AP® Psychology: 120 Must-Know Terms for the 2026 Exam

By Brian Stewart, Barron’s SAT, ACT & PSAT Author & Perfect SAT/ACT Scorer

The redesigned AP® Psychology course is built around five units, covering everything from neurons to psychological disorders. Below are 120 essential terms organized by unit (roughly 24 per unit) that align closely with the College Board’s Course and Exam Description. Each entry is a cluster of related terms that get taught and tested together, so working through them gives you broad coverage without getting buried in individual flashcards.

One note on what’s not here, since the redesigned course explicitly excludes several things that older AP Psych textbooks still cover. The Course and Exam Description (CED) puts Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Freud’s psychosexual stages out of scope. It also notes that the specific names of theories of emotion (James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer) are outside scope, though the broader ideas those theories capture are still fair game. Signal detection theory and a few other older staples are de-emphasized or absent in the current framework. If your teacher covered any of these, keep them for general knowledge, but don’t expect them on the AP exam. For the full exam strategy, including FRQ tactics and a six-week study plan, see AP® Psychology Exam Strategy: How to Score a 4 or 5.

All 30 free drills live on the AP Psychology hub page, organized by unit.

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Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior (15–25%)

1. Heredity vs. environment (nature vs. nurture). Genetic predispositions interacting with external experiences to shape behavior and mental processes.
2. Evolutionary perspective and natural selection. Explains behavior as the result of traits that increased survival and reproductive success over generations.
3. Twin, family, and adoption studies. The three main research designs used to separate genetic from environmental influences on behavior.
4. Central vs. peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) does the processing. The peripheral nervous system handles communication between the CNS and the rest of the body.
5. Somatic vs. autonomic nervous system. Two branches of the PNS: somatic controls voluntary movement; autonomic controls involuntary functions.
6. Sympathetic vs. parasympathetic nervous system. The two branches of the autonomic system: sympathetic arouses (fight-or-flight); parasympathetic calms (rest-and-digest).
7. Neuron structure: dendrites, axon, myelin sheath, synapse. Dendrites receive signals, the axon transmits them, myelin insulates the axon to speed transmission, and the synapse is the gap where signals cross to the next neuron.
8. Glial cells. Support cells that provide structure, insulation, communication, and waste transport for neurons.
9. Action potential (all-or-none, depolarization, refractory period, resting potential, threshold). The electrical impulse that travels down an axon. It fires fully once threshold is reached, then enters a brief refractory period before returning toward resting state.
10. Reuptake. The reabsorption of neurotransmitters by the sending neuron after they’ve done their job at the synapse.
11. Excitatory vs. inhibitory neurotransmitters. Excitatory signals make the next neuron more likely to fire; inhibitory signals make it less likely.
12. Key neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, glutamate, GABA, endorphins, substance P, acetylcholine. Common associations: dopamine (reward and movement), serotonin (mood), norepinephrine (alertness), glutamate (main excitatory), GABA (main inhibitory), endorphins (pain relief), substance P (pain signaling), acetylcholine (muscle movement and memory). Each has broader functions than these shorthand labels suggest.
13. Key hormones: adrenaline (epinephrine), leptin, ghrelin, melatonin, oxytocin. Adrenaline (stress arousal), leptin (satiety), ghrelin (hunger), melatonin (sleep), oxytocin (bonding).
14. Agonists, antagonists, reuptake inhibitors. Drugs that mimic a neurotransmitter, block it, or prevent its reabsorption. These are the three main ways substances affect neural communication.
15. Psychoactive drug categories: stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, opioids. Stimulants increase neural activity (caffeine, cocaine); depressants decrease it (alcohol); hallucinogens distort perception (LSD; marijuana is often grouped here for its perceptual effects, though it’s sometimes treated separately); opioids relieve pain (heroin).
16. Tolerance, addiction, withdrawal. Needing more of a drug for the same effect, compulsive use despite harm, and the distress that follows when use stops.
17. Brain stem, medulla, reticular activating system, cerebellum. Brain stem and medulla control basic life functions like breathing; the reticular activating system controls alertness; the cerebellum coordinates movement and balance.
18. Limbic system: thalamus, hypothalamus, pituitary, hippocampus, amygdala. Thalamus (sensory relay), hypothalamus (homeostasis and drives), pituitary (master gland), hippocampus (memory formation), amygdala (emotion, especially fear).
19. Cortical lobes: occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal. Occipital (vision), temporal (hearing and language), parietal (touch via the somatosensory cortex), frontal (executive function and movement via the motor cortex and prefrontal cortex).
20. Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, aphasia. Broca’s area handles speech production; Wernicke’s area handles speech comprehension. Damage to either causes a form of aphasia.
21. Corpus callosum and split-brain research. The band of fibers connecting the two hemispheres. Severing it (historically to treat epilepsy) revealed that the hemispheres specialize in different functions.
22. Brain plasticity; EEG, fMRI, lesioning. The brain’s ability to rewire itself, plus the three main tools researchers use to study brain function.
23. Circadian rhythm; NREM vs. REM sleep; REM rebound; activation-synthesis and consolidation theories of dreams. The ~24-hour sleep-wake cycle; NREM (Stages 1–3) involves deeper rest while REM produces dreaming and brain waves similar to wakefulness; REM rebound is extra REM after deprivation; two current theories propose that dreams reflect random brain activity or aid memory consolidation (the CED excludes the psychoanalytic theory of dreams).
24. Sleep disorders: insomnia, narcolepsy, REM sleep behavior disorder, sleep apnea, somnambulism. Trouble falling or staying asleep, sudden sleep episodes, acting out dreams, interrupted breathing, and sleepwalking.

