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2026 SACE Psychology exam: What to learn from last year's mistakes
Exam: Wednesday 4 November 2026, 1.30 pm. South Australia local time. The examination runs for 130 minutes.
I've gone through last year's examiner advice. The recurring problem was knowing a definition but not applying it to the actual source. These are the questions I'd check before doing another whole paper.
The 2025 extended responses were 15 marks each: 12 for content and 3 for communicating psychological knowledge. The report doesn't publish question averages. The points below come from its feedback, not a ranking of the hardest questions.
1. Q1(a) and (d): Reinforcement needs the behaviour attached
Where students went wrong
Identifying verbal praise without explaining why it was reinforcement, then defining reinforcement and punishment without explaining why reinforcement was preferred.
What they should have done
Connect the pleasant stimulus to the behaviour it strengthens. In the volleyball source, praise followed successful serves and encouraged that behaviour. For the comparison, explain that reinforcement shows the learner what to do. Punishment can suppress an unwanted response without teaching the desired skill, and may create resentment. Answer why one is preferred, not just what each word means.
2. Q2(d): Reliability needs a comparison across studies
Where students went wrong
Discussing one obedience study, confusing reliability with validity, or making a judgement without using the percentages supplied.
What they should have done
Explain reliability as consistency and replicability of findings. Compare results from at least two studies in the source, using their actual percentages. Then judge how consistent those results are. A sentence about Milgram being unethical doesn't evaluate reliability unless you explain a relevant connection to the consistency of results.
3. Q4(b): Give two different persuasion factors
Where students went wrong
Repeating the same point twice, leaving the second factor blank, or switching to conformity and obedience when the question was about attitude change.
What they should have done
Choose two distinct factors and apply both to the distracted-driving advertisement. For example, explain how the source's credibility affects acceptance, then how the message's presentation affects the audience's response. Use details actually shown in the source. Naming a model without explaining how it works in this campaign leaves the application unfinished.
4. Q6(c): A focus group needs to be justified against the alternative
Where students went wrong
Describing a focus group alone, calling it a set of individual interviews, or giving two definitions without explaining the choice.
What they should have done
A focus group gathers people for a guided discussion. The Delphi technique gathers expert views through successive rounds, usually with anonymous responses and feedback. For the dirt-track context, explain why discussion with riders and community members could reveal their experiences and reactions to each other's suggestions. Compare that purpose with seeking expert consensus. Make the reason for choosing the focus group explicit.
5. Q8: Classical conditioning needs to stay with the penguins
Where students went wrong
Retelling Pavlov's experiment, listing abbreviations, or explaining conditioning while leaving out contiguity and stimulus generalisation.
What they should have done
Work through before, during and after conditioning using the feeding source. Identify what initially produces the response, what is paired with it, and what eventually produces the learned response. Explain contiguity through the timing of the pairing. Explain stimulus generalisation through a similar stimulus producing the conditioned response. Write the terms in full before abbreviating them.
The communication marks matter here too. Use connected paragraphs that explain the sequence. A list of correct labels doesn't explain how learning occurred.
Source: SACE's 2025 Psychology examiner advice. Check the official examination timetable and your school's instructions.
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