PSYC 321 Social Comparison Essay
ESSAY: Write a 10- to 12-page essay. Select a topic that intrigues you from the following list,
or suggest your own. If you want to write on a topic not listed here, get your instructor’s
approval first.
?social norms
?individualism vs. collectivism
?social exchange
?how salience and accessibility
influence information processing
?how cognitive heuristics
influence social judgment
?cognitive reappraisal
?looking-glass self
?social comparison
?self-presentation
?the principle of attitude
consistency
?sleeper effect
?cognitive dissonance
?impression formation
?attribution bias
?culture and conformity
?informational social influence versus
normative social influence
?social power (French and Raven)
?communal and exchange relationships
?attachment style
?altruism
?the social psychological variables that
influence helping behavior
?emotional vs. instrumental aggression
?how the social situation influences
aggression
?social identity and group influences
?social loafing
?group polarization and individual decision
making
?social categorization
?reducing discrimination
?strategies for producing cooperation
?The structure of the essay is of your choosing. You may present an argumentative,
comparative (compare and contrast), persuasive, reflective, or research easy. This is an
upper-division course. This flexibility affords you the opportunity to explore newly
acquired concepts and write a paper meaningful to you (e.g., career interests, personal
connections).
?Leverage the writing of the essay to showcase effective communication of social
psychological principles and applications relevant to your selected topic.
?Support discussions (topics and logic) with sound research, evident through the
integration of properly applied and cited theory and facts collected from a minimum of
five (5) peer-reviewed journal articles.
Peer-reviewed articles are vetted for quality and adherence to editorial standards, and published
in scholarly journals (such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). This link to the
UMGC library provides excellent instruction, support and resources addressing scholarly
articles. Use the UMGC library database to find peer-reviewed articles. It is your
responsibility to make sure that the journal articles you select are appropriate. If you are unsure
about the relevance of your articles, contact your instructor for approval. The five (5) peer-
reviewed articles must meet the following criteria:
?Scholarly – Articles should address an original research study, meta-analyses, summary,
editorial or theory.
?Refereed – Articles must come from peer-reviewed journals found in the UMGC library.
?Social Psychology Connections– Articles must be relevant to social psychology.
?Recent – Articles must have been published within the last 10 years.
For example, the following would be a relevant peer-reviewed journal article for investigating
the influence of emotional intelligence on academic performance:
MacCann, C., Jiang, Y., Brown, L. E., Double, K. S., Bucich, M., & Minbashian, A. (2020).
Emotional intelligence predicts academic performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,
146, 150–186. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000219
The peer-reviewed minimum is just that, a minimum. You are encouraged to explore and to
use more than five peer-reviewed resources.This is because your use of scholarly works:
?expands your exploration of relevant concepts, theories, empirical findings and historical
trends
?invites you to implement critical and creative thinking
?inspires skeptical inquiry as you approach your topic with the goal of developed
information literacy
?empowers the development, organization, and expression of your understanding of your
selected topic
These benefits occur because the peer-reviewed articles will enable you to analyze and discuss
your topic from a point of insight and understanding that comes from quality research that
represents current knowledge in the field.
How quality, appropriately applied peer-reviewed articles support your writing within this
assignment...
Number of
quality,
appropriat
e peer-
reviewed
articles
The points below assume the articles selected and incorporated are
relevant and appropriate for the topic discussed within the 10 to
12-page essay.
6+ A+ Incorporating and appropriately applying sound empirical support
enables the expression of critical, careful thought. Well placed
evidence from a variety of scholarly articles will amplify your
ability to provide vivid and specific examples.
5 A - B+
The depth the assignment invites is why five peer-reviewed articles
has been set as a minimum. Five foundational, scholarly articles
can support central idea development, and the presentation of
relevant examples, when the five articles are strategically applied to
express critical thought and analysis.