Try a Unit 1 Brain Drill →

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Unit 2: Cognition (15–25%)

24. Bottom-up vs. top-down processing. Bottom-up starts with raw sensory input and builds upward. Top-down starts with expectations and interprets the input through them.
25. Schemas and perceptual sets. Mental frameworks that organize information and predispositions to perceive things in certain ways.
26. Gestalt principles: closure, figure/ground, proximity, similarity. Four ways the mind organizes visual information into meaningful wholes.
27. Selective attention, cocktail party effect, change blindness. Focusing on one input, noticing your name in a noisy room, and failing to see changes to the environment when your attention is elsewhere.
28. Binocular depth cues (retinal disparity, convergence); monocular cues (relative clarity, relative size, texture gradient, linear perspective, interposition). Two-eye cues that use image differences and eye-muscle feedback; single-eye cues that use contextual information to judge depth.
29. Concepts and prototypes. Mental categories and the best example of a given category.
30. Assimilation vs. accommodation. Fitting new information into an existing schema vs. changing the schema to fit the new information.
31. Algorithms vs. heuristics. Algorithms are step-by-step procedures guaranteed to find a solution. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that are faster but can produce errors.
32. Representativeness and availability heuristics. Judging by how well something fits a stereotype vs. by how easily examples come to mind (classic example of the latter: people overestimate plane crashes right after seeing one in the news).
33. Mental set, priming, framing. Relying on what worked before, being influenced by recent exposure, and being affected by how a question is worded.
34. Gambler’s fallacy and sunk-cost fallacy. Believing past outcomes change future probabilities and continuing a course of action because of past investment.
35. Executive functions; divergent vs. convergent thinking; functional fixedness. Goal-directed mental control; thinking broadly vs. narrowing to a single solution; the inability to see new uses for familiar objects.
36. Encoding, storage, retrieval. Getting information in, holding it, and getting it back out: the three core memory processes.
37. Explicit memory (episodic, semantic) vs. implicit memory (procedural); prospective memory. Conscious memories of events and facts vs. unconscious memories of skills; memory for things you plan to do.
38. Long-term potentiation. The biological process by which synaptic connections strengthen with repeated activation. LTP is the neural basis of memory.
39. Working memory model (central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad). A model of short-term memory with a controller plus separate systems for verbal and visual information.
40. Multi-store model: sensory (iconic, echoic), short-term, long-term memory. The classic three-stage model of memory; iconic is brief visual, echoic is brief auditory.
41. Levels of processing (structural, phonemic, semantic). Shallow encoding by appearance, medium by sound, deep by meaning. Deeper processing creates stronger memories.
42. Mnemonics, chunking, spacing effect, serial position effect. Memory tricks like the method of loci; grouping items into meaningful units; distributing practice over time vs. cramming; better memory for beginning (primacy) and end (recency) of a list.
43. Maintenance vs. elaborative rehearsal. Repeating information to hold it briefly vs. connecting it to meaning to store it long-term.
44. Retrograde vs. anterograde amnesia; Alzheimer’s disease; infantile amnesia. Losing old memories vs. being unable to form new ones; progressive memory loss in older adults; the absence of memories from very early childhood.
45. Recall vs. recognition; context-, mood-, and state-dependent memory; testing effect; metacognition. Generating answers vs. identifying them; remembering better when the environment, mood, or physical state matches encoding; memory improves with testing; thinking about your own thinking.
46. Forgetting curve; proactive vs. retroactive interference; tip-of-the-tongue; misinformation effect; source amnesia; constructive memory; repression. The main ways memory fails: rapid early loss after learning, old memories interfering with new ones, new interfering with old, temporary retrieval failure, misleading information distorting what you recall, forgetting where you learned something, reconstructing rather than replaying the past, and Freud’s idea of motivated forgetting.
47. Validity, reliability, standardization; stereotype threat; Flynn effect; fixed vs. growth mindset. A test measures what it claims (construct, predictive validity), gives consistent results (test-retest, split-half reliability), and uses consistent procedures; underperformance caused by stereotype awareness; the gradual rise in IQ scores over generations; believing ability is set vs. improvable.

