pap 1

Ryan J. Winter

Florida International University

Pay attention to the title page formatting above (header, page number, title, my name, and my institution)! This is the same format that YOU will use for your own title page (minus this text box, of course)!

Note: Right-click on the page number to open a link to the content in these instructions

(Select “Open Hyperlink)

1). The psychological purpose (Paper overview)

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-literature review paper will help you a). better understand the psychology topic chosen for the semester (Social Loafing, or Loafing for short), 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 (Loafing). You will also write a second literature review later in the semester (for study two), so think about Paper I as the first segment of your semester long paper. I highly recommend looking at the example Paper V to see what your final paper will look like. It will give you a good idea about how this current Paper I (as well as Papers II, III and IV) all fit together to form your final paper of the semester (Paper V).

In this current paper (Paper I), you will read five research articles, often summarizing what the authors did and found, and using that information to help support your Loafing study hypotheses. IMPORTANT: Yes, you need five references, but note that you can spend a lot of time (a page or two!) summarizing one reference but only a sentence or two summarizing others. Thus spend more time on the more relevant articles!

For Paper I, start the 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 that you plan to look at for study one. Your next paragraphs will review prior research (that is, the five references required for this paper). Make sure that you draw connections between these references rather than just listing them. Use smooth transitions between paragraphs and build a case that supports your study predictions. Your final paragraphs will use the research you just summarized to support your research hypothesis. And yes, that means you MUST include your study one predictions in Paper I (which we provided in the researcher instructions, the debriefing statement, and at the end of these instructions. Use those predictions! They go at the end of your Paper I). A good hint is to look at the literature reviews of the articles that you are using as references as you write your own paper! See what those authors did in their literature reviews and mimic their literature review style. Keep in mind that Paper I will end with your hypothesis (and your references) rather than moving directly into your study methods. In Paper II, you will pick the topic up again and discuss your study methods, results, and discussion. Paper I thus merely leads up to your study one.

2). The 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 will tell 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 your APA Formatting powerpoint presentation! Keep in mind that the research methods classes at FIU now use the 7th edition of the APA formatting manual.

Finally, Paper I is intended to help you grow as a writer. Few psychology classes give you the chance to write papers and receive feedback. This class will! We will give you extensive feedback on your first few papers in terms of content, spelling, and grammar. You will even be able to revise aspects of Paper I and include that content in future papers (notably Papers III and V). My hope is that you eventually craft a final paper that could be submitted to an empirical journal. Thus write your paper for readers who are familiar with APA style and methods but note that they may not know much about your specific study topic. Your job is to educate them on the topic (Loafing) and make sure they understand how your study design advances the field of psychology. In other words, your reader will be knowledgeable about research methodology but not your specific topic. Teach them about your topic, not methods.

In fact, your final paper in this class (Paper V), might be read by another professor at FIU and not your instructor / lab assistant. Thus write your Paper I for that “other” reader – a person who may know NOTHING about your Loafing topic and your specific study but is familiar with the mechanics of APA formatted papers and research methodology.

Note #1: The plagiarism limit for Paper I is 30%. This excludes any overlap your paper might have regarding citations, references, and hypotheses. Make sure your paper falls under 30% (or 35% if including your predictions). Also note that when you upload your paper to Canvas, Canvas does a plagiarism check through turn-it-in.com. If you submit your paper early (before others submit), your score might be low. If you happen to resubmit an updated version, your score might go up, sometimes dramatically. This is common. The later you submit, the more papers your submission is compared to, which might seem to inflate your plagiarism score. Do not be alarmed, but feel free to reach out to your instructor if it concerns you.

Note #2: I am looking for 2.5 pages minimum for Paper I (around 850 words), including your study predictions (2 pages without predictions, or around 650 words), but that is the bare minimum. If it is only 2 pages, it better be really, really good. I do not think I could write Paper I in less than three pages and do the research topic justice, so aim for 3 to 4 pages.

Note #3: Because the study topic changes each semester, I revise these paper instructions each semester. You might see some text in blue. I do that because it is easier for me to make sure I update that specific information. Unless otherwise noted, just ignore the blue color itself.

Students: Below are lengthy instructions on how to write your study one literature review. There is also a checklist document in Canvas, which I HIGHLY recommend you print out and “check off” before submitting your paper (Your graders are sticklers for APA format, so make sure it is correct! We mark off if you have a misplaced “&” or fail to italicize something that needs italics, so carefully review all your work and use the checklist! It WILL help you get a good grade). Also look at the example paper in Canvas. It will show you what we expect. We use the 7th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association for all paper formatting in this class (though note that we adhere to the professional APA paper formatting, not the separate student formatting version also present in the APA publication manual).

