Course Readings

An article starts broad, narrows, and widens again. The Introduction moves from a big, plain-English opening down to your specific study. The Method and Results are the narrow neck — precise and specific. The Discussion reverses the funnel: your findings first, then their broader implications. If you remember one image from Bem, remember the hourglass.

Write for the intelligent non-specialist. If a Psych 101 student or a history professor could follow the broad strokes of your paper, you're doing it right. Open with people and behavior, not with researchers and jargon. Build step by step toward the research problem, and explain abstract ideas with concrete examples.

• Introduction: plain-English opening; review only the literature the reader needs; keep citations parenthetical so the story stays about ideas, not authors; end with a concise overview of your study.
• Method: describe the study as if the reader were a participant — what did they see, hear, and do? Use meaningful labels ("$1 group," not "low-dissonance group"). Address reliability, validity, and ethics.
• Results: words first, numbers second. For each finding: restate the hypothesis conceptually, remind the reader of the measure, give the answer in plain English, then the statistics. Interpret every statistic — never just report a p value and move on.
• Discussion: open with what you learned. Compare with prior work, note limitations briefly without cataloguing every flaw, and end with a broad, memorable statement — never with "further research is needed."
• Title and abstract: write them last, when you know what actually matters. Title of 10–12 words naming the key variables.

Accuracy and clarity are essential; style is a bonus. Omit needless words. Avoid metacomments ("Now I will explain…"). Prefer repetition and parallel construction over confusing synonyms. Use the active voice. And the hard truth: good writing is 90% revision. If an outside reader is confused, the writing is unclear — no debate.

Bem notes that most journals reject 80–85% of submissions, and the difference between accepted and rejected manuscripts is often the quality of the writing, not the quality of the ideas. The same is true of proposals. Clear, well-structured prose is not decoration; it is the work.

A review bridges the scattered mass of individual articles and the reader who can't track them all down. It can tackle broader and more abstract questions than any one study, build a stronger case for a null conclusion, and — crucially — exploit methodological diversity: when studies with different flaws all point the same way, the most parsimonious conclusion is that the hypothesis is correct. Fifty studies using the same flawed method can be weaker evidence than five studies using five different ones.

1. The hypothesis is correct — the evidence supports it.
2. The hypothesis is not proven but is the best current guess — a conclusion unique to reviews.
3. The hypothesis is false.
4. The evidence permits no conclusion — and saying so is a contribution, especially when a wrong idea has become accepted wisdom.

1. Inadequate introduction. Readers can't wade through pages of findings before learning the point. Put your integrative framework — or at least a bottom-line preview — up front.
2. Inadequate coverage of evidence. "X causes Y (Reference)" tells the reader nothing. Better: "In a sample of A, method B produced result C (Reference)." Give the gist of method and results — a sentence or two is enough.
3. Lack of integration. A review that describes study after study without relating them to the theoretical issues is a list, not a review. Tell the reader how the studies fit together, as you go.
4. Lack of critical appraisal. Every conclusion is limited by the flaws in the evidence. Critique groups of studies rather than each one individually, and don't overstate your case — acknowledging weaknesses strengthens a review.
5. Failure to adjust conclusions. If your critique identified serious flaws, your conclusions must reflect that. Don't write a dutiful critique and then draw sweeping conclusions as if you hadn't.

Your synthesis matrix is the antidote to mistakes 3 and 4: it forces you to organize sources by theme and to record each study's method and limitations, not just its conclusion. The gap statement you write at the end is your defense against mistake 1 — it becomes the integrative spine of your introduction.

More than summarize. A good review gives the historical background of a topic, presents the earlier theories, puts disagreements and debates in context, highlights the seminal studies, identifies patterns and trends — and, most important for you, identifies the gaps, omissions, and unanswered questions in previous work. That gap is where your proposal lives.

First take the literature apart (analysis: what did each study find, with what method, in what sample?), then reassemble the pieces into a new story (synthesis: what do these studies collectively say, and where do they conflict or fall silent?). Synthesis is what separates a literature review from a stack of summaries — the same lesson Baumeister & Leary teach from the journal editor's chair.

1. Introduce the topic — broadly, in plain language, showing why it matters.
2. Review the literature — organized by theme, synthesizing as you go.
3. Narrow your focus — funnel down toward the specific question your study addresses.
4. State your purpose — conclude the introduction with your specific research question and hypothesis.

This is the funnel your Week 6 outline follows, section for section.

The chapter's sample literature review ("The Effects of Social Media Use on Depression") with Landrum's actual edits is the closest thing you'll get to seeing your own draft through your professor's eyes — before you submit it.

Landrum opens with Sternberg's checklist for whether a paper adds to knowledge: surprising results that make theoretical sense, significance of the ideas, a new way of looking at an old problem, and — above all — a clear interpretation of the results. Fresh perspective is the one advantage students reliably have over professionals. Use it.

The chapter walks through the pieces of an APA-style paper — title page, abstract, headings, citations and quotations in text, abbreviations and numbers, tables and figures, references — with examples of each. It also catalogues the twenty most common student errors. Your Week 12 formatting pass uses the APA Manuscript Rubric, which tracks the same territory.

Drafting gets ideas down; revising restructures and rewrites (this is where the real writing happens); proofreading catches the surface errors. Landrum insists these are separate passes done at separate sittings — the same "good writing is 90% revision" gospel Bem preaches.

Paraphrase from notes rather than from the source, cite as you draft (not afterward), and when in doubt, cite. In this course your AI log is part of the same discipline: a transparent record of where your words and ideas came from.

Scientific writing is detached and objective — even when the research is personally yours. The best way to internalize the register is to read well-written journal articles; Landrum's rule of thumb: if you can't understand the gist of an article, the problem is usually the writing, not you.

Participants, materials, procedure — written so another researcher could run your study from your description alone. Describe your measures with their reliability evidence (your Week 8 scales table drops straight in here), and walk the reader through the procedure in the order a participant would experience it.

Results state what was found (for your proposal: what you expect to find, statistic by statistic, with your predicted-results graph). The Discussion then explains: Did the results support the hypotheses? How do they connect back to the literature from your introduction? What are the limitations, and what should be studied next? The story ends where it began — back out at the broad end of the hourglass.

Title page, abstract, references, and tables — the elements students leave until last and then rush. Landrum treats them as their own assignment, and so does your Week 12 formatting pass.