Psychology in the News Assignment
This assignment is designed to get you critically thinking and writing about how the
psychological concepts you have learned in this course apply to the “real world”. For
this assignment, you will find three recent news articles or items. Make sure your news
items are not more than two to four months old. You may use any article or item from
one of the popular news magazines, i.e., Newsweek or from a newspaper or use one of
the news or science websites.
Please use the printed media not radio or TV unless you have a written transcript to
reference. Be sure to properly reference your sources, i.e., provide a reference and/or
weblink to the item so the reader can locate it.
Here are some ideas for your News article:
How to find News articles
Most major news papers have websites. I've included some here. Sometimes we hear of
something on the radio or TV and so you can search online for that item. My aol mail
page always has sensational articles (that pull me away from attending to my personal
mail!) and sometimes facebook has something interesting. So, it could be any article of
interest.
However, to make this really easy, I would recommend this site as most of the articles
pertain to some psychological concept: http://www.apa.org/monitor/
Here are are few more sites for you:
www.abcnew.com
www.apa.org
www.bbc.co.uk
www.cbs.com
www.cnn.com
www.npr.org
www.nytimes.com
www.washingtonpost.com Follow these steps for each of the 3 news items or articles. a) Summarize the news article. What is it about? Identify the source (publication, date
and page # or website. If you quote please quote properly (see the plagiarism tutorial).
b) Find a psychological concept in your textbook that relates to each or your news
articles. Provide sufficient detail from your textbook about this concept. Mention
research, theories or information that might be important for understanding this concept
from a psychological point of view.
c) Locate a peer-reviewed research article from the Psyc INFO database relating to
each concept. Click here for instructions on finding your journal articles. Provide a
summary of this research.
d) Explain how the research article relates to the news item and course concept.
What are the connections between the news item and psychological theories or concepts
from your textbook and the research evidence you present from your research articles?
e) Discuss the importance of understanding the concept you have chosen in relation
to the news item and research article. What might be the benefits of knowing
something about this concept, and/or the dangers of not being aware of this concept?
Be sure your paper is in proper APA style. Click here for additional information on APA
style.
Your completed paper should be between 6-7 double spaced pages. Please try to stay
within this limit.

Attachments:

• 1506267802-Psychology in the News Assignment.docx