The face averaging experiment. Psychology Lab Report

You will need to assemble a full APA lab report based on the face averaging experiment that you completed as a class. 
Overview
Lab reports tell a “story” about a research study that was conducted by the authors. The report should lead the readers through the research by arguing for the importance of the research, what the results mean, and how the findings relate to previous research. The report should follow a general to specific to general pattern, like an hourglass. It begins with the introduction to broadly introduce the topic and relevant background literature, and then narrows in focus as it leads to the specific hypotheses, methods and results of the study. The discussion transitions from stating the specific results to more general interpretations, implications, and future research directions.
Shape of a Report:
 Bem, D. J. (2003). Writing the empirical journal article. In J.M. Darley, M. P. Zanna, & H. L. Roediger III (Eds), The Compleat Academic. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
In each section of the report, you should be focusing on the “story” you want to tell. Consider how each sentence, paragraph, and section relates back to the main topic.  There should be enough information in each section to explain and provide evidence for each argument, but there should not be irrelevant details or redundancies. Accuracy, clarity, and organization are key for writing a good report. 
Use past tense when describing previous research, research question/purpose, method, and results. Use present tense when interpreting/drawing conclusions from the results in the discussion. Reports should be written in an active voice and be objective in tone. 
Paper Section Recommended Tense Example
Literature review (or whenever discussing other researchers’ work) Past Martin (2020) addressed Present Perfect Researchers have studiedMethod
Description of procedure Past Participants took a survey
Present Perfect Others have used similar approaches
Reporting of your own or other researchers’ results Past Results showed
Scores decreased
Hypotheses were not supported
Discussion of implications of results or of previous statements Present The results indicate
The findings mean thatPresentation of conclusions, limitations, future directions, and so forth Present We conclude Limitations of the study areFuture research should explore
Assignment Instructions 
While a full lab report may seem like a daunting task, by completing your lab assignments this semester, you have completed every section that will be included in this report. Additionally, you should have a solid draft of your Introduction and Results sections from your last two lab assignments. 
For this assignment, you will submit a full lab report on the face averaging experiment, including the introduction and results sections that you wrote in your previous two lab assignments. Ensure to check the feedback provided to you by your TAs for these two assignments and incorporate it into your final lab report. In addition to the introduction and result sections you have already written, you will need to write a method section, a discussion, and an abstract to complete the report. See the instructions below for a refresher on each of these sections. For more detail, refer to the assignment instructions you were given previously for each of these individual sections. 
Components of the Full Report
For all sections of the report ensure to follow APA 7 guidelines closely. Refer to the APA formatting document on Brightspace and the OWL Purdue website for assistance with this. 
1) Title page
• Come up with a unique title that accurately reflects the experiment (i.e., not “Full Lab Report”)2) Abstract (maximum 175 words and 3-5 keywords)
• Use the instructions below and the feedback from your TA on your previous Abstract assignments to write this section 
• On its own page (the second)
3) Introduction (maximum 2 pages)
• Use the feedback received from your TA to refine this section
4) Method (maximum 2 pages)
• Refer to the “Results methods” document on your Results Assignment folder to see how this experiment was designed
• Also use the instructions below and the feedback you received from your TA on your last Method assignment to write this section
• Include the instructions participants were given in an Appendix (see the APA formatting document on Brightspace for an example) 
• Here is an example page from the Microsoft Forms document for reference: 5) Results (maximum 2 pages not including table and figure)
• Use the feedback received from your TA to refine this section. 
*Include a note below your figure to briefly describe it. Make sure you mention what is on the x-axis, y-axis, and key features of the figure.
6) Discussion (maximum 2 pages)• Use the instructions above and the feedback you received from your TA on your last Discussion assignment to write this section
7) References 
• Follow APA 7 guidelines closely
• A minimum of 7 references.
o All articles must be an academic article (peer-reviewed article).
o All articles in the references list should also be cited in-text.
o You should already have 5 references included in your introduction. You will need to include 2 additional references in your full paper.
o Your reference list does not count toward any of the section page limits stated above.
Note: These are maximum page limits. You do not necessarily need to reach the maximum page limits to receive full marks. The following sections (Abstract, Method, Discussion) represent the pieces of the full lab report that you have completed using other research (e.g., on the color red) but will need to be completed for this experiment. Your Introduction and Results will already have been completed for this experiment. Be sure to reflect on your feedback and incorporate revisions for the full report. 
 Method
The primary purpose of a Method section is to convey how an experiment was done with sufficient detail that someone else could do that experiment. As you know, you will need a Participants section, Materials section, and a Procedure section. Refer to the document “Results Methods” in your Results assignment folder for more information on facial averaging – the procedure used in our experiment. The Method section that you previously wrote on facial attractiveness ratings is similar to the one that you will write for the Interesting Face Experiment. Use that to your advantage. 
Participants section
You and (most of) your classmates participated in this experiment. 
Note: The demographic information describing participants that you included in your Results assignment should be included here (i.e., not in the Results section). Any information about participants that you included in the Results for the full report, should be about analyses after the data was collected (e.g., exclusion criteria and missing data). This may mean revising your Results section from before.
Materials
Describe all the stimuli that you were shown while participating in the Interesting Face Experiment. Refer to the documents in the “Results Assignment” section on Brightspace to help you. 
