Psychology 328 Syllabus for NIOS Senior Secondary with Lesson Split and Marks
All 24 lessons, the TMA and board exam division, module marks and the official question paper design in one place.
Written by Prateek Talwar | Reviewed by Jyoti Sharma, Senior NIOS Counsellor | Last updated: July 2026
NIOS Psychology Syllabus Class 12 Complete Guide for Session 2026
Psychology carries subject code 328 at NIOS senior secondary level. The course has 24 lessons arranged in 6 modules. Ten of those lessons are set aside for your Tutor Marked Assignment and the remaining fourteen are tested in the board examination.
Most students lose time because they study all 24 lessons with equal effort. That is a mistake. Once you know which lesson sits on which side of the split, and which module carries the biggest share of marks, your revision plan almost writes itself.
This guide gives you the official bifurcation exactly as NIOS publishes it, the official question paper design, a short note on what every single lesson actually teaches, and a study plan built around the marks. Nothing here is guesswork.
If you are picking subjects for the year, the wider NIOS Class 12 syllabus page shows how Psychology sits alongside your other papers so you can balance the workload sensibly.
Psychology 328 Syllabus at a Glance
Two numbers in that table decide your whole plan. Fourteen lessons are tested in the written paper, and one module alone is worth a quarter of the paper. Give those the front seat and treat everything else as support.
Official Bifurcation of Psychology 328 as Published by NIOS
The table below is reproduced word for word from the official NIOS bifurcation document for Psychology 328. It is the single source of truth for which lesson goes to your assignment and which lesson goes to the written paper.
| Total Chapters -24 | ||
|---|---|---|
| MODULE No. and Name |
TMA (40%) (No. of lessons -10) |
Public Examination (60%) (No. of lessons -14) |
| 1. Foundations of Psychology (5 lessons) |
L-2: Bases of Human Behaviour L-4: Methods of Psychological Enquiry-II |
L-1: Understanding Psychology L-3: Methods of Psychological Enquiry-I L-5: Basic Statistics |
| 2. Basic Psychological Processes (6 Lessons) |
L-7: Learning L-9: Motivation |
L-6: Attention and perceptual processes L-8: Human Memory L-10: Emotions L-11: Thinking and Problem Solving |
| 3. Human Development (4 lessons ) |
L-12: Life Span perspective on Development L-15:Adulthood and old age |
L-13: Infancy and childhood L-14: Adolescence and Young Adulthood |
| 4. Individual Differences (3 Lessons) | L-16: Diversity and Individual Variations |
L-17:Self and personality L-18: Intelligence |
| 5. Social Processes and Behaviour (3 lessons) | L-21: Pro-social Behaviour |
L-19: Group Processes L-20: Attitude |
| 6. Health and Well-Being (3Lessons) |
L-22:Coping with Stress L-24: Psychology for holistic development |
L-23: Mental Health Problems |
Read the blue column as your writing work and the red column as your exam work. Modules 4 and 5 send only one lesson each to the TMA, so almost all of their marks are decided inside the examination hall.
Official Question Paper Design for Psychology 328
The four tables below come straight from the official NIOS question paper design for Psychology 328. They tell you how the 100 marks are shared between thinking skills, question formats, modules and difficulty levels.
Maximum Marks: 100 Time: 3 Hours
1. Weightage by Objectives
| OBJECTIVES | MARKS | % OF TOTAL MARKS |
|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE | 20 | 20% |
| UNDERSTANDING | 40 | 40% |
| APPLICATION | 40 | 40% |
| 100 | 100% |
2. Weightage by type of Questions
| Types of Questions | No. of Questions | Marks per Questions | Total marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCQ | 20 | 1 | 20 |
| OBJ | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| 6 | 4 | 24 | |
| VSA | 6* | 2 | 12 |
| SA | 6** | 3 | 18 |
| LA | 4*** | 5 | 20 |
| 45 | 100 |
*3 questions have internal choices
**4 questions have internal choices
***2 questions have internal choices
3. Weightage by Contents
| Modules | Marks |
|---|---|
| 1. Foundations of Psychology (5 lessons) | 15 |
| 2. Basic Psychological Processes (6 lessons) | 25 |
| 3. Human Development (4 lessons) | 15 |
| 4. Individual Differences (3 lessons) | 15 |
| 5. Social Processes and Behavior (3 lessons) | 15 |
| 6. Health and Well-being(3 lessons) | 15 |
| Total | 100 |
4. Difficulty Level of the Question Paper
| LEVEL | PERCENTAGE | MARKS |
|---|---|---|
| DIFFICULT | 25% | 25 |
| AVERAGE | 50% | 50 |
| EASY | 25% | 25 |
What the Psychology 328 Paper Design Actually Means for You
Knowledge questions are worth only 20 marks. Understanding and Application together are worth 80. So plain memorising will cap your score somewhere in the fifties. You have to be able to explain a theory and then use it on a situation you have never seen before.
