PSYC1005 The Wellbeing Formula: The Science and Practice of Making a Good Life
The Complete Exam Bible · S2 2026PSYC1005 Overview
- 6 units
- S2 2026
- Level 1
- In person
- Multiple-choice final exam
PSYC1005 The Wellbeing Formula: The Science and Practice of Making a Good Life is the Australian National University’s first-year course on the psychological science of wellbeing.
- Assessment Ten weekly reflections and a public pamphlet make up 60%; a multiple-choice final exam carries the other 40%.
- Exam hurdle You need at least 50% on the final exam itself to pass the course, whatever your other marks.
- Hardest step Keeping eleven topics’ constructs, studies and numbers distinct when options differ by one term.
What you get in the full PSYC1005 Exam Bible
- 11 chapters, 57 pages — every examinable topic, week by week
- 29 original practice questions, most with model answers in the End of Semester Final Exam format
- 11 worked examples, solved the way PSYC1005 marks
- 16 computed figures, redrawn from the course’s own numbers
- Exam-morning plan for the End of Semester Final Exam (40%) — what to revise last, where marks are lost
Free on this page: assessment table, chapter map, one worked example, key terms, FAQ. The rest is in the full exam bible.
How PSYC1005 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Reflective writing pieces | 30% | Ten 300-word reflections, one for each of lectures 1 to 10, worth 3% each; What, So what and Now what sections |
| Written assignment: Informational Pamphlet | 30% | Tri-fold or bi-fold pamphlet for a general audience on one course concept, submitted as a PDF on 10 September |
| End of Semester Final Exam · hurdle | 40% | In person, multiple choice, whole semester including set readings and videos; a pass mark of 50% on the exam is required |
Weights and task names follow the official ANU Class Summary for Second Semester 2026 and match the assessment slide in the first lecture; together they total 100%. The final exam is a hurdle: students below 50% on it but with an overall grade of at least 45% are offered a supplementary invigilated exam, and passing it gives a recorded course mark of 50%. Exam dates and rooms are posted by the University, so confirm them on Canvas and in your ANU email.
What other students are asking about PSYC1005
- Where can I find lecture notes or study guides for PSYC1005 at anu?
- The PSYC1005 study guide in AskSia Library covers The Wellbeing Formula: The Science and Practice of Making a Good Life in 11 chapters, with the assessment table, a chapter-by-chapter topic map, key terms and a worked example, free to read on this page.
- Is there a final exam in PSYC1005, and how much is it worth?
- Yes. In the offering this AskSia Library guide is built from, End of Semester Final Exam carries 40% of the PSYC1005 mark; the full split is Reflective writing pieces 30%, Written assignment: Informational Pamphlet 30%, End of Semester Final Exam 40%.
- What does PSYC1005 cover on engagement and flow?
- In AskSia Library's PSYC1005 guide, the Engagement and Flow chapter explains intrinsic motivation, the marks of flow, the challenge-skill channel, engagement interventions, dark and collective flow.
- What does PSYC1005 cover on relationships and social connection?
- In AskSia Library's PSYC1005 guide, the Relationships and Social Connection chapter explains the Holt-Lunstad meta-analysis, odds ratios, structural and functional support, stress buffering and main effects, kindness.
- What does PSYC1005 cover on accomplishment and the arrival fallacy?
- In AskSia Library's PSYC1005 guide, the Accomplishment and the Arrival Fallacy chapter explains accomplishment in PERMA, the arrival fallacy, the tenure study, focalism, concurrent goals and the accomplishment exercise.
