Study One

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW INSTRUCTIONS 1

Instructions for Paper I: Study One Literature Review Instructions (Worth 25 Points)

Ryan J. Winter

Florida International University

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 2

Purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review

1). Psychological Purpose

This paper serves several purposes, the first of which is helping you gain insight into

research papers in psychology. As this may be your first time reading and writing papers

in psychology, one goal of Paper I is to give you insight into what goes into such papers.

This study one-lit review will help you a). better understand the psychology topic chosen

for the course this semester (Facebook Consensus), b). learn about the various sections of

an empirical research report by reading five peer-reviewed articles (that is, articles that

have a Title Page, Abstract, Literature Review, Methods Section, Results Section, and

References Page), and c). use information gathered from research articles in psychology

to help support your hypotheses for your first study this semester (Facebook Consensus).

Of course, you’ll be doing a study two literature review later in the semester, so think of

this Paper I as the first part of your semester long paper. I recommend looking at the

example Paper V, actually, to see what your final paper will look like. It might give you a

better idea about how this current paper (as well as Papers II, III, and IV) all fit together

into your final paper of the semester.

In this current paper (Paper I), you will read five research articles, summarize what the

authors did and what they found, and use those summaries to support your Facebook

Consensus study hypothesis. IMPORTANT: Yes you need five references, but keep in

mind that you can spend a lot of time (a page or two!) summarizing one of them and a

sentence or two summarizing others. Thus spend more time on the more relevant articles!

For this paper, start your paper broadly and then narrow your focus (think about the

hourglass example provided in the lecture). My suggestion is to give a brief overview of

your paper topic in your opening paragraph, hinting at the research variables you plan to

look at for study one. Your next paragraphs will review prior research (those five

references required for this paper). Make sure to draw connections between these papers,

using smooth transitions between paragraphs. Your final paragraphs should use the

research you just summarized to support your research hypothesis. And yes, that means

you MUST include your study predictions (which we provided in the researcher

instructions and the debriefing statement. Use them!). In other words, this first paper will

look like the literature reviews for the five research articles you are summarizing for this

assignment. Use the articles you are using as references as examples! See what they did

and mimic their style! Here, though, you will end the paper after providing your

hypothesis. In Paper II, you will pick the topic up again, but in that future paper you will

talk about your own study methods and results.

2). APA Formatting Purpose

The second purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review is to teach you proper

American Psychological Association (APA) formatting. In the instructions below, I tell

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 3

you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific

requirements in APA papers, so pay attention to the instructions below as well as Chapter

14 in your textbook!

3). Writing Purpose

Finally, this paper is intended to help you grow as a writer. Few psychology classes give

you the chance to write papers and receive feedback on your work. This class will! We

will give you extensive feedback on your first few paper in terms of content, spelling,

and grammar. You will even be able to revise aspects of Paper I and include them in

future papers (most notably Papers III and V). My hope is that you craft a paper that

could be submitted to an empirical journal. Thus readers may be familiar with APA style

but not your specific topic. Your job is to educate them on the topic and make sure they

understand how your study design advances the field of psychology.

In fact, your final paper in this class (Paper V), might be read by another professor at

FIU and not your instructor / lab assistant. Write your paper for that reader - the one who

may know NOTHING about your topic and your specific study.

Note: The plagiarism limit for this paper is 30% (though this excludes any overlap your paper

might have with regard to citations, references, and the hypotheses). Make sure your paper falls

under 30% (or 35% if including predictions).

Note: I am looking for 2.5 pages minimum with predictions.

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 4

Instructions for Paper I: Study One Literature Review (Worth 25 Points)

Students: Below are lengthy instructions on how to write your study one literature review. There

is also a checklist document in Canvas, which I recommend you print out and “check off” before

submitting your paper (we are sticklers for APA format, so make sure it is correct! We mark off

if you have a misplaced “&”, so carefully review all of your work and use the checklist! It will

help). Also look at the example paper in Canvas. It will show you what we expect.

1. Title Page: I expect the following format. (5 Points)

a. You must have a header and page numbers on each page.

i. If you don’t know how to insert headers, ask your instructor or watch this

very helpful video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbUoNa5tyY.

ii. The header goes at the top of the paper and it is left justified.

