Sample pickMnemonic, the word for any trick that aids recall, is related to the name Mnemosyne. Who was she in Greek myth?
Psychology Trivia Questions, From Pavlov's Dogs to the Bobo Doll: how it works
On which day was the Stanford prison experiment stopped, and what kind of animal was Clever Hans? These 110 psychology trivia questions stick to history and famous experiments. Choose an answer, press Check answer, and read what the researchers did.
Run a psychology club night
Set Topic to one round for 22 questions. Read each question and its choices aloud, let teams write a letter, then press Check answer and read out the explanation, which names the researcher, the year and the result. Score on paper, since the card keeps no team totals. Open with Famous experiments, the stories people half remember. Memory, learning and perception has the most hard questions.
Print a review game for an intro course
Print question sheet gives the next 20 questions of the chosen Topic, and Print answer key adds the reasons. The bank is fetched after the page opens, so print before you go offline. People and dates and Schools of thought cover the history unit: Wundt, James, Freud, behaviorism, Gestalt and the cognitive revolution.
Tips
Some classic findings here have been disputed since. The questions ask what was done and reported, which makes a good debate once the round ends.
Missed collects every question you got wrong and lets one go when you get it right. Handy the night before an exam.
Studying as a group? Share this set opens the same questions in the same order on every phone, so you can compare answers.
Questions and answers
What are some good psychology trivia questions?
Three from this set: what did Pavlov's dogs learn to do at a signal, which inflatable toy did children copy an adult hitting in Albert Bandura's studies, and what does the German word Gestalt mean? Each comes with four choices and an explained answer.
Are the questions easy or hard?
Both. Of the 110, 23 are easy, such as the city where Sigmund Freud worked. Another 62 are medium, and 25 are hard, such as the three numbers Peter Wason handed volunteers in 1960. No round is all one level.
Does the quiz cover disorders or say anything about my personality?
No. It is a history quiz: experiments, researchers, schools of thought and where terms came from. Conditions, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment are left out on purpose, and no question reads anything into the answer you pick.
Can I use it to review for an intro psychology exam?
For the history unit, yes: who did what, where and when. Each answer links to the article it was checked against on September 19, 2026. It is no substitute for a textbook, and it skips the brain, statistics and clinical topics.
As a graduate student at Harvard, B. F. Skinner built a chamber in which an animal works a lever to earn food. What is it usually called?Wikipedia: Operant conditioning chamber
Clever Hans amazed crowds in Germany in the early 1900s by seeming to do arithmetic. What was Hans?Wikipedia: Clever Hans
During the Second World War, B. F. Skinner trained which birds to steer a guided bomb by pecking at a target?Wikipedia: Project Pigeon
Edward Thorndike timed animals escaping from puzzle boxes and drew his law of effect from the results. Which animals did he mainly use?Wikipedia: Edward Thorndike
Harry Harlow gave baby rhesus monkeys two stand-in mothers, one of bare wire and one covered in soft cloth. What did the babies do?Wikipedia: Harry Harlow
The Hawthorne effect, in which people change how they act because they are being watched, is named after what?Wikipedia: Hawthorne effect
In 1920 John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner published a study of a baby taught to fear a white rat. By what name is the baby known?Wikipedia: Little Albert experiment
In a 1959 study by Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith, students were paid to tell the next person that a dull task was interesting. Which group later rated the task most positively?Wikipedia: Cognitive dissonance
In a 1974 study by Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer, people watched a film of a traffic accident. A week later, those who had been asked about cars that smashed into each other more often remembered what that was never in the film?Wikipedia: Reconstructive memory
In a well-known study by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, viewers busy counting basketball passes often failed to notice what walking through the scene?Wikipedia: Inattentional blindness
In Albert Bandura's studies of the early 1960s, children watched an adult hit an inflatable toy and then copied what they had seen. What was the toy?Wikipedia: Bobo doll experiment
In Ivan Pavlov's famous experiments, what did dogs learn to do at a signal that had been paired with food?Wikipedia: Classical conditioning
In Solomon Asch's conformity experiments of the 1950s, what simple task were the groups given?Wikipedia: Asch conformity experiments
In the Stanford marshmallow experiment, what did a child earn by waiting alone without eating the treat?Wikipedia: Stanford marshmallow experiment
Leon Festinger's 1956 book When Prophecy Fails followed what kind of group?Wikipedia: When Prophecy Fails
Norman Triplett's 1898 study has been called the first experiment in social psychology. What had he noticed?Wikipedia: Norman Triplett