Current PSYC1005 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 13 August 2026 | Reflections 1 and 2 due | Due before 4pm on the Thursday of Week 3 through Canvas. |
| 27 August 2026 | Reflections 3 and 4 due | Due before 4pm on the Thursday of Week 5. |
| 10 September 2026 | Informational Pamphlet due | Due by 4:00pm Canberra time in the first week of the teaching break; marked work is expected back within three weeks. |
| 24 September 2026 | Reflections 5 and 6 due | Due before 4pm on the Thursday of Week 7. |
| 8 October 2026 | Reflections 7 and 8 due | Due before 4pm on the Thursday of Week 9. |
| 22 October 2026 | Reflections 9 and 10 due | Due before 4pm on the Thursday of Week 11. |
| 30 October 2026 | Class end date | Teaching for the Second Semester 2026 class ends on this date; the final exam follows in the examination period. |
Dates are as published in the Second Semester 2026 ANU Class Summary and the Canvas course pages. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What PSYC1005 covers
Eleven chapters follow the Canvas teaching weeks, from wellbeing myths and models through engagement, relationships, accomplishment, autonomy, humility, self-acceptance, personal growth, the end of history illusion and body image to social identity.
Wellbeing Myths, Models and Evidence
Dual-continua model, hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, PERMA, Ryff, money and genes myths, fluency and affective forecastingWeek 1 sets the frame for the whole course.
- Wellbeing as more than the absence of illness
- The dual-continua model of mental health
- Hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing
- PERMA and Ryff's six dimensions
- Money, genes and happiness myths
- Fluency and intuitive judgements of truth
Engagement and Flow
Intrinsic motivation, the marks of flow, the challenge-skill channel, engagement interventions, dark and collective flowEngagement is the E in PERMA. This chapter defines intrinsic motivation and flow, lists the seven marks of flow, and shows why flow depends on matching challenge to skill, with boredom on one side and overload on the other.
- Intrinsic motivation and eudaimonic pursuits
- Seven marks of flow
- The challenge-skill channel
- Flow, wellbeing and performance
- Engagement interventions
- Dark flow and exercise dependence
Relationships and Social Connection
The Holt-Lunstad meta-analysis, odds ratios, structural and functional support, stress buffering and main effects, kindnessRelationships are the R in PERMA and the subject of the week’s scientific paper, a meta-analysis of 148 studies with more than 300,000 participants linking social relationships to survival.
- Relationships as a mortality risk factor
- Reading an odds ratio and its interval
- Structural and functional measures
- Stress buffering and main effects
- Comparison with smoking and inactivity
- The Random Acts of Kindness task
Accomplishment and the Arrival Fallacy
Accomplishment in PERMA, the arrival fallacy, the tenure study, focalism, concurrent goals and the accomplishment exerciseAccomplishment is the A in PERMA: a sense of achievement, success and mastery.
- Accomplishment in the PERMA model
- The arrival fallacy
- The tenure study and affective forecasting
- Focalism and unseen consequences
- Holding several goals at once
- The accomplishment writing exercise
Autonomy, Motivation and Meaning in Life
Autonomy versus independence, self-determination and cognitive evaluation theory, the cadet study, reappraisal and valuesAutonomy is one of Ryff’s six dimensions, and this chapter separates it from independence and individualism before placing behaviour on a continuum from low to high autonomy.
- Autonomy versus independence and individualism
- The autonomy continuum
- Self-determination and cognitive evaluation theory
- Instrumental and internal motives
- Development and context
- Cognitive reappraisal and situation fit
Humility, Gratitude and Awe
Five hallmarks of humility, virtue, trait and state, cultural and intellectual humility, gratitude, awe and the humble doctorHumility was once treated as a weakness tied to low self-esteem; this chapter shows why the course treats it as a secure, accurate view of oneself that is good for health and relationships.
- Old and new views of humility
- Five hallmarks of humility
- Virtue, trait and state
- Cultural and intellectual humility
- Gratitude and humility reinforce each other
- Awe and the smaller self
Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion
Self-acceptance versus self-esteem, cultural differences, contingencies of self-worth, Neff's three components and misgivingsSelf-acceptance is a Ryff dimension: a positive attitude toward all aspects of oneself and one’s life so far.