The objective portion is bigger than most students expect. Twenty MCQs plus the objective type questions together carry 50 marks. That half of the paper rewards steady daily revision far more than last minute cramming.
Long Answer questions are worth 20 marks from just 4 questions, and 2 of those carry an internal choice. Prepare both options in the popular theory areas so that a choice never becomes a gamble on exam day.
Seventy five per cent of the paper is set at average or easy difficulty. A student who covers all fourteen board lessons honestly and practises past papers is aiming at a comfortable score, not a lucky one.
Working through the NIOS Class 12 question paper archive for Psychology shows how these paper design percentages appear as real questions year after year.
TMA Lessons in Psychology 328 and What Each One Covers
These ten lessons carry 40 per cent weightage and are assessed through your Tutor Marked Assignment. You write these answers at home, so there is no reason to score anything less than very well here.
Notice that six of the ten TMA lessons come from Modules 3, 4, 5 and 6. That means your assignment is heavy on human development, social behaviour and well-being rather than on the theory heavy opening module.
Board Exam Lessons in Psychology 328 and What Each One Covers
These fourteen lessons carry 60 per cent weightage and decide your written paper. This table is the most useful thing on this page, so bookmark it and come back to it during revision.
Four of these fourteen lessons sit inside Module 2. That single fact explains why Basic Psychological Processes is worth 25 marks while every other module is worth 15.
To see how these lessons are actually questioned, work through the solved NIOS Class 12 Psychology 328 question paper collection covering the April and October sessions.
Module Wise Marks Breakdown for Class 12 Psychology
Module 1: Foundations of Psychology, 15 Marks
This module sets up the language of the subject. Definitions from Lesson 1 and the research methods from Lessons 3 and 4 come back in almost every later lesson, so weak preparation here costs you marks elsewhere too.
Basic Statistics is the one lesson students avoid. Do not. Mean, median, mode and variability questions are short, they follow a fixed procedure, and they are among the easiest marks in the whole paper once you have practised them ten times.
Module 2: Basic Psychological Processes, 25 Marks
This is the biggest module and it sends four lessons to the written paper. Memory, attention, emotion and thinking are also the topics examiners most enjoy turning into application questions, because everyone has personal experience of them.
Give this module roughly a quarter of your total study time. If your Psychology score has been stuck, this is almost always where the missing marks are hiding.
The NIOS Class 12 previous year question papers make this obvious very quickly once you count how often Module 2 topics appear.
Module 3: Human Development, 15 Marks
Two lessons here go to the paper and two go to the TMA. Infancy and Childhood brings in cognitive development theory, while Adolescence and Young Adulthood is the lesson most students find easiest to remember because they are living it.
Module 4: Individual Differences, 15 Marks
Only one lesson goes to the TMA, so Self and Personality plus Intelligence carry nearly the whole 15 marks in the written paper. Both are theory dense. Build a comparison table of the personality approaches and one for the intelligence theories.
Module 5: Social Processes and Behaviour, 15 Marks
Group Processes and Attitude are examined in the paper. These topics look like common sense until the question asks you to name the process and explain it in psychological terms. Learn the terminology precisely, not just the idea.
Module 6: Health and Well-Being, 15 Marks
Two lessons go to the TMA and only Mental Health Problems is examined in the paper. It is a rewarding lesson to prepare because the classification of disorders and the treatment approaches produce clear, well structured long answers.
What the Class 12 Psychology Course Aims to Teach You
The course is built to move you from description to explanation to application. Module 1 teaches you how psychologists gather evidence, the middle modules explain the mental processes behind behaviour, and the last two modules apply all of it to social life and mental health.
By the end you should be able to describe a psychological process accurately, compare competing theories about it, and use the right concept to explain a real situation. That third skill is what the 40 marks of Application weightage is testing.
The subject also opens practical doors. Counselling, teaching, human resources, social work, healthcare and market research all draw on the ideas in this syllabus, which is why students from Arts, Commerce and Science streams all take it.
How the Psychology 328 TMA Works and How to Write It
Your Tutor Marked Assignment draws on the ten lessons listed in the blue column of the official bifurcation. It is compulsory. Submit it to your study centre within the window NIOS announces for your session, because a missed submission holds up your result.