Yes, the information below is long, boring, and detailed. I know. I got bored writing it! While I am sorry for the length, you will appreciate the detail as you write your paper. Take ten minutes to thoroughly read these instructions. It will save you lost points in the future!

1. The header: You must have a header and page number on each page of your paper. This header will be identical on all pages (though the page number will increase)

a. Your title must also be in bold text. Make sure that every word with four or more letters starts with a capital letter. You can use lower-case letters for words like “and”, “with”, “the”, but in general start each title word with a capital letter.

a. You can also refer to the APA Format powerpoint for formatting guidance, but I suggest looking at the example papers, too. There some from prior students in this course as well as one based on a document provided by the APA. Most have comments and notes to direct you toward correct formatting.

b. Your name is placed two spaces below your title.

c. Double space everything! This includes all title page information

You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper I. Because the abstract needs to summarize the study results, you cannot write it until you run your studies. So, omit the abstract until Paper V.

1. The first page of the literature review (Page 2)

a. Make sure you have the same information in the header that you have on the title page (short title and page number). Of course, page 2 should have the number “2” in the header for the page number. (You are currently reading page six of these instructions, so you can see the number 6 in the header, since it is the sixth page).

b. The original title of your paper from the title page is repeated on the first line of page two, centered. It is IDENTICAL to the title on your title page, including the bold font type. Just copy and paste it from your title page!

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

a. Minimum citations: 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 must have a literature review, a methods section, a results section, a conclusion or discussion section, and references.

i. For Paper I, you MUST use at least three of the articles provided in the Canvas folder. You can use four if you like, but only three are required. For your fifth article, you must find a new one on your own (using library resources). There are some other requirements for this fifth article that you must follow:

1. First—and to reiterate—remember that the fifth article cannot be any of those found in the Canvas folder.

2. Second, for your fifth article, it can be based on a wide variety of topics, including Social Loafing, The Ringlemann Effect, Deindividuation, Group Work, Accountability, Teamwork. Social Learning, Group versus Individual Performance, etc.

a. Trust me, there are TONS of topics can use in your paper. Just make sure it is relevant to your study. It does not have to be about Loafing. Use your best judgment. Get creative!

i. avoid using author first names, initials, or the title of the article the author(s) wrote

ii. include the last name of the author followed by the date of publication. If there is one author, use that author’s name every time you cite. If there are two authors, use both author names every time you cite. If there are three or more authors, use the last name of the first author every time you cite followed by the phrase et al. to replace other authors.

1. One author example:

a. “According to Piper (2020) …”

b. “The author found XYZ (Piper, 2020).”

2. Two authors example:

a. “According to Piper and Holmes (2020) …”

b. “The authors found XYZ (Piper & Holmes, 2020).”

3. Three + authors example:

a. “According to Piper et al. (2020) …”

b. “The authors found XYZ (Piper et al., 2020).”

iii. Consider an author that you did not personally read, but the article was cited by an author that you did read (That is, imagine you read Evans, not Piper, but you want to discuss what Piper found). Use the format below:

1. “Piper et al. (2020, as cited by Evans, 2021) found that …”

2. For easy reference, note that the date of the “as cited by” paper should be after the publication of the paper they cited!

c. Direct quotes: If you use a direct quote, make sure to provide a page number for where you found that quote when citing the article. For example, “… as Piper found” (2020, p. 234). However, do not directly quote too often. In fact, you cannot have more than two direct quotes for Paper I. If you do, you will lose “writing quality” points. In fact, I prefer that you not quote at all.

i. I prefer paraphrasing, but still cite even when you paraphrase.

ii. If you need help with paraphrasing or writing, there are lots of resources available to you at FIU, including the writing center and the center for academic success. Visit their websites for more info:

a. 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 the APA Formatting Lecture.

b. The last part of your literature review should narrow down even further to focus on your own study, eventually ending with your study hypotheses. However, DO NOT go into specific details about your methods. You will talk about your specific study methods in Paper II in a few weeks.

i. Again, to be clear, at the end of your paper you MUST provide your specific predictions/hypotheses (See the last page of these instructions).

c. The literature review must have a minimum of two (2) full pages of text NOT INCLUDING THE HYPOTHESES (2.5 pages if you include the hypotheses, or around 850 words). If your paper is only two pages, it better be really, really good. I do not think I could do this paper topic justice in fewer than three pages, so if your paper is not at least three pages, I doubt it will get a good grade. The maximum for the literature review is five pages. Two to five pages gives you flexibility. With the predictions, title page, and the reference page, I expect a minimum of 4.5 pages to a maximum of 7.5 pages, but good papers will be around 6 pages.