The Robbers Cave experiment of 1954 studied conflict between two groups of boys. Where did it take place?Wikipedia: Realistic conflict theory
The Stanford prison experiment of 1971 was planned to last two weeks. On which day was it stopped?Wikipedia: Stanford prison experiment
Stanley Milgram's experiments at Yale, begun in 1961, measured how far people would go in doing what?Wikipedia: Milgram experiment
Stanley Milgram's small-world experiment of the 1960s asked people to pass a letter toward a stranger through people they knew. Which famous phrase is it linked to?Wikipedia: Small-world experiment
What did Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk's visual cliff of 1960 test in babies and young animals?Wikipedia: Visual cliff
Wolfgang Köhler studied problem solving in chimpanzees during the 1910s and argued that they showed insight. On which island was his research station?Wikipedia: Wolfgang Köhler
People and dates 22
After John B. Watson left Johns Hopkins University in 1920, which line of work did he take up?Wikipedia: John B. Watson
Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon brought out the first practical intelligence test in 1905. In which country?Wikipedia: Alfred Binet
Show all 110 questions (86 more)
People and dates, continued
Carl Jung, a close ally of Freud before the two fell out, came from which country?Wikipedia: Carl Jung
Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, won a Nobel Prize in 2002. In which field was it awarded?Wikipedia: Daniel Kahneman
Francis Galton, who made the phrase nature versus nurture popular, was a half-cousin of which famous scientist?Wikipedia: Francis Galton
Francis Sumner, who in 1920 became the first African American to earn a doctorate in psychology, went on to lead the psychology department at which university?Wikipedia: Francis Cecil Sumner
In 1909 Sigmund Freud crossed the Atlantic to give five lectures in the United States. Which university had invited him?Wikipedia: Sigmund Freud
In which city did Sigmund Freud live and work for most of his life, until he left in 1938?Wikipedia: Sigmund Freud
Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904. What was the prize-winning work about?Wikipedia: Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov, known for his conditioning studies with dogs, worked in which country?Wikipedia: Ivan Pavlov
Jean Piaget described four stages in how children's thinking develops. Which comes first, starting at birth?Wikipedia: Piaget's theory of cognitive development
Kenneth and Mamie Clark's experiments of the 1940s on children's attitudes about race became part of the evidence in the cases behind Brown v. Board of Education. What did the children in the studies choose between?Wikipedia: Kenneth and Mamie Clark
Mary Whiton Calkins became the first woman president of the American Psychological Association in 1905. What had Harvard refused her?Wikipedia: Mary Whiton Calkins
Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo ran two of the best-known studies in social psychology. What did they have in common as teenagers?Wikipedia: Stanley Milgram
Which American wrote The Principles of Psychology, a two-volume work published in 1890?Wikipedia: The Principles of Psychology
Which behaviorist wrote the 1948 novel Walden Two, about a community run on the principles of his science?Wikipedia: Walden Two
Which book by Freud came out in 1899 but carried the date 1900?Wikipedia: The Interpretation of Dreams
Which book did Charles Darwin publish in 1872 on how feelings show in the faces and bodies of people and animals?Wikipedia: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Which daughter of Sigmund Freud became a leading figure in the psychoanalytic study of children?Wikipedia: Anna Freud
Which psychoanalyst described eight stages of life and coined the phrase identity crisis?Wikipedia: Erik Erikson
Wilhelm Wundt opened what is usually called the first laboratory for psychological research in 1879. In which German city?Wikipedia: Wilhelm Wundt
William James, often called the father of American psychology, was the brother of which novelist?Wikipedia: William James
Schools of thought 22
A large project led by Brian Nosek repeated 100 psychology studies published in 2008 to see whether the results held up. About what share of the repeats found a significant result again?Wikipedia: Reproducibility Project
Alfred Adler split from Freud's circle in 1911 and founded his own school, known for the idea of the inferiority complex. What did he call it?Wikipedia: Alfred Adler
An ancient theory, passed down from Greek medicine, sorted people into four temperaments. Which of these was NOT one of them?Wikipedia: Four temperaments
The Belmont Report of 1978 set out principles for research with human subjects in the United States. Which of these is one of its three core principles?Wikipedia: Belmont Report
Franz Mesmer claimed to work through an invisible force he called animal magnetism. A French royal commission tested the claim in 1784 and found no evidence of the force. Which American sat on it?Wikipedia: Franz Mesmer
Functionalism asked what the mind is for rather than what it is made of. Whose theory did it lean on?Wikipedia: Functional psychology
Gestalt psychology was founded in the early 20th century. What does the German word Gestalt roughly mean?Wikipedia: Gestalt psychology
