Building a Rationale Assignment Psychology Research Paper

Building a Rationale Assignment: PSYC1001 Term 2, 2020 Due: 4pm on Friday 24th July (Week 8) This assignment is worth 45% of your final mark for PSYC1001 AIMS The aim of this assignment is to develop skills in creating the introductory section of a formal scientific report. Firstly, you will perform a search to find literature related to the topic in question and review this literature. Additionally, you will think creatively and logically in order to develop a novel idea for an experiment, which extends the research literature in your review. BACKGROUND An important series of experiments in the field of social psychology are Solomon Asch’s studies of group pressure/conformity. Asch demonstrated that people would often provide incorrect answers in very simple tasks that should have been easy, when in the presence of a group of people who also answered incorrectly. Variants of Asch’s experiments tell us about the factors that affect conformity and group pressure, and so are still relevant today. Watch Dr Phillip Zimbardo discussing the Asch experiments here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA INSTRUCTIONS For this assignment you will complete two short sections of written work: 1) an introduction, which should review the relevant literature and 2) a rationale for your proposed experiment. Generally, in an academic report these two sections together would form the “Introduction” but here we would like you to separate them for the purpose of marking, and to ensure you include sufficient content in each section. The requirements for each section are detailed below. Reading and preparation You will need to read the article by Mori & Arai (2010) available on the Moodle page under the assessments tab. This article is an exploratory study based on Asch’s experiments; it uses a small number of participants to explore some new aspects of group pressure and conformity. In addition to reading the Mori & Arai (2010) paper, you should also conduct a literature search to find at least TWO additional papers of your choosing, which relate to the Asch experiment, or to conformity more broadly. You are not expected to conduct an extensive literature search but should demonstrate that you have found and read important and useful academic papers on the topic, and that you understand their significance. The papers that you decide to review will determine the rationale for the experiment you present and in this sense it is important you find papers on an aspect of the topic that is interesting to you (HINT: quickly determine the broad issues covered by a paper by reading the abstract). You must include a reference section at the end of your report. Citations and references should be in APA format and details of this formatting convention can be found in the APA referencing tutorial on Moodle. WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR BUILDING A RATIONALE ASSIGNMENT Introduction (Maximum 600 words) You should start with a general introduction to the phenomenon of group pressure/conformity, and to the Asch experiments. You may want to draw the reader into this body of work by placing it in the context of a real-world example. Why is this research important in general to psychologists, and to the layperson? You should then describe the work presented in the literature you have read, discussing the key theoretical ideas behind conformity and group pressure, and critically analysing the research you have found. You should not simply copy text from these articles: this is plagiarism. It is your job to simplify the concepts and present them as a coherent introduction. You need to be careful to present a suitable level of detail: enough such that a reader who is unfamiliar with the work can follow what you are saying, whilst minimising irrelevant information and keeping within the word limit. Aim to write concisely and efficiently to express the points you wish to communicate. See more details about how to write an introduction below. Rationale (Maximum 400 words) The rationale section should start by focusing on the literature you have covered: what do these studies collectively tell us, and what key questions remain? You will then use the literature you have reviewed as a springboard for your own idea for an experiment. There are a great number of potentially important and interesting research questions that you could propose, and there is no correct answer. You must however explain clearly to the reader why you are choosing to do that research, and how it relates to your literature review by targeting a research “gap” you have identified. Some potential strategies for choosing a research question, designing your research, and rationalising it: - You may have identified a problem with the original studies. Propose a new experiment that fixes this problem, and describe in general terms how your experiment would be conducted. - The experiment you design may follow-up the research findings reported by Mori & Arai (2010) and explore issues the authors raise in their study. How can you test the ideas they present in their discussion section? - The authors also suggest that the MORI technique can potentially be used to help understand the reasons for people’s conformity, so you might also think of research questions