How to write a psychology essay

Carefully read the essay topic and follow your tutor’s guidance.

  • This is one of the easiest ways to fail to do well. It happened to me once at the start of my second year of study. My tutor said that my essay was good, but I did not address the question well. Essays about altruistic behaviour can vary a lot depending on what you are asked to do, and what year you are.
  • In the first year of study, tutors will expect less critical thinking than in the third year when it will be mandatory for getting As and Bs. If you are asked to describe a concept or a theory, you need to show a good understanding of the topic – knowledge.
  • When you become more familiar with different research methods and theories you could be asked to critically evaluate. Now, knowledge should be 50-60% of your paragraph and the critical evaluation 40-50%.
  • Also, pay attention to where the emphasis is: theory, research, or applications?
  • What kind of evidence do you need to bring? Is it psychology in general or is it a certain branch of psychology such as: cognitive, developmental, evolutionary, forensic?
  • The following essay examples are all about altruism, but they need to be approached in different ways. Look for keywords to understand where the focus is. Example 2 can be trickier as it does not have keywords. In this case, you should show both knowledge and critical evaluation, and talk about theory and research and application. In Example 3 the focus is on theory and research but in Example 4 only research methods. In Example 5 you are specifically asked to include evidence from social psychology mostly. You could briefly evaluate why social psychology might be better than other branches of psychology, but the focus at all times should be on social psychology.
    • Example 1: Describe the contribution of psychological theories to understand altruistic behaviour
    • Example 2: Are people altruistic or selfish?
    • Example 3: Critically Evaluate psychological theories and research regarding altruistic behaviour.
    • Example 4: How are the psychological research methods used to investigate altruistic behaviour?
    • Example 5: What is the contribution of social psychology to understanding altruism?

Manage expectations and don’t set the bar too high

  • Writing a good essay can be very challenging. The coursebooks have highly qualified authors. Many manuals are nicely written, and this can be intimidating for students. As I did, it’s probably something you need to accept, that as an undergraduate student you don’t yet master the psychological jargon.

Keep it simple stupid

  • By keeping it simple, stupid you will improve the clarity of your writing.

Follow a good structure

  • Introduction
    • 10% of the words.
    • Why is the topic important? You can use some attention-grabbing facts: statistics, news, etc. (Only include this if you have enough space within the word count and keep it short, no more than 1 or 2 sentences).
    • Define key terms.
    • Write how you will answer the essay question, or what your argument will be.
    • Speak in the third person: ‘the essay will show that’.
  • Body
    • 80% of the essay word count
    • Follow PESEL (Point, Example, Support Evidence, Link) to write clearly and concisely.
    • Try to keep a good balance between description and explanation 60-40 or 50-50.
    • Best Psychology Tutor Tip: try to answer the how and the why? to improve critical thinking and move from description to evaluation.
    • Medium length paragraphs
    • Start the paragraph with a transition word or phrase to improve the flow
    • Transition words that show agreement: further, furthermore, likewise, moreover, equally important, first, second, third etc
    • Conditional transition words: since, while, due to, because of etc
    • Transition words that limit or oppose: despite, on the contrary, on the other hand, but, while, unlike etc
    • Transition words that show effect: as a result, then, because the, hence, consequently, therefore.
    • Best Psychology Tutor Tip: you can use transition words when you evaluate a study or research to improve the clarity of your argument.
    • Always link it back to the title of the essay. Remember, you are talking about an experiment or concept because it brings some more understanding to a certain topic. For example, if you are talking about authoritarian personality, it’s not enough to just describe the Milgram experiment (1961) and state the results, you also need to explain why and how it contributed to our understanding of the authoritarian personality.
  • Conclusion
    • Very important: don’t include any new information. The conclusion needs to mirror your introduction.
    • Summarise the key points and show how you answered the question
    • End with a strong sentence.

Follow PESEL (Point, Explain, Support Evidence, Link)

  • The structure of the paragraph is a bit like a layer cake: you can refer to concepts and theory, research, and sometimes applications and then link the paragraph back to the title.
  • Example: Critically evaluate: "are people always helpful?"
    You might want to develop the argument that how helpful people are depends on the situation. So, let’s say, in one paragraph from the body, you decide to refer to the bystander effect.
  • Point - Make a point Bystander effect is a concept that states that in an emergency, people are less likely to offer help if others are present.
  • Explain - explain the point How do we know about the bystander effect? Kitty Genovese was murdered, and 38 bystanders failed to call the police.
  • Support Evidence - What type of psychological evidence supports the point? You might want to refer to some experiments, for example, Darley and Latané (1968). You will need to briefly describe the experiment and then say what it showed (when others are present, people are less likely to help in an emergency, because they think someone else will take responsibility).
  • Best Psychology Tutor Tip: when you support evidence for your point you can bring more than one piece of evidence. For example, you can also mention another experiment conducted more recently. Critically evaluate: are the conclusions the same as the ones offered by Darley and Latané (1968)? Think if there are any flaws with the design of the experiments, or possibly even with the way Kitty Genovese murder was reported in the news.
  • Link - link the paragraph back to the essay question “are people always helpful?”. How and why the bystander effect concept is useful? What are some practical or ethical implications? You can also use a link to link to the next paragraph.

