BPCC 131 Solved Guess Paper 2026 for IGNOU Foundations of Psychology BAG and BA Psychology

"Psychology is a science that seeks to understand and predict human and animal behavior."

The word psychology comes from two Greek words — psyche (soul or life) and logos (knowledge or explanation). The most accepted definition today is that psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes.

Psychology as a Science

      
1. Systematic data gathering — It gathers data by observing and recording behaviour under controlled experimental conditions.
      
2. Objectivity — Measurement of behaviour is kept as free from bias as possible.
      
3. Empirical approach — It relies on experiments and observation, not opinions or beliefs.
      
4. Replication — Experiments are designed so another researcher can repeat and check them.
    

Subfields of Psychology

      
1. Cognitive Psychology — Studies how the mind thinks, remembers and learns.
      
2. Clinical Psychology — Deals with assessment, diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.
      
3. Counselling Psychology — Helps people with milder emotional problems and career choices.
      
4. Environmental Psychology — Focuses on the human-environment interrelationship.
      
5. School Psychology — Works on the psychology of learning and school programmes.
      
6. Educational Psychology — Focuses on the psychology of teaching and curriculum.
      
7. Experimental Psychology — Studies learning, memory and perception through experiments.
      
8. Physiological Psychology — Examines the relation between brain and behaviour.
      
9. Organizational Psychology — Applies psychology to work settings for employee well-being.
      
10. Social Psychology — Studies groups, their attitudes, beliefs and mutual relations.
      
11. Developmental Psychology — Studies behaviour across the life span.
      
12. Community Psychology — Deals with community, social and health issues.
      
13. Sports Psychology — Focuses on psychological aspects of sports behaviour.
      
14. Health Psychology — Studies factors that influence health and illness.
      
15. Forensic Psychology — Applies psychology to criminal justice and legal investigations.
    

Conclusion: Psychology is a science because it studies behaviour in a systematic, objective and empirical way. Its many subfields show how widely it is applied today.

"Whole is different from the sum of its part."

In the early 20th century three German psychologists — Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka — proposed these principles. Gestalt literally means form or configuration.

      
1. Law of Figure-ground Relationship — We always see a figure against a background. The figure has a definite shape and is better remembered; the ground is shapeless.
      
2. Law of Proximity — Objects that lie close together are seen as belonging to one group.
      
3. Law of Good Figure / Pragnanz / Symmetry — Out of all possible groupings, we choose the simplest and most stable shape.
      
4. Law of Continuation — We tend to see figures in continuation rather than in parts.
      
5. Law of Common Fate — Stimuli moving in similar directions are seen as belonging to the same group.
      
6. Law of Closure — Our perception fills in the gaps in our sensations to complete a figure.
      
7. Law of Similarity — Things are grouped together according to their similarity.
    

Factors Affecting Perception

      
1. Effect of Motivation or Need and Set — Sanford (1936) showed hungry participants saw ambiguous stimuli more as food-related. Changizi and Hall (2001) showed thirst also affects perception.
      
2. Effect of Expectation or Perceptual Expectancy — It is a readiness to perceive things in a particular way. Bruner and Minturn (1955) showed the same figure was read as 13 among numbers and as B among alphabets.
      
3. Effect of Emotions — McGinnies (1949) found the threshold was higher for emotionally toned words, which was seen as a perceptual defense mechanism.
      
4. Effect of Stimulus Characteristic — Stimuli that sound, taste, look or feel different grab our attention more.
      
5. Effect of Experience — Prior experience shapes perception, as when a rope is seen as a snake in the dark.
      
6. Effect of Culture — A hand gesture meaning beautiful in India is rude in Brazil, so interpretation changes with culture.
    

Conclusion: Gestalt laws explain how we group scattered stimuli into meaningful wholes. What we finally perceive also depends on needs, expectations, emotions, experience and culture.

"A limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning."

Memory is the ability of retaining information and reproducing it over time when needed for a cognitive task. It has three stages — encoding, storage and retrieval.

Information-processing Model

In 1968 Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin proposed the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model, which works much like a computer handling data. It has three stores.

      
1. The sensory register or memory — It receives information from the sensory receptors and holds it for a very brief period, perhaps a few seconds. It passes on only if attention is paid to it.
      
2. Short-term store or memory — Also known as working memory; William James called it primary memory. Information is kept for 20 to 30 seconds and rehearsed again and again. G. A. Miller (1956) suggested its capacity is about seven items, plus or minus two. Packing more information into one item is chunking.
      
3. Long-term store or memory — Information rehearsed well moves here; what is not rehearsed is lost. It has unlimited capacity and stores material for days, months, years and maybe forever.
    

