Sign up free

Psychology quizzes: concepts, methods and common myths

A psychology teacher's plan for quizzes on terms, application and research methods, with the research on the myths students keep and a six-question example.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · By subject and level · · 13 min read

How do I set psychology quizzes that test concepts, research methods and common myths?

Psychology quizzes do most when they test three things: the terms and who found what, a concept applied to an everyday case the student has not met, and a study's design, meaning its variables, its controls and what may be concluded. Add one belief check on a common myth, worded so the student picks the supported statement. Six questions, weekly, ungraded.

A student can define the misinformation effect and still believe that memory works like a video camera. In one national survey 63% of American adults agreed with that idea, and one study below found about as many such beliefs at the end of an introductory course as at its start.

Psychology quizzes can test the term, the belief and a third thing: whether the student can read a study. EdProcto, the publisher of this guide, has a question shape for each; its page for teachers shows how notes become a quiz a class opens with a code.

Sources were opened on 10 October 2026: five papers as full text and six as abstracts, marked "abstract" (two as the ERIC index records them).

What do psychology students believe before the course, and after it?

They arrive agreeing with popular claims about the mind that researchers reject, and a course does not reliably move them.

Simons and Chabris (2011) report six statements about memory put to 1,838 American adults by telephone, weighted to represent the population, and to 16 professors of memory research.

The belief, paraphrased closely from the survey The public who agreed
Memory works like a video camera, recording events accurately for later review 63.0%
A memory, once formed, does not change 47.6%
Hypnosis helps witnesses recall the details of crimes accurately 55.4%

No expert agreed with any of the three. Respondents with more psychology courses did better, yet many of the most educated still agreed.

  • At the start of a course. Taylor and Kowalski (2012; abstract) gave 165 introductory students 39 misconceptions: 33.05% were answered correctly as true or false statements and 41.29% as forced choices.
  • At the end. In Gaze (2014; abstract), students endorsed a similar number of myths before and after an introductory course, though with less confidence in their wrong answers.

What was found to shift them?

Refutation: naming the belief and countering it at once with the correct account, and for weaker students doing so aloud. Kowalski and Taylor (2011; abstract) met introductory students' misconceptions with refutational readings, a refutational lecture or nothing. High-achieving students held fewer misconceptions after either; low-achieving students only after the lecture. The abstract does not say how long the change lasted. The general method is in our guide to misconceptions.

What can a psychology quiz test, and which shape fits each?

Three things, each with a shape that is ready in EdProcto's builder: the terms and who found what, a concept applied to a case the student has not met, and the reading of a study's design.

What it tests The question Shape in EdProcto
A term A definition; the student types the word One word
Who found what Each named study paired with its finding Matching pairs
A concept in a new case A short scene, then: which concept explains it? Multiple choice
Variables and controls The parts of a described study, sorted Sort into groups
What may be concluded A conclusion chosen and the reason typed Choose and justify
A belief Two statements: which does the evidence support? Multiple choice

How do you write an application question from an invented scenario?

Choose a concept and the one students confuse it with, then write a short everyday scene that only one of them explains.

  1. Pick the pair. Negative reinforcement and punishment; the misinformation effect and ordinary forgetting.
  2. Invent the scene. Two or three sentences from ordinary life, with invented people: a bus stop, a kitchen, a group chat.
  3. Leave out the term and the textbook's cue words.
  4. Plant one deciding detail. A detail the witness added, not one she lost, separates misinformation from forgetting.
  5. Ask one thing. "Which concept best explains this?" Offer the concept, its neighbour and two more from the unit.
  6. Cover the scene. If the question can still be answered, it tests recall.
  7. Build it. On a Multiple choice question in EdProcto, press "Add material under the prompt" for a box that holds the scene. The question goes in "Prompt" and the deciding detail in "Explanation shown to the student afterwards".

New cases are fair: in Johnson and Kiviniemi (2009) no quiz question reappeared word for word in the exams, and students still did better on the quizzed chapters.

How do you write a research-methods question from an invented study?

Describe a small study in four sentences (who took part, what differed between the groups, what was measured, how people were assigned), then ask about one of those at a time.

