Review Paper in
Evolutionary Psychology
(20% of final grade)
Task: To write a
review of major empirical studies and theoretical approaches on a specific area
of evolutionary psychology. The review should bring together these approaches
in an attempt to provide additional insight to the field or offer an
alternative view to those already established. Thus, you should provide a “story” of sorts
for the reader: The story synthesizes the research that has been performed on a
particular question, analyses the theory underlying this research, and will
finish with your view on what this research and theory tells us about the
question under debate. Does the available evidence support an evolutionary
perspective? Does one view make more sense than another? Are there more studies
that need to be done? What are they? Is there an alternative approach that
makes more sense? In essence, you will be writing a long “Introduction” to a
research paper - but one that tells a good story without the need for empirical
data. The area you chose to focus on should be one that has been addressed by
an evolutionary approach, though you could try to develop a similar approach for
an as yet unexamined area (talk to me if this is the case).
Aim: To develop a deeper understanding of a particular topic within evolutionary psychology, to stimulate novel thinking on this topic, and to provide experience with drawing together relatively diverse research into a coherent story.
How to choose an area on which to focus. The best way to do this is to choose an area within the field that you find particularly interesting. This may sound obvious, but it is important that you pick a topic that appeals to you, one where you have a “burning desire” to find out more than is covered in the textbook or the additional readings. We have already covered in class a number of fundamental areas of human behavior and thought to which an evolutionary approach has been applied, and you can read ahead to find out about areas that sound potentially interesting to you. You can also decide to examine an area that is relatively unstudied from an evolutionary approach - for example, many aspects of cognition have been largely ignored by evolutionary psychologists, though some have attempted to apply evolutionary thinking to them. As I pointed out in the Research Paper handout, and as has been discussed in class and in the book, evolutionary psychology is a new discipline and there are many more questions than answers at this point.
Once you have established an area in which you are interested, you need to pick a more specific topic. In other words, “parenting” is too broad a focus - you need to pick a more narrow area within the topic such as, for example, “abuse by step-parents”, “neglect of children by parents”, or “neglect of parents by children”. The more narrow the focus the better. Once you have defined your area of review more closely, you need to find at least five papers (though preferably more) that examine various aspects of the area you have chosen. These papers need to be fairly closely related - there is no point picking papers that are so diverse that when presented together they will fail to provide a coherent view of the area. As with the Research paper, the best way to do this is through an electronic search on PsycInfo. These searches can be done through the CMU library from many of the clusters. Search for "evolutionary psychology” and “[your topic]". Once you find one article that interests you, look in the References section at the end of the article--you are likely to find several other articles on the same topic, perhaps even by the same author. In general, the more papers you cover, the better the “story” (with fewer gaps) you will be able to tell.
Structure of the paper: The best guideline for the structure and format of your report would be to look at any published psychology review paper. Look at the Ohman and Mineka paper we read for “hostile forces of nature” as an excellent example. Here is a basic outline of the structure of the paper, which should include the following sections.
Title Page. The
title should reflect the purpose of the review. The title of your paper should
reflect the most important issue on which that you choose to focus. For example, “The role of flirting in short-term mating” or
“Evidence of a psychological mechanism for intrasex aggression”, or
“Differences in intersex sexual manipulation by men and women”. Beneath
the title, list yourself as the author, using
your social security number, NOT your name.
Your affiliated institution should appear below your social security
number. The title page should also
include a running head at the top (a shortened version of the title, e.g., “Intrasex
aggression”.
