CBSE Class 12 Psychology Question Paper 2020

CBSE Class 12 Psychology 2020 Solved Paper

SECTION A (1 Mark)

1. The situational perspective views human behaviour as mostly a result of _________ factors. 

Ans: External/ Situational/ Environmental

2. _________ is the ability to produce ideas, objects for problem solutions that are novel and innovative. 

Ans: Creativity

3. Karim watches TV when he is stressed due to pending assignments in school. According to Endler and Parker, he is using _________ mechanism of coping. 

Ans: Creativity

4. The self is described as a/an _________ when it gets affected. 

Ans: Object

5. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were known as the _________, because the scientific method replaced faith and dogma. 

Ans: Age of Reason and Enlightenment/ Renaissance period/Reform movement

6. Dhruv fidgets, squirms, climbs and runs around the house aimlessly. He is distracted, inattentive and seems overactive in class. Thus, he neither follows instructions nor completes assignments. The psychologist has diagnosed him with _________. 

Ans: Attention–Deficit/ Hyperactivity

Disorder/ ADHD/ Hyperactivity

7. When someone is sociable and outgoing, as well as enjoys meeting friends, relatives and other people at social gatherings, she/he can be classified as an introvert. (True/False) 

Ans: False

8. When children use name-calling, swearing and abusive words, they are using the _________ form of aggressive behaviour. 

Ans: Verbal

9. _________ refers to repeated association of a desired response with a positive consequence. 

Ans: Positive Reinforcement

10. Tarun’s group has won the elections from his constituency. His opponents, Ramesh and his group, are weak and too small in number. Tarun often expresses frustration and negative attitude towards Ramesh’s group. This is known as _________. 

Ans: Scapegoating

Displacement/ Displaced Aggression

11. Sometimes we think of the target person in terms of whatever information comes at the end. And, this has a stronger influence on a person’s formation of impression. This may be due to the _________. 

Ans: Recency Effect

12. _________ is a collection of people who may be present at a place/situation by chance. 

Ans: Crowd

13. A branch of psychology called _________ deals with various psychological issues pertaining to the human-environment interactions in a very broad sense of the term. 

Ans: Environmental Psychology

14. Mandeep wants to clean the river in his village. He is actively working to achieve his goal. This behaviour is a part of _________ behaviour. 

Ans: Pro-Environmental/Pro-Social

15. Skill is the proficiency or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training and experience. (True/False) 

Ans: True

16. One can communicate and exchange messages without using any verbal language. These acts of communication are a part of _________. 

Ans: Non–verbal/ body language

17. Atul states and writes down a summary of what he understood of the communication held between him and his client. Thus, he is _________ the communicated message. 

Ans: Paraphrasing

SECTION B (2 Marks)

18. Aditya has to interview a famous politician on a live TV show. Which is the most appropriate type of interview he can use? 

Ans: The interview can be structured. The structured interviews address very specific questions and follow a set procedure. This is often done to make an objective comparison of persons being

interviewed. Use of rating scales may further enhance the objectivity of evaluations.

19. What do you understand by creative visualisation? 

Ans: 

• Stress management technique
• Subjective experience
• Uses imagery and imagination
• Setting a realistic goal
• Listening/Explanation of the above

OR

What is burnout? Explain any one cause of burnout. 

Ans: Burnout is the state of physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion due to prolonged or chronic stress. 

20. State any four significant features of attitudes. 

Ans: 

• Valence (positivity or negativity)
• Extremeness
• Simplicity or complexity (multiplexity)
• Centrality (Role of a particular attitude in the attitude system)

21. Explain any two characteristics of a group. 

Ans: A Social unit consisting of two or more individuals having 

• Common motives and goals
• Interdependent
• Satisfy a need through joint association
• Interact directly/ indirectly
• Set of roles and norms
• Has a leader who holds responsibility for the group. (Any two)

OR

Explain any two differences between primary and secondary groups. 