How to summarise a study

  • Briefly state the author (year), the hypothesis, procedure (sample and conditions), what were the findings. After a short description of the research, (ideally no more than a couple of sentences), use critical thinking, by answering why and how much that research was useful. What did you find? Use critical thinking to state any possible limitations of the study or to find alternative explanations, ways a study could be improved or suggest future research.
    Best Psychology Tutor Tip: You need to be brief when describing a study because you also need to critically evaluate. Try to be succinct in your description. If in doubt, search on the internet how that study was described in some research papers, to get a feeling of what is important to include and what to leave out. Also, if you can get hold of the primary source (this is always preferable) look at the abstract – pay attention to how the author summarised the hypothesis (in the case of quantitative research) or the research question (in the qualitative research), design and results.

Demonstrate critical thinking

  • Unless you are asked to describe, it’s safe to assume you need to make good use of critical thinking to score highly in all your essays. From my experience, many students are using critical thinking when they talk about psychological research, but many have difficulty writing in a way that demonstrates critical thinking.
    Try to think if there are there any flaws with some experiments. Are different types of research supporting the arguments? Are the results valid and reliable?
  • Best Psychology Tutor Tips: how to use critical thinking successfully.
  • Try to build a balanced argument. Students (as I did too) think that it is very important to be critical because this shows that you can engage with the material, you understand the research design, and you can critically evaluate the research. But don’t be overly critical and don’t just stop after you critically evaluate a study, write how it helps the understanding of the essay topic.
    For example, Solomon Asch (1951) studied conformity by asking people to match line lengths. Participants were asked to choose one of three lines that were closest in length to another line given as reference. Solomon Asch used deception by placing each participant with a group of actors who were instructed to give a false response on purpose, to see if the participants would comply or not. The task was not difficult, and it was easy to see which line was closest to the reference one, but 37 out of 50 participants agreed with the false decision of the group (made of actors). The study could not be replicated today because of ethical considerations. Solomon Asch did not get informed consent and he used deception. However, seventy years ago the ethical considerations were not as strict, and the study remains important in psychology because it showed that people conform to group pressure.
  • Find new, interesting research papers through independent study. Most of the times tutors expect you to cover some classical or well-known psychological research but it is more difficult to say something new that was not said before. Therefore, it can be useful to look if some of that classical research was replicated in the last 5-10 years. You can google things like: “replication of Darley and Latané (1968)” for the bystander effect or even “replication of Milgram experiment” for the study of obedience.
  • Use a new angle when talking about a well-researched concept. Example: group membership: Is belonging to a group changing the bystander effect? or cultural differences: Is the bystander effect the same in western or eastern societies? in an urban or rural environment?
  • Think about the strengths and limitations of a study. Some studies have a few limitations such as the participants were psychology students, not a big enough sample size (the sample size is often not important in qualitative studies), the participants were white and middle class.
  • Many times, the authors acknowledge the limitations of their own research in the Discussion section of published papers. When you look at published papers, it’s worth paying extra attention to the Discussion as it can help you gather a lot of good arguments that will no doubt improve your critical thinking.
  • Is a study valid? The study measures what it was created to measure
  • Is it reliable? Can the findings of the research be replicated with similar results?
  • Is it biased? Biased behaviour of the researcher, prejudice. It can be a bit tricky for students. Most published papers tend to be reviewed and they are supposed to be trustworthy even if sometimes there might be issues with the design of the experiment, or the participants. But there are times when studies are replicated, and different results are obtained. Also, some of the classical studies were culturally biased, as in the case of IQ where the research and results in one culture or population were extrapolated to different cultures.
  • Is the research conducted with animals? When psychological studies are done with animals, the questions one should ask are?
    • 1. How much do the findings from studies with animals apply to people?
    • 2. Were the studies ethical? Many of the early psychological research with animals could not be replicated today because it involves animal cruelty.
    • 3. Some topics might be particularly difficult to investigate- for example testing animals' abilities to problem solving, or if they have a theory of mind.
  • Harlow’s Monkey Experiments in the 1950s. He used infant rhesus monkeys separated from their mothers, to study the effects of maternal deprivation. After separation, the infant monkey was placed in a cage with two surrogate mothers, one made of cloth and the other made of wire that fed the monkey through a bottle. The monkey preferred the cloth mother, spending most of the time next to it, even though the wire one provided nutrition. Harlow’s experiments showed the importance of the bond and interaction between the mother and the child.
  • Is the research ethical?
    Darley and Latané (1968) measured the bystander effect by studying how people respond to an emergency in the ‘alone’ condition and in the presence of others. In some experiments, the participants thought they heard someone having a seizure down the hall. The ones who were alone, were quicker to offer help, showing that when others are present the responsibility is diffused – the bystander effect. However, the participants thought they witnessed a medical emergency and because of that, the experiment would not be ethical today.
    Stanley Milgram (1961) – the study of obedience. Participants took the role of ‘teacher’ in a memory test. They were pressured to administer increasingly high electric shocks to a ‘learner’ sitting in the next room, to help the learner to memorise a list of word pairs. The learner was an actor, and no electric shocks were administered to him. The experimenter wore a white lab coat to appear more authoritative and he kept instructing the ‘teacher’ to keep increasing the electric shock administered. 66% of participants thought they administered the highest, lethal, 450 volts. Stanley Milgram showed that people obey authority, but his experiment was criticised for causing psychological harm to the participants.

When was the study conducted? Think about some problems that might arise from research done 50, 70 or 100 years ago in terms of diversity: the gender was binary (male and female), participants were from western countries, white and middle class. Also, social norms and values were different before.

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