Psychology 207 (Winter 2023) MeSearch Assignment Guidelines Purpose: The goal of this assignment is to help you understand social psychology in action—in your own life and in the world around you. This paper requires you to think about how a specific social psychological theory that you’ve learned about in this class can be applied to an experience from your own life. Choose one theory that you think may be related to a real-life situation that you have experienced and attempt to account for your own behaviour. There should be five major sections in your paper: 1. Introduction: What do you plan to say in your paper? What type of behaviour are you going to explain? What theory will you use to explain this behaviour? This is only an overview, so don’t go into too much detail. Generally, only one paragraph is needed. Be sure to give a thesis statement (see below). 2. Theory: Name and explain the theory that you are going to use. What does it predict? In what situations does it apply? How has it been tested in the past? Be sure to cite and reference any theory used—this could simply be citing the textbook if that is your source. 3. Your experience: This is where you describe the experience from your own life that you are going to explain using the theory you have chosen. Go into just enough detail so that it will be clear exactly how the theory fits with your real-life experience. This must be from your own perspective and not the perspective of another that you have noticed (as we cannot mindread other people).

Psychology 207 (Winter 2023)
MeSearch Assignment Guidelines

Purpose: The goal of this assignment is to help you understand social psychology in action—in your own life and in the world around you. This paper requires you to think about how a specific social psychological theory that you’ve learned about in this class can be applied to an experience from your own life. Choose one theory that you think may be related to a real-life situation that you have experienced and attempt to account for your own behaviour.

There should be five major sections in your paper:

1. Introduction: What do you plan to say in your paper? What type of behaviour are you going to explain? What theory will you use to explain this behaviour? This is only an overview, so don’t go into too much detail. Generally, only one paragraph is needed. Be sure to give a thesis statement (see below).

2. Theory: Name and explain the theory that you are going to use. What does it predict? In what situations does it apply? How has it been tested in the past? Be sure to cite and reference any theory used—this could simply be citing the textbook if that is your source.

3. Your experience: This is where you describe the experience from your own life that you are going to explain using the theory you have chosen. Go into just enough detail so that it will be clear exactly how the theory fits with your real-life experience. This must be from your own perspective and not the perspective of another that you have noticed (as we cannot mindread other people).

4. How the theory accounts for your experience: Explain the ways in which the theory accounts for the experience you just described. Make the connections between the theory and your experience explicit – don’t just assume that the reader will understand how the two fit together. For example, if you were discussing a time when the presence of others influenced your performance, you would identify the extent to which you were accountable for your individual performance and the extent to which the task was simple or complex, and then apply the relevant theory (e.g., social facilitation or social loafing theory) to understand your behaviour. In other words, do not just say that your behaviour was an example of social loafing—rather, explain exactly how the various components of social loafing theory map onto your experience.

5. Conclusion: Summarize and then go beyond what you discussed in your paper. Which theory did you apply to your experience? How well did your theory account for your behaviour? Were there discrepancies between the theory and your behaviour? Is there another social psychology theory that might help explain some of these discrepancies? Does your experience suggest a modified theory or even a new, testable hypotheses relating to this theory?
Please see the grading rubric for this assignment which is included in the assignment folder, and includes a more comprehensive breakdown of scoring.

Important assignment details:
Due date: Please upload your paper to Moodle on or before Monday March 27th. Papers turned in after this date will be penalized 10% for each day late (2 marks per day). No papers will be accepted after April 5th.

Formatting guidelines:
Your paper should begin with a cover page that includes the following: A title, the date, your name, your student number, and the word count—word count does not include title page and reference list. Be sure to consult APA style for your cover page.
Your paper should be a maximum of 1800 words (i.e., approx. 6 pages of text). The instructor or TA will not read any content that exceeds the word limit. The word limit does not include title page and reference list.
Papers must be double-spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman font, with 1-inch margins (2.54 cm).
You must cite the theory and any experiments from the textbook and/or lesson slides you mention in your paper. Every source you cite in the text of your paper (including lesson slides) should be included in your reference list in APA style.
You must also apply two peer-reviewed social psychology journal articles that contain material not covered in the course. For example, one or both of these articles may describe research studies not found in the textbook or lesson slides that supports the connection you are making between your experience and the theory you’ve chosen to use. Journal articles that simply reiterate material already covered in class must not be included. Follow this link to see a list of social psychology journals https://www.socialpsychology.org/journals.htm. Articles from general psychology journals may be used with approval from the instructor.
Grammar, organization, spelling, and general writing style will affect your grade. As such, you should write this paper as if the reader has no specialized knowledge of social psychology. You may want to have a non-psychology friend proofread your paper – if they understand it, you are writing at the appropriate level.

