Students sign up expecting to learn how to read people and spend the first fortnight learning about operational definitions instead. That gap between the popular idea of the subject and the discipline itself is the honest starting point of What is Psychology? 3rd Edition by Ellen E. Pastorino, and it is also where the first exam quietly does its damage. The material feels familiar — memory, sleep, stress, personality are things everyone already has opinions about — so it is easy to read a chapter, recognize every term, and discover in the test that recognition and recall are not the same ability at all.
Why this test bank helps
Marking the correct box shows recognition; explaining the choice shows the understanding the course is grading. Every question here carries a written rationale that walks through the reasoning behind the keyed answer and identifies what each of the other options actually refers to — almost always a term from the same chapter that sits close enough to catch a reader working from familiarity rather than knowledge.
What’s inside
- Questions that follow the book chapter by chapter, so each assigned reading has its own practice block.
- Multiple choice, true/false and short-answer formats, mirroring how introductory courses are assessed.
- A written rationale under every item, so a wrong answer points to the specific distinction to review.
- Applied scenario questions of the kind this text uses to connect concepts to everyday situations.
- A single organized PDF, ready to download when checkout completes.
Topics covered
- What psychologists do — the subfields and careers, the scientific method, descriptive and experimental designs, and research ethics.
- Biological psychology — the neuron and neurotransmitters, the nervous and endocrine systems, and the functions of the major brain areas.
- Consciousness — sleep stages and circadian rhythms, dreaming, hypnosis, and the effects of psychoactive drugs.
- Learning — classical conditioning, operant conditioning and reinforcement schedules, punishment, and observational learning.
- Memory and cognition — the stages of memory, retrieval and forgetting, problem solving, reasoning and language.
- Motivation, emotion and stress — hunger and achievement motives, theories of emotion, the stress response, coping and health.
- Development and personality — physical, cognitive and social development across life, and the psychoanalytic, trait, humanistic and social-cognitive views of personality.
- Disorders, therapy and social behavior — classification of psychological disorders, biomedical and psychological treatments, attitudes, attribution and group influence.
Who it’s for
Students in a first introductory psychology course using this edition — community college and university general-education students, plus those completing psychology as an entry requirement for nursing, teaching or social work programs.
How to use it (the right way)
Read the chapter, close the book, and only then attempt the questions; testing yourself while the text is open measures the page, not your memory. Go back through the rationale for every item you missed or guessed. This is a study aid, to be used in line with your institution’s academic-integrity policy — for preparation and self-testing, never as a shortcut around the coursework or as material carried into a graded assessment.
Sample question (shows the format — your download contains the full set)
Q. A researcher reports a correlation of -.62 between hours of sleep per night and self-reported anxiety in a sample of students. Which conclusion is justified?
- A. Losing sleep causes anxiety to increase.
- B. Students who sleep less tend to report more anxiety, and the association is a moderately strong one.
- C. The relationship is weak, because the coefficient is negative.
- D. Sixty-two percent of anxiety is explained by sleep loss.
Answer: B. A correlation describes the direction and strength of an association: the negative sign means the two variables move in opposite directions, and a value of .62 is moderately strong. A asserts causation, which no correlational design can establish, since anxiety could equally disturb sleep or a third variable could drive both. C confuses sign with strength — the sign tells you the direction, the absolute value tells you the strength. D misreads the coefficient as a percentage; the proportion of shared variance is the square of the coefficient, not the coefficient itself.
Edition & format
- Matches: What is Psychology? 3rd Edition, by Ellen E. Pastorino (ISBN 9781111652845).
- Format: Digital PDF, delivered instantly after checkout.
- Access: Lifetime — re-download from your account whenever you need it.
This title is printed in several variants with different ISBNs. Please confirm the edition and ISBN above match the book on your syllabus before buying.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the current edition? This set is prepared against the 3rd Edition carrying the ISBN listed above. If your course names a different printing or edition, choose that listing instead.
How do I receive it? The download link is on your order confirmation page and in your account the moment checkout completes. Nothing ships.
Do all the questions include rationales? Yes. Each item is followed by a written explanation of the reasoning and of what the other options describe.
Is using a test bank allowed? Used as a study aid, it is an ordinary practice resource. Follow your institution’s academic-integrity policy and never carry the material into a graded assessment.
More titles for this course are in Psychology Test Banks.
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