Guidelines for Writing Psychology Essays

Look, I wasn't the best at writing essays, I haven't written a psychology essay since literally a year ago, but I wrote two good ones, and therefore I am qualified to deliver this video. Thank you very much. Right, so hello and welcome to or welcome back to my channel. My name is Saskia, I'm a first year psychology student at the University of Southampton. In today's video I'm going to talk to you about IB psychology. So, I did IB psychology from 2018 to 2020, I got a 7, those are my my credentials you're welcome I did higher level as well so so you can probably tell by the title I'm going to be talking about how to write a psychology extended response question now I have said before this was not my strongest suit but I did have some very good essays compared to my usual so averaged I would say on average I got between 13 and 15 out of 22 which isn't good I know I know you don't have to tell me, but my short answer questions were so good that it got me sevens. But I did have some very good days where I would get like 90. My first ever psychology essay, I got 21 out of 22. And then we never got that close again. My next closest was in year 13, literally like the last essay before we left because of the world. And I got 19 out of 22. And it made me cry because I'd been writing such bad essays all year and I didn't. know how to write them like we were never really taught structure until year 13 and then my teacher was like sasky you've been doing this wrong since the beginning of time and i was like oh why did no one tell me why didn't no one tell me because literally oh my god the first essay i got back in year 13 my teacher was like when i was looking at your predicted grades i thought i thought i'd get much better essay and i was like and she's like i'm disappointed like oh because my predicted grades were always seven so I assume she thought I was good at essays but I was only getting these sevens because my paper three was really good my paper one was really good and we'd never done a paper two before so I didn't have to deal with the essays like in my paper two I got five I didn't sit the exam obviously because thanks class of 2020 but in the one mock that we did for paper two I think I got five I think I got 28 out of 44 which isn't good I know I I know, okay? This is just gonna be me defending my poor essay writing skills for the whole 20 minute video. It might be. Look, I wasn't the best at writing essays, I haven't written a psychology essay since literally a year ago, but I wrote two good ones and therefore I am qualified to deliver this video. Thank you very much. We are going to talk about psychology extended response questions. I'm gonna call them essays because I don't like ERQ. Like essay Q? Fine. ERQ? So, psychology essays. You will do one in paper one, whether you're standard or higher level, you will be answering an essay. So you've got to deal with it. And then in paper two, you're doing at least one. If you're standard level, you're doing one. If you're higher level, oh, welcome baby. You're going to write two essays in that paper and it's going to make you cry. Paper two is everyone's least favourite paper. And if it's your favourite paper, sort yourself out. You're wrong. You're absolutely lying to yourself. I don't know anyone in the IB in my sixth form. class that could actually write essays and understood what they were doing. Anyone. Yes there was only like seven of us in the class but still none of us could write the essays so zero percent able to do essays in Psychology IB. So my plan for this video is I'm going to talk to you about the criteria, where you're going to get your marks, what they want and how many marks you can get in each section. Then we're going to discuss the structure, how to actually write the essay, which is the bit that is the most difficult. and then I'm going to go through one essay with you. I've got an example on my phone, I've got an example plan, we're going to talk through how you would write that essay. Everyone ready? Buckle your seat belts kids, it's IB psychology time. So essays are out of 22 marks, they're big, they're very big. Considering your next biggest question nine, It's a very big jump. It's two and a half times a short answer question. And don't let that convince you in your mind that you're doing two and a half short answer questions. Because you are not. Although you kind of are. Let me explain that in a moment. So, there are five criteria for writing an essay. It goes A, B, C, D, E. Learn the alphabet with Saskia. So, criteria A. Focus. Have you actually focused on... on the question. So if you get asked a question about social identity theory and you don't talk about social identity theory, you're not going to get asked a question about social identity theory. Entity theory, you haven't focused on the question. You have not done what the criteria wants. You will not get the two marks. I used to think that these were a really easy two marks to get. Yeah, they're not. You need to be focused on the relevant aspects. of the question. If the question is asking you to discuss something, are you discussing it? If the question is asking you about biological and you are mentioning socio-cultural and then you're not like linking it back or making it relevant, are you going to discuss it? to get the marks. No. You need your essay to be streamlined, condense it, make it as relevant as you can. You want to stay focused on the question and it's difficult, we will get there in the structure of how you're going to stay focused on the question because I could never stay focused on the question. I would just write how I thought I was supposed to write but like almost forgetting that I was trying to answer a question. So, criterion B is knowledge. I'm going to say this is a relatively