Ans: Primary group 

• Pre-existing
• Family, Caste, Religion
• Face-to-face interaction
• Close physical proximity
• Warm emotional bond
• Boundaries are less permeable

Secondary group

• Individual joins by choice
• Political Party, School Friends
• Impersonal
• Indirect, less frequent interaction
• Easy to leave and join another group

SECTION C (3 Marks)

22. Supriya has broken the norms of a village by pursuing a higher-level course in aviation. She deviated from the social norms of her village, where higher education for girls was neither motivated nor accepted. Is her behaviour abnormal? Explain with reference to four Ds. 

Ans: The four D’s are

• Deviance (different, extreme, unusual, even bizarre)
• Distressing (unpleasant and upsetting to the person and to others)
• Dysfunctional (interfering with the person’s ability to carry out daily activities in a constructive way)
• Dangerous (to the person or to others)

23. You have assessed twenty peers of your class for mathematical comprehension/knowledge. Create a distribution for the results that you are most likely to expect. What is the shape of the distribution? 

Ans: IQ scores are distributed in the population in such a way that the scores of most people tend to fall in the middle range of the distribution. Only a few people have either very high or very low scores. The frequency distribution for the IQ scores tends to approximate a bell-shaped curve, called the normal curve. This type of distribution is symmetrical around the central value, called the mean.

24. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of observation. 

Ans: Explanation of observational skill and types.

• It allows behaviour to be seen and studied in its natural setting
• People from outside or those already working in a setting can be trained to use it.
• Events being observed are subject to bias due to the feelings of the people involved as well as of the observer.
• Generally day to day activities in a given setting are fairly routine, which can go unnoticed by the observer.
• The actual behaviour and responses of others may be influenced by the presence of the observer.
• Professional training is required for the collection of data.
• This method is demanding and time-consuming.
• Any three points from the above.

OR

Explain the typical format of a counselling interview. 

Ans: 

• 1. Opening of the interview
  • Rapport
  • Goals to be established
• 2. Body of the interview
  • Sequence of questions called Schedule
  • Domains/categories of questions
• 3. Closing the interview with a discussion of the next step to be taken and offering the interviewee to ask questions.

SECTION D (4 Marks)

25. Think of any international conflict. Suggest conflict resolution strategies for the same. 

Ans: Choosing a relevant international conflict

Conflict Resolution Strategies

• Superordinate goals
• Altering perceptions
• Increasing intergroup contacts
• Redrawing group boundaries
• Negotiations
• Respect for other groups’ norms
• Structural solutions (May not be appropriate for international conflict)
• Apply any three strategies relevant to the chosen conflict.

26. Natural disasters are stressful experiences that are a result of nature’s fury. There are ways of being prepared to minimise their devastating consequences. Develop any one action plan which can be used at the community level and will help people to deal with disasters effectively. 

Ans: To minimise the devastating consequences of a natural disaster through various modes. An action plan should include the following:

• Warnings
• Safety measures
• Treatment of psychological disorders
  • Providing material relief
  • Counselling at the individual or group level
  • Psychiatric help
  • Rehabilitation

(Explanation of the above)

27. What is attitude? Explain its various components. 

Ans: Attitude is a state of the mind, a set of views, or thoughts, regarding some topic (called the ‘attitude object’), which has an evaluative feature (positive, negative or neutral quality). Its components are, 

• A – Affective, the emotional component
• B – Behavioural, the tendency to act
• C – Cognitive, the thought component 

Taken together, these three aspects have been referred to as the A-B-C components (Affective-Behavioural-Cognitive components) of attitude.

(Explanation of all three)

28. Explain how life skills can help meet life challenges. 

Ans: Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

• Assertiveness
• Time Management
• Rational Thinking
• Improving Relationships
• Self Care
• Overcoming Unhelpful Habits (Explanation of any four of the above)

OR

Explain any four stress management techniques. 