1. APA reference page formatting:

a. The References section starts on its own page, with the word References centered and in bold font. Use proper APA format here (or lose points!)

2. Number of required references: All five references that you cited in the literature review must be in this section (if you cited more than five articles, then there should be more than five references, which is fine in this paper).

a. Remember, at least three references must come from the Canvas article folder, one can come from either Canvas or library resources (PsycInfo), while the last one cannot come from Canvas. Only peer-reviewed articles are allowed for paper one (no books, journals, websites, or other secondary resources).

3. APA formatting for references: For references, make sure you:

a. use alphabetical ordering (start with the last name of the first author)

b. use the authors’ last names but only the initials of their first/middle name

c. give the date in parentheses – e.g. (2020).

d. italicize the name of the journal article ( Journal of Personality)

e. give the volume number, also in italics

f. give the page numbers (not italicized) for articles

g. provide the doi (digital object identifier) if present (not italicized)

Writing quality includes proper grammar and spelling. This is a college level, scientific paper, and we hold you to high standards. I recommend getting feedback on your paper from the Pearson Writer program prior uploading it on Canvas or going to the Writing Center at FIU for some proofreading help. Below are some hints to help you with writing quality:

1. Avoid using personal pronouns like “you”, “us”, “we”, “our”, and “I”. You can use those when discussing your predictions for your own study, but avoid these pronouns when discussing the work of other authors. Stick with terms like “people”, participants”, “humans”, “users”, or similar

2. Avoid direct quotes. We prefer paraphrasing. But either way, make sure to cite the source of the information you are quoting / paraphrasing

3. Do not center or full justify your paragraphs. Use the “left justification” option. That is, select this button

The above information is required for your paper, but I wanted to give you some hints / tips about writing your literature review. Students often struggle with this first paper, but hopefully this will give you some good directions:

1. First, remember that you need 5 references, all of which MUST be peer-reviewed (three from the Canvas folder and one or two that you find on your own using PsycInfo). You can check mark the “peer-reviewed” option in PsycInfo to guarantee that you get peer-reviewed articles!

2. Second, I do not 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 discussing Article B. The amount of time you spend describing an article should be proportional to how important that article is in helping you defend your hypotheses. If a prior study looks a lot like your study, I expect you to spend more time discussing it. If an article you read simply supports a general idea that ties into your study, 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! Again, look at the literature review articles that you are citing. How did those authors set up their literature reviews, and how did they summarize the studies they read for their literature reviews? Want a valuable hint? Look at their in-text citations, too. Sometimes they cite six different studies in the same sentence. You can do the same, as long as the citations have the same general information. That is six citations taken care of all on a single sentence, one more than required! For example, consider the paragraph below, copied from a published paper. There are six references in this single paragraph!

1. What are your hypotheses?

a. This paper is all about supporting your hypotheses. Know what your hypotheses are BEFORE you write your 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 Social Loafing (Define it and discuss its origins), and then talk about studies that looked at this area. Use those studies to help you defend your own study hypothesis. That is, “Since they found X in this prior study, that helps support the hypothesis in my study”.

b. Do you remember your hypotheses? Okay, I will be really helpful here. BELOW are your study hypotheses. Use your literature review to support these hypotheses! Just remember that the rest of your paper needs to be at least two full pages NOT INCLUDING the hypotheses below.

We have two predictions. First, if participants are told that their individual total score will be the basis of the “best performance”, then they will attempt to solve more problems than those who are told their score will be pooled with the scores of two other participants (resulting in either a group total score or a group average score), with no differences expected between these two group-based conditions. Second, since prior research suggests that people tend to think that they themselves do not engage in social loafing, we predict that all participants—regardless of their study condition—will agree that they completed more math problems than the average participant.”

In other words, participants who think their individual contributions are more identifiable will work harder on the task than those who think their contribution is pooled with others, but all participants will think they worked equally hard.

Note: Use the Paper Checklist, too! It is much more detailed than this grading rubric!