Psychology Final Project (250 Points)
DIRECTIONS:
1. Students will write a 5-page, APA styled (Double-spaced, Times Roman 12 font, 1 inch margins, with correct
citation format) paper on one of the following topics below.
2. Students MUST have a minimum of 7 references dealing with your topic; examples, quotes, etc should be
used throughout your paper, as well as cited at the end of the paper (This page does not count as 1 of the 6;
failure to display will result in lost points). Your input should coincide, or refute the references you used.
3. There must be a cover page, stating your title, name, class, etc, and all pages MUST be numbered (This page
also does not count as 1 of the 6; failure to display will result in lost points).
4. Failure to display any of the wanted items will result in loss of points.
TOPICS TO CHOOSE FROM (CHOOSE 1 OF THE FOLLOWING):
1. My personal Experience with Brain Injuries and Their Psychological Consequences. This paper should
describe your personal experience with a brain injury – for example, your grandfather’s stroke or your friend’s
brain injury after a car accident. The goal is to describe the brain injury and its psychological and behavioral
consequences. Incorporate findings of psychological research on the brain, its function, and the effects of injuries
to parts of the brain such as language centers, the frontal lobe, the cerebellum, the right versus left hemisphere,
etc.
2. My Experience with Psychological Medication: What Happened to (Me, my Best Friend, my Mother) after
I, he, she took (Prozac, Strattera, etc). The goal here is to describe a personal experience of yourself or
someone you know who has taken psychological medications. Questions you could address: Was the
psychological diagnosis appropriate? What the prescription appropriate? Did the drugs work? Did the drugs
have unpleasant side effects? What was the outcome of the drug therapy – e.g., was it successful? Is the person
still on the medication? Was the drug therapy accompanied by other kinds of counseling and therapy? Relate
your account to research and theory on the treatment of mental illness.
3. Our Phobias: How Classical Conditioning Helps Explain My Fear (Spiders, heights, Snow White). This
paper should describe a strong fear or phobia you or someone you know has. Analyze the origins of your fear
and try to explain it in terms of classical conditioning. This paper should include a brief description of classical
conditioning and the major terms used in classical conditioning (e.g., CS, US, CR, and UR, generalization), and it
should apply these terms and concepts to your example. Do you think classical conditioning provides a complete
explanation for your fear? Does classical conditioning theory suggest ways you might reduce your fear?
Research the actual fear itself, and use this information in proving or refuting the fear.
4. I Was So Angry I Could Have Killed that Person: The Relevance of Three Theories of Emotion. Describe
an experience of anger (Someone in the news in past or present) and apply three theories of emotion to that
experience: the James-Lange theory, and the Cannon-Bard theory theory of emotion. You also may want to tie in
Freud’s levels of Consciousness. Which theory do you think best describes this experience of anger? How well
do theories of emotion apply to this very intense emotion? Do any of these theories of emotion help you to
understand better you own experience of anger? Does anger share features with other strong emotions, such as
fear, falling in love, etc.? Do the various theories of emotion offer any practical advice about how people can
reduce their anger in stressed situations?
5. Theories of Development: Pick one of the following theories of developmental stages – Freud’s theory of
psychosexual stages, Piaget’s theory of stages of cognitive development, Erikson’s psychosocial stage
theory – and apply it to your own development. In this paper you need to briefly describe the developmental
theory you choose and its terminology, and you need to apply the theory to you own life. For example, if you
chose to apply Freud’s psychosexual stage theory to your own life, you would describe events that occurred in the
oral, anal, and phallic stages of your life and analyze how these events may have influenced your young adult
personality.
6. Using Freudian Theory to Explain my Dreams. This paper should apply Freud’s theory of dreams to some of
your own dreams. If you choose this topic, you might want to keep a dream diary for a week or so (keep a pad of
paper near your bed and record all the dreams you can remember as soon as you wake up.) In this paper you
must briefly explain and describe Freud’s dream theory (e.g., the function of dreams as wish fulfillments, the
manifest and latent content of dreams, the dream “censor”) and try to analyze your own dreams in terms of
Freud’s theory. Discuss how well Freud’s theory applies to your dreams. Do you think there are other theories
that better explain the content of your dreams?