- Self-acceptance and self-esteem
- Self-esteem across cultures
- Vulnerability and scar hypotheses
- Contingencies of self-worth
- Four costs of pursuing self-esteem
- Neff's three components of self-compassion
Personal Growth, Resilience and Mindsets
Ryff's personal growth, adverse childhood experiences, resilience, posttraumatic growth, mindsets and the reflective cyclePersonal growth, in Ryff’s model, is the extent to which people use their talents and keep developing their potential.
- Ryff's personal growth
- Three routes to growth
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Resilience and its pathways
- Posttraumatic growth
- Fixed and growth mindsets
The End of History Illusion
Predictors and reporters, personality, values and preferences, the longitudinal check, the concert premium and explanationsThe end of history illusion is the finding that people of every age see large change behind them yet expect little change ahead.
- Predictors and reporters
- Studies 1 to 3: personality, values and preferences
- Decade, condition and interaction tests
- Ruling out memory with longitudinal data
- Study 4: the concert premium
- Why the illusion happens
Positive Body Image
Six facets and their look-alikes, distinct from dissatisfaction, malleability, protection from media ideals and functionalityPositive body image is not simply the absence of body dissatisfaction.
- Six facets of positive body image
- What positive body image is not
- Distinct from negative body image
- Holistic, stable and malleable
- Protection against media ideals
- Acceptance by others and social identities
Social Identity and the Social Context
Personal and social identity, individual mobility, social creativity and social change, the forgiveness case and attributionsSocial identity is the last topic and the course’s critique of its own focus on the individual.
- Personal and social identities
- Individual mobility
- Social creativity
- Social change
- Permeability and legitimacy
- Optimism and forgiveness case analysis
It is team-taught, so each week a different expert presents one ingredient of a good life, and it moves deliberately away from a focus on illness and distress toward what protects people and helps them thrive.
The first week sets the frame: wellbeing as distinct from the absence of mental illness, the difference between feeling good and functioning well, Seligman’s PERMA model and Ryff’s six dimensions of psychological wellbeing, and the myths about money, genes and happiness that the evidence corrects.
The following weeks take one construct at a time.
Engagement and flow, relationships and their link with survival, accomplishment and the arrival fallacy, autonomy and meaning in life, humility and awe, and self-acceptance and self-compassion each come with a scientific paper, a popular article and a video, all of which are assessable.
Later weeks turn to personal growth after adversity, the end of history illusion, in which people of every age underestimate how much they will change, and positive body image.
The course closes with a critique: when psychological strategies such as optimism and forgiveness need to be weighed against a person’s material and social situation, and how social identities shape the choice between individual mobility, social creativity and social change.
Assessment combines practice with knowledge.
Each week from the first to the tenth you try a wellbeing exercise and write a short reflection; mid-semester you design a public-facing pamphlet on one concept; and a multiple-choice final exam, which is a hurdle, tests the whole semester’s lectures, readings and videos.
Worked example · free
Reading a survival odds ratio and its confidence interval
- 1An odds ratio of 1.50 means people with stronger relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over the follow-up period.
- 1Its interval, 1.42 to 1.59, lies wholly above 1, so the data are not consistent with no difference.
- 1For living alone the interval, 0.99 to 1.44, includes 1, so this single yes-or-no measure does not establish a difference.
- 1The pooled result is the stronger evidence; the studies are correlational, so both describe prediction rather than proof of cause.
Key terms
- Positive psychology
- The scientific study of what helps people, groups and institutions to flourish and function at their best.
- Dual-continua model
- Keyes’s model treating mental illness and mental wellbeing as two separate axes, so high wellbeing can coexist with illness.
- Eudaimonic wellbeing
- Wellbeing understood as functioning well, through competence, meaning and positive relationships, rather than simply feeling good.
- PERMA
- Seligman’s five-element model of wellbeing: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.
- Flow
- A state of complete absorption in an activity whose challenge matches your skill, where the experience itself is the reward.
- Affective forecasting
- Predicting how future events will make us feel, a skill that tends to misjudge the strength and duration of feelings.