1. Use “Insert Headers” or click on the top of the page to open the

header. Make sure to select the “Different first page” option so that

your title page header will differ from subsequent pages

2. The R in Running head is capitalized but the “h” is lower case,

followed by a colon and a short title (in ALL CAPS). This short

running head title can be the same one as the rest of your paper or

it can differ – the choice is yours, but it should be no more than 50

characters including spaces and punctuation

3. Insert a page number as well. The header is flush left, but the page

number is flush right.

iii. Want an example header? Look at the title page of these instructions! You

can use other titles depending on your own preferences (e.g. SOCIAL

MEDIA AND CONSENSUS; CONFORMITY; JUDGING OTHERS;

etc.).

b. Your Title should be midway up the page. Again, see my “Title” page above as an

example of the placement, but for your title try to come up with a title that helps

describe your study one. Avoid putting “Paper One”. Rather, consider the titles

you saw in PsycInfo. Create a similar title that lets the reader know what your

paper is about

c. Your name (First Last) and the name of your institution (FIU) beneath the title.

For this class, only your own name will go on this paper. Double space

everything!

i. You can also refer to Chapter 14 in your powerpoints and/or Smith and

Davis textbook

d. This Title Page section will be on page 1

2. Abstract?

a. You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper I. In fact, you cannot write it until you

run both study one and two (as the abstract highlights the results), so omit the

abstract for now

3. Literature Review Section (12 points)

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 5

a. First page of your literature review (Page 2)

i. Proper header with page numbers. Your running head title will appear in

the header of your page WITHOUT the phrase “Running head”. To insert

this header, use the headers program.

ii. The title of your paper should be on the first line of page two, centered. It

is IDENTICAL to the title on your title page. Just copy and paste it!

iii. The beginning text for your paper follows on the next line

b. Citations for the literature review

i. Your paper must cite a minimum of five (5) empirical research articles

that are based on studies conducted in psychology. That is, each of the five

citations you use should have a literature review, a methods section, a

results section, a conclusion/discussion, and references.

1. For Paper I, you MUST use at least three of the five articles

provided in the Canvas folder. You can use four if you like, but

you must use three at minimum – however, you cannot use all five.

For that fifth article, you must find it using PsycInfo. There are

some other conditions for this fifth article that you must follow:

a. First, remember that the fifth article cannot be any of the

five found in the Canvas folder.

b. Second, for your fifth article, it can be based on a wide

variety of topics, including general priming studies, studies

on consensus or conformity (without a social media angle),

studies on social media (without a consensus or conformity

angle), studies on impression formation, studies on friends,

studies on informational social influence or morality etc.

Trust me, there are TONS of topics that can help you in

your paper. Just choose one that will help you support your

experimental hypothesis for your Facebook Consensus

study. That is, it has to help you justify your study one

hypothesis (all students are using this same hypothesis, so

make sure to read it. You can find it in the researcher

instructions along with the questionnaires you are giving to

participants. I actually suggest copying and pasting that

hypothesis into this first paper at the end).

c. Finally, you can have more than five references if you

want, but you must have a minimum of five references.

ii. Proper citations must be made in the paper – give credit where credit is

due, and don’t make claims that cannot be validated.

iii. If you use a direct quote, make sure to provide a page number for where

you found that quote in the citations. Do not directly quote too often,

though. You can have no more than three direct quotes in the whole

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 6

paper (though zero quotes would be even better). Instead, I would like

you to paraphrase when possible.

c. Requirements for the information in your literature review

i. Your study one literature review should use prior research as a starting

point, narrowing down the main theme of your specific project – think

about the hourglass example from Chapter 14 in Smith and Davis.

ii. The last part of your literature review should narrow down your focus onto your own study, eventually ending in your study hypothesis. However,

DO NOT go into specific details about your methods. You will talk about

your specific methods in Paper II in a few weeks.

iii. Again, to make it clear, at the end of your paper you will give an overview of your research question, providing your specific predictions/hypotheses.

d. The literature review must have minimum of two (2) full pages NOT INCLUDING THE HYPOTHESES (2.5 pages with the hypotheses). It has a

maximum of five (5) pages (thus, with the title page and references page, the

paper should be between 4.5 and 7 pages). If it is only four and a half pages

(again, including the hypotheses), it better be really, really good. I don’t think I

could do this paper justice in fewer than five pages, so if yours isn’t at least five

pages, I doubt it will get a good grade.

