Term Project
Introduction to Psychology 101-03
Hal S. Bertilson, Ph.D.
August 22, 2006

Purpose. The volunteer experience or application paper is designed to be an opportunity for students to experience the theories in more depth and to relate them to their lives. Theories that are experienced first hand and/or have application to student's lives are more useful and remembered longer.
 
Options. Option 1 is a volunteer experience and a three-page description of that experience. Option 2 is a six-page research paper.
 
Option 1 Volunteer Experience
Content of paper on their volunteer experience. Describe in three pages or more what you learned from the experience and how this experience relates to what you've learned in class.
The volunteer experience
  1. Rationale. Humanist psychology (e.g., Wade & Tavris, 2003, pp. 21-22) emphasizes the importance of personal growth, personal development, human potential, and the hopes and aspirations of people. An important aspect of humanist psychology and social psychology (Chapter 8 in Wade & Tavris) is prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior is any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person, including volunteerism. Surveys indicate that 47 percent of the population of the United States engage in community service (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert, 2002, pp. 410-411) and many high schools, colleges, and businesses require their students and employees to engage in volunteer work.
  2. Types of Volunteer Experience. This assignment is to volunteer at non-governmental organizations and social service agencies. Working for pay at an agency does not meet this requirement. Volunteering at businesses and schools are excluded and internships do not meet this requirement.
  3. Getting Started. Look in the telephone book under Social Services Organizations and make calls to see what is available. Some examples of possible volunteer experiences are the Center Against Sexual &Domestic Abuse, Duluth Emergency Food Shelf, Edgewood Vista, Safe Haven, Piedmont Group Home in Duluth, Aging Resource Center for Douglas County, Damiano Center, Boys and Girls Club of Superior, Boys and Girls Club of Duluth, nursing homes, Detox Center of Duluth, the Recovery Center, Life House, The Challenge Center, DRCC for developmentally disabled, Salvation Army Retail Store, Salvation Army Regency Office, Mentor Duluth, Harmony Club in Duluth, Villa Marina Nursing Home, etc.
  4. Time Commitment. It involves twenty hours of volunteering off campus at a charitable organization or social service agency during this semester. Volunteering at schools, courts, businesses, internships, and other non-charitable organizations do not count.
  5. Volunteer Confirmation. Attach to the paper and signed confirmation by a representative of the agency that you volunteered 20 hours.
  6. Paper. Write a double-spaced paper of three or more pages describing what you did and your reactions to the experience. Explain what theories we studied this semester in Psychology 101 that were illustrated by your volunteer experience. Describe the theory(s) and how the theory(s) informs your volunteer experience. References are acceptable, but not necessary. In addition to the three or more pages of the paper, include a cover page.
  7. Cover Page. A cover page will be included. The students name, course name, and course number will be in the upper right hand corner. This convention makes it easy to sort, record, and return student papers. The cover page will also include the date and title of the paper.
 