- Stress-buffering hypothesis
- The proposal that relationships protect health by supplying resources that soften the harm of stressful events.
- Arrival fallacy
- The illusion that reaching a goal will bring lasting happiness, coined by Tal Ben-Shahar.
- Cognitive reappraisal
- Changing how you think about an emotion-eliciting situation in order to change its emotional impact.
- Self-compassion
- Neff’s combination of mindfulness, common humanity and self-kindness in the face of one’s own suffering or failure.
- Posttraumatic growth
- Positive psychological change after a traumatic or highly stressful event that goes beyond a return to baseline.
- End of history illusion
- The tendency, found at every age, to see large change in our past selves while expecting little change from now on.
- Social creativity
- Reframing a low-status group’s position in a more favourable light when group boundaries are impermeable.
PSYC1005 FAQ
How is the final mark made up?
Three components count. Ten reflective writing pieces, one for each of the first ten lectures at up to 3% each, make up 30%. An informational pamphlet for a general audience is worth another 30%. The end of semester final exam carries the remaining 40%, and it is a hurdle, so the exam result matters twice: for its weight and for passing the course at all.
What is the format of the final exam?
The course describes the final exam as an in-person, multiple-choice paper held during the semester 2 final examination period, and students must be on campus to sit it. It covers lecture content and the set readings and videos for the whole semester. The first lecture promised an example question for each week; duration and question count are posted on Canvas.
How difficult is this course?
The materials point to breadth rather than technical difficulty. There are eleven topics, each with its own lecturer, scientific paper, popular article and video, and all of them are examinable in a multiple-choice paper you must pass with at least 50%. The challenge is keeping similar constructs, studies and numbers distinct, and the course expects about ten hours of work a week.
Do I need to do the readings and watch the videos?
Yes. The first lecture says each topic has one scientific paper, one popular scientific paper and one video that are assessable, and the Class Summary says the final exam covers the set readings and video content as well as the lectures. Several chapters in this guide are built around those scientific papers, such as the relationships meta-analysis and the end of history study.
Are there past papers or practice exams?
The course materials available here contain no past paper or practice exam. The first lecture says an example question will be provided for each week, so check Canvas for those. The practice questions in this guide are newly written multiple-choice items on each week’s content and are not drawn from any course paper.
How are the reflective writing pieces marked?
Each piece is worth up to 3% of the final mark. You receive 1.5% for an on-time piece with all three sections, What, So what and Now what, completed; 2% if at least one section shows deep reflection; and 3% if every section does. Deep reflection describes inner states, connects the experience to the literature and names a question to pursue.
What does the pamphlet assignment ask for?
It asks for a tri-fold or bi-fold pamphlet, submitted as a PDF, that introduces one wellbeing concept from the course to a reader with no psychology background. It must explain the concept plainly, give concrete daily actions traceable to evidence, and offer a practical way to judge whether the practice is working, with sources in a small separate panel.
How should I plan revision for the final exam?
Revise one topic per session in course order, because later weeks build on earlier ones. For each topic, list its key constructs, its main studies with design and result, and the lecturer’s critique or limitation. Then test yourself with multiple-choice items and explain why each wrong option is wrong, since distractors usually swap a neighbouring construct or reverse a direction word.
Questions students ask in each PSYC1005 chapter
- What is the difference between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing?
- Hedonic wellbeing is feeling good, measured as happiness or life satisfaction. Eudaimonic wellbeing is functioning well, through competence, meaning and positive relationships. The lecture stresses that high wellbeing can sometimes require a spell of low happiness, as when demanding but meaningful work makes a person less cheerful in the moment yet more fulfilled overall. Chapter 01 · Wellbeing Myths, Models and Evidence
- What are the conditions for flow?
- The lecture lists high autonomy, clear goals, a clear role and a sense of control, with immediate feedback and freedom from worry about failure in work and sport, and a collective orientation in teams. Above all, the challenge of the task has to match the person’s skill, because too easy a task leads to boredom and too hard a task to overload. Chapter 02 · Engagement and Flow
- How much do relationships affect mortality?