okay criteria to meet. This is six marks. This is your definitions, your terminology. Do you actually know what you're talking about? This does not include the research. Your research is irrelevant for criteria B. You need to define your words. If you do not define your key terms, this is destroyed because you might be using them really well but no one knows if you know what they mean. You have to explain the big words you're going to talk about, even things like reliability and validity. You have to tell me what they mean. Pretend I don't know. Pretend whoever is reading your essay has no idea. nothing, not a single clue about psychology. You are writing for them. So, define your words and you can quite, quite solidly do well in this criterion. Then we have criteria C, research. Have you actually used research to support your understandings? And has it been relevant research? That is where it is important. You think this might be easy, but if your research isn't relevant to the question, it doesn't matter. It does not matter if you've used the research because it doesn't, it's not linking. The IB says that there is no like specific amount that you should use of research. I'm going to tell you there is two minimum. You need two studies and it's worth throwing a third one in like a counter study, a counter example or if you literally just want to mention a point you can just say oh well in two sentences you can say well Maguire did this and he found this which is going against what this person found let me discuss that. Your research has to be relevant. On the ivory criteria on my phone relevant is in bold. bold it in your mind if it's not relevant don't even try and include it don't even try then the criterion D critical thinking I thought this was easy it's not that easy I'm gonna read here it says the areas of critical thinking are research design and methodologies, triangulation, assumptions and biases, contradictory evidence or alternative theories, areas of uncertainty. Those are your five critical thinking points. Learn them. Unless the question is asking you to talk about research methodology, please do not put all of your effort into saying, oh well this one has high ecological validity and this one doesn't. Because you... It's not important. I don't want to see the same... point repeated over and over again about the ecological validity unless it's incredibly relevant to what you're trying to say and chances are it's not. You want to be using relevant critical thinking not every right every study will have something that you can say is wrong with it but you do not have to always mention it it's not always relevant to what you're trying to say then we have criterion e which is organization and clarity this is only worth two marks and again you might think oh easy really easy marks um yeah no i never really got two marks in this bit it's harder than you might think because you need to for organization and clarity it's talking about your structure and a lot of the time people don't know know how to structure an essay which means they just lose these marks because the examiner like they did not plan it they did not know where they were going with this essay and they've just shoved random points in i'm talking to myself here i did not know how to structure an essay and i still don't really so you need your essay to be organized you need to be coherent and it needs to flow don't just jump from research to research if they're not linking together if they're not relevant so those are the criterion now let's talk talk about the command word. They are important, much more important than you might think. So you tend to kind of get discuss questions. Discuss is a balanced review. one side, two side, but it's not balanced. Evaluate is probably the next easiest command term because this is very similar to discuss, but evaluating strength limitations. Simple as that. Sometimes you'll get a question, I remember one of my mocks was evaluate research on pro-social behavior. It didn't really care about you know the pro-social behavior. Evaluate research, the word that comes after evaluate is often very useful because I knew from that I wasn't evaluating the theory. I was evaluating the research. Then to what extent? You have to say to what extent in this essay. You can't just, you know, present an opinion but not conclude an opinion. You have to say to what extent. You have to come to a conclusion and say, like, you know, your question might be like, to what extent does, do biological factors play a, play, play a part in the development of major depressive disorder? So you need to say like genetic and biological factors play a very large role as supported by this and this and this. And then we have contrast. I've never had a contrast question, but I've seen them and I don't want to do them. So contrast, differences, not similarities, differences. So you might get asked like, you know, contrast two models of memory. You don't want the similarities. How are they different? Tell me. I'm pretty sure those are the only questions they can ask you, like beginning bits. That's what I've got on my phone. So we have talked about the criterion, we've talked about the command terms, let's talk structure. How are we writing an essay? So you need an introduction. Always need an introduction, always. In your introduction, define everything all the relevant words you need to define so if you're going to be talking if your question is like you know discuss the reliability of diagnosis what you need to define reliability of diagnosis not just reliability that's not relevant the reliability of a diagnosis what does that mean and like if you were talking about specific disorder what is that disorder you need to define everything because this is gonna get you your knowledge marks you need to show them that you