Psychology assignments are marked on understanding rather than length. A good answer defines the concept, explains the theory in your own words, and then gives one clear example. Three tight paragraphs beat two pages of copied text every time.
Use personal examples where the question allows it. Writing about a real situation where you used a coping strategy, or a time you saw someone help a stranger, shows the evaluator that you actually understood the lesson.
Keep your handwriting clean, number the questions exactly as they appear, and do not skip the internal parts of a multi part question. These small habits protect marks that students throw away for no reason.
If you need model answers to work from, our NIOS solved assignment sets cover all ten Psychology 328 TMA lessons in both typed and handwritten formats.
High Scoring Topics in Class 12 Psychology 328
Human Memory. Encoding, storage and retrieval, the three memory stores, theories of forgetting and memory improvement techniques. It appears in objective questions and long answers alike, year after year.
Methods of Psychological Enquiry. Observation, interview, survey, case study and experiment, each with two advantages and two limitations. Learn these as a set and you can answer almost any method question.
Theories of Personality. Trait, psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches. Examiners often ask you to compare two of them, so prepare a side by side table rather than three separate notes.
Intelligence. Definitions, the major theories, the meaning of IQ, and how intelligence is tested. Know what each theory added to the subject and what critics said about it.
Mental Health Problems. Classification, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia and treatment approaches. A well organised long answer here is straightforward to write and easy to score.
Attitude and Attitude Change. The three components, how attitudes form, persuasion, and prejudice. This topic links neatly to Group Processes, so revise the two together.
Basic Statistics. Central tendency and variability calculations. Numerical questions have a right answer with no argument about it, which makes them the most reliable marks on the paper.
NIOS Psychology Syllabus Class 12 Preparation Strategy That Works
Start by marking the fourteen board lessons in your book with a sticky note. Those pages get your best hours of the day. The ten TMA lessons can be handled in the evening when your concentration is lower, because you have your book open anyway.
Spend the first month on Module 2 alone. Twenty five marks from one module justifies that. Read each lesson twice, once for the ideas and once to write short notes with a real life example beside every theory.
Build the habit of application practice. Take any everyday situation, a quarrel, an exam nerve, a helpful stranger, and write four lines naming the psychological concept involved and explaining it. Ten minutes of this daily is worth more than an hour of rereading.
Do twenty MCQs every day from a mixed set. The objective portion is worth 50 marks and it is the part that improves fastest with repetition.
For long answers, use one structure every time. Define the term, explain the theory in points, give an example, close with a one line application. Markers reward that shape because it makes your answer easy to score.
In the last month, work only from past papers under a three hour clock. Nothing else exposes your slow spots as honestly as a timed attempt.
How Unnati Education Supports Psychology 328 Students
We have worked with NIOS learners since 2010 and Psychology is one of the subjects we are asked about most often, particularly by students who joined NIOS after a gap in schooling.
Our solved TMA sets cover all ten Psychology 328 assignment lessons with complete answers, prepared in the format NIOS expects and available in both typed and handwritten form.
We also share previous year papers with worked solutions, lesson wise notes for all 24 lessons, and practice question banks organised by the same module weightage you saw in the official paper design above.
Doubt clearing happens over WhatsApp and phone, so if a theory in Module 2 is not making sense at ten at night, you can ask and get an answer instead of leaving it for later.
Why Psychology 328 Is Worth Choosing in Class 12
Psychology is open to students from every stream, which makes it a sensible choice if you are changing direction or filling a subject slot after a compartment.
- You understand yourself better. Memory, motivation, stress and personality are not abstract topics. You use them the day you learn them.
- The language is plain. There is very little jargon compared with most Class 12 subjects, and almost no mathematics beyond one statistics lesson.
- It builds towards real careers. Counselling, teaching, human resources, social work and healthcare all start from this material.
- The marks are winnable. Seventy five per cent of the paper is set at average or easy difficulty.
- It suits self study. The lessons are readable on their own, which matters when you are studying around a job or family responsibilities.
Study Material We Provide for Psychology 328
- Lesson wise notes for all 24 lessons, in English and Hindi
- Solved TMA covering all ten assignment lessons, ready to submit
- Previous year papers with model answers written to the marking pattern
- Sample papers built on the official 328 question paper design
- MCQ practice banks arranged module by module
- Live and recorded classes so you can study at your own pace
- WhatsApp doubt support for quick answers during revision
Materials are shared on WhatsApp after you tell us your session and whether you need English or Hindi. Nothing is sent in a fixed bundle you did not ask for.
