidence to show how the study supported the researchers’ hypothesis: that the kind of praise has an impact on future learning choices.