Option 2 Application Paper
Stages of the assignment.
  1. Students are encouraged to write a preliminary draft and submit it for comments. The draft will not be graded. It is an opportunity to confirm that your paper fits the assignment and to receive suggestions from your professor. The draft is not required, but is strongly recommended. For you to receive comments, the draft must be submitted by November 27.
  2. The final draft of the paper will be graded to the specifications described in this set of instructions. The due date is December 22. Papers submitted after this date will be discounted by one letter grade.
Evaluation. Papers must include the following elements and will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
  1. Observation--The student will describe some behavior(s) from his/her experience or from reading the current news media. The behavior might be that of one's mother, aunt, brother, friend, or self. Behavior in this sense is used broadly. For example, it might be anger, color blindness, depression, anorexia, or pain.
  2. Reason for student's interest--The intent of the paper is for the student to write about a topic that has particular interest to the student. The student will describe his/her reason for interest in the topic.
  3. Principle--The student will relate the behavior(s) to psychological theories. Be sure to describe why this behavior relates to these theories and cite the source of the theories.
  4. Topic--Topics may be any theories discussed in your textbook. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:
    Dreams
Depression
Creative intelligence
Posttraumatic stress disorder
Insomnia
Love
Anorexia nervosa		 Anger
Panic disorder
Amnesia
Altruism
Vision
Heart disease
Stress
  5. Length--Papers will be a minimum of five double-spaced pages in addition to the cover page and reference list.
  6. Definitions--Use definitions from psychology textbooks and journals. Do not use definitions from dictionaries. Such definitions were not written in operational terms nor were they written in support of psychological theories.
  7. Effectiveness of Writing Style--The paper will be graded on two criteria: (a) The degree to which the paper meets the requirements listed in this set of instructions and (b) The effectiveness of the writing style (clarity, logic, organization, readability, grammar, spelling, etc.)
  8. Nonsexist language--Masculine words such as "man" and "he" create images of men to the exclusion of women. When masculine words are used with the intention to denote people in general, both female and male, stereotypes and prejudices are reinforced. Accordingly, APA prohibits the use of sexist language.
  9. Tone--Strive for a straight-forward, interesting writing style. Avoid a flippant style (e.g., "Here's what Thorndike says.")
  10. Cover page--A cover page will be included. The students name, course number, and course name will be in the upper right hand corner. This convention makes it easy to sort, record, and return student papers. The cover page will also include date and title of the paper.
  11. Citations/References--The student must differentiate between the ideas of other authors and ideas of the student. Use the author-year citation method followed by a references list to acknowledge contributions of others. Every resource cited in your paper must be included in the references list. The convention in psychology is to acknowledge all resources used from your references. That may mean several author-year citations in a paragraph. Unless a paragraph is solely the student's ideas, it will have at least one citation. See example at the end of this document.
  12. References--There must be at least four references. One reference must be your textbook. Two other references must be another book or a journal article. In addition to these references, students may use other books, journals, personal communications, and web pages. References include only those resources cited in your paper. Those resources you read, but did not cite, are not included in the reference list. See the examples at the end of this document.
  13. Author-year citations in the body of the paper--Citations in the body of the paper generally are in the form of author surname and year (e.g., Nahbenayash, 1989). When the citation is a direct quote it is in the form of author surname, year, and page number (e.g., Bearheart, 1995, pp. 28-29).
  14. Quotations. Quotations sometimes add richness to your paper. They can capture the thinking and style of the author. Avoid, however, quoting long passages throughout your paper. Such passages detract from the readability of the paper. Papers should reflect your thoughts.
  15. Use of your textbook. When writing your paper be sure to include all the relevant information on the topic included in your textbook. For some topics such as dreams and multiple personalities your textbook describes several competing explanations. Be sure to acknowledge each of these competing theories.
  16. Data base--Psycinfo is the electronic data base most often used in psychology. You may access it through the UW-Superior homepage (http://www.uwsuper.edu). Select the following choices:
a. Jim Dan Hill Library
b. Alphabetic list of indexes with annotations
c. Under Indexes and Data Bases select |P|
d. Find Psycinfo and choose it. You will find a thesaurus, key words, author listings, title listings, and Boolean logic capabilities
Laura Jacobs, the Information Literacy Librarian, is available to answer your questions.
  17. Other sources of information--A good place to look for important studies is the reference section of a current textbook or serial (e.g., Annual Review of Psychology). You can use the UW-Superior automated catalog (sail.uwsuper.edu) to sort through their repository of books and serials. Some journals, such as Psychological Bulletin, specialize in literature reviews. The last issue of each volume contains an index. Recent years are kept in the stack on the main floor of the Jim Dan Hill Library. Older issues are kept in remote storage in the basement. A reference librarian will be happy to assist you in accessing to these resources.
  18. Importance of Author-Year Citation Method. In psychology we view the author-year citation method as standard. When reading psychology articles and books we expect the author-year citation to be used. Accordingly, there is a standard expectation in all university psychology classes that the author-year citation method be used. 10 points will be deducted from application papers that do not use the author-year method in the text and an author-year reference list. Feel free to discuss the author-year method with Dr. B. and show him a sample of your use of the method to be sure you are doing it correctly.
Examples of citations in the reference list:
  Journal articles
    Bertilson, H. S. (1986). Change seeking and shock choices. Journal of Research in Personality, 20, 363-371.
    Bertilson, H. S., Bartz, A. E., & Zimmerman, A. D. (1979). Treatment program for borderline hypertension among college students: Relaxation, finger temperature biofeedback, and generalization. Psychological Reports, 44, 107-114.
  Books
    Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2002). Social Psychology. (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
    Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2000). Psychology. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
  Chapter in an edited book
    Bertilson, H. S. (1991). Aggression. In W. Jones, B. A. Winstead, & V. Derlega (Eds.), Personality: Contemporary Theory and Research (pp. 457-480). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Citing a Web site
To cite an entire Web site (but not a specific document on the site), it's sufficient to give the address of site in the text. For example,
  Kidspsych is a wonderful interactive Web site for children (http://www.kidspsych.org).
No reference entry is needed.
For further information regarding APA guidelines for electronic reference formats see http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html or http://www.apastyle.org/elecsource.html#71 APA
Example of narrative with reference list--The following illustrates the use of the author-year citation system in the narrative with a reference list. It includes an excerpt from Bertilson (1990, p. 600).
One conclusion is that minimally aggressive strategies (passive and withdrawal) were effective in reducing the aggression of both highly aggressive and randomly selected, attack-instigated subjects. The terms passive and withdrawal strategies capture the methodology in those studies. But I believe there are theoretical advantages for identifying those strategies collectively, under one label, as the mollification strategy--using minimal force in an aggressive interchange will prevent or reduce an opponent's attack. Support for the mollification theory has been obtained in a series of studies (Bertilson, Wonderlich, & Blum, 1983, 1984; Dengerink & Bertilson, 1974; Pisano & Taylor, 1971) with both average and aggressive individuals. The Bertilson et al. (1983) study suggested that its effectiveness depends, at least in part, on communication of willingness of the subject to de-escalate the aggressive interchange.

References
Bertilson, H. S. (1990). Can aggression be justified in order to study aggression? American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 594-607.
Bertilson, H. S., Wonderlich, S. A., & Blum, M. W. (1983). Withdrawal, matching, withdrawal-matching, and variable-matching strategies in reducing attack-instigated aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 9, 1-11.
Bertilson, H. S., Wonderlich, S. A., & Blum, M. W. (1984). Withdrawal and matching strategies in reducing attack-instigated aggression. Psychological Reports, 55, 823-828.
Dengerink, H. A., & Bertilson, H. S. (1974). The reduction of attack-instigated aggression. Journal of Research in Personality, 8, 254-262.
Pisano, R., & Taylor, S. P. (1971). Reduction of physical aggression: The effects of four strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 19, 237-242.