actually know what these words mean and you actually understand what the question is asking you because if you show them that you understand what the question is asking you you're more likely to get your criterion a marks because you've shown them that you are actually going to focus on the question you kind of want to set out a plan in your introduction without telling them in this essay i'm going to discuss don't i hate i hate when someone puts i in an essay don't do it you just set it up for them you say like oh the liability of diagnosis has been you know why widely argued, some supporting evidence such as this, and some against evidence like this. And then you've told them what you're gonna talk about without telling them. So introduction, tell them what you're gonna talk about, define all your key terms. So if your question is about reliability of diagnosis, what are they being diagnosed with? What's your disorder? And then what's a reliability of diagnosis? And then like, why is that a thing? What's your question asking you to do about the diagnosis? But you know, oh, Reliability of diagnosis is widely argued. Oh, it's controversial. Oh, is it? That kind of thing. Move on to the bit that people tend to get confused with. These are the main body paragraphs of your essay. So first of all, your theory, explain it. Sometimes there is not a theory. If you're talking about model of memory, explain the model of memory. You can go into as much detail as you want. You have an hour, but remember to, your focus shouldn't all be here. You'll feel. Your theory is only contributing to your knowledge marks. It's not really going to get you the research marks and unless you're going to critically analyse it or assess it, it's not going to get you Criterion D. This is a small part of Criterion B. You need to say it so they know what you're talking about, but don't spend forever on it. N. Research. I would always first go for supporting evidence because it's easier. So you know, we're doing social identity theory, let's say that. What study supports it? Oh wow, these people found things. this um and it supports this theory by this aim method findings conclusion you don't always have to put the aim i don't ever like explicitly say oh they wanted to find out this i would just say oh they study social identity theory let's tell you about it so yes you want to give them your research tell them all about it and show that you actually kind of know what they're talking about you don't have to put details in sometimes it's worth shoving in you like you know how many participants there were but it's not always like if you can't think of it don't it's fine it's perfectly fine to not know so then you want to kind of very quickly evaluate the study not a lot because it's not about the study it's about the theory and you want to say oh you know well this is quite a valid study because of this it was highly controlled this oh but it's a little bit old so you know take it with a grain of salt that kind of thing but obviously in a more in a more formal manner because you can't say take it with a grain of salt in an ibsa you want to link that back to the theory how does How does it show the theory? This is like the last section in a short answer question, linking it back to the top. What does it mean? How does it show the theory? You also will need to evaluate the theory at some point. Well, it depends on what your question is, but let's say you have to evaluate the theory. You will eventually at some point need to be kind of, you want to be embedding this into your argument. So like if you, when you're explaining the theory, if you say that it was developed a very long time ago, you can straight away put in a point there and be like, well, temporal validity, you know? you can straight away be like, well, here's me showing you that I'm already critically analysing this. Like, I already am showing you I understand this. Then when you're linking your study back to the theory, you can do a little bit more critical analysis then. So you can say, well, there's not really much empirical support for this. Or, oh, there is a lot of empirical support for this. Oh, well, the empirical support is rubbish. Obviously not like that, but kind of like that. And then you basically do that twice. So you're probably going to go off on theory and research. twice Obviously unless you're doing you know, like an entire question on social identity theory. You don't need to repeat the theory You would then just say like oh well on the other hand someone studied this Or you could say that people might think there's a bias in this theory So they studied if there was a bias in the theory and they found oh There was not one and things like that and then just after that before you're concluding You want to show them a little bit more knowledge Not necessarily like a study but you want to show them a little bit more analysis of the theory you need to show them just any points you maybe haven't already mentioned in the other bits of your essay maybe just kind of say oh you know this study doesn't have good contract validity what's it what is it teacup testable empirical evidence assumptions and biases construct validity you I don't know what U is. Predictability. That's a thing, isn't it? Or did my teacher make that up? We had teacup for how you assess a theory. You know, you want to embed that throughout your essay, but you also want to kind of do a tiny section at the end being like, well, here's what you missed. And then, your conclusion should not be long, okay? Your conclusion is no new information, nothing new. You are literally summarizing it. You are saying, well, on the one hand, there is supporting evidence, on the other hand, and there is contrasting evidence, but the contrasting evidence is really weak, so we're led to more