One of the quiet revolutions in teaching IB Psychology is this: our students no longer need to memorise outlines of 200 or more studies, each with two strengths and two limitations. That’s worth celebrating. It makes our subject lighter, more engaging, and far more relevant. Students can now focus on developing critical thinking, connecting concepts, and applying their knowledge rather than playing flashcard games with endless lists of studies.
But let’s not forget: research is the scientific foundation of psychology.
Would you teach ethics in psychology without telling your students about Little Albert and the white rat, Zimbardo’s appalling Stanford Prison Study, or Milgram’s not-so-appalling obedience experiments? Of course not. These are the stories that not only illustrate concepts but also bring to life the ethical debates that shape our subject.
Would we introduce social identity theory without Sherif’s Robbers Cave study? Could we possibly explain observational learning without Albert Bandura’s endlessly punched Bobo doll? And when we turn to methods, what better way to anchor quasi-experiments and neuroplasticity than Eleanor Maguire’s London taxi drivers, or to illuminate the case study method than Henri Molaison, whose memory loss is legendary?
The point is simple: research gives psychology its credibility.
Yes, assessment criteria don’t explicitly require studies by name. Students aren’t graded on whether they remember that it was 22 boys in Sherif’s camp or 72 children in Bandura’s playroom. But to teach any of the IB Psychology concepts with integrity, we must draw upon the research that produced them. Without robust studies and their conclusions, our discipline risks floating away into abstraction, detached from the science that grounds it.
So let’s celebrate freedom from rote memorisation, but let’s also celebrate the research itself. Studies are not an add-on; they are the very evidence that makes psychology worth studying.
Tom Coster - Psychology 