Biological Psychology

Biological Psychology Order Description   The aim of the essay is to encourage the student to provide his or her own point of view on some of the important issues in biological psychology. As always, it is necessary to back up your views with evidence. This evidence should come from the psychological literature as well as examples from the popular press. The topic for this essay relates to how various biological determinants of behaviour are described and reported in the popular press: “Often you will see short popular press items that briefly summarise research findings relating to topics in biological psychology. Choose two general topic areas in biological psychology. Discuss how accurate are these brief popular press summaries in describing these general topic areas. In what way are these brief articles reductionistic in trying to get their point across? Finally, would readers – that is, the consumers of these popular press articles – lead happier, more fulfilling lives if they knew more about the psychobiological underpinnings of behaviour?” A few clarifications: • The popular press, otherwise known as the media, includes newspaper articles, magazine articles, or articles from any freely available webpage source. Do not include any stories from broadcast media such as television or radio. • To ascertain how accurate some of these popular press articles are, you need to examine the actual research article(s) from which the summary was derived. • While this essay requires you to think about reductionism, the essay itself is not about reductionism, so do not turn the essay into a long discussion about reductionism. • In choosing your two areas, think about what is covered in PSY3350. For example, stress, sleeping patterns, psychological disorders, memory, and many other topic areas may be examined. Choose two topic areas. Virtually anything goes, so long as you can relate the topic back to its biological determinants. • As a general rule, one third of the marks relate to your discussion of how accurate the popular press articles are with respect to the actual research from which the press articles are derived, one third of the marks relate to whether or not the descriptions in the popular press are reductionistic, and about one third of the marks relate to a discussion of whether or not people would lead happier lives if they knew more about biological determinants of behaviour. • The most common question about this assignment is “how many references do I need to use?” The answer is, you should use as many as you need to answer the question and to get your point across. • You should include at least six small screen-grabs or pictures of press items (e.g., the headlines or actual pictures of the articles) that cover the two general topic areas you have selected. These figures are to be embedded into your essay to help get your points across. At least five of your references should be (formal) journal articles. I have attached popular media articles and the original articles. I have also attached a cover sheet please write essay on this template Kind regards