4. References (6 points)

a. The References section starts on its own page, with the word References centered. Use proper APA format in this section or you will lose points.

b. All five references that you cited in the literature review must be in this section (there should be more than five references here if you cited more than five

articles, which is fine in this paper). However, at least three must come from the

article folder on Canvas while the remaining two can come from either the last

Canvas paper or two new ones from psychinfo. Only peer-reviewed articles are

allowed here (no books, journals, websites, or other secondary resources are

allowed for paper one).

c. For references, make sure you: i. use alphabetical ordering (start with the last name of the first author)

ii. use the authors’ last names but only the initials of their first/middle name iii. give the date in parentheses – e.g. (2007). iv. italicize the name of the journal article v. give the volume number, also in italics

vi. give the page numbers (not italicized) for articles vii. provide the doi (digital object identifier) if present (not italicized)

5. Writing Quality (2 Points)

a. This includes proper grammar and spelling. I recommend getting feedback on your paper from the Pearson Writer program prior uploading it on Canvas.

6. Between the title page, literature review, and reference page, I expect a minimum of 4

pages and a maximum of 7 pages for this assignment. But like I said, the shorter the

paper, the less likely it is to get a good grade, so aim for 5 pages minimum.

The above information is required for your paper, but I wanted to provide a few tips about

writing your literature review as well. Students often struggle with the first paper, but hopefully

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 7

this will give you some good directions:

• First, remember that you need 5 references, all of which MUST be peer-reviewed (three coming from the Canvas folder and one or two that you find on your own using

PsycInfo).

• Second, I don't expect a lengthy discussion for each and every article that you cite. You might spend a page talking about Article A and a sentence or two on Article B. The

amount of time you spend describing an article you read should be proportional to how

important it is in helping you defend your hypotheses. See if there is a prior study that

looks a lot like yours (hint – there is at least one, which I based this study on, but you’ll

have to find it on your own!). I would expect you to spend more time discussing that

prior research since it is hugely relevant to your own study. If an article you read simply

supports a global idea that ties into your study but has very different methods (like

"frustrated people get mad!"), you can easily mention it in a sentence or two without

delving into a lot of detail. Tell a good story in your literature review, but only go into

detail about plot elements that have a direct bearing on your study!

• Third, this paper is all about supporting your hypotheses. Know what your hypotheses are before you write the paper, as it will help you determine how much time to spend on each

article you are citing. My suggestion is to spend some time describing the nature of

consensus and conformity, and then talking about studies that looked at this area. Use

those studies to help defend your own study hypothesis. That is, “Since they found X in

this prior study, that helps support the hypothesis in the present study”. Do you remember

your hypotheses? Okay, I’ll be really helpful here. BELOW are your hypotheses. In your

paper, support it! Just remember that the rest of your paper needs to be at least two full

pages NOT INCLUDING the hypothesis below. In other words, including the

hypotheses below, your actual text for your paper should be at least two and a half pages!

In general, we predict that participants who read unanimously supportive

feedback will rate the Facebook user’s conduct as more acceptable than

participants who read unanimously oppositional feedback, with those

who read mixed feedback falling between these extremes.

More specifically, participants in the unanimously supportive condition

will more strongly agree with supportive survey statements (“Abigail’s

behavior was understandable, “Abigail’s behavior was reasonable”,

“Abigail’s behavior was appropriate”, “I would advise Abigail to keep

silent”, and “I would try to comfort Abigail”) and more strongly

disagree with oppositional survey statements (“Abigail’s behavior was

wrong”, “Abigail’s behavior was unethical”, “Abigail’s behavior was

immoral”, and “Abigail’s behavior was unacceptable”) compared to

participants in the unanimously oppositional condition, with participants

in the mixed condition falling between these extremes. However,

participants in both the unanimously supportive and unanimously

oppositional conditions will strongly agree that they would give Abigail

the same advice that her friends gave her.

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 8

• Fourth, make sure to proofread, proofread, proofread! Use the Pearson Writer for help, but note that their suggestions are just that – suggestions. It is up to you to make sure the

flow of the paper is easy to understand. Good luck!

• Fifth, go look at the supporting documents for this paper. There is a checklist, a grade rubric, and an example paper. All will give you more information about what we are

specifically looking for as well as a visual example of how to put it all together. Good

luck!

• Finally, note that you have a lot of help available to you. You can go to the Research Methods Help Center (which is staffed by research methods instructors and teaching

assistants). You can go to the Writing Center in the Green Library (at MMC) and get help

with writing quality. You can attend workshops from the Center for Academic success

(CfAS) focusing on APA formatting, paraphrasing, and statistics. Your instructor might

even be willing to give you extra credit for using these resources, so make sure to ask

your instructor about it.