Humanistic psychology was set up as a third force in the 1950s. Which two schools was it answering?Wikipedia: Humanistic psychology
In Freud's model of the mind, which part works on the pleasure principle and wants its wishes met at once?Wikipedia: Id, ego and superego
The intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as a study of the mind and its processes, drawing on several fields at once, is known as what?Wikipedia: Cognitive revolution
John Locke argued that the mind at birth has no built-in ideas. Which Latin phrase for blank slate is tied to this view?Wikipedia: Tabula rasa
Max Wertheimer's 1912 study of the phi phenomenon is taken as the birth of Gestalt psychology. What kind of illusion is it?Wikipedia: Phi phenomenon
Phrenology, developed by Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, claimed to read character from what?Wikipedia: Phrenology
Positive psychology, the study of what makes life go well, took off in 1998 when which psychologist made it the theme of his term as head of the American Psychological Association?Wikipedia: Positive psychology
René Descartes held that mind and body are two different kinds of thing. What is this view called?Wikipedia: Mind–body dualism
Structuralism, the school of Wundt's student Edward Titchener, relied on trained observers reporting their own sensations and thoughts. What is this method called?Wikipedia: Structuralism (psychology)
Which Greek letter is widely used as the symbol of psychology?Wikipedia: Psi (Greek)
Which need sits at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in its best-known five-level form?Wikipedia: Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Which school did Carl Jung found after his break with Freud?Wikipedia: Analytical psychology
Which school of thought did John B. Watson launch with a 1913 address at Columbia University, sometimes called its manifesto?Wikipedia: John B. Watson
Which work by Aristotle, known in Latin as De Anima, sorts living things by the powers of their souls?Wikipedia: On the Soul
The word psychology comes from the Greek word psyche. What did psyche mean?Wikipedia: Psychology
Memory, learning and perception 22
Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed a model of working memory in 1974. What did they call the part that directs attention and controls the rest?Wikipedia: Baddeley's model of working memory
Being quizzed on material helps people remember it better than reading it again. What do researchers call this?Wikipedia: Testing effect
Bluma Zeigarnik reported in 1927 that people remember one kind of task better than another. Which kind sticks?Wikipedia: Zeigarnik effect
Colin Cherry studied in 1953 how we can follow one voice in a noisy room yet still catch our own name from across it. What is this called?Wikipedia: Cocktail party effect
Frederic Bartlett's 1932 book Remembering showed that people reshape a story each time they retell it. Which Native American folk tale did his English readers retell?Wikipedia: Frederic Bartlett
The full Moon looks huge on the horizon and smaller high in the sky. What do measurements of its size in the sky show?Wikipedia: Moon illusion
George Miller's 1956 paper on the limits of short-term memory has a famous number in its title. Which number?Wikipedia: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
In 1972 Endel Tulving drew a line between memory for general facts and memory for events in one's own life. What did he call the second kind?Wikipedia: Episodic memory
In 1977 Roger Brown and James Kulik named the vivid memories people keep of where they were when they heard shocking news. What did they call them?Wikipedia: Flashbulb memory
In a well-known 1975 study by Godden and Baddeley, people recalled word lists best in the place where they had learned them. Who were the volunteers?Wikipedia: Context-dependent memory
In an Ames room, what seems to happen to a person who walks from one corner to the other?Wikipedia: Ames room
In Pavlov's terms, what is it called when a learned response fades because the signal keeps coming without the food?Wikipedia: Extinction (psychology)
In the McGurk effect, reported in 1976, what changes the speech sound a listener hears?Wikipedia: McGurk effect
In the Müller-Lyer illusion of 1889, two lines of equal length look unequal. What is drawn on their ends?Wikipedia: Müller-Lyer illusion
In the Stroop test, first published in English in 1935, people are slow to name the ink color of a word when the word itself spells what?Wikipedia: Stroop effect
The Necker cube, first published in 1832, is a plain line drawing of a see-through cube. What makes it a famous illusion?Wikipedia: Necker cube
People tend to recall the first and last items of a list better than those in the middle. What is this called?Wikipedia: Serial-position effect
Rubin's vase, developed by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin around 1915, can be seen either as a vase or as what?Wikipedia: Rubin vase
Seeing a face in a cloud, a car grille or the surface of the moon is an example of what?Wikipedia: Pareidolia
Shown a spiky shape and a rounded blob, most people agree on which of two made-up names belongs to the spiky one. Which name?Wikipedia: Bouba/kiki effect
Study sessions spread over days beat one long cram for lasting recall. What is this finding called?Wikipedia: Spacing effect
What did Hermann Ebbinghaus memorize in the experiments that led him to the forgetting curve?Wikipedia: Hermann Ebbinghaus
