PSY 496 Week 1 Assignment Foundations for the Final Paper

For this assignment, submit a three-to four-page document (including title and reference pages) that includes the following:

Topic: Decide upon a topic in psychology that you will address in your Final Paper. Ideally, your professional paper should integrate at least two to three aspects or areas of psychology that are particularly intriguing to you.

Spend time reviewing professional psychology literature to further familiarize yourself with your topic and generate a thesis statement.

Preapproved topics include:

Does watching violence on television make people more violent?

Do nonhumans use language?

Are intelligence tests unfairly biased against certain groups?

Does day care harm the emotional development of infants?

Are personality traits inherited?

Are all forms of therapy equally effective?

Is ethnic prejudice too ingrained to ever be eliminated?

Do violent video games make people more aggressive?

Is job satisfaction genetic?

Are our dreams an indication of our unconscious conflicts and desires?

Is psychotherapy more beneficial than psychiatric medication?

What is personality, and how is it measured?

If you do not choose one of the preapproved topics, your topic must be approved by your instructor.

Thesis Statement: Generate a thesis statement for your topic. Your thesis statement must clearly indicate the purpose of the paper.

For example: The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between cognitive therapy and behavior therapy.

For help with developing and writing your thesis statement, please visit the Purdue Online Writing Lab website.

Outline: Your outline will aid you in the process of writing by helping you to organize your ideas and to present your material in a logical form. Your outline should include a list of the key points and elements you want to include in your paper. See an example of an outline below based on the thesis statement above:

Cognitive and Behavior Therapy: Similarities and Differences

Introduction/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between cognitive therapy and behavior therapy.

Motivation/Problem Statement – Why do we care about this topic?

Approach – Briefly summarize your review of the literature.

Conclusion/Implications: What are the larger implications of your findings?

Review of the Literature

What is cognitive therapy? In cognitive therapy, clients learn to:

Distinguish between thoughts and feelings.

Become aware of the ways in which their thoughts influence their feelings in ways that are not helpful.

Evaluate critically the veracity of their automatic thoughts and assumptions.

Develop the skills to notice, interrupt, and intervene at the level of automatic thoughts “on-line,” as they happen.

What is behavior therapy?

Definition

Classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

Features common to cognitive and behavior therapy

Differences between cognitive and behavioral approaches

Research methods

Strengths and limitations of research design

Conclusion and implications

References: Your preliminary list of references should demonstrate familiarity with the professional literature as it relates to the thesis statement. Please be sure to list your references in APA format as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center and include the name of the database from which you retrieved them. Include the five to ten primary/scholarly references you plan to use in your Final Paper.