Try a Unit 2 Memory Drill →

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Unit 3: Development and Learning (15–25%)

48. Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal research. Cross-sectional designs compare different age groups at a single point in time. Longitudinal designs follow the same group of people over months or years.
49. Teratogens. Substances or conditions during pregnancy that can harm prenatal development.
50. Rooting reflex, visual cliff, fine vs. gross motor skills. Infants turn toward touches near the mouth; the apparatus that tests depth perception in babies; small precise movements vs. large whole-body movements.
51. Critical/sensitive periods; imprinting. Windows when certain learning must occur; the attachment some animals form to the first moving object they see.
52. Puberty, menarche, spermarche, menopause. Physical maturation in adolescence, first menstruation and first ejaculation, and the end of menstruation in later adulthood.
53. Piaget’s stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational. Sensorimotor (object permanence develops); preoperational (pretend play, but struggles with conservation and reversibility; egocentrism, animism, theory of mind); concrete operational (logical thought about concrete things); formal operational (abstract and hypothetical thinking).
54. Vygotsky: scaffolding, zone of proximal development. Learning happens socially, with adults providing support for tasks a child can almost do alone.
55. Crystallized vs. fluid intelligence; dementia. Accumulated knowledge stays stable with age; reasoning speed tends to decline; severe cognitive decline in older adults.
56. Language building blocks: phonemes, morphemes, semantics, grammar, syntax. Smallest sound units, smallest meaning units, meaning of words, the rule system, and word order.
57. Language development stages: cooing, babbling, one-word, telegraphic speech; overgeneralization. Vowel sounds, consonant-vowel repetition, single words, two-word sentences, and applying rules too broadly (“goed” instead of “went”).
58. Ecological systems theory: micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, chronosystem. Bronfenbrenner’s nested layers of influence, from direct contacts out to cultural context and life stage.
59. Parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive. Strict without warmth, balanced with warmth and structure, warm without rules.
60. Attachment styles; temperament; separation anxiety; Harlow’s finding. Secure vs. insecure (avoidant, anxious, disorganized); inborn emotional style; distress when caregivers leave; monkey studies showing contact comfort was more important than feeding in attachment formation.
61. Adolescent egocentrism: imaginary audience and personal fable. Feeling watched by everyone and believing your experiences are uniquely special.
62. Social clock; emerging adulthood. Cultural expectations about when life events should happen; the transitional period roughly from 18 to 25.
63. Erikson’s eight psychosocial stages. Trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, integrity vs. despair.
64. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Traumatic experiences in childhood that affect development and health throughout life.
65. Identity statuses: achievement, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium. Marcia’s four positions based on whether an adolescent has explored and committed to an identity.
66. Classical conditioning terms: UCS, UCR, CS, CR; acquisition; extinction; spontaneous recovery; stimulus generalization and discrimination; higher-order conditioning. An unconditioned stimulus naturally produces an unconditioned response; pairing it with a neutral stimulus turns the neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus that produces a conditioned response. The response can be learned, weakened by non-pairing, return after extinction, spread to similar stimuli, be limited to specific stimuli, or be built on previous conditioning.
67. Counterconditioning; taste aversion; one-trial learning; biological preparedness; habituation. Replacing an unwanted response with a new one; learning to avoid foods that caused illness; learning from a single pairing; being biologically primed to learn certain associations quickly; diminished response to a repeated stimulus.
68. Operant conditioning: Law of Effect; positive vs. negative reinforcement and punishment; primary vs. secondary reinforcers. Behaviors followed by good consequences get repeated. Reinforcement increases behavior (positive = add something pleasant; negative = remove something unpleasant); punishment decreases behavior (positive = add something unpleasant; negative = remove something pleasant). Primary reinforcers are biologically satisfying (food); secondary are learned (money).
69. Shaping and successive approximations; instinctive drift; superstitious behavior; learned helplessness. Reinforcing gradual steps toward a target behavior; animals reverting to instinctive patterns; repeating random behaviors that happen to be reinforced; giving up after repeated uncontrollable aversive events.
70. Reinforcement schedules: continuous vs. partial; fixed- vs. variable-interval; fixed- vs. variable-ratio. Reward every time vs. sometimes; reward after a set or random amount of time; reward after a set or random number of responses. Variable-ratio (slot machines) produces the most persistent behavior.
71. Social learning, vicarious conditioning, modeling; insight learning; latent learning; cognitive maps. Learning by watching others and their consequences; sudden realization of a solution; learning that isn’t immediately visible; mental representations of spatial environments.

