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CLEP cheat sheet

CLEP Introductory Psychology cheat sheet

A condensed reference for the formulas, graph-reading rules, and must-know facts most worth reviewing before exam day.

The seven perspectives

  • Biological: behavior comes from the brain, neurons, genes, and neurotransmitters.
  • Cognitive: focuses on thinking, memory, and information processing.
  • Behavioral: behavior is learned through conditioning (Pavlov, Watson, Skinner).
  • Psychodynamic: unconscious drives and early experience (Freud).
  • Humanistic: free will, self-actualization, and growth (Maslow, Rogers).
  • Sociocultural: culture and social context shape behavior.
  • Evolutionary: behaviors persist because they aided survival and reproduction.

Theorists and their ideas

  • Pavlov: classical conditioning (a neutral stimulus becomes conditioned).
  • Skinner: operant conditioning (reinforcement increases, punishment decreases behavior).
  • Freud: id/ego/superego, psychosexual stages, defense mechanisms.
  • Piaget: cognitive stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, formal operational).
  • Erikson: eight psychosocial stages (e.g., trust vs mistrust, identity vs role confusion).
  • Maslow: hierarchy of needs, from physiological up to self-actualization.

High-yield facts

  • Reinforcement (positive or negative) increases behavior; punishment decreases it. Negative reinforcement is NOT punishment.
  • Memory stages: sensory → short-term (working) → long-term; encoding, storage, retrieval.
  • Correlation does not equal causation; only experiments with a manipulated variable show cause.
  • Neurotransmitters: dopamine (reward/movement), serotonin (mood), acetylcholine (memory/movement).
  • The independent variable is manipulated; the dependent variable is measured.

Practice this first: Learning, cognition, and memory — Conditioning, reinforcement, and the memory model are the most-tested cluster.

Now put it to work — practice CLEP Introductory Psychology free

Reviewing the sheet is step one. Passers are usually hitting about 70-80% on realistic practice before test day (CLEP costs about $93, with a 3-month retake lockout on a miss), so the fastest way to know you are ready is to start answering real questions.