There are many theories and ideas to choose from such as social facilitation theory, social loafing theory, attribution theory, self-verification theory, self-enhancement theory, theory of planned behaviour, cognitive dissonance, self-perception theory, social exchange theory, and many others.

Lesson slide reference examples:

Climenhage, J. (2023). Social cognition: Making sense of the world [PowerPoint slides]. Moodle@UNBC. https://learn.unbc.ca.

Parenthetical citation: (Climenhage, 2023)

Narrative citation: Climenhage (2023)

If you are citing more than one lesson slide the first lesson you cite should be the first one that appears in your reference list, for example: (Climenhage, 2023a), (Climenhage, 2023b), etc. or Climenhage (2023a), Climenhage (2023b), etc.

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Finally, I am including feedback that students usually get following assignment completion. I have attached these comments here because I tend to see the same issues year after year and my hope is that by giving you some writing tips up front it will cut down on many of these mistakes and help you to become better writers.

Thesis statement.
Some students did not provide a sentence in their introduction that stated the reason for writing the paper—this is called a thesis statement. The thesis statement serves as a guide to the reader to let them know why you are writing the paper and what to expect in the coming pages. You need to mention your experience in the introduction because that is the focus of the paper.

Citations.
Some students provided very few citations throughout their paper. When you do not provide citations, you are essentially claiming that the words that you have written are your own. If they are not your own ideas, concepts, theories, and the like, not adding a citation is equivalent to plagiarism. Citations are also required in the introductory paragraph (e.g., textbook). Some students failed to provide any citations in the introduction. If you make a claim or name a theory or psychological concept, a citation is required.

Putting the ‘Me’ in MeSearch.
The purpose of the assignment is to use your own experience and apply course material to help explain it. Some students used someone else’s experience, or their own judgements of another person’s behaviour, which is simply not following directions. It is impossible to effectively use someone else’s experience and apply the course material to it as you do not have a window into their thought processes (this is called mindreading). Therefore, any kind of explanation is pure speculation based on behaviour (and possibly an attribution error).

Journal articles.
Although many students included additional journal articles, they did not discuss them in terms of how they related back to their own experience. Additionally, some of the articles had little or nothing to do with their own experience and no explanation was given as to how these new ideas, concepts, or experiments related back to their experience. Also, if you did not include 2 peer reviewed psychology articles, you lost at least 1 mark.

Direct quotes.
As a rule, do not use direct quotes. Many students used direct quotes in their papers. Direct quotes are generally frowned upon and, if used, should be used sparingly, especially in such a short paper; paraphrase or summarize whenever possible. Direct quotes can be used for specific circumstances. For instance, if the meaning would be lost by paraphrasing, or if the quote itself is only relevant when stated exactly as it is, such as, “Fore score and seven years ago…” Some students used many direct quotes. You might consider this: At what point do we begin to consider multiple authors for your paper as a good deal of the text belongs to other writers? If you use a direct quote, the page number must follow the citation (e.g., Smith & Jones, 1981, pp. 121); do not add page numbers to your citations when not using direct quotes.

Other APA issues:
Please review APA guidelines – Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. (2020). American Psychological Association. Some of the issues seen were capitalizing all the words in the article title, not including journal article title, not referencing the textbook properly, etc.

<p>The post Psychology 207 (Winter 2023) MeSearch Assignment Guidelines Purpose: The goal of this assignment is to help you understand social psychology in action—in your own life and in the world around you. This paper requires you to think about how a specific social psychological theory that you’ve learned about in this class can be applied to an experience from your own life. Choose one theory that you think may be related to a real-life situation that you have experienced and attempt to account for your own behaviour. There should be five major sections in your paper: 1. Introduction: What do you plan to say in your paper? What type of behaviour are you going to explain? What theory will you use to explain this behaviour? This is only an overview, so don’t go into too much detail. Generally, only one paragraph is needed. Be sure to give a thesis statement (see below). 2. Theory: Name and explain the theory that you are going to use. What does it predict? In what situations does it apply? How has it been tested in the past? Be sure to cite and reference any theory used—this could simply be citing the textbook if that is your source. 3. Your experience: This is where you describe the experience from your own life that you are going to explain using the theory you have chosen. Go into just enough detail so that it will be clear exactly how the theory fits with your real-life experience. This must be from your own perspective and not the perspective of another that you have noticed (as we cannot mindread other people). first appeared on For academic Help.</p>