Try a Classical Conditioning Drill →

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Unit 4: Social Psychology and Personality (15–25%)

72. Dispositional vs. situational attributions. A dispositional attribution explains behavior by internal traits; a situational attribution explains it by external circumstances.
73. Explanatory style (optimistic vs. pessimistic). The predictable pattern of how people explain good and bad events in their lives.
74. Fundamental attribution error; actor-observer bias; self-serving bias. Overattributing others’ behavior to disposition; explaining our own behavior situationally while judging others dispositionally; taking credit for success and blaming situations for failure.
75. Locus of control (internal vs. external). Believing outcomes depend on your own actions vs. on outside forces.
76. Mere exposure effect; self-fulfilling prophecy. Repeated exposure increases liking; expectations cause the behavior that confirms them.
77. Social comparison (upward, downward); relative deprivation. Evaluating yourself against others who are doing better or worse; feeling deprived based on comparison rather than absolute circumstances.
78. Stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination. Generalized beliefs, negative attitudes, and negative behaviors toward a group.
79. Implicit attitudes; just-world phenomenon; out-group homogeneity bias; in-group bias; ethnocentrism. Unconscious evaluations; the belief that people get what they deserve; seeing other groups as more uniform than yours; favoring your group; judging other cultures by your own.
80. Belief perseverance; confirmation bias; cognitive dissonance. Clinging to beliefs despite contradicting evidence; seeking evidence that confirms what you already believe; the discomfort when attitudes and actions conflict, which motivates change to restore consistency (a smoker who believes smoking is harmful might rationalize that quitting would be worse for stress).
81. Normative vs. informational social influence. Normative influence is conforming to fit in. Informational influence is conforming because others seem to know something you don’t.
82. Persuasion: elaboration likelihood model; halo effect; foot-in-the-door; door-in-the-face. Central route (careful evaluation) vs. peripheral route (superficial cues); inferring broad goodness from one positive trait; starting small to get a bigger yes; starting big to make a smaller request seem reasonable.
83. Conformity and obedience. Adjusting behavior to match a group; complying with authority.
84. Individualism vs. collectivism; multiculturalism. Cultural frameworks that prioritize individual vs. group goals; integrating multiple cultural identities.
85. Group behavior: group polarization, groupthink, diffusion of responsibility, social loafing, deindividuation, social facilitation. Groups amplify existing views, prioritize harmony over truth (the Challenger launch decision is the textbook case of groupthink), spread responsibility across members, reduce individual effort, loosen inhibitions in crowds, and improve performance on easy tasks when others watch.
86. False consensus effect; superordinate goals; social traps. Overestimating how much others agree with you; shared goals that unite rival groups; situations where individual self-interest damages the group.
87. Industrial-organizational psychology; burnout. The application of psychology to the workplace; chronic work-related exhaustion.
88. Altruism; reciprocity and responsibility norms; bystander effect. Selfless helping; the expectations to repay kindness and to help those in need; the finding that individuals are less likely to help when others are present.
89. Psychodynamic theory; ego defense mechanisms; projective tests. Unconscious processes drive personality. The eight defense mechanisms: denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, sublimation. Projective tests (like inkblots) probe the unconscious.
90. Humanistic theory: unconditional regard; self-actualizing tendency. Personality focuses on acceptance without conditions and the natural drive to fulfill one’s potential.
91. Social-cognitive: reciprocal determinism; self-concept; self-efficacy; self-esteem. Behavior, environment, and cognition shape each other; how you see yourself; belief in your ability to succeed; how you evaluate your own worth.
92. Trait theory and the Big Five. Personality as enduring characteristics, measured along five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN). The CED phrases the fifth factor as “emotional stability,” which is the inverse of neuroticism. Factor analysis is the statistical tool used to identify these factors.
93. Motivation theories: drive-reduction, arousal (Yerkes-Dodson), self-determination (intrinsic vs. extrinsic), incentive, instinct, sensation-seeking. Behavior reduces physiological needs; performance peaks at moderate arousal; motivation comes from internal interest or external reward; rewards shape behavior; fixed patterns that apply mainly to non-human animals (the CED emphasizes that human behavior is less rigidly instinctual than in other species); some people need more novelty and stimulation than others.
94. Lewin’s motivational conflicts: approach-approach, approach-avoidance, avoidance-avoidance. Choosing between two good options, one option with both good and bad features, or two bad options.
95. Facial-feedback hypothesis; broaden-and-build theory; display rules. Facial expressions influence emotional experience; positive emotions broaden thinking and build resources; cultural norms about which emotions to show when.

Try a Social Psychology Drill →

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Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health (15–25%)