- Across 148 studies with 308,849 participants, people with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival, an odds ratio of 1.50. The authors conclude the effect is comparable with smoking and alcohol consumption and exceeds the influence of physical inactivity and obesity, while noting the studies show prediction rather than proof of cause. Chapter 03 · Relationships and Social Connection
- What is the arrival fallacy?
- It is the illusion that once we reach a goal we will be lastingly happy. Tal Ben-Shahar, who is credited with the term, argues that people who expect happiness on arrival can end up unhappy and without hope once the brief glow fades, because the promise that sustained them has gone. He saw the pattern after winning a squash tournament. Chapter 04 · Accomplishment and the Arrival Fallacy
- Is autonomy the same as independence?
- No. The lecture defines autonomy as being self-determining, deciding for yourself what to think, feel and do, and judging yourself by your own standards. Independence means not relying on others, and individualism is a cultural orientation. A person can rely on close relationships, or live in a collectivist culture, and still be highly autonomous. Chapter 05 · Autonomy, Motivation and Meaning in Life
- Is humility the same as low self-esteem?
- No. Early research linked humility with incompetence and low self-esteem, but the lecture presents it as a secure, accepting identity with an accurate view of one’s strengths and weaknesses, openness to new information, a focus on others and egalitarian beliefs. Later research links it with health, prosocial behaviour and good relationships. Chapter 06 · Humility, Gratitude and Awe
- What is the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion?
- Self-esteem is a global evaluation of yourself that depends on doing well and tends to fall when you fail. Self-compassion is a way of responding to your own suffering with mindfulness, a sense of common humanity and self-kindness, and it does not have to be earned. Unlike self-esteem, it is not associated with narcissism. Chapter 07 · Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion
- What is the difference between resilience and posttraumatic growth?
- Resilience is adapting competently despite significant adversity, which can mean resisting stress or recovering after it. Posttraumatic growth is positive change after trauma that goes beyond returning to how things were, such as closer relationships, new possibilities or a greater appreciation of life. Growth is one of several resilience pathways. Chapter 08 · Personal Growth, Resilience and Mindsets
- What is the end of history illusion?
- It is the tendency, at every age, to report a lot of change over the past decade but to predict little change over the next. In Quoidbach, Gilbert and Wilson’s studies, predicted change fell short of the change that people a decade older reported for the same decade, for personality, values and preferences. Chapter 09 · The End of History Illusion
- Is positive body image just low body dissatisfaction?
- No. Tylka and Wood-Barcalow show the two are separate constructs rather than ends of one line. Body appreciation and dissatisfaction shared only 19% of their variance among older adolescent African American girls and about 41% to 53% in mainly Caucasian college samples, and people can hold some dissatisfaction while appreciating their bodies. Chapter 10 · Positive Body Image
- What are the three responses to group inequality?
- Individual mobility relies on the personal identity and needs permeable boundaries, so a person can move into a higher-status group. Social creativity relies on the social identity and reframes the group’s position when boundaries are closed and status seems legitimate. Social change relies on the social identity and collective action when status is seen as illegitimate. Chapter 11 · Social Identity and the Social Context
How to study for the exam
Treat the course as eleven compact topics that share a vocabulary. For each chapter, write a one-page summary with three parts: the constructs and their exact definitions, the studies with design, sample and result, and the limits or critiques the lecturer raised.
Those three parts are what multiple-choice options are built from, and most wrong options either swap a neighbouring construct, such as focalism for immune neglect or social creativity for social change, or reverse a direction, such as more change for less. Because the readings and videos are assessable, add one line per topic on what the scientific paper adds to the lecture.
In the last two weeks, mix topics in timed sets of multiple-choice questions and spend your review on the reasons behind each wrong option. Link topics as you go: affective forecasting in the first week explains the end of history illusion, relationships return in personal growth, and the final week questions the individual focus of every exercise before it.
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