Central Texas College Spielman Psychology Paper

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Instructions

There are 3 options for your Final Paper:

You will submit your completed paper at the “Final Paper” link below.

Note: You may not all be Psychology majors but you will be dealing with people regardless of your major and chosen profession. Choose a psychological concept that relates to your chosen field. Nursing: placebo effect or pain, Marketing: persuasion or compulsion, Education: peer pressure or bullying.

Format

The Final Paper should consist of a minimum of three to five typed pages. Each paper option has a format that should be followed in order to ensure you have met all of the requirements.

Be sure that the paper submission adheres to the following formatting requirements:

  • Use double-spacing.
  • Use size 12 font Arial or Times New Roman. Do not try to increase your paper length with another font.
  • Set margins to one inch on all sides.
  • Be sure to include your name/course title on the first page.
  • Write in complete sentences, use good English grammar, and correct spelling.
  • APA documentation style must be used when citing references in context and bibliography (if any).
  • Your paper will be run through Safe Assign to prevent plagiarism.
  • Complete your assignment using word-processing software such as MS Word 365 (download free software at https://products.office.com/en-us/student?ms.officeurl=getoffice365), LibreOffice (download free software at https://www.libreoffice.org/download), or other per course requirements. Save your file as a .rtf file or .doc to ensure
  • Option 1: Final Paper Essay
  • PSYC 2301
  • Your essay should include the following format and
    items to be considered complete. You may choose any topic from the
    textbook that you would like to learn more about. Your topic should be
    narrow enough to be able to write the paper without being overwhelmed and broad
    enough to gather enough information for the paper requirements.
  • Broad topic: sleep
  • Subtopic: shift
    work
  • Paper Topic: Does
    shift work create health problems for individuals.
  • Locate 3-5 academic articles related to your
    topic. All articles should be a minimum of 3 pages in length. Your
    articles should be current and no older than 2008. Your articles should
    come from peer-reviewed journals that you can get from the CTC Library database.
    Articles from newspapers, popular magazines, book reviews, or websites are not
    acceptable for this paper. All of your articles should not come from the
    same publication.
  • Intro:
    ·
    Must contain an
    attention grabber for the reader or at least make the essay sound interesting,
    may begin with a quote about the particular topic
    ·
  • Ensure that the intro
    moves from the general to the specific in regards to the topic
    ·
  • Provides the reader
    with a “road map” of the essay in a logical order
    ·
  • At the end there should
    be what is called a thesis statement, arguably the most
    important component of the intro
    ·
  • The thesis statement
    states the aim of the paper and may give insight into the author’s examples and
    evidence
  • Body:
    ·
  • Includes the evidence
    and support of the paper in addition to the author’s ideas
    ·
  • Paragraphs must
    include a topic sentence which relates the discussion back to the thesis
    statement
    ·
  • Logical ordering of
    ideas: 3 types of order
  • 1.
    Chronological
    order—order of time, good for narratives
  • 2.
    Spatial order-good for
    descriptions of locations; top to bottom, e.g.
  • 3.
    Emphatic order-least
    important to most important; most common for college writing
    ·
  • Ensure that transition
    sentences are present to create a good flow to the essay
    ·
  • Include substantial
    examples and evidence to support your argument and remember to cite, cite,
    cite!
    ·
  • Make sure each example
    is relevant to your particular topic
  • Conclusion:
    ·
  • This section should
    wrap all of your arguments and points
    ·
  • Should restate the
    main arguments in a simplified manner
    ·
  • Ensure that the reader
    is left with something to think about, particularly if it is an argumentative
    essay.
  • Option 2: Movie/ Book Review
  • PSYC 2301
  • For this option, you will review a movie or
    book about an issue related to psychology and the concepts in the course. You will relate the concepts from the course
    to the characters of the movie or book. You can watch any movie or read any
    book of your choosing that has a significant character or characters that
    relate to one of the concepts of the book.
    The movie/book review should include an introduction to the topic, a
    summary of your main observation, and a concluding summary.

  • Content of the paper:

    ·
  • You MUST
    have three scientific citations to support your paper. The citations may come
    from the textbook or a professional journal but NOT popular press. Better
    sources include scientific (peer-reviewed) journals.
    ·
  • For this
    assignment, you are asked to discuss the psychological aspects of a fictional
    character.
    ·
  • Students
    should select at least three areas of psychosocial development that are
    discussed as part of this course (e.g., cognitive development, culture,
    parent-child relationships, psychological disorders, motivation, etc.) and
    discuss the character in the context of what we know about these domains.
  • 1. What are some of the most specific aspects of
    the character that you can relate to concepts in the textbook?
  • 2. What do you find interesting about this
    character?
  • 3. What seem to be the pressing issues that this
    character must resolve?
  • 4. How have the specific factors inherent in the
    context in which the person lives affected them?
  • 5. To what extent is this character’s
    development typical, in the sense that it appears to correspond (or not
    correspond) to what we have learned from scientific research and theory about these
    psychological concepts?
  • 6. What might have been done to change the
    development of this character in regards to the psychological concepts you have
    chosen to study? Family, peers, environment,
    medication, etc…
  • Be sure to introduce briefly the character
    and the story so that the reader of your paper is familiar enough to understand
    the references to the book or movie. You may use direct quotes (with proper
    citation) from the scientific articles or movies for the purposes of
    illustration. You should not rely on this as an alternative to providing your
    own interpretation or opinion. You are required to tie in references and
    information from the scientific literature.