Students Who Study Psychology With Us
Our Psychology learners write to us from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharashtra and West Bengal, and from Indian families living in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Nepal.
A large share of them are adult learners returning to study after a break, or students who moved to NIOS mid year. The syllabus split on this page matters most to exactly those students, because their study time is limited and has to be spent in the right place.
Why Students Choose Unnati Education for Psychology
- All NIOS streams supported: Stream 1, 2, 3 and 4
- Quick TMA delivery in English and Hindi
- Personal mentoring rather than a one size fits all package
- Complete syllabus coverage across all 24 Psychology lessons
- Delivery across India and to overseas students
- Affordable and flexible options for working learners
Every student arrives with a different gap, so we ask what you have already covered before recommending anything.
Final Words on the Class 12 Psychology 328 Syllabus
Psychology 328 is not a difficult subject, but it is an easy subject to prepare badly. Twenty four lessons feel like a lot until you see that only fourteen decide your written paper and one module carries a quarter of the marks.
Work from the official bifurcation table on this page, follow the paper design when you plan revision, and practise application answers rather than rereading notes. That is the whole method.
If you want solved TMA sets, notes, past papers or simply a straight answer to a doubt, message us and tell us your session and language preference.
FAQs on the Class 12 Psychology 328 Syllabus
How many lessons are there in the NIOS Class 12 Psychology 328 syllabus?
There are 24 lessons arranged in 6 modules. Ten lessons are assessed through the Tutor Marked Assignment and carry 40 per cent weightage. The remaining fourteen lessons are tested in the public examination and carry 60 per cent weightage. The written paper is worth 100 marks and you get 3 hours to complete it. The official bifurcation table on this page shows exactly which lesson falls on which side.
Which module carries the highest marks in Class 12 Psychology 328?
Basic Psychological Processes carries 25 marks, the highest of the six modules. Every other module carries 15 marks. It holds six lessons, four of which are examined in the written paper. Those four are Attention and Perceptual Processes, Human Memory, Emotions, and Thinking and Problem Solving. This module deserves your longest study hours because it alone decides a quarter of your final written score.
Which lessons come in the Psychology 328 TMA and which come in the exam?
The assignment covers L-2, L-4, L-7, L-9, L-12, L-15, L-16, L-21, L-22 and L-24. The public examination covers L-1, L-3, L-5, L-6, L-8, L-10, L-11, L-13, L-14, L-17, L-18, L-19, L-20 and L-23. The official bifurcation table reproduced on this page presents the same split module by module, so you can check any lesson quickly.
What is the question paper pattern for NIOS Psychology 328?
The paper carries 100 marks across 45 questions in 3 hours. It has 20 MCQs of 1 mark, objective type questions worth 6 and 24 marks, 6 very short answer questions of 2 marks, 6 short answer questions of 3 marks, and 4 long answer questions of 5 marks. Internal choices appear in several sections.
Is NIOS Class 12 Psychology a difficult subject to pass?
Most students find it manageable. The official paper design sets 25 per cent of questions at difficult level, 50 per cent at average and 25 per cent at easy. The language is plain and only one lesson involves calculation. The real challenge is the 40 per cent Application weightage, which needs practice rather than memorising.
Do I need to study all 24 lessons for the Psychology 328 exam?
For the written paper you need the fourteen public examination lessons. The other ten still matter because your assignment marks count towards your final result and submission is compulsory. So you do cover all 24 lessons, but you give the fourteen board lessons deeper attention and treat the assignment lessons as open book writing work you can complete calmly at home.
Where can I get notes and solved TMA for NIOS Psychology 328?
Unnati Education provides lesson wise notes for all 24 lessons, solved TMA sets covering the ten assignment lessons, previous year papers with model answers, and module wise MCQ practice banks. Materials are available in English and Hindi, in typed or handwritten format. Message our NIOS desk on WhatsApp with your session and language details and we will share what suits your preparation.
How should I write long answers in the Psychology 328 board exam?
Use one structure every time. Open by defining the key term, explain the theory in clear numbered points, add one real life example, then close with a line applying the idea to a practical situation. Long answers carry 5 marks each and two of the four offer an internal choice, so prepare both options in the popular theory areas rather than gambling on exam day.
Disclaimer
Unnati Education is an independent academic support platform. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) in any way. The bifurcation and question paper design reproduced above are taken from documents published by NIOS. Always confirm current syllabus details on the official NIOS website before your examination.
Written by Prateek Talwar, founder of Unnati Education. Reviewed by Jyoti Sharma, Senior NIOS Counsellor. Page last updated in July 2026.
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