believe the supporting evidence. Oh, but supporting evidence has low temporal validity, so we would need more recent supporting evidence. Something like that. You don't have to end on a nice concluding sentence. So, we are on the example question. This is, I think, from the 2019 May paper. So I'm pretty sure this was in my mock. So, discuss one or more biases and think. thinking and or decision making. So what we are underlining, discuss. Your key term, you need to offer a range of arguments, factors and hypotheses in a balanced way. Present your opinions with evidence. You can then do one or more biases. If you only remember one, perfect, stick to one. Sometimes it's helpful to do two so you can contrast the theories, the biases. Then thinking and or decision making. Do you want to do thinking, decision making or both? You know, you can pick. So, in your introduction, what are you going to say? Well, you're probably going to discuss what a bias is and where these biases come from. So, we are going to talk about anchoring bias and availability. heuristics, which are a part of system one thinking. So you're gonna talk about the dual process model in your introduction. You will say, well, the dual process model is this, but you know, part of the dual process model is the system one, you know. this kind of lazy, effortless thinking, which can lead to biases, heuristics, cognitive shortcuts, etc. Oh, an example of this cognitive shortcut would be availability heuristics. Another example would be anchoring bias. So, you know, define them. What is an anchoring bias? What is an availability heuristics? And then you need to support them with evidence. So we've done our introduction. You know, we're going to talk about anchoring bias first because it's the first one I've spotted. We have English and... and Miss Viler? Miss Viler? We're gonna talk about that study. It's the law student's rape case, that one. Talk about that. Then, how does it show angering bias? We're gonna talk about the bias, and oh, this is evidence for it. Is it good evidence for it? Like, is it relevant? Is it okay? So, you want to say a little bit about the study, and like, if it's actually any good. And then you want to kind of say, well, Anchoring bias like it doesn't have much evidence or it does have a lot of evidence or you know you want to kind of talk about anchoring bias you can say oh well we can actually measure anchoring bias like very easily we can empirically measure anchoring bias so it's quite easy to find support for it and things like that. Then you move on. Next paragraph. Oh, well, another kind of bias in thinking and or decision making, I don't know which one it is, is an availability heuristic. You might want to repeat what an availability heuristic is you don't have to if you think it kind of flows well and you know a definition is good put it in it might be helpful but like if you think it's going to kind of plug things up don't bother so then we have kainman and bersky i don't remember this study i don't think i ever learned it it was just one i found in one of my notes so we're going to talk about that what does it show does it show availability heuristic and why and then similar Similarly to the anchoring bias one, you know, can we measure availability heuristics? Like, are they a thing? Can we prove that they're a thing? And in this essay, you can do, you know, you could pick to do only anchoring bias and then do one for and one against. We never learned an against anchoring bias study, so I could not tell you one. But you know, you can do, because you're allowed to do one or more theories of thinking and or decision-making, you kind of have like a potential of like three or four different questions you could actually. answer here so if you only know about anger and bias you've got your one theory in thinking or decision making you've got it like you can answer this kind of however you want to and then you're going to just conclude say well you know there's a lot of evidence for this you can very easily test these biases and they show great support for you know the dual process model that kind of thing and i know that this example is not the best essay example plan but basically you it's the only one I could find in my notes. So, I know this last part of the video about the essay was probably not the most helpful thing, but hopefully me talking about how to structure the essay and what the criterion are was helpful in some way. I hope this was helpful in some way. I know that my IB psychology videos tend to do relatively well because there just doesn't seem to be that many videos about IB psychology. So, yes, hopefully this was helpful in some way, shape or form and hopefully it helps you write an essay. Remember, you asked... Essays don't have to be that great. Focus on your short answer questions. Because in paper one, that's where they're important. You need to be able to write a solid essay. Like not great, not even necessarily good. But just it needs to get you enough marks to kind of get a solid like four or five in paper two. Which is hard. But with practice, that's the thing. You have to just practice essays. It's not fun, but our teacher used to set us an essay like every two weeks on a Friday, we'd get an essay. And I would write an essay every single Saturday. for the sake of it because I knew that essays were not my strongest suit and I knew that essays were a pretty big chunk of the IB and I had to be able to do them and my paper two wasn't the strongest so I was like well I'm gonna do it I'm gonna learn how to write an essay and I learned how to write an essay yes hopefully that video was helpful in some way shape or form and hopefully everyone does pretty well in the IB I don't know how exams are gonna happen this year but hopefully everything is good and everyone does well