Procedure
For the Interesting Face Experiment, you and your classmates rated pictures of human faces. The experiment procedure started when you received the link to the online survey software that showed you photos of faces. The experiment concluded when you exited this survey. Everything that occurred between these two time points was the study procedure. The only thing that you didn’t previously know is that the faces were presented in random order to each participant. 
 Discussion
The primary purpose of a Discussion section is to talk about the key results observed in your experiment and explain what the results mean in relation to your research question(s) and the context of existing evidence (i.e., are your results consistent with results from similar studies). As a reminder, the research question for this experiment was: are composite faces made up of a greater number of individual faces more interesting than composites made up of fewer individual faces? In the Discussion, do not include statistics/numbers that have already been stated in the Results section. Instead, talk about whether the results support the research question, and what the result means in the context of your paper and the existing literature.The flow of the Discussion should follow this structure: 
1. Introduction to this section.
• Reminder: this should only be a few sentences to re-orient readers to your research question before moving on to discuss your results
2. Summarizing relevant results and linking them to the research questions.
3. Interpretation of the results.
4. Drawing on relevant literature that addresses your interpretation (I.e. are your results consistent with previous work?).
5. Limitations of the study and what future research should do to address these limitations and advance our knowledge of the topic.
6. Conclusions.
7. Implications (why people should care) and how the results can be applied generally (think ecological validity!).Refer to the in-text citations you included in your Introduction to help you write your Discussion. We recommend that you use your literature review from your Introduction when interpreting your Results in your Discussion section. For example, say you cited a paper that previously found that composite female faces tend to be rated as more attractive than individual faces (i.e., one face in the photo rather than multiple averaged faces in the photo). If your results showed that interestingness ratings of female faces increase as the number of faces averaged into a composite face also increases, you may want to draw a parallel between attractiveness and interestingness. In that regard, your results build upon the previous research you cited to show that attractiveness and interestingness both increase with number of faces in the composite. The big picture implication may be that attractiveness is not distinguishable from interestingness, when evaluating human faces. Of course, this is just an example.  
 
Abstract
The Abstract is typically written after you finish your report. A scientific Abstract is a concise summary of a research paper and is the first main piece of text the reader sees. Think of it like the blurb on the back of a book, only instead, the author of the book exposes every major plot point and twist, revealing the entire book to you. Essentially, that is what we want you to do with your abstract, but instead of revealing a book, we want you to reveal your lab report in one paragraph. The Abstract of a scientific paper is arguably the most important piece. The better the abstract is, the more people will want to read your paper. So, while it may seem like the smallest, easiest part of writing a paper, it has the biggest impact. Therefore, it is crucial we get it right. 
 We want you to write your own Abstract for this full paper, based on the experiment conducted in this class. Maximum word count of 175, not including title or keywords, following APA 7 guidelines.
Remember, your Abstract should clearly depict the paper without having the reader refer back to the full text to understand the scope of the study. It is important to not include any new information that is not mentioned in the article. Only report the most important, most impactful findings of the paper which contribute to the essential “take home” message the authors are trying to convey. A good way to gauge this is to describe what you spent the most time talking about in the discussion. If you’re struggling, you can think of the Abstract section as one sentence for each section of the full article (e.g., an introductory sentence followed by a sentence on the methodology of the study, one sentence that summarizes the main/most striking results, and then a brief interpretation sentence that summarizes the implications of the result mentioned in the previous sentence. Review the Abstract structure instructions in your original Abstract assignment instructions.
 Tips for Synthesizing a Full Paper
• Remember to incorporate the feedback from your Results and Introduction assignments and generalize the feedback from your previous lab assignments for the Method, Discussion, and Abstract! 
• Use the citations that you included in your Introduction to help you write the Discussion section (i.e., refer back to the research used to set up the rationale for your experiment. Were your results consistent with that research?  did your results fill the knowledge gap that you intended to fill? Why or why not?) 
• You should be using in-text citations and providing references for any paraphrasing of other relevant literature that you include. All citations must have an entry in the reference page (i.e., all references in the reference page must refer to a citation in the paper). Reminder that plagiarism is a major academic offence. 
• Proofread the report from beginning to end when it is finished (reading it aloud by yourself or having a friend read it can be helpful here). Is it logically organized? Does it make sense? Does it flow well and are the transitions smooth? Are there any gaps that need more supporting evidence or any redundant details? 
• Your full report will be graded on both on the quality of your writing (overall writing style, smooth transitions between ideas, organization, clear logic not filled with gaps, proper length, APA formatting, use of seven or more citations, spelling and grammar) and including appropriate elements in each section of the paper (Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, References).
Assignment Requirements
• Font size 12; Times New Roman or Arial.
• Maximum of 8 pages double-spaced (not including the title page, Abstract, References, or Appendices).  See the page breakdown above. You must adhere to each section maximum. Anything over the limit described above for each section will not be graded. 
• Must be APA 7 formatted. See Purdue OWL and the APA template on Brightspace.
• No direct quoting of any source is permitted. Paraphrase or describe in your own words what the researchers found/did instead. 
Citation Resources
Refer to the APA Formatting document in Brightspace. 
Purdue Owl Link – APA 7 in-text citations:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_styl e_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_styl e_guide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html
Purdue Owl Link – APA 7 bibliography:https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_styl e_guide/reference_list_basic_rules.htmlhttps://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_styl e_guide/reference_list_author_authors.html