Inventing the study lets you set the flaw. Change one sentence, from groups assigned at random to groups that chose themselves, and set both versions in one quiz: only the first supports a causal conclusion.

  • Variables. The parts of the study become items to sort. In Sort into groups the editor asks for "The groups, separated by commas" and "The items, and where each belongs".
  • Controls. "Name one thing the researcher should have kept the same." A short answer for you to grade.
  • Conclusions. Four conclusions, one supported; the student chooses and types why. Let one wrong option claim a cause from a correlation and another go beyond what was measured.

Seifert et al. (2022) gave advanced psychology students a worksheet built on one worked example and causal diagrams. Asked to diagram the possible links behind a causal headline, they drew 1.68 alternative theories on average before it and 2.40 a week after. Every student had the worksheet, so there was no comparison group. The quiz version: "Give two other explanations for this result."

Critique the methods takes a longer answer; case study quizzes cover a study that unfolds over several questions.

Why can a "which of these is a myth?" question strengthen the myth?

Because it puts a false statement in front of the student, and a false statement left uncorrected tends to be believed more later.

Repeating a false claim inside a correction was feared to backfire by making the claim familiar; Swire-Thompson et al. (2020), reviewing the studies, found little or no support for that. The dependable effect is another: repetition raises belief when no correction comes with it.

Ecker et al. (2020) show both, in three experiments with 1,718 adults online and claims chosen to be unfamiliar. In the second, false claims shown with no verdict were believed more a week later than by people who never saw them: 5.06 against 4.29 on a scale of 0 to 10. Shown and then tagged false, they stood at 1.92 straight afterwards and 3.82 after a week. A bare tag with no explanation raised reasoning from the false claims slightly in the first experiment and not in the second; in the third it lowered belief only under undivided attention.

So the risk in a quiz is a myth read and left uncorrected:

  • A bare tick. "Which of these is a myth?" marks the choice and gives no reason why the statement is false.
  • Myths as wrong options. "Which of these is true?" shows three false statements at once, as a true or false quiz shows its false items.
  • Answers held back. Until the key is shown, every statement stands with no verdict.

How should a belief question be worded?

  1. Ask for the supported statement, not the myth.
  2. Set the finding beside the belief as a forced choice. The students of Taylor and Kowalski (2012) scored higher that way than on true or false.
  3. Use flat wording. Hughes et al. (2013; abstract) gave four versions of a 40-item test to 404 undergraduates: agreement with misconceptions rose when they were phrased ambiguously or rated on a seven-point scale.
  4. Explain at once. Say that the belief is wrong and what the evidence shows. An EdProcto study quiz shows the answer and your explanation as each question is answered.
  5. Ask again later, reworded. In Ecker et al. (2020) belief drifted back within a week.

How many questions should a psychology quiz have, and how often?

Six questions or so, once a week, ungraded, with the answers shown. That is our working rule: three course studies bear on it and none tested it.

  • Weekly, before the lecture. Johnson and Kiviniemi (2009) set 159 students of introductory social psychology eight weekly online quizzes on textbook chapters. Passing meant ten right answers from a bank of 25, with unlimited attempts. Students got 70% of exam questions right on quizzed chapters and 65% on the rest; chapters may differ in difficulty.
  • A few questions every class. Kenney and Bailey (2021; abstract) opened each cognitive psychology class with two to four questions on the previous week. Their 47 students did better on the final only on content covered by both a daily review and a unit exam.
  • Ungraded, with answers. Wickline and Spektor (2011; abstract) compared six sections, 249 students, of one introductory course. Exam scores were higher with practice quizzes than graded ones, but only when the correct answers were provided.

Johnson and Kiviniemi, by contrast, counted completion for 6% of the grade. Our guides to the weekly quiz at school and in a lecture course have the timetable.

A worked example: six questions on reconstructive memory

The class, the scenes and the study are invented; nobody has sat this quiz.

