Love and close relationships
You may present an argumentative, comparative (compare and contrast), persuasive, reflective, or research easy. This is an upper-division course. This flexibility affords you the opportunity to explore newly acquired concepts and write a paper meaningful to you (e.g., career interests, personal connections).
• Leverage the writing of the essay to showcase effective communication of social psychological principles and applications relevant to your selected topic.
• Support discussions (topics and logic) with sound research, evident through the integration of properly applied and cited theory and facts collected from a minimum of five (5) peer-reviewed journal articles.
Peer-reviewed articles are vetted for quality and adherence to editorial standards, and published in scholarly journals (such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). This link to the UMGC library provides excellent instruction, support and resources addressing scholarly articles.
Use the UMGC library database to find peer-reviewed articles. It is your responsibility to make sure that the journal articles you select are appropriate. If you are unsure about the relevance of your articles, contact your instructor for approval. The five (5) peer-reviewed articles must meet the following criteria:
• Scholarly – Articles should address an original research study, meta-analyses, summary, editorial or theory.
• Refereed – Articles must come from peer-reviewed journals found in the UMGC library.
• Social Psychology Connections – Articles must be relevant to social psychology.
• Recent – Articles must have been published within the last 10 years.
For example, the following would be a relevant peer-reviewed journal article for investigating the influence of emotional intelligence on academic performance:
MacCann, C., Jiang, Y., Brown, L. E., Double, K. S., Bucich, M., & Minbashian, A. (2020). Emotional intelligence predicts academic performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146, 150–186.
The peer-reviewed minimum is just that, a minimum. You are encouraged to explore and to use more than five peer-reviewed resources. This is because your use of scholarly works:
• expands your exploration of relevant concepts, theories, empirical findings and historical trends
• invites you to implement critical and creative thinking
• inspires skeptical inquiry as you approach your topic with the goal of developed information literacy
• empowers the development, organization, and expression of your understanding of your selected topic
