Reflection Paper Prejudice
The purpose of this assignment is to help students explore the power of social influences and apply knowledge learned in the classroom and apply it to your life. You will apply your knowledge of social psychology and are expected to write a paper that incorporates concepts, theories, and empirical findings discussed through lectures and readings, as well as one psychological research paper you find on your own which you will cite (APA style).
Components: 1. Choose and describe one social psychological phenomenon (e.g., fundamental attribution bias) that your paper will be on. Make sure to define and discuss the construct of the psychological factor/bias/occurrence/phenomenon that you are discussing—this can be the definition described in the textbook, any of the other class materials, or a description/definition found from your other psychological research paper/article that you will be writing on. For example, describe what the fundamental attribution bias is, how psychologists first came to understand what it is, what possible examples of it might be, and if there are other psychological theories that might be related to it (e.g., in-group v. out-group effects). (This section should probably be no more than a few sentences to a paragraph).
2. Describe your personal experience with the social psychological phenomena that you have chosen (e.g., time(s) when you yourself were applying the fundamental attribution bias and judging/describing someone based on dispositional factors and not considering or discounting situational factors). Students will write about their own behavior at the time of the experience (i.e., what you did or what was done to you) as well as their possible thoughts and emotions before, during, and after the experience. For instance, students can write how they were thinking/feeling during the actual event and how they look back on the experience now (e.g., you did not realize that you were judging someone in terms of dispositional factors at the time but now, looking back, you realize that situational factors could have contributed to your judgment/attitude toward that individual). (This section should probably be two to three paragraphs: one describing the situation, another describing your post hoc reaction to it, having now known about the social psychological aspect).
3. Relate the social psychological phenomenon you have chosen and your experience with it to a psychology research article (i.e., through the library and a PsychInfo search). Students should briefly relate their experience to a theory, description, or finding from the research article. For instance, “Smith et al. (2017) found that individuals tend to engage in and apply the fundamental attribution error when encountering individuals from an out-group, relative to an in-group member. This was also the case relative to my own experience with the fundamental attribution error, as I was judging someone of a different racial group than me in dispositional terms (i.e., lazy); however, when someone from my own racial in-group engaged in the same behavior, I found myself more likely to think of the behavior in terms of situational variables (i.e., she was probably stuck in traffic). Students must cite their research article in APA format – both in-text citation (see the Smith et al. (2017) example above) as well as a final references page with your one reference in APA format (see below for example):
Riggio, H. R., & Garcia, A. L. (2009). The power of situations: Jonestown and the fundamental attribution error. Teaching Of Psychology, 36(2), 108-112. doi:10.1080/00986280902739636
4. Lastly, students will also be graded on grammar, spelling, formatting, and the cohesiveness of their writing. So please read over, double-check, and spell check your paper before handing it in. Papers must be submitted as either Word documents or PDFs. Papers should have 1” margins on all sides, be double-spaced, and be written in 12-point Times New Roman font.
Grading Criteria:
• 1) Social Psychological Phenomenon: ____
/ 25 points • 2) Personal Experience: ____
/ 30 points • 3) Relation to Research: ____ / 30 points • 4)
Organization, Syntax, Mechanics: ____ / 15 points • Total:
____ / 100 points
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