relating to conformity that can benefit from the use of this technique, and design a study to address them. - Mori & Arai (2010) propose that their MORI technique is useful to replicate the Asch studies without the use of confederates. Can you think of any other ways to conduct these studies that overcome some limitations with the MORI technique? You are not required to give precise details about the materials or apparatus to be used in the experiment, but you should provide enough detail to enable the reader to understand the logic of the experiment you are proposing. Your experiment should be justified in a logical way; just because an experiment is novel (i.e. has never been done) does not mean it will be useful. It is your job to convince your marker that the experiment you propose will be useful for this field of research, using the literature you have reviewed to support your argument. INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION Submission This assignment should be completed using a word processor. Please clearly mark your sections as “Introduction” and “Rationale”. Add a word count for each section. Upload your document to the Turnitin link entitled “Building a Rationale” which will be visible in the ‘Assessment’ tab on the Moodle course site; AND ALSO email to your tutor by 4pm on Friday 24th July 2020 (Week 8). Tutors’ email addresses can be found in the Course Outline. Word limit Reports that go beyond the word limit will receive a 5% penalty. Late submissions For reports submitted late without acceptable reason (but before the final submission deadline, see below) a penalty of 2% will be deducted for each day it is overdue, including weekend days. A 'day', in this context, refers to 24 hours; thus if your assignment is due on Friday at 4pm and you submit it on Saturday at 5pm, you will be penalized 4% for being 2 days late. The date/time stamp on the Turnitin copy will be used to determine whether a report is overdue. Late submissions may not receive detailed feedback. See Section 5.3 of the Course Outline for more information regarding special considerations for an extension. Failure to submit your assignment by the final deadline (Friday August 7th) may be regarded as a failure to meet the requirements of the course. If you fail to submit this assignment by the final deadline you may receive a grade of Unsatisfactory Fail (UF), regardless of your performance in other components. See the Course Outline for information about course requirements. Plagiarism The report must be your own, independent work. It will, of course, be based on your reading and on the material provided on the assignment sheet, but it should not be simply a restatement of this material. Presenting other people’s work as your own is plagiarism and this is a serious academic offense. Although it is often useful to discuss the content of an assignment with other students, you should be very careful when preparing your report to ensure that it represents your own unique work; this is not a group assignment. It is also inappropriate to use a large amount of quotes from other studies. Try to only use quotes when referring to a set definition or a quote from an interview. See Section 6 of the Course Outline for more information regarding plagiarism. Return of marks Your marked assignment will be available on Moodle sometime in the week starting Aug 10th. An announcement will be made on Moodle once the marks have been released. See section 5.4 of the Course Outline for more information on assessment feedback. EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU COULD INCLUDE IN YOUR ASSIGNMENT • Definitions of key concepts • Findings from previous literature • Similarities, differences or patterns across previous research findings • Explanation of what findings tell us about conformity/group pressure • Limitations of previous research or gaps in previous research TIPS ON GETTING A GOOD MARK • Read instructions and the marking rubric (available on Moodle) carefully before starting. • Rather than just describe what previous studies have done, ensure that you critically analyse information (https://student.unsw.edu.au/critical-thinking). • Ensure that your experiment has a strong rationale which links to the literature that you have reviewed. • Get some easy marks by making sure that you structure your writing in paragraphs, and that your referencing is APA style (https://student.unsw.edu.au/apa). • Use the Smartthinking service (see section on Moodle) to get feedback on your work before submission. • For further help, you can always book a consultation with The Learning Centre: https://student.unsw.edu.au/writing THE “INTRODUCTION” OF A SCIENTIFIC REPORT/ARTICLE A scientific report is different to an essay. A scientific report primarily includes the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion: In this assignment, you will only need to concentrate on the introduction section. The main goal of the introduction is to convey basic information to the readers without obligating them to investigate previous publications and to provide clues as to the results of the present study. You should write your introduction without requiring us to find other important information from additional resources. Start general before providing specific details justifying your proposed study: