exam guide

How to study for AP Psychology, from unit tests to the May 14, 2027 exam

The prettysmart teamUpdated 9 min read

the short answer

Study AP Psychology on two tracks: spaced flashcards that pair every key term with a fresh example, and practice of the research-methods and argument skills the two free-response questions score. The exam has five equally weighted units, and the 2027 exam is Friday, May 14.

Key takeaways

  • Since 2025 it's 75 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes, then the AAQ and EBQ in 70 minutes, all in Bluebook.
  • If a guide doesn't mention the AAQ and EBQ, it describes the old exam.
  • About 65% of the multiple choice asks you to apply a concept to a new scenario, so every card needs an example.
  • The exam only asks about eight neurotransmitters, five hormones and five sleep disorders: learn those lists.
  • Skip what the course rules out, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the names of the theories of emotion.
Jump to the 45 flashcards
In this guide
  1. AP Psychology is a different course now
  2. What’s on the exam
  3. The five units
  4. The AAQ and EBQ, part by part
  5. What to memorize and what to practice
  6. What you can skip
  7. The study method is on the test
  8. How to study for unit tests, midterms and finals
  9. A plan from now to May 14, 2027
  10. If you have three days, or one
  11. How AP Psych scores look
  12. Flashcards
  13. Questions
  14. Sources

AP Psychology is a different course now

If an older sibling took AP Psych, their notes describe a different exam. College Board revised the course in the 2024-25 school year, and the first exam in the new format was in May 2025:

Old exam (through May 2024) New exam (May 2025 onward)
Units 9 5
Multiple choice 100 questions, 5 choices each 75 questions, 4 choices each, in 90 minutes
Free response 2 questions in 50 minutes The AAQ and the EBQ, in 70 minutes
Format Paper Fully digital, in Bluebook
Subject Social science A science as well as a social science

Watch out: Some pages that rank for this search still say the exam is all multiple choice, or that it has 100 questions or 9 units. If a guide doesn’t mention the AAQ and EBQ, it’s out of date.

What’s on the exam

Section Questions Time Share of score
Multiple choice 75 90 minutes 66.7%
Article Analysis Question (AAQ) 1, about one study 25 minutes, including 10 to read 16.65%
Evidence-Based Question (EBQ) 1, about three studies 45 minutes, including 15 to read 16.65%

No calculator. Psychology isn’t on College Board’s calculator list, but the course expects you to work out a mean, median, mode or range by hand, and to read standard deviations, percentiles and correlations.

No guessing penalty. Your multiple-choice score is the number you got right, so never leave one blank.

The 2027 exam is on Friday, May 14, 2027, in the afternoon session, which starts at 12 p.m. local time at most U.S. schools.

The five units

All five units carry the same weight, 15–25% of the multiple-choice section, so no unit is safe to skip.

Unit Topic
1 Biological Bases of Behavior
2 Cognition
3 Development and Learning
4 Social Psychology and Personality
5 Mental and Physical Health

What weighs more than any unit is the skill. About 65% of the multiple-choice questions ask you to apply a concept to a scenario, about 25% test research methods and design, and about 10% test data interpretation.

The AAQ and EBQ, part by part

The Article Analysis Question gives you a summary of one real study and asks six things, worth 7 points:

  1. The research method the study used.
  2. The operational definition of a variable.
  3. What a statistic in the results means, including the direction of the relationship.
  4. An ethical guideline the summary describes, and how the researchers applied it. Since October 2025, naming any guideline the summary doesn’t describe counts as contradicting yourself.
  5. Whether the findings generalize, and why.
  6. Whether a finding supports or refutes a claim, worth 2 points.

The Evidence-Based Question gives you three study summaries on one topic. You propose a claim, then support it twice: evidence from one source with a psychology concept that explains it, then evidence from a different source with a different concept. It’s also worth 7 points.

What the 2025 exam readers said in their official report:

  • Read the task verb (identify, state, describe, explain) and do exactly that.
  • Several correct answers are sitting in the summary itself. Use the summary, not your memory of other studies.
  • For a statistic, go beyond defining it: say what it shows and in which direction.
  • For the EBQ, read all three sources before you start, and take evidence from the results, not from how the study was run.
  • The reasoning parts lost the most points: on the first 2025 EBQ they averaged about 1.3 and 1.0 out of 2. A definition of a concept alone doesn’t earn the point; you have to connect it to the evidence.

