AP Psychology Units
The redesigned AP Psychology course is built from five units. This guide walks through what each one covers and pairs it with the AppsychLab experiment that makes the concept stick. (The older course split the same material into nine smaller units — it's now reorganized into these five.)
The biology under everything else: neurons and neurotransmitters, how neural signals fire, the nervous and endocrine systems, the structures of the brain and the tools used to study it, genetics and the nature–nurture interaction, plus sensation, perception, and sleep and consciousness. It's the most vocabulary-dense unit, so steady review pays off.
How the mind processes information: memory (encoding, storage, retrieval, and forgetting), thinking, problem solving, and decision making (including heuristics and biases), intelligence and its measurement, and language. This is the unit where AppsychLab has the most for you to actually do.
Run it yourself: Stroop Test · Memory Span Test · Cognitive Bias Test
Two big threads: lifespan development (physical, cognitive, and social-emotional change from infancy to late adulthood, including major theorists) and learning — classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational/social learning. Conditioning shows up constantly on the exam, so being able to label the parts is essential.
Run it yourself: Classical Conditioning Simulator
How people influence and explain each other, and what makes individuals consistent: attribution, attitudes, conformity and obedience, group behavior, prejudice, and attraction, alongside the major theories of personality (psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and social-cognitive) and how it's assessed. The famous studies — Milgram, Asch, Zimbardo — live here.
Stress and coping, positive psychology and well-being, the major categories of psychological disorders and how they're classified, and the main approaches to treatment (psychological therapies and biomedical treatment). It rewards organized notes, since disorders and therapies are easy to mix up.
How to Study the AP Psychology Units
You don't need to study the units in order, but you do need all five — the multiple-choice section pulls from everywhere, and the free-response questions can land on any topic. The most efficient approach is to learn each unit's vocabulary well enough to apply it, then test yourself. For a full plan, see the AP Psychology study guide, and to gauge readiness across units, use the score calculator.
Learn a Unit by Doing It
Start with Cognition — measure your own Stroop effect and memory span — then check your score.
Run an Experiment