MCAT Psychology: OCEAN and Understanding the Big Five Personality Traits
What are the Big Five Personality Traits? What does OCEAN mean on the MCAT?
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Category MCAT Psychology
Understanding Classical and Operant Conditioning for the MCAT
These fundamental concepts not only pop up on your MCAT, but also help you better understand the basis of human behavior. So buckle up, unload that personal baggage, and get ready to blame your parents.
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Understanding Differential Association Theory for the MCAT
Find out everything you need to know about Differential Association Theory to help you crush the Psych/Soc section of the MCAT.
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Understanding the Difference Between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing for the MCAT
Discover the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing and how to incorporate both into your MCAT prep.
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Don’t Psych Yourself Over MCAT Psychology!
Seemingly endless vocabulary terms. Complicated experimental designs. Deceptive graphs and figures. This is the last stretch of the MCAT—you’re almost done! Many students consider the MCAT psychology section to be the easiest, due to its more content-based nature compared to…
Identifying Methodological Flaws in Studies
One of the things that really surprises students about the MCAT is the heavy focus on how experiments are set up and ran. This can really catch a student off-guard, as most undergrad courses don’t really emphasize this. But from the point of view of the AAMC, it’s obvious that they want to test this. In order to be a good doctor, you need to be able to understand the quickly changing research that is coming from our more experimental-minded colleagues. It’s incredibly important for doctors to know when a certain treatment is likely to help, and when it may make matters worse.
Read MoreIdentifying Methodological Flaws in StudiesMemorizing MCAT Psychology and MCAT Sociology Terminology
For many pre-med students, especially those who have majored in biology or a hard science, the Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior Section can be challenging to prepare for because it may not correspond as closely to the core…
MCAT Psychology – Study Design
Types of Study Design on the MCAT The Psychology and Sociology section of the MCAT has become well-known for including questions about experimental design. Moreover, experimentally-based passages occur in all three science sections. For this reason, gaining a solid…
MCAT Public Office Hours – Psychology and Sociology Content Review
This webinar session was run by Andrew Dombrowski, one of Next Step’s Premium MCAT tutors and Content Developers. During this session, Andrew discussed study strategies, topics to pay attention to, and questions to ask yourself while working through the Psychology…
MCAT Psych/Social – Theories of Emotion: Which Is Which?
The James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter-Singer theories of emotion are an important topic for the Psychological and Social, and Biological Foundations section of the MCAT, and are also a perennial source of confusion for students due to the need to distinguish…