Abstract. Your abstract should be a brief, comprehensive summary of your paper. I recommend writing it after you have completed the rest of the paper and after you have answered the questions to ensure that your abstract accurately reflects the ideas and finding presented in the paper. It should concisely describe the following (in less than 150 words):
· the area of focus (1-2 sentences)
· the established empirical findings and theoretical views (2 sentences)
· the outcome of your review (2-3 sentences)
· the implications of your review and your alternative perspective (2 sentences)
Main body of the paper: Think of the paper as a funnel that starts in general terms and becomes more specific as it progresses:
Introducing the issues: Start by generally describing the area of focus (e.g., mating) and briefly outline the effect of selection pressures on its evolution. Then progress to the more specific area of interest. (1-2 pages)
Theories: Begin with the major theories in the area you have chosen. For example, if you were to review advantages for females of short-term mating and in particular, the sexy son hypothesis, it would be useful to know what are the five proposed theories. Then outline why the issue you are going to examine closely is worth investigating. Is it contentious? Is there little evidence collected? (2-3 pages)
Literature review: You should then review studies that have examined the issue in question. Give enough detail to explain the study to a naïve reader (who is smart but knows little about evolutionary psychology) but leave out anything that isn’t essential. Look at the textbook and see how Buss uses about a paragraph to describe some studies. That is about the same level of detail you should aim for. It isn’t important to know how the participants, for example, were recruited or the wording of every question they were asked. Strip down the studies to the important facts. What was done, why was it done, how was it done, what are the results, and what are the implications. You must describe at least 5 studies - and they must be different from those in the text book (or additional readings) or must provide additional evidence from those cited in the book. Of course, you can use studies in the book as well - but only in addition to the papers you have read yourself. As stated above, the idea is that you are telling a story that leads the text (and the reader) to certain conclusions about the state of our knowledge about this area. What those conclusions will be is up to you. (4-5 pages)
Conclusions: After reviewing the literature you should summarize your findings - what do the studies, overall, tell us - and then hopefully provide some kind of discussion of the area that goes beyond what you have covered. What questions are raised? Does the literature tell a coherent story? Is this an area appropriate for an evolutionary approach? Could the studies described be explained by cultural learning alone? These are obviously just suggestions - it is up to you what aspect of the review you focus on. But, the review needs to be more than just a description of previous work - it must provide something new (at least potentially) to the field. The kinds of things that you have been posting on the message board are appropriate here - but try to suggest some answers as well as raising issues (2-3 pages)
References.
Include citations, in APA format, for all the sources you use.
When you cite a source in the text, just give the name and year (e.g., Rakison,
2010). No page numbers are necessary unless you are quoting (which I don’t recommend,
see the next main paragraph).
After the text of your paper, you
should include a References section, where you list the articles you reviewed
and any other references you cite (but NOT references you didn’t specifically
cite) in the text of your paper. References for journal articles should
be provided as follows (note that the References also should be double-spaced):
Shackelford, T. K., & Buss, D. M.
(1996). Betrayal in
mateships, friendships, and coalitions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1151-1164.
References for book chapters
should be provided as follows:
Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Perceptions of
betrayal and the design of the mind. In J. A. Simpson
& D. T. Kenrick (Eds.), Evolutionary
social psychology (pp. 73-107). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
References for books should
be provided as follows:
Buss, D. M.
(1994). The evolution of desire:
Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books.
Any idea you take from another source should be credited to
that source by putting the last name or names and year of publication in
parentheses after you present the idea. Alternatively, you can credit the
author by last name in the context of the sentence. In this case, you would put
the year of publication of the source in parentheses after the author’s last
name. Needless to say, don’t plagiarize in your paper. If you are using more
than three words in the order in which they were written by the author, you
must put quotes around these words and cite the page number and source from
which the phrase or sentence was taken. However, I suggest that you DO NOT USE
QUOTES unless the author says something particularly poetic or something cannot
be rephrased without losing meaning. As a general rule, paraphrase (use your
own words) rather than quote directly. Plagiarism will result in immediate
failure of the paper. Nonetheless, feel free to discuss ideas with other
students, but all written work should be your own.
Length and other details
Not including the References page, your paper should be about 10-14 typed pages. Do not exceed 15 pages. Try to be as clear and concise as possible. I suggest using headings to help structure the paper. I will be grading you for content, structure, workload, coherence, creativity, and writing quality. You must include with your submission a copy of the front page of the articles you have reviewed in the paper (at least 5). Failure to include these copies will result in an immediate loss of one grade on the paper. The paper is due on March 29th in class. Anything handed in after class will be considered “late”.
Note: To give you a little more structure for this project, I would like you to submit a one page summary of what you will be writing (the area, the general issues at stake, ambiguity in the current literature) by February 16th. This need not be detailed - it is meant to get you thinking now about what it is you plan to review.
GOOD LUCK!!!! And, as always, if you have any questions - ask!!!!