Ans: 

• Relaxation techniques: Deep breathing is used along with muscle relaxation to calm the mind and relax the body.
• Meditation procedures: It involves such a thorough concentration that the meditator becomes unaware of any outside stimulation and reaches a different state of consciousness.
• Biofeedback: Biofeedback training involves three stages: developing an awareness of the particular physiological response, e.g. heart rate, learning ways of controlling that physiological response in quiet conditions; and transferring that control into the conditions of everyday life.
• Creative Visualisation: Creative visualisation is a subjective experience that uses imagery and imagination. It is easier to visualise if one’s mind is quiet, body relaxed, and eyes are closed.
• Cognitive behavioural techniques: The essence of this approach is to replace negative and irrational thoughts with positive and rational ones.
• Exercise: Swimming, walking, running, cycling, skipping, etc, for at least four times a week. help to reduce stress. (Explanation of any 4 techniques)

29. Describe the symptoms of any two anxiety disorders. 

Ans: Generalised anxiety disorder is prolonged, vague, unexplained and intense fears that are not attached to any particular object or event, accompanied by hypervigilance, worry and apprehensive feelings, motor tension, and inability to relax. 

Panic Disorder

• Recurrent anxiety attacks: Frequent anxiety attacks characterised by feelings of intense terror, palpitations, trembling, dizziness and a sense of losing control or dying, choking, nausea, chest pain, fear of going crazy
• Separation Anxiety Disorder – Extreme distress while expecting or going through separation from home or other significant people to whom the individual is immensely attached, clinging, and shadowing their parents.
• Fuss, scream, throw temper tantrums, and make suicidal gestures.
• Phobia disorder
  • (a) Specific phobia
  • (b) Social phobia
  • (c) Agoraphobia

(Explanation of any two of these disorders)

OR

Classify and explain the symptoms of eating disorders. 

Ans: Special interest to young people

• Anorexia Nervosa: Distorted body image, often refusing to eat, exercising compulsively, and refusing to eat in front of others. They may lose large amounts of weight and may starve to death.
• Bulimia Nervosa: May eat excessive amounts of food and then purge. Feel guilty or disgusted when s/he eats an excessive amount of food.
• Binge Eating: Frequent episodes of out-of-control eating, tends to eat at a higher speed.

(Explanation of the above)

30. Angad has been a topper in class. He went to the topmost college, where he was neither sensitive to his own self nor to others. This led to problems in interpersonal relationships with reference to his condition. Explain the importance of emotional intelligence in his life. 

Ans: Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to process

emotional information accurately and efficiently.

• Perceive and be sensitive to your feelings and emotions.
• Perceive and be sensitive to various types of emotions in others by noting their body language, voice and tone and facial expressions.
• Control and regulate your emotions and their expressions while dealing with yourself and others to achieve harmony and peace.

As Angad is lacking in the above characteristics, he has problems in interpersonal relationships.

Emotional intelligence has beneficial effects on their academic achievement. It encourages co-operative behaviour. It prepares students to face the challenges of life outside the classroom.

(Explanation of the above)

SECTION E (6 Marks)

31. How do you define personality? Explain any one approach to the study of personality. 

Ans: Personality refers to –

Our characteristic ways of responding to individuals and situations. OR unique and relatively enduring characteristics of a person that make her/him distinct from others

(Any other relevant definition)

