Psychology 346IC

Term Paper Assignment

This file is basically the same file as for my Psych 361 class. As a result, some of the examples and illustrations are from an assignment on sex differences in children's talk. For PSY 346IC, you will do the same thing, but you will deal with a different set of papers, all of which deal with research on attractiveness from an evolutionary perspective. The papers may be purchased at the Copy-Pro, on the corner of Atherton and Palo Verde, just off campus.

You may also add other papers not in this packet at your discretion, but it is not necessary to do so. You may see a reference to another article or book that you would like to incorporate into your presentation. Go for it. (I may be impressed!!)

In this assignment, you will do something that students, academics, public officials, and others are often called on to do: read a collection of research reports on a single subject and report on the information in them. This is a common and important kind of writing in which the writer tries to convey information in a straightforward, clear way for a reader looking for information.

You will read a small portion of a well-focused body of academic research on physical attractiveness research within an evolutionary framework. In your essay, you will concentrate on the important -- though deceptively simple -- skill of reporting accurately what you learn from the research studies and integrating them in order to develop an integrated, coherent essay.

When writers report on others' research, they are likely to have to complete the following tasks:

Task I. Your first task is to read the articles included in the research packet and summarize their findings on the research reports page. Make one research report page
for each of the seven articles and turn them in with your paper.

Research Summary Form (You will need one copy the following form for each article in the set.)

Research Summary Form

Title of Reading

Types of People Studied (for example, age, ethnicity, class):

Hypothesis of the study:

Key Topics/Terms/Concepts
 

How is this study linked to ideas derived from evolutionary theory?

Findings of the Study:

Task II: Write an outline. (This outline will appear as headings in the final version of your paper. Do not turn in a separate outline.)

The first section of your paper should be a theoretical introduction in which you discuss evolutionary theory as it relates to attractiveness. You may also present alternative competing, non-evolutionary hypotheses, as discussed, for example, in the two contributions by Langlois and colleagues. The body of your paper should also have an outline. You may organize your paper any way you want, but remember that a critical component of the paper is that it be organized topically. For example, you might organize it as follows:

I. INTRODUCTION AND THEORY

II. EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESES AND SUPPORTING DATA

A. SYMMETRY

B. UNIVERSALITY OF JUDGMENTS OF ATTRACTIVENESS

C.

D.

III. NON-EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESES AND SUPPORTING DATA

A. COGNITIVE-PROTOTYPE THEORY

IV. DISCUSSION: HOW DOES THE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FARE?

Reporting the Information. The body of your paper will report the information itself. By now, you have chosen an outline. This plan allows you to arrange your report by topics (or topically), taking one topic heading at a time and reporting all the information relevant to that topic before you proceed to another one. You will not arrange your report simply by summarizing first one study and then the next, because that would require your reader to do too much of the work you need to do. A report is more useful for a reader if it makes specific connections by topic; with full discussion of one topic and then another, readers will be able to see topical connections instead of having to make connections for themselves. In the next section (Learning More About Strategies for Reporting Information), we offer more detailed suggestions about how to report information clearly and effectively within the topics and subtopics of your report.

Task III. Write your paper. In setting up your paper, refer to the following scoring sheet which will be used to grade your paper.

Psychology 346IC Scoring Sheet

Points Possible
The STRUCTURE of your paper:

  1. Intro: Establishing Significance 6
  2. Intro: Orienting/Forecasting Statement 6
  3. Intro: Adequacy of Theoretical Summary 9
  4. Outline (Appearing as Headers in Text) 6
  5. Paragraphs Conform to Headers 6
  6. Conclusion 6
The CONTENT of Your Paper
  1. Paragraphs Contain Topic Sentences 9
  2. Key Terms/Concepts Defined 6
  3. Multiple Authors Cited/Quoted per concept 15
  4. Smooth Transitions among multiple authors 12
  5. Supporting Details 6
  6. Subjects' Age, Sex, Race, Social Class 3
Research Summaries 10

Total Structure and Content Points (100 Possible): __________

Less points for incorrect grammar, spelling, etc.: -___________

Other: _______________________________ +/-__________

_______________________________ +/-__________

Explanation of Scoring:

Introduction: Establishing Significance: The opening should take a reader who may know nothing about the subject -- and may never before have been curious about it -- and prompt that reader to want to read further and understand enough to proceed. A successful opening draws your readers in and prepares them to understand the new information you will present.
An engaging opening. Your imagined reader is someone who has a lively interest in human behavior and likes to read for information and enjoyment. Picture this reader as cruising through a magazine looking for something interesting -- and significant -- to read about.
There are several ways to draw this reader in:

  1. Relate a personal observation of men and women not understanding each other or speaking at cross purposes.
  2. Quote one passage of typical male and female speech from the research.
  3. Appeal directly to readers' interests in communicating better with
  4. everyone.
  5. Present two or three significant findings from the research.
  6. Relate a personal experience in which you have had to use different strategies in talking
  7. to men rather than women or vice versa.
Introduction: Theoretical Summary. Evolutionary and non-Evolutionary theoretical approaches to attractiveness are discussed. Here you discuss the theoretical basis of evolutionary research in the area as well as competing hypotheses.