What to memorize and what to practice

Memorize with flashcards:

  • Key terms, each with a fresh example. Two-thirds of the multiple choice is applying a term to a scenario you haven’t seen, so a card that only holds a definition isn’t enough.
  • The pairs College Board says students confuse: classical versus operant conditioning, conformity versus obedience, and obsessive-compulsive disorder versus obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
  • Research methods and statistics vocabulary: operational definition, random assignment versus random sampling, confounding variables, effect size, statistical significance.
  • Ethics terms: institutional review, informed consent and assent, deception, confederates, debriefing, confidentiality.
  • The closed lists. The exam only asks about these eight neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, glutamate, GABA, endorphins, substance P and acetylcholine. These five hormones: adrenaline, leptin, ghrelin, melatonin and oxytocin. And these five sleep disorders: insomnia, narcolepsy, REM sleep behavior disorder, sleep apnea and sleepwalking.

Practice, because flashcards can’t do it for you:

  • Applying a term to a new scenario, at about 72 seconds a question.
  • Spotting a study’s design and its flaws: confounds, sampling bias, correlation treated as causation.
  • Calculating by hand, without a calculator.
  • Writing AAQ answers that use only what the summary says.
  • Building an EBQ argument from two different sources and two different concepts.

What you can skip

The course description lists topics that won’t be on the exam. Plenty of older prep material still teaches them:

Topic Not on the exam
Heredity and environment (1.1) Specific genetics: genotype, phenotype, DNA, dominant and recessive genes
The neuron (1.3) The sodium-potassium pump; neurotransmitters and hormones beyond the lists above; endocrine glands other than the pituitary
Sleep (1.5) The psychoanalytic theory of dreams; sleep disorders beyond the five above
Perception (2.1) Monocular depth cues other than relative clarity, relative size, texture gradient, linear perspective and interposition
Development (3.2, 3.5) The stages of prenatal development; the pragmatics of language
Personality (3.6, 4.4) Psychosexual stage theory; Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Conditioning (3.7) Delayed, trace, simultaneous and backward conditioning
Emotion (4.7) The names of the theories of emotion (the ideas behind them stay)
Disorders (5.4) Disorders not listed in topic 5.4

The study method is on the test

This is the one course where the way you should study is also the material. The course description includes the spacing effect (spreading practice out beats cramming), the testing effect (recalling an answer strengthens memory more than rereading it) and the forgetting curve, and the 2026 EBQ asked what strengthens a person’s ability to retrieve something they just learned.

The research behind it: practice testing and spaced practice were the only two of ten common techniques rated high utility in a major review (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

Testing beats rereading. Students who tested themselves on passages remembered 56% a week later, against 42% for students who restudied (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006).

Spacing beats cramming. Across hundreds of experiments, spreading study over days rather than one session was extremely useful for long-term memory (Cepeda et al., 2006). The deck below covers Unit 2, where all three live.

How to study for unit tests, midterms and finals

  1. Use the unit’s topics in the course description as your checklist, and cross off anything on the skip list.
  2. Make cards as you go, each with an example in a new setting.
  3. Review in three or four short sessions across the week before the test.
  4. For a midterm or final, mix units in each session instead of studying one at a time.

A plan from now to May 14, 2027

When What to do
Now to mid-November Self-studying? Get an exam-only seat before schools order on November 13, 2026. Everyone: start a research-methods deck, which every unit uses, and a deck for each unit you finish
December–January Review cards most days; write one AAQ every two weeks from College Board’s new-format sets and score it with the official guidelines
February EBQs: read all three sources first, use two different sources and two different concepts, and time it at 45 minutes
March Try the Bluebook test preview; do timed multiple-choice blocks; practice statistics by hand
April Two full timed practice exams, two weeks apart; sort your misses by unit and by skill
May 3–13 Light daily reviews around your other AP exams; nothing new in the last two days

The daily review is what slips first, usually to your phone. prettysmart keeps the apps you pick locked until your due cards are done. If you’d rather use something else, we compared the best app blockers for studying and the best study apps for high school students.

Tip: Taking more than one AP exam? AP Biology is on May 3 and AP U.S. History on May 7: see how to study for AP Biology and how to study for APUSH.

If you have three days, or one

Three days out:

  1. Day 1: Units 1 and 2 plus research-methods cards, then one AAQ.
  2. Day 2: Units 3 and 4, then one EBQ.
  3. Day 3: Unit 5, 25 timed mixed multiple-choice questions, then a quick pass on the cards you missed on days 1 and 2. Then sleep.

One day out:

  1. Research methods and statistics first: they feed about 35% of the multiple choice and most of the AAQ. Practice mean, median, mode and range without a calculator.
  2. The confusable pairs: classical versus operant, conformity versus obedience, OCD versus OCPD.
  3. The AAQ checklist (method, operational definition, statistic with direction, ethics only from the summary, generalizability, support or refute) and the EBQ shape (a claim, two sources, two concepts).
  4. Two or three short self-test passes on your cards, hours apart, instead of rereading. In the same experiment as above, testing beat restudying even with only two days to go.

