General Psychology Application Essay Over the course of the class, we have discussed a number of different psychological concepts and theories. For your paper you will be asked to connect a real life experience or observation with a concept or theory from lecture and/or your textbook. Your assignment should include three sections, as follows: 1) Section 1: A brief description of a personal experience or observation that is related to a psychological concept/theory. Write this section as if you were telling a friend a story about something that happened to you personally, or something that you observed. a. For example, you could describe your own experiences with attachment, memory, conditioning, sensation & perception, etc. or an observation of someone else’s experiences (parents, children, grandparents, friends, etc.) b. This section should only include your experience/observation, do not include any psychology. 2) Section 2: A brief explanation of the theory, research or psychological principle dealing with your experience/observation described in Section 1. Write this section as though you were explaining a concept to a friend who had never heard of it before (which means define and describe words like ‘attachment’ or ‘operant conditioning’). Think of this section as a “mini- report” on your concept/theory/psychological principle. a. For example: Top-down processing, classical conditioning, Piaget, mnemonics, etc. b. This section requires at least one citation, from your textbook. If you would like to include additional citations from outside sources, you are more than welcome to. c. This section should only include a description of the psychological principle. Do not include or relate it to your own experience. 3) Section 3: This will be a combination of the first two sections. Discuss and evaluate how well the research or theory explains your observation/experience. a. Remember that in lecture we always discuss what happens on average, and there are Additionally: always individual differences. So your experience may be quite different than the average experience. Or, you may have listened in lecture and thought “That’s exactly how it was!” This section asks you to describe what matched up, and what did not. b. Include questions or thoughts that this example has raised for you. 1) Assignment should be approximately 2 – 5 pages. Typed, double-spaced. 2) Your assignment should cover one psychological principle/theory/concept 3) NO QUOTES allowed, instead paraphrase information into your own words. 4) Please proof-read and spell-check your paper. You can lose points for poor grammar, organization and spelling. 5) This is not an essay, you do not need (nor should you have) an intro and a conclusion and a cover page, etc. Instead, break your assignment up into the three sections outlined above. 6) If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask!
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