Assignment: WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL
PART 1- Submitting your manuscript - Research procedures for submitting a manuscript for a specific journal. Discuss your findings with your team.
PART 2- OBEDIENCE AND ETHICS-
The Culture of Shock See Article In Resources
Milgram's and Zimbardo's studies have gained a resurgence of interest. Can you think of recent events that might have caused this? I have attached an article from Scientific American. I apologize that it is upside down and you will have to print it to read it.
Also, my most recent issue of Monitor on Psychology there is a short review on Milgram Redux. Researchers from Poland (we couldn't get this approved in the US) replicated the study and found the same results - 90% of participants were willing to administer the highest shock level
Let me know what you think and how Milgram's and Zimbardo's studies might still find some applicability today.
RESOURCE for this assignment
For most people, the nightmare of the Holocaust was a gross pathology, a social sickness brought about by specific circumstances: the brutality of the Naziregime or certain traits in the German character. But in the 1960s, a young American psychologist,Stanley Milgram, had a different theory.
Rather than being pathological,supposing the concentration camps were just an example of normal behavior in extreme circumstances?
- What he was particularly interested in was, under what conditions will people follow instructions which will result in harm to somebody else, in suffering to somebody else?
And beyond that,he was interested in whether the responses to instructions to do harm,the pressure to obey are normal,whether normal people, any average person, would respond.
- To test these theories, Milgram devised a series of experiments, experiments that were to change the face of psychological research forever.
Imagine you're one of Milgram's volunteers.
You've answered an a din the paper to take part in a psychological experiment.
You're told it's about testing whether giving mild punishments in the form of electrics hocks will improve the memory of the subject.
You find yourself playing the role of teacher,and you're introduced to someone you're told is the learner.
- The learner was then subjected to electric shocks every time they made a mistake in the learning process.
And because it appeared they weren't very smart, the instructions required that you keep increasing the level of shock.
So each time the learner made a mistake,the shock level had to rise.
And potentially,it could go up to, apparently,450 volts.
- And the question was how far they would go up the scale, how far they would respond to the screams and the ultimately the silence of the person that was listening to-- who was answering the questions.
- Every time they expressed some reluctance about carrying on,the experiment would say,"No, the instructions require that you continue." So Milgram was interested to see how far people would go under those circumstances.
At what point would they say, "No, I'm not going to give any more electric shocks.
I'm not going to increase the voltage." - So how far do you think you'd have gone if you'd have been a teacher Perhaps further than you think.
The results of these experiments surprised even Milgram and his research team.
- He asked a large number of students and psychiatrists before the research took place,how far did they think the participants would go?
And the average was about 120,150 volts.
And nobody was predicted to go beyond 300 volts.
In the event,everybody went beyond 300 volts.
And 2/3 of them, as we now know,went all the way.
And even when there was no answer from the person next door,still they went on.
And remarkably, a lot of people were prepared to continue shocking to the point where it appeared they'd killed the other person.
- What Milgram concluded that this revealed about obedience is that it's not unnatural that practically anybody can be induced to obey authority and to do things which you might regard as inhumane, cruel, sadistic, and yet with not any sadistic intent but simply in order to abide by the instructions given to them by a legitimate authority.
And the conclusions seems to be, or at least the conclusion that many people took from this research is that people's inclination to unconditional obedience is very high
- Milgram's research threw new light on the Holocaust and the question of how ordinary German citizens could have been turned into mass murderers in such a short time.
It seemed that the phrase"only obeying orders" had rather more to it than most people believed at the time.
- To many of them, they were obeying orders.
The orders were clear
So if you wish to believe you were obeying orders, you can
And it was a very rigid hierarchy. And people who showed sympathy were exterminated too.
- To some, Milgram's experiments were amongst the most important ever done in psychology. But others were very critical, arguing this research should never have been done,because it was completely unethical.
PART 3- The Malleability of Memory
View the video on Elizabeth Loftus and discuss memory. THIS VIDEO CAN BE FOUND ON YOUTUBE
PART 4- Read the article The Perfect Poster and post your thoughts. The article is in the Resources . HERE IS THE ARTICLE: THE PERFECT POSTER
Poster sessions offer a chance for many eyes to see your hard work - and some of those visitors may open doors to interesting research collaboration, postdoc or career opportunities. The trick is making your poster stand out among the hundreds of others.
"A good poster is not just tacking a standard research paper on poster board," says Kathryn Tosney, PhD, a neurobiologist and chair of the biology department at the University of Miami who created a poster-making guide to help her own students. "An effective poster helps you engage colleagues in conversation and gets your main points across to as many people as possible."
Here are a few hints to draw a crowd:
• Focus on findings. The first thing people will look at is the poster's title, says Warren Street, PhD, a professor emeritus of psychology at Central Washington University who's judged poster sessions for years. The title should let people know what your poster is about in one brief sentence, he says. "You're marketing your ideas," he says. "Look for a simple, effective message that invites people into conversation." In the body of the poster, use short, declarative sentences to explain what you found and why it matters. Limit your methods section to a few sentences - if someone wants the nitty-gritty, they'll ask. "Providing endless details detracts from the point of your poster," Tosney says. "Simple messages are more memorable."
• Emphasize graphics. At a convention, your poster will probably be one fish in a large sea. Charts, graphs and pictures will make your poster pop, says George Hess, PhD, a professor at North Carolina State University who collaborated with Tosney to create an online poster-making guide. "There's real power in turning your information into simple, clean graphical representations to communicate data relationships."
• Avoid 'chart junk.' Unnecessary grid lines, labels, keys and other extraneous information undermine your main message, Tosney says. Let the data speak for itself as much as possible, Hess adds. Daniel Baughn, a clinical psychology and behavioral medicine grad student at Virginia Commonwealth University, recommends usingposter design software, which automatically balances image sizes with the rest of the poster's materials.
• Choose colors wisely. "Go for simplicity and stick to two or three colors that really stand out against your background," Hess says. More than that will overload and confuse your readers. In general, dark colors against a white background show up better than light colors against a dark background, especially in dimmer convention halls. Also, apply colors consistently, with section titles all the same hue. Finally, Hess says, keep in mind that 7 percent to 10 percent of men have red-green colorblindness, so don't put those colors adjacent to each other.
• Leave white space. Don't jam every square inch of your poster with graphs and text, says Street. Leaving space between poster elements will make it easier to read.
• Aim for symmetry. If you have a graphic element in the top left, try to include one in the bottom right, as well. A 1994 study in Nature found that humans have an aesthetic preference for symmetrical things, be they people or patterns (Vol. 372, No. 2). A poster that's image-heavy on either end throws off people's natural affinity for symmetry. Graphics in the middle of your poster are fine, but don't overload the poster edges, Tosney adds.
• Design for your readers' eyes. Designer and communication researcher Colin Wheildon, author of "Type & Layout" (Worsley Press, 2005), explains that most people from Western reading backgrounds will read your poster from top to bottom, then left to right. So lay out your information in columns that follow this path. You can number your sections and include simple flowchart marks to further guide your reader's gaze. One thing you don't want to do is get too unusual with your layout, says Hess. It's more important for your poster to be readable than clever.
• Mind the details. Include your full contact information. If you go off to look at other posters or get lunch, you might miss someone who's interested in talking to you. Also, have printouts of your poster that include a few explanatory sentences on either a separate page or along the bottom.
PART5-ETHICAL STANDARD SUMMARY-
1. Write a 500- to 750-word summary of the ethical issues that affect your selected research question and methodology, including the following:
o Write a brief statement of the research question.
o List the possible ethical issues, such as consideration of characteristics of your sample, type of data collection, potential for bias, and so forth.
o Identify and cite the APA ethical standard concerning the issue.
o Respond to each issue, specifying how you, the researcher, will minimize or eliminate it.
o Format your summary consistent with APA guidelines.
PART6- RESEARCH PROPOSAL-
Write a 1,400- to 1,750-word research proposal including the following:
• Introduction, including purpose and importance of your topic
• Literature review based on the Annotated Bibliography assignment
• Research questions and hypothesis
• Methods: sample, procedure, and analysis
• Ethical considerations
• Discussion: expected results, conclusions, and limitations
• References.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.