Psychology Assignment

For this response paper, you are still required to write a 300-500-word response paper.

A response paper requires you to concisely articulate a concept or a topic you have learned from the course. This helps you become a more active learner, which means that you look for clues and ask questions as you learn, rather than passively accept what is in the textbook or instructor’s lecture. In addition, response papers also help me (and the TA) know how you are doing in the course, as they allow us to see how well you comprehend the material you read and watch.

Please double check that your submission on canvas is successful, especially if you submit your paper close to the deadline. Late submission due to failure in uploading will NOT be accepted.

Response Paper 3 Instruction

For this paper, please choose one of the following topics:

Topic A: Evolutionary psychology and personality

Topic B: Biological perspectives on personality

Topic C: Defense mechanism and personality

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Topic A: Evolution theory is a powerful tool to explain the nature and the origin of human psychological function. For personality psychology, it provides a framework to understand personality as “the psychological mechanisms designed in response to the social adaptive problems recurrently faced by our ancestors” (Michalski & Shackelford, 2010). Find out more about how personality is studied from the evolutionary perspective.

Topic B: For this topic, you can talk about anything relevant to behavioral genetics, Hans Eysenck’s model, BAS/BIS as well as hormones’ influence on personality, which are covered in Chapter 6 & 7. Studies from these perspectives are critical to substantiate our understandings of personality from the trait, the motive and other perspectives that treat human personality as a construct.

Topic C: Defense mechanism is a very important concept to understand human personality. The concept originated from the psychoanalysis perspective, but its application goes way beyond the field. Pick one or two of the defense mechanisms we talked about in the class and apply it in analyzing the behaviors of someone you know or yourself.

Write in essay form, not in a list or series of bullets. I want to see how you connect topics and move from one point to the next, both within and between paragraphs.
Write no more than one page (Times Roman, 12pt font, single-spaced, 1-inch margin). You might leave the reference on the second page. However, you will lose points for more than one page of content.
Both the in-text citation and reference have to be in APA style. At least one reference in APA style (APA documentation)
Submit your response paper in Canvas.

Paragraph 1: Tell me what you have learned about the topic you choose. Explain the main concepts and ideas that were introduced and explored the topic based on the textbook and lecture materials from the class.

Paragraph 2: Cruise the Internet and learn more about the topic. Describe and explain the new information you have found about the topic. Provide the reference information for where you found the information in APA style.

Paragraph 3: Apply what you have learned about the topic to analyze a real-life event. It can be your life experience, public matter or life stories you hear from others (e.g. the functionality of certain personality from the evolutionary perspective or how to detect defense mechanism in daily communication).

Writing tips: Here are some general tips on how to paraphrase a source: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/quotingsources/Links to an external site.

Here is an example of paraphrasing plagiarism.

https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/example1paraphrasing.html (Links to an external site.)

If you were found out paraphrasing without in-text citation or copying from other sources, you will earn a zero in this assignment.