In today's video I'm going to talk to you about IB psychology. So, I did IB psychology from 2018 to 2020, I got a 7, those are my my credentials you're welcome I did higher level as well so so you can probably tell by the title I'm going to be talking about how to write a psychology extended response question now I have said before this was not my strongest suit but I did have some very good essays compared to my usual so averaged I would say on average I got between 13 and 15 out of 22 which isn't good I know I know you don't have to tell me, but my short answer questions were so good that it got me sevens. But I did have some very good days where I would get like 90. My first ever psychology essay, I got 21 out of 22. And then we never got that close again. My next closest was in year 13, literally like the last essay before we left because of the world.

And I got 19 out of 22. And it made me cry because I'd been writing such bad essays all year and I didn't. know how to write them like we were never really taught structure until year 13 and then my teacher was like sasky you've been doing this wrong since the beginning of time and i was like oh why did no one tell me why didn't no one tell me because literally oh my god the first essay i got back in year 13 my teacher was like when i was looking at your predicted grades i thought i thought i'd get much better essay and i was like and she's like i'm disappointed like oh because my predicted grades were always seven so I assume she thought I was good at essays but I was only getting these sevens because my paper three was really good my paper one was really good and we'd never done a paper two before so I didn't have to deal with the essays like in my paper two I got five I didn't sit the exam obviously because thanks class of 2020 but in the one mock that we did for paper two I think I got five I think I got 28 out of 44 which isn't good I know I I know, okay? This is just gonna be me defending my poor essay writing skills for the whole 20 minute video.

It might be. Look, I wasn't the best at writing essays, I haven't written a psychology essay since literally a year ago, but I wrote two good ones and therefore I am qualified to deliver this video. Thank you very much.

We are going to talk about psychology extended response questions. I'm gonna call them essays because I don't like ERQ. Like essay Q?

Fine. ERQ? So, psychology essays. You will do one in paper one, whether you're standard or higher level, you will be answering an essay. So you've got to deal with it.

And then in paper two, you're doing at least one. If you're standard level, you're doing one. If you're higher level, oh, welcome baby.

You're going to write two essays in that paper and it's going to make you cry. Paper two is everyone's least favourite paper. And if it's your favourite paper, sort yourself out.

You're wrong. You're absolutely lying to yourself. I don't know anyone in the IB in my sixth form.

class that could actually write essays and understood what they were doing. Anyone. Yes there was only like seven of us in the class but still none of us could write the essays so zero percent able to do essays in Psychology IB.

So my plan for this video is I'm going to talk to you about the criteria, where you're going to get your marks, what they want and how many marks you can get in each section. Then we're going to discuss the structure, how to actually write the essay, which is the bit that is the most difficult. and then I'm going to go through one essay with you. I've got an example on my phone, I've got an example plan, we're going to talk through how you would write that essay.

Everyone ready? Buckle your seat belts kids, it's IB psychology time. So essays are out of 22 marks, they're big, they're very big. Considering your next biggest question nine, It's a very big jump. It's two and a half times a short answer question.

And don't let that convince you in your mind that you're doing two and a half short answer questions. Because you are not. Although you kind of are. Let me explain that in a moment.

So, there are five criteria for writing an essay. It goes A, B, C, D, E. Learn the alphabet with Saskia. So, criteria A. Focus. Have you actually focused on...

on the question. So if you get asked a question about social identity theory and you don't talk about social identity theory, you're not going to get asked a question about social identity theory. Entity theory, you haven't focused on the question.

You have not done what the criteria wants. You will not get the two marks. I used to think that these were a really easy two marks to get. Yeah, they're not.

You need to be focused on the relevant aspects. of the question. If the question is asking you to discuss something, are you discussing it?

If the question is asking you about biological and you are mentioning socio-cultural and then you're not like linking it back or making it relevant, are you going to discuss it? to get the marks. No.

You need your essay to be streamlined, condense it, make it as relevant as you can. You want to stay focused on the question and it's difficult, we will get there in the structure of how you're going to stay focused on the question because I could never stay focused on the question. I would just write how I thought I was supposed to write but like almost forgetting that I was trying to answer a question.

So, criterion B is knowledge. I'm going to say this is a relatively okay criteria to meet. This is six marks.

This is your definitions, your terminology. Do you actually know what you're talking about? This does not include the research.