96. Stress; eustress vs. distress. A response to demands on the body. Eustress is motivating stress; distress is debilitating stress.
97. General adaptation syndrome; fight-flight-freeze. Selye’s three-stage stress response (alarm, resistance, exhaustion); the three automatic reactions to threat.
98. Tend-and-befriend. A stress response that involves caring for others and seeking connection, identified especially in research on female stress responses.
99. Problem-focused vs. emotion-focused coping. Working to solve the stressor vs. managing your emotional reaction to it.
100. Positive psychology; subjective well-being; signature strengths; posttraumatic growth. The study of what makes life flourishing; your own evaluation of your life; your characteristic virtues; positive change following trauma.
101. Defining disorders: dysfunction, distress, deviance; the DSM. Three criteria used to identify a psychological disorder, and the manual clinicians use to classify them.
102. Perspectives on disorders; eclectic approach. The CED identifies seven psychological perspectives that explain disorders differently: behavioral (learned associations), psychodynamic (unconscious conflicts), humanistic (blocked growth or unmet potential), cognitive (maladaptive thoughts), evolutionary (traits that were adaptive for ancestors but can be mismatched to modern environments), sociocultural (social and cultural context), and biological (physiology or genes). In practice, most clinicians use an eclectic approach that draws on several.
103. Biopsychosocial model and diathesis-stress model. Disorders result from biological, psychological, and social factors; genetic vulnerability plus life stress triggers disorders.
104. Neurodevelopmental: ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. The two neurodevelopmental disorders in scope, both with onset in the developmental period.
105. Schizophrenia: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking or speech (including word salad), catatonia, flat affect; positive vs. negative symptoms; dopamine hypothesis. A disorder with disturbances in thought, perception, and behavior. Positive symptoms add abnormal experiences (delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking or speech); negative symptoms reflect the absence of typical functions (flat affect). Excess dopamine activity is a leading biological explanation.
106. Depressive disorders: major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder. Episodes of depressed mood affecting functioning; chronic, lower-grade depression lasting years.
107. Bipolar I and II; mania. Cycling periods of depression and elevated mood. Bipolar I involves full manic episodes; Bipolar II involves hypomania (less severe).
108. Anxiety disorders: specific phobia, agoraphobia, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. Excessive fear of specific things; fear of situations it’s hard to escape; unpredictable panic attacks; fear of being judged; chronic, nonspecific worry.
109. Culture-bound anxiety: ataque de nervios, taijin kyofusho. Panic-like episodes in some Caribbean and Iberian populations; intense fear of offending others, primarily in Japan.
110. OCD and hoarding disorder; obsessions vs. compulsions. Intrusive thoughts paired with repetitive behaviors to reduce anxiety; difficulty discarding possessions.
111. Dissociative disorders: dissociative amnesia (with or without fugue), dissociative identity disorder. Memory loss for personal information, sometimes with unexpected travel; the presence of two or more distinct identities.
112. PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder: psychological distress following exposure to a traumatic or stressful event. Symptoms may involve hypervigilance, severe anxiety, flashbacks, insomnia, emotional detachment, and hostility.
113. Feeding/eating: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa. Severe food restriction; cycles of binge eating followed by purging.
114. Personality disorder clusters: A, B, C. A (odd/eccentric: paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal); B (dramatic/erratic: antisocial, histrionic, narcissistic, borderline); C (anxious/fearful: avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which is distinct from OCD).
115. Therapeutic alliance; cultural humility; evidence-based treatment. The working relationship between therapist and client; ongoing self-reflection about cultural differences; using treatments supported by research.
116. Psychodynamic therapy (free association, dream interpretation). Methods designed to access unconscious material.
117. Cognitive therapy: cognitive restructuring; cognitive triad. Replacing maladaptive thoughts with adaptive ones; Beck’s idea that depression involves negative thoughts about self, world, and future.
118. Behavioral therapies: applied behavior analysis, systematic desensitization, aversion therapy, token economy, biofeedback. Applying conditioning principles; gradual exposure paired with relaxation; pairing unwanted behavior with unpleasant stimuli; earning tokens for target behaviors; using biological feedback to regulate physiology.
119. CBT, DBT, rational-emotive behavior therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and two specific variants that combine cognitive and behavioral approaches.
120. Person-centered therapy (active listening, unconditional positive regard). Rogers’s humanistic therapy that emphasizes genuine listening and nonjudgmental acceptance.
121. Biomedical treatments. Antidepressants, antianxiety drugs, lithium (for bipolar), and antipsychotics. Tardive dyskinesia is a movement-disorder side effect of some antipsychotics. Psychosurgery, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are physical interventions; the lobotomy is historical and rarely performed today.

Try a Disorders Drill →

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How to Use This List

Don’t try to memorize 120 term clusters in one sitting. The research on distributed practice (see term #43) points in one direction: spreading study over multiple sessions beats cramming. A good rhythm is one unit per week for five weeks, reviewing the earlier units as you add new ones. After you’ve worked through a unit’s terms, run the corresponding drills on the AP Psychology practice page to see the concepts in scenario form, which is how the actual exam tests them.

For the full strategic picture of the exam (how the MCQ section is scored, what the AAQ and EBQ actually ask for, and the common traps to avoid) read the companion post AP® Psychology Exam Strategy: How to Score a 4 or 5. When you’re ready to practice under timed conditions, pull the released 2025 FRQs from AP Central and score yourself against the official rubric. The 2026 AP Psychology Exam is Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 12:00 PM local time, which gives you plenty of time to work through these terms, the drills, and a few timed FRQs.

AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website. Term list derived from the College Board’s AP Psychology Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2025). See full Trademark & Disclaimer.