How AP Psych scores look

Year Exam 5 4 3 3 or higher
2026 New 15% 35% 24% 74%
2025 New, first year 14.4% 30.9% 25.2% 70.5%
2024 Old 19.2% 23.1% 19.5% 61.7%
2023 Old 16.9% 23.2% 19.5% 59.6%

Since the redesign, more students score 3 or higher, but fewer score a 5 than in 2024.

Flashcards: AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition

45 cards, each checked against this guide's sources. Tap a card to see the answer.

Download .txt

AP Psychology Unit 2 flashcards: Cognition: study them one at a time

1What is top-down processing in perception?
Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, such as prior knowledge and expectations (e.g., reading a messy sentence because you understand the overall context).
2What is bottom-up processing in perception?
Sensory analysis that begins at the entry level with sensory receptors and works up to the brain (e.g., detecting individual lines and colors on an unfamiliar canvas before recognizing a picture).
3What is an absolute threshold?
The minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time (e.g., detecting a candle flame 30 miles away on a clear, dark night).
4What does Weber's law state regarding difference thresholds?
Two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) to be perceived as different (e.g., noticing a 1-ounce difference in a 10-ounce weight, but needing a 10-ounce difference in a 100-ounce weight).
5What is a perceptual set?
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another based on expectations, context, or emotions (e.g., mistaking a cloud for a flying saucer after watching a science fiction movie).
6What is the Gestalt principle of figure-ground?
The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground) (e.g., seeing black words as the figure against the white ground of a page).
7What is the Gestalt principle of proximity?
The tendency to group nearby figures together (e.g., seeing six vertical lines arranged in three pairs rather than six separate lines).
8What is the Gestalt principle of closure?
The perceptual tendency to fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object (e.g., perceiving a circle with small breaks in its line as a complete circle).
9What is effortful processing?
Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort (e.g., actively rehearsing terms and definitions for a psychology exam).
10What is automatic processing?
Unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time, and frequency (e.g., effortlessly remembering where you left your jacket without trying to memorize the location).
11What is iconic memory?
A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli lasting only a few tenths of a second (e.g., briefly retaining the exact visual image of a lightning strike after it disappears).
12What is echoic memory?
A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli lasting about 3 to 4 seconds (e.g., repeating the last few words your teacher said when asked, even if your attention had wandered).
Show the other 33 cards
13According to George Miller, the capacity of short-term memory is _____ items.
7 ± 2
14What is chunking in memory?
Organizing items into familiar, manageable units to increase short-term memory capacity (e.g., remembering a 10-digit phone number as three groups: 555-867-5309).
15What is the spacing effect?
The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than massed study or cramming (e.g., studying 30 minutes a day for a week instead of 3.5 hours the night before a test).
16What is the serial position effect?
The tendency to recall best the first and last items in a list (e.g., remembering the first few and last few grocery items on a list while forgetting those in the middle).
17What is an episodic memory?
Explicit memory of personally experienced events (e.g., remembering what happened on your sixteenth birthday party).
18What is a semantic memory?
Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge (e.g., knowing that Paris is the capital of France).
19What is a procedural memory?
Implicit memory of learned motor skills and habits that do not require conscious recall (e.g., knowing how to ride a bicycle or tie your shoes).
20Which brain structure is primarily responsible for processing and consolidating explicit memories?
The hippocampus (e.g., damage to this structure prevents the formation of new declarative memories about facts or personal events).
21Which brain structure plays a key role in forming and storing implicit memories created by classical conditioning and motor skills?
The cerebellum (e.g., learning to blink automatically in response to a tone paired with an air puff).
22What is priming?
The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory (e.g., seeing the word "rabbit" makes you more likely to spell the spoken word "hair" as "hare").
23What is context-dependent memory?
Improved recall of information when retrieval occurs in the same environment where encoding took place (e.g., scoring better on an exam taken in the same classroom where the lectures were held).
24What is state-dependent memory?
The tendency to recall information more easily when in the same physiological or psychological state as during encoding (e.g., recalling where you hid your keys when caffeinated because you hid them while caffeinated).
25The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood is known as _____.
mood-congruent memory
26What does Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve demonstrate?
Forgetting is rapid initially and then levels off over time (e.g., losing about 50% of nonsense syllables within an hour, while remaining items stay stable for days).
27What is proactive interference?
When prior learning disrupts the recall of new information (e.g., accidentally typing your old phone number or password when trying to recall your new one).
28What is retroactive interference?
When new learning disrupts the recall of older information (e.g., forgetting your old class schedule after memorizing your new semester schedule).
29What is anterograde amnesia?
The inability to form new long-term explicit memories after brain trauma (e.g., patient H.M. being unable to remember people he met after his surgery).
30What is retrograde amnesia?
The inability to retrieve information acquired before a brain injury or trauma (e.g., waking up after a concussion unable to remember the accident or the events leading up to it).
31What is the misinformation effect demonstrated by Elizabeth Loftus?
Occurs when misleading post-event information distorts one's memory of an event (e.g., witnesses estimating higher car speeds when asked how fast cars were going when they "smashed" into each other versus "hit" each other).
32What is a prototype in cognitive psychology?
A mental image or best example of a category (e.g., thinking of a robin when asked to picture a bird, rather than an ostrich or penguin).
33What is an algorithm in problem solving?
A methodical, step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution, though it may take a long time (e.g., searching every single aisle in a supermarket to locate vanilla extract).
34What is a heuristic?
A simple thinking strategy or mental shortcut that allows us to solve problems efficiently, but is prone to errors (e.g., checking only the baking aisle for vanilla extract).
35What is the availability heuristic?
Estimating the likelihood of events based on their vividness and availability in memory (e.g., fearing a shark attack after watching news reports of one, despite the statistical rarity).
36What is the representativeness heuristic?
Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match a particular prototype, often ignoring statistical odds (e.g., assuming a quiet man in a suit is an Ivy League professor rather than a truck driver).
37What is a mental set?
A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past (e.g., repeatedly restarting a frozen computer because it worked previously, instead of checking if the mouse is unplugged).
38What is functional fixedness?
A cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used (e.g., failing to use a coin to tighten a loose screw because you only view it as currency).
39What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that confirms preexisting beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence (e.g., an investor reading only positive articles about a stock they already bought).
40The _____ refers to the way an issue is presented, which significantly affects decisions and judgments (e.g., preferring ground beef labeled "75% lean" over "25% fat").
framing effect
41What is Charles Spearman's general intelligence (g factor)?
A single underlying mental ability that underlies all specific mental skills (e.g., someone scoring high on a verbal test often also scores high on spatial and quantitative tests).
42What are the three components of Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence?
Analytical intelligence (academic problem solving), creative intelligence (adapting to novel situations), and practical intelligence (everyday street smarts).
43What is the difference between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence?
Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and solve novel problems (peaks in early adulthood), while crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge and verbal skills (increases with age).
44The worldwide increase in intelligence test scores over decades, necessitating the re-norming of tests, is known as the _____.
Flynn effect
45In psychological testing, what is the difference between reliability and validity?
Reliability is the consistency of test results across repeated administrations, while validity is the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it claims to measure (e.g., a scale giving the exact same incorrect weight is reliable but not valid).

