PSYC 3170
Persuasion and Facilitation
Individual Paper Assignment
This is a recommended procedure. You do not have to follow it exactly,
I just think it will make it easier to do the paper.
Step 1 – Do a quick literature search for “neural imaging” or other neural scanning techniques (fMRI, PET scans) and a persuasion topic that interests you (Like deception or visual images.) It does not have to be a topic we have already covered. The trick will be to find the relevant neural imaging study.
Step 2– Once you have found a relevant imaging study (even if it is only somewhat related), use the book or any other resource to do backward citation chaining and find some early work in psychology where that topic was first discussed.
Step 3 – Use any type of citation method to try and find a find a relatively recent article about the same topic. The neural imaging study or the book may also be able to help with this. Use any relevant technique including either forward or backward citation chaining.
Step 4 – Put this all together in an analysis. I would suggest that you describe what theorist came up with without the benefit of imaging. Then present the imaging conclusions and finally present what is the current thinking in the field. Your main objective is to see if the ideas in persuasion are integrated with other aspects of Psychology. Then draw some conclusions about how the field should progress from here given what you learned.
Criteria
- Success will be based on your ability to pull the ideas from the different articles you have read and present them in a coherent way.
- A minimum of 3 references is required (1 neural imaging, 1 early, 1 current) but that is probably not sufficient. For example, it is extremely unlikely that you will not need to reference the text. Also when reviewing how this might relate to other things you know about psychology, you need to properly reference sources outside of this course.
- The finished paper must be no more than 2500 words long. If it exceeds 2500 words, it will be marked down. (Do not feel it necessary to deliver 2500 words, 1800 should be quite adequate.)
- The finished paper must be submitted electronically via the Dropbox. The Dropbox has a version of Turnitin incorporated into the submission. You should be able to see your integrity score when you submit your paper. If you are an early completer, please let me know right away if you do NOT get an originality report when you submit. You can submit more than once so if your originality report is high, you can revise and resubmit.
- All reference must be in proper APA format.
- The paper is due at 11:59 pm on the day of class in week 12. For this term that is Friday April 8th.
- Grades on late submissions will be reduced by 10% per day until the day of the final. At that point no more submission will be accepted.