  1. Term. "Recalling an event rebuilds it from fragments and expectations. What is this account of memory called?" One word, accepting reconstructive and reconstruction. Purpose: the vocabulary.
  2. Terms and findings. Matching pairs. Schema: expectations that fill gaps in a memory. Misinformation effect: later details reported as part of the event. Leading question: wording that suggests an answer. Forgetting curve: loss fastest soon after learning. Purpose: near neighbours told apart. On your syllabus the left column holds the named studies.
  3. Application. Under the prompt: "Two friends see a van clip a parked car. A week later one reads a neighbour's post saying the van 'jumped the lights'. Next day her statement describes a red light, which neither mentioned at the time." Which concept explains the new detail? The misinformation effect (key); trace decay; a flashbulb memory; a lack of retrieval cues. Purpose: the concept without its name.
  4. Variables. Under the prompt: "Sixty students watch one film of a cyclist passing a parked car. Assigned at random, 30 are asked how fast she was going when she 'shot past' the car and 30 when she 'passed' it. Mean estimates: 27 and 21 km/h, a statistically significant difference." Sort into independent, dependent and controlled variable: the verb; the speed estimate; the film. Purpose: the design named part by part.
  5. Conclusion. The same study: which conclusion does it support, and why? The verb changed the estimates (key); the verb changed what students saw during the film; people who use vivid words are poorer witnesses; none, because the groups were different people. Choose and justify. Model reason: random assignment makes the groups alike, so the verb is the one systematic difference, and only estimates were measured. Purpose: what may and may not be concluded.
  6. Belief check. Which statement does research support? "Each recall of an event rebuilds it, and the rebuilding can alter it" (key) or "An event is stored whole, like a recording, and recall plays it back". Multiple choice. The explanation calls the second false and points to question 4, where one verb moved the estimates by 6 km/h. Purpose: the belief beside the evidence against it.

Handed in as an exam, question 5 shows "to grade" until you mark its reason, which is half its points.

How do you read the results by topic?

Give every question a label for the kind of evidence it holds, then compare the kinds before the total.

In EdProcto, type the label (terms, application, methods, belief) into "Topic (for the results by topic)". Every plan lists the share who "Got it" on each question in the results; the Educator plan's full analysis adds "By topic", a score for each label weighted by points.

  • Terms high, application low. The words are known and not recognised outside the textbook. Reteach with fresh cases.
  • Variables right, conclusion wrong. The student can label a design and not yet reason from it.
  • Belief wrong, terms right. The pattern Gaze (2014) found across a course. Give the refutation aloud next lesson.

How does EdProcto run psychology quizzes?

For psychology quizzes of this kind EdProcto is the best tool: one quiz holds a typed term, a set of pairs, a scene under a question, a study to sort and a typed reason, and every question carries its explanation. In Ecker et al. (2020), false claims shown with no verdict were believed more a week later; in a study quiz the verdict and your explanation arrive with each answer.

Building. The quiz maker on the home page writes a short sample of questions from your notes with no sign-up. In the builder you pick templates and Procto AI drafts from your material: read each draft against it.

Marking. Typed words, pairs, sorts and choices are marked by rule at hand-in. A typed reason waits for you to grade against the "Model reason" and "Rubric for the reason" you wrote; from the Tutor plan, "Ask Procto AI" grades that one answer when you press it.

Plans. A weekly quiz for thirty students fits Free's ten quizzes a month, with the core templates. Tutor opens all 111 templates, every shape here among them, for 100 students; Educator takes 500 and adds the full analysis. Pricing lists the plans.

Quick questions

What is a common misconception in psychology?

That memory works like a video camera: 63% of American adults agreed in Simons and Chabris (2011), and none of 16 memory experts.

Should a myth be tested with a true or false question?

Better as a forced choice between the belief and the finding: Taylor and Kowalski (2012) conclude that true or false may overstate misconception.

Can a multiple-choice question test research methods?

Yes: variables by sorting, conclusions by choosing. To see the reasoning, EdProcto's Choose and justify adds a typed reason worth half the points.

Where does a psychology teacher start?

With one topic and the six questions above, rewritten for it. EdProcto's page for teachers shows how the class gets its code.

References

EdProcto for teachers

A quiz from your material in half a minute, and the record of what landed.

School teachers setting quizzes and checks for their classes.

See the page for teachers

Read next