  • Movie List
    1.
    Leaving
    Las Vegas
    2.
    A
    Clockwork Orange
    3.
    What’s
    Eating Gilbert Grape
    4.
    Boys
    Don’t Cry
    5.
    Benny
    and Joon
    6.
    Girl
    Interrupted
    7.
    Seven
    8.
    Mad Love
    9.
    Rain Man
    10.
    Shine
    11.
    A
    Beautiful Mind
    12.
    Madness
    of King George
    13.
    Fight
    Club
    14.
    The
    Fisher King
    15.
    One Flew
    over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    16.
    Twelve
    Monkeys
    17.
    Sybil
    18.
    The
    Three Faces of Eve
    19.
    Eating
    20.
    The
    Silence of the Lambs
    21.
    Pollock
    22.
    Ordinary
    People
    23.
    Analyze
    This/Analyze That
    24.
    Final
    Analysis
    25.
    Identity
    26.
    Primal
    Fear
    27.
    What
    About Bob
    28.
    Good Will
    Hunting
    29.
    Silver
    Linings Playbook
    30.
    Split
    31.
    As Good
    As It Gets
    32.
    Awakenings
    33.
    Rainman
    34.
    Grumpy
    Old Men
    35.
    Nell
    36.
    I am Sam
    37.
    Shutter
    Island
    38.
    You may
    choose another movie that is not listed here.
  • Option 3:
    Compare/Contrast
  • PSYC 2301
    This assignment is
    intended to have you compare and contrast the writing style and potential uses
    of a popular press article versus a peer-reviewed primary
    research article     that discusses a psychological phenomenon, written
    within the last 10 years. The articles need to address the same
    area of interest (for example, depression and gender, love and crying, teenage
    norms and ostracism etc.), but do not have to necessarily be about the same
    exact experiment. For hints on appropriate
    psychological phenomena reference the textbook.
    You will have a total of 6 articles in order to write 3 different
    comparisons. You may choose a different
    topic for each of the three comparisons.
  • Your popular press
    report can come from any popular magazine, newspaper, or website.
  • Your peer-reviewed
    primary research article must come from one of the peer-reviewed
    scientific journals listed below:
    ·
    American Journal
    of Psychology
    ·
    Applied Cognitive Psychology
    ·
    Behavioral Neuroscience
    ·
    Cognitive
    Neuropsychology
    ·
    Cognitive Psychology
    ·
    Developmental Psychology
    ·
    Educational
    Psychologist
    ·
    Emotion
    ·
    Experimental Psychology
    ·
    Health Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Abnormal Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Applied Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Comparative Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Counseling Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Educational Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Mind and Behavior NOTE: Current four years not online!
    ·
    Journal of
    Neuroscience
    ·
    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
    ·
    Journal of Personality
    ·
    Journal of
    Social Psychology
    ·
    Memory
    ·
    Merrill-Palmer
    Quarterly
    ·
    Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology
  • I would suggest
    finding an article of interest in the popular press section first, and then
    searching for a related article in one of the approved peer-reviewed primary
    research journals.
  • For this paper you
    must:
  • 1.
    Summarize
    the main points and evidence found within each resource (NOTE: USE YOUR OWN
    WORDS, DO NOT PLAGIARIZE THE ARTICLES).
  • 2.
    Describe,
    using examples, at least 3 ways that the theoretical approaches or article
    writing styles are different (note: mentioning participant pools is too simple,
    and if you notice that they are addressing completely different topics, your
    articles aren’t related enough).
  • 3.
    Describe,
    using examples, at least 2 ways that the articles styles are similar in goals,
    structure, or something similar to this.
  • 4.
    Describe a
    situation where you think that you would benefit using a popular press article,
    and then describe situations where you would be better off using a
    peer-reviewed research article.
  • 5.
    Provide
    in-text citations and a reference page in APA format (including DOI number
    for the peer-reviewed article).
    6.
    Provide a
    full reference list at the end of each section.
  • 7.
    Write a
    paper that is coherent, with smooth transitions between topics (no bullet
    points or lists).
  • 8.
    Do this
    THREE times… one for each pair of articles you find.
  • Notes for both articles:
  • Articles MUST be full articles (avoid summary
    papers, blurbs, or blogs)
    Notes for the popular
    press articles:

    • Again, make sure
      that your article is NOT a blog
    • Articles MUST
      be less than 10 years old
    • Articles MUST
      be at least 3 pages long in order to ensure that you’re reading a full
      article from one of these sources

    Notes for the
    peer-reviewed articles:

  • a.
    Be aware
    that many un-approved journals have similar names. Misreading names will not be
    an acceptable reason for not using articles from the approved journal list
    located above.
  • b.
    Articles MUST
    be less than 10 years old
  • c.
    Articles MUST
    be at least 5 pages long. This will ensure that you’re reading a full research
    article instead of a summary essay. The one exception to this rule is for
    neuroscience topics. Several well-written neuro articles are less than 5
    pages long.
  • The total paper
    should be 3-6 pages in length, allowing for 1-2 pages for each comparison. You
    should have a conclusion paragraph at the end of the 3 comparisons, discussing
    what you learned from the assignment and how the information will assist you in
    your future studies.
  • Make sure that your
    paper is written as an expository essay. It needs to be coherent, with smooth
    transitions between topics, and it must be in an essay format. You should not
    have different sections in your paper. There should also be no bullet points or
    other forms of separation in the paper.