The new IB Psychology course is built out of three things that are meant to be used together. Six concepts, a body of content, and four contexts in which that content gets applied. If this course has confused you so far, it is almost always because those three are being learned as separate lists rather than used as one system.
This guide walks through how the course is put together, what each assessment component actually asks you to do, and where the differences sit between SL and HL. By the end you should be able to look at the whole course and know which parts you can prepare in advance, which parts you cannot, and where your revision time is best spent.
Concepts, content and contexts: how the course is actually built
The six concepts are bias, causality, change, measurement, perspective and responsibility. They run through the entire course.
The content is the psychology itself. The biological, cognitive and sociocultural approaches, plus research methodology.
The contexts are the four settings where that psychology gets applied: health and well-being, human development, human relationships, and learning and cognition.
Here is the part worth slowing down for. The concepts are not a seventh topic to memorise. A concept is doing real work when it changes something. It changes the question you ask about a study. It changes what you notice in the method. It changes how confident you are willing to be in your conclusion.
There is a quick test for this. If you can delete the concept sentence from your paragraph and the paragraph still says exactly the same thing, the concept was decoration.
That is the difference between learning six definitions and learning six ways of thinking. The exam is built to tell those two apart.
The four contexts and the 38 Areas of Study
Inside the four contexts sit 38 Areas of Study.
| Context | Areas of Study |
|---|---|
| Health and well-being | 10 |
| Human development | 8 |
| Human relationships | 10 |
| Learning and cognition | 10 |
The Areas of Study are what the syllabus tables actually name, and they matter more than you might expect, because Paper 1 Section C questions can only be built from the Area of Study column of those tables, not from the learning objectives sitting beside them.
Several Areas of Study offer you a choice. Where that happens, one well-prepared option is enough. You do not need two mental health disorders, two health problems, two developmental domains, both types of interpersonal relationship, or two cognitive processes. Choosing one route deliberately and learning it properly will serve you better than half-learning three.
A handful of areas do require more than one part, and these are the ones to check carefully against your own notes. Cultural differences in mental health needs both prevalence differences and differences in approaches to mental health. Cognitive models of memory requires two models. Social identity theory needs both the explanation and the application to changing group behaviour. Conditioning needs classical and operant, plus an application of operant conditioning.
Knowing exactly where breadth is compulsory and where it is not is one of the quietest ways to reduce your workload without leaving a gap.
How you are assessed
There are four components at HL and three at SL.
Paper 1
Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 30 minutes and is worth 35 marks. It has three sections, and everything in Sections A and B is compulsory.
| Section | What it gives you | Marks |
|---|---|---|
| A | Two compulsory content-based questions, 4 marks each | 8 |
| B | Two compulsory questions applying your knowledge to a new situation, 6 marks each | 12 |
| C | One concept-based extended response, chosen from two | 15 |
Look at the shape of that before you plan anything. Section C is the largest single section of Paper 1, worth 15 of the 35 marks, or about 43% of the paper. It should get the largest share of your time in the exam and the largest share of your practice before it.
You also get five minutes of reading time before the clock starts, as you do in every IB exam. Use it to decide which Section C question you are answering.
Section C is probably the part you are most worried about, and it is also the most predictable in shape. It gives you two extended response questions, each from a different context, and you answer one. It is worth 15 marks and you have roughly 40 minutes for it.
Every Section C question is built the same way. It names a context, one Area of Study inside that context, and one of the six concepts. That is the entire architecture. Once you can see it, the paper stops being a surprise.
Two further things are worth knowing before you plan any Paper 1 revision.
The command terms in Section C are AO3 only. Evaluate, discuss, to what extent. You will never be asked to describe or outline here, which means an answer that only explains content cannot reach the top bands however accurate that content is.
And knowledge of the specific details of research studies is not assessed. That one gets misread every year, so be clear about what it does and does not mean. Studies still matter, because you need evidence to argue with. What is not being marked is your ability to recite the sample size and the year.
Paper 2
Paper 2 lasts 1 hour 30 minutes and is worth 35 marks at both SL and HL. It has two sections, and they behave completely differently.
Section A is rooted in the four class practicals you carry out during the course. It is 20 of the 35 marks, and it is the most predictable part of the whole psychology course. Four questions, and the shape of each one is stable.
| Question | Marks | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| 1a | 4 | Describe how a named method was used in your practical, including aim and procedure |
| 1b | 4 | Explain one concept in relation to that practical |
| 1c | 6 | Compare and contrast your practical method with another method |
| 1d | 6 | Design a study using another method to investigate the same topic |
The focus of assessment here is the research method, not the psychology topic. You are not being marked on how interesting your practical was. You are being marked on whether you understand the methodology you used and can describe it precisely.
Section B is worth 15 marks and gives you an unseen research study to discuss through two or more specified concepts. Because the study is unseen, your preparation for it cannot be a bank of ready-made paragraphs. It has to be a bank of thinking moves.