Studying in Anki or Quizlet?

  1. Copy all the cards, or download the .txt.
  2. Quizlet: paste them into its import box. It reads Tab between term and definition.
  3. Anki: File, then Import, and pick the .txt file.

Questions people ask

Is AP Psych harder now?

More students pass since the 2025 redesign: 74% scored 3 or higher in 2026, against 70.5% in 2025 and 61.7% on the old exam in 2024. But fewer score a 5 than in 2024: 15% in 2026, 14.4% in 2025 and 19.2% in 2024.

How many questions are on the AP Psych exam?

75 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes, then 2 free-response questions, the Article Analysis Question and the Evidence-Based Question, in 70 minutes. The whole exam is 2 hours 40 minutes.

When is the AP Psychology exam in 2027?

Friday, May 14, 2027, in Session 2, the afternoon slot, which starts at 12 p.m. local time at most U.S. schools. Late testing is Friday, May 21, 2027.

Can you use a calculator on AP Psych?

No. Psychology isn't on College Board's list of exams that allow calculators, but you may need to work out a mean, median, mode or range by hand.

Can I use old AP Psych practice tests?

For vocabulary, yes; for format, no. College Board says questions from before the 2024-25 revision don't completely match the current exam. The new-format free-response sets are 2025 (two sets) and 2026, plus the samples in the course description.

Is AP Psychology a science class?

Since 2024-25, College Board lists AP Psychology as a science course as well as a social science course. Your school decides how it counts it.

Can you self-study AP Psychology?

Yes. There are no prerequisites, and you can take the exam without the course through an exam-only section at a school that tests you. Schools order exams by November 13, 2026, and the fee is $99 in the U.S.

Sources

  1. AP Psychology Course and Exam Description, College Board
  2. AP Psychology Exam, College Board
  3. Changes Announced to AP Psychology and AP Physics Courses, College Board
  4. AP Psychology CED Clarifications and Corrections (October 2025), College Board
  5. 2027 AP Exam Dates, College Board
  6. AP Exams Calculator Policy, College Board
  7. Chief Reader Report: 2025 AP Psychology Set 1, College Board
  8. 2026 AP Psychology Free-Response Questions, College Board
  9. AP Psychology score distributions, College Board
  10. Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013), Psychological Science in the Public Interest
  11. Test-Enhanced Learning (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006), Psychological Science
  12. Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks (Cepeda et al., 2006), Psychological Bulletin

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