4 C
When fewer than five relevant articles are leveraged, it can become
difficult to authentically develop the paper’s central idea. This is
because the scope of the paper becomes comes constrained by the
lacking variety of evidence and examples to draw upon. This in
turn can potentially result in lacking support for points discussed, or
excessive reliance on the four articles to carry the discussion
forward.
3 or less D
When the number of peer-reviewed articles leveraged to support
this assignment drops below three, it becomes more challenging to
fully develop the discussion. Central ideas may remain
underdeveloped due to lacking examples or presentation of relevant
evidence. In turn, the limited number of scholarly resources make
it challenging to establish a critical analysis of the topic covered.
In addition to the five peer-reviewed articles, you may also use sources from the Web, your
textbook or other books. Magazines and newspapers are generally not acceptable. For instance,
Psychology Today would not be a preferred scholarly choice. If you are not sure, ask your
instructor.
FORMATTING: Structure your paper utilizingAPA style (7th Edition) appropriate for student
papers; this includes headings, double-spacing, appropriately sized sans serif or serif fonts (e.g.,
12 Times Roman), one-inch margins (left, right, top, and bottom), page numbering, and logical
flow from topic to topic. Include a title page and references page(s). The page count requirement
excludes the title page and references.
Information and/or quotes from selected sources should be relevant and thoughtfully placed.
Consult thePublication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition, for
proper form of in-text citations and references.
EVALUATION CRITERIA: The following criteria will be considered in the evaluation of
your paper. Please review the Applied Final Project Rubric that accompanies the instructions in
Assignments for point allocations.
1. Accuracy—Are your stated facts or ideas correct?
2. Clarity—Is your essay clear and easy to follow? You may want to read your essay out
loud to yourself. This will help you catch incomplete sentences or lapses in logic.
3. Depth—Are the issues and implications well thought out and explored?
4. Originality—What is your thesis (the main point of your essay)? Have you stated your
own views and articulated them well? Use your own words. Do not copy material directly
from your text or other sources without quotation marks. If you want to use the author's
exact words, put them in quotation marks and cite the page number from your text or
other source material. Don't forget to express your own opinion.
5. Supporting evidence—Are your ideas supported with empirical evidence? This is a
crucial part of any well-written essay. You may support your ideas with theories,
previously conducted research, or other information you encounter in the text and other
sources (journal articles and so forth). You may also use personal experiences as
supporting evidence when appropriate.
6. References—Did you use appropriate references to support the main points of your
paper? Be sure you have these references—that is, that you have the articles on hand if
you used them, and make sure that your references relate to the point you are making or
support your inferences.
7. Form, composition, spelling, and so forth—Is your paper neat and error-free? It helps
to run spellcheck before submitting your work and to have a colleague or friend read over
your work.
8. APA style —Did you follow the formatting rules of the American Psychological
Association (APA) for student papers? You may want to visit the UMGC Library Guide
to Citing and Writing.
RUBRIC: You may access the full grading rubric in the classroom, adjoining the assignment
within the Assignment folder.
FURTHER DETAILS:
General Paper characteristics:
?Length of paper: 10-12 pages of written content [the title page and the reference pages do
not count]
?Format: Double-space, 1-inch margins all sides, 12-point Times New Roman font, left
justified, appropriate indenting, centering, etc. Make sure not to have extra spacing (in
Word, under ‘page layout’ and spacing, make sure left, right, top, bottom are set to zero).
?Do NOT intentionally include additional spaces between paragraphs or on the top of the
page.
?Remember: citing and reference pages need to be in APA style so make sure all the basic
information is included.
?VERY important to watch out for plagiarism and keep in mind that it doesn’t just refer to
cut-and-pasting but also to using too much of someone else’s words in your writing. Keep
re-reading your paper and if something doesn’t sound like you, it most likely isn’t.