That distinction between Section A and Section B is the single most useful thing to hold on to about Paper 2. One half can be heavily prepared. The other half can only be trained.
Paper 3 (HL only)
Paper 3 is 1 hour 45 minutes, 30 marks, and 30% of your HL grade. You get a resource booklet of several sources you have never seen, all drawn from one HL extension inside one context. A mix of quantitative and qualitative, experimental and non-experimental. The data may be real or written for the exam.
| Question | Marks | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | Explain one issue that limits what can be read from the data in a named source |
| 2 | 6 | Analyse the findings from a named source and state a conclusion linked to the claim |
| 3 | 6 | Improve credibility, reduce bias, or judge how far findings transfer |
| 4 | 15 | Judge how far a stated claim holds, using at least three sources and your own understanding of the extension |
Question 4 is worth as much as the first three combined, and it is judged on three things at once. Your own understanding of the HL extension. Critical analysis of at least three sources using research methodology. And evaluation of competing points of view, ending in a conclusion that actually follows from what you argued.
The first of those is the one to watch. Your extension knowledge is assessed in its own right. An answer that analyses the sources beautifully but shows no background psychology cannot reach the top band. The reverse is also true.
The internal assessment
The IA asks you to design a research proposal for a population of interest, using one of the four research methods you met in your class practicals. You do not carry it out. No participants, no data, no results, no statistics, no graphs.
That is worth saying twice. Nobody fills in your questionnaire. You design the study, you explain every decision you made, and that is the entire task.
It is 2,200 words maximum and 24 marks across four criteria, six marks each.
| Section | Marks | What it has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 6 | Set out a real problem, say who it harms, summarise two studies, state your aim or research question |
| Research Methodology | 6 | Say which method and why, justify every step of the procedure, handle ethics |
| Data Collection | 6 | Present your tool, justify every choice inside it, name what could go wrong |
| Discussion | 6 | Describe what you might find, what should change, your own bias, one more method |
The sentence that decides your grade comes from the IB itself: the focus of assessment is on your ability to justify your methodological decision-making, not on your ability to design the perfect study.
In practice this means a simple study with strong reasons beats a clever study with none. Every year, ambitious designs land in the middle band because the reasons behind them were never written down.
What actually changes between SL and HL
The differences are smaller than you might expect, but they are not trivial.
| SL | HL | |
|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | 35 marks, 1 hour 30 minutes | Same |
| Paper 2 | 35 marks, 1 hour 30 minutes | Same |
| Paper 3 | Not taken | 30 marks, 1 hour 45 minutes, 30% of the grade |
| HL extensions | Not studied | Culture, motivation and technology |
| Internal assessment | 30% of your grade | 20% of your grade |
| Total external exam weight | 70% | 80% |
One point here is easy to miss. Data analysis and interpretation is studied by both SL and HL students, but it is not formally assessed at SL. Its formal assessment is Paper 3, which is HL only. No Paper 2 question at either level asks you to calculate or formally interpret statistics.
So why learn it at SL? Because being able to read whatever an unseen study reports is what makes a Paper 2 Section B evaluation specific rather than generic. Strong answers point at the study in front of you, not at studies in general.
The other point worth noticing is the IA weighting. At SL your internal assessment is nearly a third of your final grade, and it is the only component where you have weeks rather than ninety minutes, your notes, your teacher, and the published mark scheme. If you are an SL student deciding where to invest effort early, that is your answer.
Four things to get right in the first term
These four patterns cost more marks than anything else early on, and all four are easy to fix now.
Treating the concepts as definitions to memorise. Writing "bias means systematic distortion" in an essay gets your conceptual understanding called descriptive, and that feedback is correct. Naming the direction is what turns it into analysis. Not "there might be bias" but "this would inflate the effect, so the true effect is probably smaller."
Trying to cover every optional route. The syllabus offers choices in several places. Taking all of them multiplies your workload without adding a single mark. Commit to one route, then learn to use what you know flexibly across the Areas of Study it touches.
Memorising study details. Section C does not assess your knowledge of the specific details of research studies. Time spent drilling sample sizes is time not spent learning to argue with evidence.
Treating Paper 2 Section A as something you deal with in April. It is 20 marks with a stable question structure, and it depends entirely on records you can only make properly while the practical is fresh. Write up each class practical the week you do it.
What to do with this now
If you are at the start of the course, three things will pay you back more than anything else.
Keep an accurate record of each class practical as you do it, including method, sample, operationalisation, procedure and ethics. That record is the raw material for 20 marks you can fully prepare.
Get into the habit of asking the six concept questions of every study you meet. What is being measured. What could distort this. What caused it. What actually changed. Whose perspective is missing. What should we responsibly do with what we know. The aim is that eventually those questions arrive on their own.
And decide your syllabus route early, in writing, so you stop relearning options you were never going to use.
If you want a starting set of materials built specifically for the 2027 course, the PsychExcel Starter Library is free and covers the essentials for concepts, papers and the IA.