Glendale Community College Observations Reflective Paper

I’m working on a psychology report and need a sample draft to help me study.

Much of the learning process comes from reflection and seeing how new information relates to you own life. This is not a research assignment, but a paper where you apply what you have learned in this course to observations you have made of people’s behaviors—both your own and other individuals.

This is not a diary where you just write down what you experienced during the day. It should include in-depth explanations of how your observations relate to social psychology. For example, perhaps you saw 2 people getting into an argument. You can relate this to the theories on the causes and types of aggression. Maybe a coworker was showing prejudicial attitudes. You can explain this behavior by relating it to the section on prejudice, or the development of attitudes (or both!)

I recommend that you take some notes every day of your observations. The people you observe can include yourself, family, friends, strangers, even a current event you viewed on TV or social media. The observations can include not only behaviors, but attitudes and beliefs as well. Once it is time to write your paper, you can then go back and select your best examples. These should be recent observations, and not from the past.

Must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. You may need to reset your default margins. DO NOT justify (line up) your right margin. Please use only Times or Times New Roman font, set at 12 points. With correct spacing and font, there will be 23 lines per page. The paper needs to be 6-7 pages in length (papers will be penalized if short on the length requirement or incorrectly formatted.) A 6 page paper using Times New Roman 12 point font should have a minimum of 2400 words.

Ideally, there should be 10-12 observations; however, if fewer examples are tied in depth into 3-4 different concepts, that would also be sufficient. Try to avoid repeating concepts. I don’t want you to have five examples of conformity.

All papers submitted will be checked for non-original materials using SimCheck. It checks websites, books, other students’ papers, etc. When you submit your paper to Canvas, it is automatically checked by SimCheck. Please do not copy & paste paragraphs from web pages into your paper or submit another student’s paper or a paper from a term paper website. It will be red-flagged by SimCheck and you will receive 0 on the assignment. This also includes materials from papers you personally have submitted in prior classes. It will even detect a paper that has been “rewritten.” Please submit your paper in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (rtf) only! Grading is based on the level of reflection and analysis in your paper. The description of the observations should be very brief, with the main focus on explaining how the example demonstrates the concept(s).

compliance example

internalization example

representative example

primacy effect example

recency effect example

direct experience example

operant conditioning example

appeal to reason vs. appeal to emotion example

frame of mind example

contrast effects example

actor observer bias example

catharsis example

biochemical influences of aggression example

learned aspects example

hostile aggression example