• Type approach: Jung has proposed an important typology by grouping people into introverts and extroverts. This is widely recognised. According to this typology, introverts are people who prefer to be alone, tend to avoid others, withdraw into themselves in the face of emotional conflicts, and are shy. Extroverts, on the other hand, are sociable, outgoing, drawn to occupations that allow dealing directly with people, and react to stress by trying to lose themselves among people and social activity.
• Trait approach: These are mainly concerned with the description or characterisation of basic components of personality. They try to discover the ‘building blocks’ of personality. Human beings display a wide range of variations in psychological attributes, yet it is possible to club them into a smaller number of personality traits. For example, when we come to know that a person is sociable, we assume that she/he will not only be cooperative, friendly and helpful, but also engage in behaviours that involve other social components.
• Psychodynamic approach: This is a highly popular approach to studying personality. This view owes largely to the contributions of Sigmund Freud. He was a physician and developed this theory in the course of his clinical practice. Early in his career, he used hypnosis to treat people with physical and emotional problems. He noted that many of his patients needed to talk about their problems, and having talked about them, they often felt better. Freud used free association (a method in which a person is asked to openly share all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that come to her/his mind), dream analysis, and analysis of errors to understand the internal functioning of the mind.
• Behavioural approach: The behaviourists believe in data, which they feel are definable, observable, and measurable. Thus, they focus on learning stimulus-response connections and their reinforcement. According to them, personality can be best understood as the response of an individual to the environment. They see the development simply as a change in response characteristics, i.e. a person learns new behaviours in response to new environments and stimuli.
• Cultural approach: This approach attempts to understand personality in relation to the features of the ecological and cultural environment. It proposes that a group’s ‘economic maintenance system’ plays a vital role in the origin of cultural and behavioural variations. The climatic conditions, the nature of the terrain of the habitat and the availability of food (flora and fauna) in it determine not only people’s economic activities, but also their settlement patterns, social structures, division of labour, and other features such as child-rearing practices. Taken together, these elements constitute a child’s overall learning environment.
• Humanistic approach: The most important idea proposed by Carl Rogers is that of a fully functioning person. He believes that fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development. People try to express their capabilities, potential and talents to the fullest extent possible. There is an inborn tendency among persons that directs them to actualise their inherited nature.

(Explanation of any one of the above)

OR

How do projective techniques assess personality? Explain any two well-known projective techniques. 

Ans: Projective techniques were developed to assess unconscious motives and feelings.

These techniques are based on the assumption that a less structured or unstructured stimulus or situation will allow the individual to project his/her feelings, desires and needs onto that situation. These projections are interpreted by experts.

• The person being assessed is usually not told about the purpose of the assessment, and method of scoring or the interpretation.
• The person is informed that there are no correct or incorrect responses.
• Each response is considered to reveal a significant aspect of personality.

(Any four features)

• Rorschach Inkblot test
• Thematic Apperception Test
• Rosenzweig’s picture frustration study (P-F Study)
• Sentence completion test
• Draw a person test.

(Explanation of any two of the above)

32. Discuss the various techniques used in behaviour therapy. 

Ans: A range of techniques is available for changing behaviour. The principles of these techniques are to reduce the arousal level of the client. Alter behaviour through classical conditioning or operant conditioning with different contingencies of reinforcement, as well as to use vicarious learning procedures.

Behavioural Techniques

• Positive Reinforcement: Rewarding the child for appropriate behaviour, such as using kind words or following rules, to increase the chances of such behaviour recurring.
• Negative Reinforcement: Removing an unpleasant consequence when the child behaves well, for example, reducing extra tasks if the child sits quietly, encouraging good behaviour.
• Aversive Conditioning: Pairing the undesirable behaviour with an unpleasant consequence, such as removing a privilege when the child is aggressive, to reduce that behaviour.
• Token Economy: Giving tokens or points for good behaviour, which can later be exchanged for a reward, motivating the child to behave positively.
• Differential Reinforcement: Reinforcing only the desired behaviour while ignoring or not reinforcing the undesired ones, to gradually shape better behaviour.
• Modelling/Vicarious Learning: Encouraging the child to observe and imitate the calm and respectful behaviour of peers or adults.
• Systematic desensitisation: Here, the client is systematically desensitised to the fear through fear-provoking situations and creating a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations. 

OR

Explain the key features of cognitive therapies as explained by Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. 

Ans: Cognitive therapies locate the cause of psychological distress in irrational thoughts and beliefs.

Albert Ellis formulated the Rational Emotive Therapy Antecedent, belief, consequence (ABC) analysis. 

• Distorted perception of the antecedent event due to the irrational belief leads to the consequence, i.e. negative emotions and behaviours. In the process of Rational Emotive Therapy, the irrational beliefs are refuted by the therapist through non-directive questioning; the nature of questioning is gentle, without probing or being directive.
• Aaron Beck, Psychological distress characterised by anxiety or depression, states that childhood experiences provided by the family and society develop core schemas. Negative thoughts are persistent, i.e. I am ugly, I am stupid, I will not succeed. These patterns of thought are called dysfunctional cognitive structures. Cognitive distortions are the ways of thinking which are general and distort reality in a negative manner.

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