Your research is irrelevant for criteria B. You need to define your words. If you do not define your key terms, this is destroyed because you might be using them really well but no one knows if you know what they mean.

You have to explain the big words you're going to talk about, even things like reliability and validity. You have to tell me what they mean. Pretend I don't know.

Pretend whoever is reading your essay has no idea. nothing, not a single clue about psychology. You are writing for them. So, define your words and you can quite, quite solidly do well in this criterion. Then we have criteria C, research.

Have you actually used research to support your understandings? And has it been relevant research? That is where it is important. You think this might be easy, but if your research isn't relevant to the question, it doesn't matter.

It does not matter if you've used the research because it doesn't, it's not linking. The IB says that there is no like specific amount that you should use of research. I'm going to tell you there is two minimum.

You need two studies and it's worth throwing a third one in like a counter study, a counter example or if you literally just want to mention a point you can just say oh well in two sentences you can say well Maguire did this and he found this which is going against what this person found let me discuss that. Your research has to be relevant. On the ivory criteria on my phone relevant is in bold. bold it in your mind if it's not relevant don't even try and include it don't even try then the criterion D critical thinking I thought this was easy it's not that easy I'm gonna read here it says the areas of critical thinking are research design and methodologies, triangulation, assumptions and biases, contradictory evidence or alternative theories, areas of uncertainty.

Those are your five critical thinking points. Learn them. Unless the question is asking you to talk about research methodology, please do not put all of your effort into saying, oh well this one has high ecological validity and this one doesn't. Because you...

It's not important. I don't want to see the same... point repeated over and over again about the ecological validity unless it's incredibly relevant to what you're trying to say and chances are it's not. You want to be using relevant critical thinking not every right every study will have something that you can say is wrong with it but you do not have to always mention it it's not always relevant to what you're trying to say then we have criterion e which is organization and clarity this is only worth two marks and again you might think oh easy really easy marks um yeah no i never really got two marks in this bit it's harder than you might think because you need to for organization and clarity it's talking about your structure and a lot of the time people don't know know how to structure an essay which means they just lose these marks because the examiner like they did not plan it they did not know where they were going with this essay and they've just shoved random points in i'm talking to myself here i did not know how to structure an essay and i still don't really so you need your essay to be organized you need to be coherent and it needs to flow don't just jump from research to research if they're not linking together if they're not relevant so those are the criterion now let's talk talk about the command word.

They are important, much more important than you might think. So you tend to kind of get discuss questions. Discuss is a balanced review.

one side, two side, but it's not balanced. Evaluate is probably the next easiest command term because this is very similar to discuss, but evaluating strength limitations. Simple as that.

Sometimes you'll get a question, I remember one of my mocks was evaluate research on pro-social behavior. It didn't really care about you know the pro-social behavior. Evaluate research, the word that comes after evaluate is often very useful because I knew from that I wasn't evaluating the theory. I was evaluating the research. Then to what extent?

You have to say to what extent in this essay. You can't just, you know, present an opinion but not conclude an opinion. You have to say to what extent.

You have to come to a conclusion and say, like, you know, your question might be like, to what extent does, do biological factors play a, play, play a part in the development of major depressive disorder? So you need to say like genetic and biological factors play a very large role as supported by this and this and this. And then we have contrast. I've never had a contrast question, but I've seen them and I don't want to do them. So contrast, differences, not similarities, differences.

So you might get asked like, you know, contrast two models of memory. You don't want the similarities. How are they different?

Tell me. I'm pretty sure those are the only questions they can ask you, like beginning bits. That's what I've got on my phone.

So we have talked about the criterion, we've talked about the command terms, let's talk structure. How are we writing an essay? So you need an introduction. Always need an introduction, always. In your introduction, define everything all the relevant words you need to define so if you're going to be talking if your question is like you know discuss the reliability of diagnosis what you need to define reliability of diagnosis not just reliability that's not relevant the reliability of a diagnosis what does that mean and like if you were talking about specific disorder what is that disorder you need to define everything because this is gonna get you your knowledge marks you need to show them that you actually know what these words mean and you actually understand what the question is asking you because if you show them that you understand what the question is asking you you're more likely to get your criterion a marks because you've shown them that you are actually going to focus on the question you kind of want to set out a plan in your introduction without telling them in this essay i'm going to discuss don't i hate i hate when someone puts i in an essay don't do it you just set it up for them you say like oh the liability of diagnosis has been you know why widely argued, some supporting evidence such as this, and some against evidence like this.

