-Biographical Essay
For your final project, you will write a Biographical Essay of an important psychologist of your choosing. Specifically the one that did not appear in the textbook. The biographical essay will outline the main events in the person’s life, the mentors and ideas that shaped his or her ways of thinking, and his or her major contributions to psychology. Be sure to evaluate these contributions critically, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of these ideas as well as the ethical conduct of the psychologist.
Guidelines
Before you write this biographical essay, you will need to gather information on your psychologist of choice. You will need at least six reliable sources for this paper, but more is better. You should give first preference to peer-reviewed sources. However, as a historical researcher, you may also need to use other sources as well. In doing so, critically evaluate the reliability of the source. For instance, anything publishe-d by the APA can be considere-d reliable. In addition, consider the credentials of the author. Do not cite encyclopedias such as Wikipedia in your paper; however, these resources may provide you with references that you can access and read on your own.
The biographical essay must be written in standard APA format.
This means the paper must include a title page, abstract, and list of references. Including these, your submission altogether must extend to at least 2,000 words. Furthermore, the 20% rule applies to this assignment as well. (See the section on “Originality” below.) Specifically, your biographical essay must have a Turnitin similarity score of less than 20%, including references. This means that your essay must be written in your own words. Without reliance on paraphrasing or quoting from your sources. A sample biographical essay on John Dewey is provided in D2L under the “Biographical Essay” tab.
This assignment has two learning objectives.
The first learning objective is for you to demonstrate that you are able to research a scholarly topic in psychology, integrate information from various sources, write effectively, and format that writing in APA style. As a graduate of the Psychology program at GGC, you are expecte-d to take these skills with you into your future career, so this is your final chance to hone them.
The second learning objective is for you to continue your investigation into the history of psychology by researching an important psychologist who was not mentione-d in the book. You are especially encourage-d to research and write about a woman, minority, or non-American psychologist.
However, the choice is yours. You may have heard about a particular psychologist in one of your other classes that you want to learn more about. Otherwise, you can find lists of psychologists by gender, ethnicity, or nationality on the internet.
Additional Guidelines
Before you begin your project, be sure to check the Person Glossary in the back of the textbook to make sure the psychologist you are planning to write about was not mentioned in the textbook. Submission of a biographical essay about a person listed in the Person Glossary will receive a score of zero points for this assignment. In summary, the three rules that applied to the reaction papers apply (with some modification) to the biographical essay as well.
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