Introduction: Orienting/Forecasting Statement. The forecasting statement tells your reader how and in what order you will present the information. It offers the reader a way to follow your report more easily and anticipate what is coming. For this report, you will not need the same kind of thesis statement you would need for an argument because you are not offering a thesis of your own. You still need to orient the reader to what is coming, however, and so you need a statement telling what you are going to report on. This statement should explain that you will report on a particular body of research on gender differences in language.

Outline. The outline that you choose should appear in the text as headers of the different sections.

Paragraphs Conform to Outline. Your paragraphs should make sense in the context of the outline. For example, if you have a header labeled 'aggravated directives', all of the material in that section to be related to that topic.

Conclusion. Summarize the key findings that you have reported on. Try your best to say how the evolutionary perspective fares. Do the data support it? Does it seem better than competing hypotheses? What future research makes sense?

Research Summaries: Good research summaries are sufficiently detailed so that they distill information from the five papers.

Paragraphs Contain Topic Sentences. Paragraphs should begin with a good topic sentence.

Key Terms/Concepts Defined. Key terms provide a powerful tool for writing an explanation or report. Naming key concepts (like 'cooperation' and 'competition') or key ways of talking (like 'directives' or 'questions') provides ways of communicating otherwise difficult material. Key terms bring order out of disorder and give a reader clear signposts for understanding a complex body of information.

In this kind of research on attractiveness, you should define key terms such as fluctuating assymetry, cognitive-prototype theory, etc.

Multiple Authors Cited/Quoted per concept. An important aspect of this assignment is integrating information from various sources into a coherent essay. As noted earlier, you can not arrange your report simply by summarizing first one study and then the next, because that would require your reader to do too much of the work you need to do. This is worth a lot of points. These writers are discussing very similar topics. There is a great deal of overlap among the papers. Therefore, you should be able to do some integration. Here's an example.

Women also seem more likely than men to use attention beginnings to initiate a conversation, to catch a person's attention during a conversation, and to promote a response. [Note the good topic sentence.] Attention beginnings are also used to emphasize the importance of a statement because they force a listener to pay close attention to the statement being said. In Fishman's study (1983), the phrase This is interesting was used as an attention beginning. In Marjorie Harness Goodwin's study (1980), the girls used something very like attention beginnings:

Pam: We gotta do em on the ground.
Pam: We gotta find some more bottles.
Pam: We gotta wash these off (p. 167)
Their use of the phrase We gotta gave Pam's statement a sense of importance that forced her listeners to pay close attention.

The writer has done several things here to help the reader. She defines Fishman's term attention beginnings, gives a brief example, and then makes the connection to Goodwin. Next, she uses a helpful illustration from Goodwin and then explains in her own words how Pam's use of We gotta can be considered an attention beginning. Note that even though Goodwin did not use the same term (attention beginnings) as Fishman, the writer has examined Goodwin's evidence closely enough to be able to apply Fishman's concepts to Goodwin's evidence. By making connections for the reader, the writer serves her reader well. These connections -- between writers and between concepts -- and the explanations that go with them make new information easier to understand and appreciate. Though each of researchers in this chapter tends to use different terms, there are nevertheless ways of connecting their research. Readers will rely on you to make connections among the terms and the ideas behind them, and the three plans we have described above all offer ways of doing so.

Supporting Details: Good papers provide plenty of detail -- examples that elaborate and enrich the paper.

Subjects' Age, Sex, Race, Social Class: This information is often important for comparing research.

Referring to Your Sources. Since this is a report about research, you will need to refer constantly to the research itself -- and the researchers. In a report on research, any ideas that come from a particular researcher -- including facts, theories, and interpretations, as well as direct quotations -- need to be attributed to that researcher. Referring accurately to sources involves more than merely inserting page references every time you quote a source. Ideas, findings, interpretations, and summaries that you take from the research also require clear references to their sources.

Most social science researchers do not often quote directly from the other researchers they cite because what is important is not the words that other researchers use to explain themselves, but a summary of their findings, their key terms, and important examples from their data.

Citing Sources
Because this chapter's readings are central to your essay, you will be referring to them constantly as you report on their information. And when you refer to sources, you must cite them, that is, identify the source. References in the body of the paper are in APA style: References in the body of the paper are by name(s) of author(s), followed by year of publication in parentheses (Kleiman, 1981). For references authored by more than two contributors use the first author's name and et al. (Plomin et al., 1989). For multiple citations in the same year use a,b.c after year of publication (Jones, 1987a).

You should conclude your paper with a reference list in the following style:

Plomin, R., McClearn, G. E., Pedersen, N. L., Nesselroade, J. R., & Bergeman, C. S. (1989). Genetic influence on adults' ratings of their current family environment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 791-803.
Kleiman, D. G. (1981). Correlations among life history characteristics of mammalian species exhibiting two extreme forms of monogamy. In R. D. Alexander & D. W. Tinkle (Eds.), Natural selection and social behavior (pp. 332-344). New York: Chiron Press.
Guttentag, M., & Secord, P. F. (1983). Too many women: The sex ratio question. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.