An Integrative Model: Working Memory

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) found short-term memory is dynamic — it not only stores information but also manipulates it. Their Working Memory model has four components.

      
1. The central executive — It coordinates the other sub-systems and decides which memory goes to long-term memory and which fades away.
      
2. The phonological loop — It stores verbal and auditory information, which decays within 2 seconds unless rehearsed. It has a phonological store and an articulatory rehearsal process.
      
3. The visuospatial sketch pad — It keeps visual and spatial information, such as the mental picture formed while solving a puzzle.
      
4. The episodic buffer — It combines information from the phonological loop, sketch pad and long-term memory into one unitary episodic representation.
    

Conclusion: The Atkinson-Shiffrin model explains memory as three stores through which information flows. Baddeley and Hitch showed short-term memory actively works on information, not just holds it.

"Ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world."

Sigmund Freud was the major contributor of the psychoanalytic theory of personality, in which unconscious mental processes are central. He proposed a topographic model of the psyche, a structural model of personality, and stages of development.

A Topographic Model of the Psyche

      
1. Conscious — Deals with current information — all thoughts, feelings and actions you are aware of right now.
      
2. Preconscious — Holds information you are not aware of now but can reach if you pay attention.
      
3. Unconscious — Stores socially unacceptable needs, desires and feelings you are unaware of; it plays a vital role in our actions.
    

A Structural Model of Our Personality

      
1. Id — Operates unconsciously on basic instincts, biological needs and aggressive impulses, working on the pleasure principle. Its driving forces are Eros, the life force, and Thanatos, the death force.
      
2. Ego — The reality check; it works on the reality principle, delaying the id's gratification till a realistic situation is found. It is the decision-making part.
      
3. Superego — The moral master of personality; it internalises society's moral values. It develops between three to five years and has two systems — conscience and ideal self.
    

Five Stages of Psychosexual Development

      
1. Oral Stage (birth to 18 months) — The mouth is the source of pleasure. Fixation may cause over-eating, drinking, smoking or nail biting later.
      
2. Anal Stage (18 months to three years) — Pleasure comes from bowel and bladder movement. Too harsh or lenient toilet training causes fixation — anal expulsive or anal retentive habits.
      
3. Phallic Stage (three to five years) — Genitals become the erogenous region. The male child experiences the Oedipus complex, the female child the Electra complex. By its end personality is formed completely.
      
4. Latency Stage (six to twelve years) — Sexual energy is channelised towards education, sports and social activities.
      
5. Genital Stage (thirteen years to adulthood) — Sexual energy returns. Successful completion of earlier stages helps form a mature intimate relationship.
    

Conclusion: Freud saw personality as a struggle between id, ego and superego, mostly below awareness. He held that the core of personality is fixed in the first five years.

"Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment."

Theories of Intelligence

      
1. Spearman's Theory — Charles Spearman's (1904) two-factor theory says all mental activity has a general or g factor and a specific or s factor.
      
2. Thurstone's Theory — L.L. Thurstone (1938) said intelligence involves seven clusters of Primary Mental Abilities — Word Fluency, Verbal Comprehension, Spatial Visualization, Perceptual Speed, Numerical Facility, Reasoning and Associative Memory.
      
3. Sternberg's Theory — Robert Sternberg's Triarchic theory has three types — contextual or practical, creative and analytical intelligence.
      
4. Gardner's Theory — There is not one intelligence but many. He proposed seven — Linguistic, Musical, Logical-mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-kinesthetic, Intrapersonal and Interpersonal — then added an eighth, Naturalist.
      
5. Cattell's Theory — Fluid intelligence is the capacity to reason and solve new problems; crystallized intelligence uses skills, knowledge and past experiences.
      
6. PASS Theory — Das, Naglieri and Kirby (1994) proposed the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous and Successive theory.
    

Nature vs. Nurture Debate in Intelligence

Nature means the genetic factors inherited from parents. Nurture means all environmental factors that affect us — rearing, family, socioeconomic conditions and culture.

      
1. Nativists — They believe intelligence is purely hereditary, from genetic makeup.
      
2. Environmentalists or empiricists — People differ due to experience. John Locke called the mind a tabula rasa or blank slate.
      
3. Evidence for heredity — Identical twins reared apart support genetic endowment (Jenson, 1973).
      
4. Evidence for environment — The Flynn effect (James Flynn, 1987) describes massive IQ gains of nearly three points per decade.
    

Conclusion: Theorists differ on whether intelligence is one ability or many. The modern view is balanced — genes and environment together shape it.