Suspected plagiarism will be dealt with according to policy. You also cannot submit a
paper you’ve written for another class or include major portions of it for this class. Make
sure you do original research on the social psychological topic you select. The psychology
department has embedded the use of “Turnitin” to help authenticate work; you will be
able to submit as many drafts as you want and can look at the feedback to help you
finalize your paper. I will only be grading the FINAL version submitted closest to the
deadline.
?Include a title page which has the title of the paper, your name, course title, my name and
term or date. Do not include an ‘abstract’ or any figures or tables for this paper. Start
writing your paper right away on page 2 (don’t put your name or add additional wasted
lines). Use APA style subheadings as needed and make sure you have logical flow from
topic to topic. Conclude your document with reference page(s) at the end (title the page
“References” and alphabetically list your references in APA style). Again, keep in mind
that the title page and the references do not count toward the 10-12 page limit for content.
?SUBMIT ONE DOCUMENT. Only acceptable format is a .doc or .docx file (if you
must, .rtf is also acceptable). Do *not* password protect & do not submit .pdf or other
formats. Submit under “Course Content” and Week 8, under the appropriate Final
Project/Paper tab set up for the purpose or if you want to submit early, you can always
submit under the blue “Assignments” tab.
?Total points: 50 points. Worth about 18% of the overall course grade.
?Due date: By MONDAY 11:59 AM EST (Note: this is different from all other deadlines;
it is the second to the last day of class and before noon) of the eighth week of class. NO
late papers will be accepted. If you are unsure about the paper getting submitted (always
make sure to open the document after you submit) or trouble with the classroom, feel free
to also send a copy via email before the deadline.
Finally, “write an essay” is a pretty broad undertaking so please consider carefully that this a
psychology class and that you should be thinking about making this a research paper of some
sort, not conducting a research study but most likely reviewing literature on a topic, come up
with some interesting hypotheses, include some application to yourself or real life etc. As stated
earlier, the style of the essay can take many forms: argumentative, comparative (compare and
contrast), persuasive, reflective etc. Importantly, you want to make sure to have good research
backing for your ideas and provide your own unique analysis and stamp to the essay. Always
work on provided a good BALANCE between your ideas and supporting scientific ideas
and keep in mind that you want this to be appropriate to an upper-level social psychology
class.
Some specific advice:
?Look for several good, legitimate and comprehensive references that are relatively current
since this will play a large role in the quality and depth of the content.
?Select a topic from the list and then narrow down to a few questions/hypotheses you think
would be interesting to explore. Try not to remain at the lower level of description and move
to a higher level of application and analysis.
?Make sure to choose articles from psychological peer-reviewed journals (Psychology Today
and other such newspapers and magazines do *not* count); your best bet is to use the UMGC
library since it contains legitimate sources that you do not need to vet yourself.
?Seek out some journals that have “social psychology” in their titles so that you don’t veer off
too much into other areas of psychology.
?Make sure to be comprehensive in writing about ALL your references without focusing on
just one or two; consider that you really need quite a few references for such a long paper.
?Use your own words as much as you can since it is very natural to over-use words we have
read. Do not over-cite and do not under-cite. Balance between these two is key to good
writing. Do not wait until the last minute to write this paper; it is a big task and you need to
break it down over the eight weeks.
?Do not simply reiterate what others have said. Make the paper UNIQUE to you. You cannot
simply summarize research you find but rather, provide a good balance of your “voice” and
your research.
?Write, re-read, edit, review, re-order, delete, re-write etc. Remember, writing is a process and
as such, it takes times to produce a high-quality final product. If you work early, you can
utilize the “Turnitin” feature to get feedback that can help you with your final draft.
?Use the UMGC Writing Center resources to help you. I believe you can even submit a paper
early to get some feedback (if you check under the blue “Resources” tab, there is a link to the
“Effective Writing Center” so contact them early for details on how they can help – they
won’t help with content but could help with organization and presentation).
If in doubt regarding any of this, please check with me, and check early. Good luck. I am really