And then you've told them what you're gonna talk about without telling them. So introduction, tell them what you're gonna talk about, define all your key terms. So if your question is about reliability of diagnosis, what are they being diagnosed with? What's your disorder? And then what's a reliability of diagnosis?

And then like, why is that a thing? What's your question asking you to do about the diagnosis? But you know, oh, Reliability of diagnosis is widely argued.

Oh, it's controversial. Oh, is it? That kind of thing. Move on to the bit that people tend to get confused with. These are the main body paragraphs of your essay.

So first of all, your theory, explain it. Sometimes there is not a theory. If you're talking about model of memory, explain the model of memory. You can go into as much detail as you want.

You have an hour, but remember to, your focus shouldn't all be here. You'll feel. Your theory is only contributing to your knowledge marks.

It's not really going to get you the research marks and unless you're going to critically analyse it or assess it, it's not going to get you Criterion D. This is a small part of Criterion B. You need to say it so they know what you're talking about, but don't spend forever on it. N. Research.

I would always first go for supporting evidence because it's easier. So you know, we're doing social identity theory, let's say that. What study supports it?

Oh wow, these people found things. this um and it supports this theory by this aim method findings conclusion you don't always have to put the aim i don't ever like explicitly say oh they wanted to find out this i would just say oh they study social identity theory let's tell you about it so yes you want to give them your research tell them all about it and show that you actually kind of know what they're talking about you don't have to put details in sometimes it's worth shoving in you like you know how many participants there were but it's not always like if you can't think of it don't it's fine it's perfectly fine to not know so then you want to kind of very quickly evaluate the study not a lot because it's not about the study it's about the theory and you want to say oh you know well this is quite a valid study because of this it was highly controlled this oh but it's a little bit old so you know take it with a grain of salt that kind of thing but obviously in a more in a more formal manner because you can't say take it with a grain of salt in an ibsa you want to link that back to the theory how does How does it show the theory? This is like the last section in a short answer question, linking it back to the top. What does it mean? How does it show the theory?

You also will need to evaluate the theory at some point. Well, it depends on what your question is, but let's say you have to evaluate the theory. You will eventually at some point need to be kind of, you want to be embedding this into your argument. So like if you, when you're explaining the theory, if you say that it was developed a very long time ago, you can straight away put in a point there and be like, well, temporal validity, you know?

you can straight away be like, well, here's me showing you that I'm already critically analysing this. Like, I already am showing you I understand this. Then when you're linking your study back to the theory, you can do a little bit more critical analysis then. So you can say, well, there's not really much empirical support for this. Or, oh, there is a lot of empirical support for this.

Oh, well, the empirical support is rubbish. Obviously not like that, but kind of like that. And then you basically do that twice.

So you're probably going to go off on theory and research. twice Obviously unless you're doing you know, like an entire question on social identity theory. You don't need to repeat the theory You would then just say like oh well on the other hand someone studied this Or you could say that people might think there's a bias in this theory So they studied if there was a bias in the theory and they found oh There was not one and things like that and then just after that before you're concluding You want to show them a little bit more knowledge Not necessarily like a study but you want to show them a little bit more analysis of the theory you need to show them just any points you maybe haven't already mentioned in the other bits of your essay maybe just kind of say oh you know this study doesn't have good contract validity what's it what is it teacup testable empirical evidence assumptions and biases construct validity you I don't know what U is.

Predictability. That's a thing, isn't it? Or did my teacher make that up? We had teacup for how you assess a theory.

You know, you want to embed that throughout your essay, but you also want to kind of do a tiny section at the end being like, well, here's what you missed. And then, your conclusion should not be long, okay? Your conclusion is no new information, nothing new. You are literally summarizing it.

You are saying, well, on the one hand, there is supporting evidence, on the other hand, and there is contrasting evidence, but the contrasting evidence is really weak, so we're led to more believe the supporting evidence. Oh, but supporting evidence has low temporal validity, so we would need more recent supporting evidence. Something like that.

You don't have to end on a nice concluding sentence. So, we are on the example question. This is, I think, from the 2019 May paper. So I'm pretty sure this was in my mock. So, discuss one or more biases and think.

thinking and or decision making. So what we are underlining, discuss. Your key term, you need to offer a range of arguments, factors and hypotheses in a balanced way.

