How to prepare for psychology paper 2 upsc ias exams

*In case you are a person totally unfamiliar with psychology, you may not be able to draw any benefit from this article. This is written keeping in mind aspirants who are familiar with topics in paper 2 psychology.

Psychology is a very popular optional. We will feel a natural inclination to learn this subject, as it directly relates to us. The moment you start learning psychology, some of this thrill disappears.

Psychology paper 2 is notorious for constantly giving aspirants very low marks. The motivation for learning dips down and many aspirants are left confused seeing the marks given for paper 2 psychology in upsc ias exams. The extreme low marks of around 60/300 or 80/300 can be a real spoiler for someone who has done well in other areas.

The common difficulties faced by aspirants while learning paper 2 psychology are

1 lack of adequate materials

2 do not know how to answer

3 Lack of knowledge regarding depth, significance of a particular topic

Nowadays all topics in syllabus are important. In earlier times, many chapters would be left by the aspirants. This method of selectively excluding topic can be dangerous. These days its desirable to cover as much syllabus as possible.

We need to know the availability of material, depth and significance of topics in syllabus when it comes to paper 2 psychology.

Availability of material

In the paper 2 syllabus, there are areas for which there is lot of material available in the commonly available textbooks eg: Schizophrenia or personality disorder. No psychology textbook comes out without such topics.

There are other topics like Psychology of terrorism or gender psychology or rehabilitation psychology in which lot of research has been done. But the in-depth material may not be readily available. The commonly used texts (ncert, baron , morgan & King) would not have featured these areas prominently. In these areas we need to find out books/data which are written for them. That doesn’t mean that we need to learn the whole book on any particular topic. We would benefit from jargons, diagrams, keywords, certain sections which are entirely meant for the topic. Some people after finding a textbook in a particular topic (say psychology of terrorism) will learn the whole thing. In the exam point of view, i would say it’s pretty useless. Since maximum words that can be asked about a topic are 600 (imagining that a 60 mark question came from it, which rarely occur these says). So grinding the whole stuff (a 400 page book on a topic like psychology of terrorism or rehab psychology) and keeping in head would gain knowledge but not much of marks. That is where knowledge of depth on a topic comes in. The book with cover “Sports psychology” is meant for the sports psychologist who needs to know everything about that topic.

Depth

The depth to which studies have occurred may not be known to a person who is learning psychology for the first time. This is one reason why aspirants falter in paper 2 of psychology.

Take for instance chapter 4 of psychology –

     "4. Work Psychology and Organisational Behaviour:

Personnel selection and training;  Use of psychological tests in the industry;  Training and human resource development;  Theories of work motivation – Herzberg, Maslow, Adam Equity theory, Porter and Lawler, Vroom; Leadership and participatory management;  Advertising and marketing;  Stress and its management;  Ergonomics; consumer psychology; Managerial effectiveness; Transformational leadership; Sensitivity training; Power and politics in organizations. "

In almost all areas in chapter 4, in depth studies have been done.

Significance/Current Trend

In the previous para , i had listed topics in chapter 4.The topics like consumer psychology are very significant in the current world. There are researches on it almost every month, while the number of researches on Freudian theory may not be too high. The topics like positive psychology have recently come to the international scenario, and hence very significant. Only when you are familiar with the topics, the relevance of topics can be made out.

The usual advice given when “How to study paper 2 psychology?” asked is “Apply the paper 1 in paper 2”. This technique of putting all things of paper 1 may not be possible. The paper 2 has many topics which are quite important and distinct from paper 2.