Camryn Fiore
Prejudice Issues
1. Personal Application Assignment (PAA). This is a short (5-7 full page TYPED) paper
consisting of a thoughtful analysis of some social psychological issues. The choice of
topic area is up to you, but will most likely be developed from some idea that you have
learned about in this class. You need only to look at your work/personal/academic life in
order to come up with viable topics. For example, the lecture and reading on obedience
may bring to mind some situation where you conformed to someone’s wishes without
really feeling that it was the right thing to do. What do social psychological theories
have to say about why you did that? Or maybe the reading and lecture about the social
nature of self-image will get you contemplating your own self-consciousness (or lack
thereof) and cause you to reflect upon situations in which you feel especially self-aware.
Whatever your topic choice, you must enhance your discussion by using the information
found in TWO social psychology journal articles. I would expect you to find articles
relevant to your topic, and to summarize the theoretical basis and experimental
procedures described in the articles. The major journals in the field are The Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, The
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, The Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin. Many empirical sources can also be found online. Other
journals, such as those found in the human resources, clinical, or educational fields,
might also be used, depending upon your topic. (NOTE: Magazines for laypersons, even
those such as “Psychology Today”, are not appropriate as a primary source for this
assignment. Websites that merely provide information about a topic, as opposed to
websites containing research articles, are also unacceptable.)
The general format of a typical paper would be to spend a page or so discussing your
topic of interest: Why does it intrigue you? What have you seen in your own life or in
the observations of the social world that relate to this topic? Then you would spend two
or three pages summarizing the articles you have found. What is the general history of
the topic in the research literature? What do the authors of the articles you are using
hypothesize about the topic? How do they test their hypotheses? Who are the
participants in the study, and what is the methodology that was used? What are the
results, and what are the implications of those results? You do not have to spend a great
deal of time discussing the statistics that were utilized in the research, just summarizing
the results is fine. In the final page or pages of the paper, relate what you have read in
the articles to the observations or thoughts you have had about the topic. What have
you learned?
For example: Let’s say that you are interested in leadership, because you had an
especially negative experience working with a manager who was very harsh and
unpleasant. Write about your experience and the way in which the manager was
negative in his or her interactions with workers. Locate two articles in social psychology
or related journals about how harsh, autocratic management styles are
counterproductive (if indeed they are!) Summarize those articles, and then reflect back
to your original situation and discuss how the management style of your unpleasant
boss could have been modified.
I want to make sure that you are looking at a topic for which you will be able to locate
sufficient information, and I want to make sure that your topic is explicitly social
psychological in nature, so please email me your topic in advance. Many students are
interested in exploring such topics as self-esteem, relationships, and psychological
disorders. Topics like this are fine, but it is possible to make them too “clinical” in
nature, such as writing about the origins or treatment of disorders. You would
(obviously) have to make them more about social psychology in order to satisfy the
requirements of the paper (such as exploring the social stigma of mental illness, or the
social factors that impact the development of healthy self-esteem).
