Purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review

Purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review

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-lit review will help you a). better understand the psychology topic chosen for the course this semester (color priming), 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 (color priming). Of course, you’ll be doing a study two literature review later in the semester, so think of this Paper I as the first part of your semester long paper. I recommend looking at the example Paper V, actually, to see what your final paper will look like. It might give you a better idea about how this current paper (as well as Papers II, III, and IV) all fit together into your final paper of the semester.

In this current paper (Paper I), you will read five research articles, summarize what the authors did and what they found, and use those summaries to support your color priminghypothesis. IMPORTANT: Yes you need five references, but keep in mind that you can spend a lot of time summarizing a few of them and just a sentence or two summarizing others. Thus spend more time on the more relevant summaries!

For this paper, start your 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 you plan to look atfor study one. Your next paragraphs will review prior research (those five references required for this paper). Make sure to draw connections between these papers, using smooth transitions between paragraphs. Your final paragraphs should use the research you just summarized to support your research hypothesis. In other words, this first paper will look like the literature reviews for the fiveresearch articles you are summarizing for this assignment. Use those articles as examples! See what they did and mimic their style! Here, though, you will end the paper after providing your hypothesis. In Paper II, you will pick the topic up again, but in that future paper you will talk about your own study methods and results.