Present your opinions with evidence. You can then do one or more biases. If you only remember one, perfect, stick to one. Sometimes it's helpful to do two so you can contrast the theories, the biases.

Then thinking and or decision making. Do you want to do thinking, decision making or both? You know, you can pick. So, in your introduction, what are you going to say? Well, you're probably going to discuss what a bias is and where these biases come from.

So, we are going to talk about anchoring bias and availability. heuristics, which are a part of system one thinking. So you're gonna talk about the dual process model in your introduction.

You will say, well, the dual process model is this, but you know, part of the dual process model is the system one, you know. this kind of lazy, effortless thinking, which can lead to biases, heuristics, cognitive shortcuts, etc. Oh, an example of this cognitive shortcut would be availability heuristics. Another example would be anchoring bias.

So, you know, define them. What is an anchoring bias? What is an availability heuristics?

And then you need to support them with evidence. So we've done our introduction. You know, we're going to talk about anchoring bias first because it's the first one I've spotted. We have English and... and Miss Viler?

Miss Viler? We're gonna talk about that study. It's the law student's rape case, that one.

Talk about that. Then, how does it show angering bias? We're gonna talk about the bias, and oh, this is evidence for it.

Is it good evidence for it? Like, is it relevant? Is it okay? So, you want to say a little bit about the study, and like, if it's actually any good.

And then you want to kind of say, well, Anchoring bias like it doesn't have much evidence or it does have a lot of evidence or you know you want to kind of talk about anchoring bias you can say oh well we can actually measure anchoring bias like very easily we can empirically measure anchoring bias so it's quite easy to find support for it and things like that. Then you move on. Next paragraph.

Oh, well, another kind of bias in thinking and or decision making, I don't know which one it is, is an availability heuristic. You might want to repeat what an availability heuristic is you don't have to if you think it kind of flows well and you know a definition is good put it in it might be helpful but like if you think it's going to kind of plug things up don't bother so then we have kainman and bersky i don't remember this study i don't think i ever learned it it was just one i found in one of my notes so we're going to talk about that what does it show does it show availability heuristic and why and then similar Similarly to the anchoring bias one, you know, can we measure availability heuristics? Like, are they a thing? Can we prove that they're a thing?

And in this essay, you can do, you know, you could pick to do only anchoring bias and then do one for and one against. We never learned an against anchoring bias study, so I could not tell you one. But you know, you can do, because you're allowed to do one or more theories of thinking and or decision-making, you kind of have like a potential of like three or four different questions you could actually.

answer here so if you only know about anger and bias you've got your one theory in thinking or decision making you've got it like you can answer this kind of however you want to and then you're going to just conclude say well you know there's a lot of evidence for this you can very easily test these biases and they show great support for you know the dual process model that kind of thing and i know that this example is not the best essay example plan but basically you it's the only one I could find in my notes. So, I know this last part of the video about the essay was probably not the most helpful thing, but hopefully me talking about how to structure the essay and what the criterion are was helpful in some way. I hope this was helpful in some way.

I know that my IB psychology videos tend to do relatively well because there just doesn't seem to be that many videos about IB psychology. So, yes, hopefully this was helpful in some way, shape or form and hopefully it helps you write an essay. Remember, you asked...

Essays don't have to be that great. Focus on your short answer questions. Because in paper one, that's where they're important.

You need to be able to write a solid essay. Like not great, not even necessarily good. But just it needs to get you enough marks to kind of get a solid like four or five in paper two. Which is hard.

But with practice, that's the thing. You have to just practice essays. It's not fun, but our teacher used to set us an essay like every two weeks on a Friday, we'd get an essay.

And I would write an essay every single Saturday. for the sake of it because I knew that essays were not my strongest suit and I knew that essays were a pretty big chunk of the IB and I had to be able to do them and my paper two wasn't the strongest so I was like well I'm gonna do it I'm gonna learn how to write an essay and I learned how to write an essay yes hopefully that video was helpful in some way shape or form and hopefully everyone does pretty well in the IB I don't know how exams are gonna happen this year but hopefully everything is good and everyone does well

Transcript for:Guidelines for Writing Psychology Essays

Transcript for:
Guidelines for Writing Psychology Essays