7. Analyzing my Masculinity (or Femininity) in Terms of Trait Theory and Social Learning Theory: Am I
Consistently Masculine (or Feminine)? In this paper you should describe and analyze your masculine and
feminine behaviors (e.g., your hobbies, your abilities, your style of grooming and dress, the way you move your
body and your nonverbal behaviors, your ways of interacting with friends, family members, and
boyfriends/girlfriends). Apply trait theories and social learning theories of personality to your M/F behavior. Do
you think you show consistent traits of masculinity or femininity – e.g., Are your masculine or feminine
behaviors consistent over time and across situations? Or, do you think your masculine and feminine behaviors
vary a lot depending on the situation you’re in and the people you are with? Do you think that you can be both
masculine and feminine, or are these two kinds of behavior mutually exclusive (Take into consideration, Gender
roles, schemas, and traits)? What do you think the origins are of your masculine and feminine behaviors – e.g.,
do these behaviors result from genes, hormones, brain differences between men and women, imitating your
parents, modeling your friends, imitating celebrities in movies and TV, or what?
8. My Experience with Mental Illness. In this paper, you should describe someone you know well (yourself, a
family member, a friend) who has suffered from mental illness (e.g., depression, panic attacks, phobias, bipolar
disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, etc). Begin by describing the characteristics of the
illness. What do you think are the causes of the person’s mental illness? How much do you think the person’s
mental illness resulted from biological factors (genes, brain chemistry, etc), and how much do you think it
resulted from the person’s environment (e.g., parental rearing, life stresses, a terrible loss such as a death in the
family or the breakup of a relationship). Did the person receive counseling or therapy? Was it effective? Relate
your account to research on mental illness and its treatment.
9. My Defense Mechanisms. Apply Freud’s theory of defense mechanisms to your own thought processes and
behavior. The goal here is to describe what a defense mechanism is and to describe a number of Freudian defense
mechanisms (e.g., repression, projection, reaction formation, denial, sublimation), and then apply them to your
own or another’s behavior; give examples. Why do you think you/they engage in the defense mechanisms that
you/they do? How did these defense mechanisms develop? Why do you prefer certain defense mechanisms over
others? Are you always aware of your defense mechanisms, or do you sometimes need other people to point
them out to you? Are there positive as well as negative defense mechanisms? Can defense mechanisms have
both good and bad consequences? Is it possible for a person to live without defense mechanisms?
10. Sexual orientation and its causes. Describe someone you know (e.g., yourself, a friend, a family member) who
is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. In your opinion, what influenced this person’s sexual orientation to develop as it did?
Relate your discussion to the nature-nurture debate in psychology. Do you think sexual orientation (being
heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) results from biological factors (e.g., genetics, prenatal hormones, brain
chemistry and structure), or does it result from environmental factors (the way our parents treat us; childhood
experiences, what’s popular)? Are both nature and nurture important? Are we “born” heterosexual, homosexual,
or bisexual? Can we “choose” to be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual? Do you think that
gay/lesbian/bisexual people differ from heterosexual people in ways other than their attractions to men or
women? – for example, do they differ in personality, nonverbal behavior, grooming? If so, why? Again, relate
this to possible causes and theories of sexual orientation.
RUBIC
250 Points
200 Points
150 Points
100 Points
50 Points or
Less
Did students
follow
directions?
All is present
(Cover page,
cited page, apa
format in paper,
etc)
One items is
missing or
incorrect
2-3 items are
missing or
incorrect
3-5 items are
missing or incorrect
Did you read
the
directions????
Is the topic
thoroughly
explained
using
minimum, 7
sources?
Student
explained topic
thoroughly using
the cited sources.
Student
explained most
of what they
were supposed
to using some
sources.
Student skipped
around the topic
briefly, but did not
really explain and
rarely used
references.
Student had major
problems
explaining their
topic, and trouble
tying in references.
No explaining
of anything,
probably
copied and
pasted the
information!!!
There were NO
Is the paper
grammar, or
grammatically
spelling problems
correct?
in this paper.
A couple of
spelling errors
(1-5 words)
Several spelling
errors (5-10)
Multiple spelling
errors (10-20
words)
Was able to
spell name
correctly 
Fairly good
paper
Needs a little work.
Probably should’ve
shown me a draft
first.
You are a very
charismatic
person as a
writer
Presentation
of the paper?
This is a really
GREAT paper!!!
DUE DATE: This paper is due the day of your December 17th, no exceptions or excuses will be accepted.