Terms and who coined them 22
The advertising executive Alex Osborn popularized group sessions for thinking up ideas with no criticism allowed. What are they called?Wikipedia: Brainstorming
B. F. Skinner is often called the father of which kind of learning, in which behavior is shaped by its consequences?Wikipedia: Operant conditioning
Baruch Fischhoff studied it in the 1970s: the feeling, once an outcome is known, that one knew it all along. What is it called?Wikipedia: Hindsight bias
Bertram Forer gave each of his students the same vague personality sketch in 1948, and most rated it a good description of themselves. After which showman is the effect named?Wikipedia: Barnum effect
By 1896 Sigmund Freud was using a new word for his method. It became the name of his school of thought. What is it?Wikipedia: Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung's 1921 book Psychological Types set out which pair of opposite attitudes?Wikipedia: Psychological Types
Edward Thorndike named the halo effect in 1920 after studying how which people rated those under them?Wikipedia: Halo effect
The German psychologist William Stern coined a term in 1912 that English shortens to two letters. Which two?Wikipedia: Intelligence quotient
In 1970 the Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori named the uneasy feeling people get from a robot or doll that looks almost, but not quite, human. What did he call it?Wikipedia: Uncanny valley
In 1999 two psychologists reported that people who do badly on a test of a skill tend to overrate how well they did. Whose names does the effect carry?Wikipedia: Dunning–Kruger effect
In a study by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, people's estimates were pulled toward a number that had just come up on a spun wheel. What is this bias called?Wikipedia: Anchoring effect
In Peter Wason's 1960 experiment on how people test a rule, volunteers had to discover the rule behind three numbers. Which numbers did he give them?Wikipedia: Confirmation bias
Irving Janis made groupthink a research topic in 1972, but William H. Whyte had coined the word twenty years earlier. Which novel's vocabulary was it modeled on?Wikipedia: Groupthink
Jean Piaget used which term for a baby's grasp that a toy still exists after it is hidden under a blanket?Wikipedia: Object permanence
Lev Vygotsky's best-known term describes the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with help. What is it called?Wikipedia: Zone of proximal development
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named the state of being so absorbed in a task that the sense of time changes. What one-word name did he give it?Wikipedia: Flow (psychology)
Mnemonic, the word for any trick that aids recall, is related to the name Mnemosyne. Who was she in Greek myth?Wikipedia: Mnemonic
The phrase pecking order came out of a study of rank among which animals?Wikipedia: Pecking order
Saying one word when you meant another, in a way that seems to give away a hidden thought, is known as what kind of slip?Wikipedia: Freudian slip
Walter Cannon of Harvard coined a phrase for the body's instant reaction to a threat. What is it?Wikipedia: Walter Bradford Cannon
What does the French term déjà vu mean in English?Wikipedia: Déjà vu
The word hypnosis comes from the name Hypnos. In Greek myth, Hypnos was the personification of what?Wikipedia: Hypnos
How this list was compiled: Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Every question, wrong choice and explanation is our own wording. Each answer was checked on 2026-09-19 against the page named and linked beside the question: the text of that English Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org) was fetched that day, and the passage that states the fact was read before the question was kept. Every extra claim in an explanation was checked the same way, and a detail the article did not state plainly was cut or the question was reworded. Examples: the Hawthorne explanation credits the term to John R. P. French in 1953, as the article does; the gorilla question carries no year; the 2, 4, 6 question does not say Peter Wason coined confirmation bias, because the article says his 1960 paper never uses the term; the operant conditioning question says B. F. Skinner is called its father, not that he coined it; Francis Galton is a half-cousin of Darwin; the Ames room question carries no date, because the article calls the date unsettled; the co-author of the 1959 dissonance study is Merrill Carlsmith. Dropped because the article read that day did not state them plainly: a head count for the Milgram result, the group names at Robbers Cave, a door study of change blindness, a date for the Ponzo illusion and a first paper by the young Piaget. Two drafts were cut because another set on this site already asks the same fact the other way round (Konrad Lorenz and imprinting, and the colors of the 2015 dress). Left out on purpose: conditions, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, medication, case histories of patients, self-tests and any question about what an answer says about the player. This is a history quiz and not advice of any kind. Some classic findings here have been questioned or have failed to repeat since; the questions ask what was done and reported, not whether it holds. No question repeats one in another trivia set on this site as of 2026-09-19. Levels are our estimate. Licence: own work