Paper Guidelines and Suggested Topics

Psychology 162

On this page you will find useful information about how to pick a topic for your paper and about how your paper should be organized. Examples of excellent papers that would get an A+ are also here.

Contents

*  Guidelines for organizing and researching your topic.

*  An Example Paper (ß Click here to see an example of an ideal paper. The green men example.)

*  Another Example Paper (This is one was written by people who work for a policy institute.)

*  Introduction to Suggested Paper Topics

*  Topics dealing with crime.

*  Topics dealing with jury decisions.

*  Topics dealing with Psychiatry.

*  Topics dealing with the Role of Social Science in the Law.

*  Topics dealing with Decision Making

*  Critical thinking about legal research

*  Instructions: How to format and write a psychology paper

*      Instructions for final paper (Read this before you start to work on your final paper and then again before you hand in the final version.)

*  Searching for research on your topic

*  Comments on last year's papers and outlines

Guidelines for organizing and researching your topic.

1. Your essay should be a critical analysis1, not a rehash of someone else's article, book, or talk.  It should contain your ideas and your analyses, although clearly you will have to rely on other people's raw data and research. Do not simply fill your paper with quotes or "near quotes" of other people's claims. You should try to use this essay to show us how well you can critically evaluate ideas in psychology that might or have been applied to the law or assumptions made by the law that are naive or well conceived in light of psychological evidence. 

Pick something that you really believe in and that you would like to know more about.  This is your chance to become a real expert in a particular domain.  Think of this as an opportunity to develop a set of arguments that will be useful the next time that you get into an argument with your parents or friends about some social policy issue. But, most of all have fun. 

2. Organize the material for your paper before you begin writing. Remember that this is a 5-page paper!!! Most topics have much more relevant material available than you will be able to fit into a five page paper. Generally speaking, your paper should have a well-thought-out introduction, thesis statement, argument, and conclusion.

3. Clearly state your thesis. Be sure that your thesis relates a legal issue to psychology or a psychological issue to the law. The thesis statement must be one that can be empirically validated (ie., verified through the collection of observable, objective evidence.)

Examples of Acceptable Thesis Statements: "The death penalty should be abolished because it is applied in a discriminatory manner;" or "Lie detectors should not be used because they lack validity;" or "Other things being equal, pro-death penalty attitudes prejudice jurors towards more guilty verdicts;" or "The methods social workers sometimes use to interview children in child abuse cases can produce false memories of abuse," or "Although judges say that they take a large number of factors into account when deciding how much bail to set, they really only seem to base their decisions on a very small number of factors," or "Race plays a significant role in the sentencing decisions of judges," or "Although in Neil v. Biggers, the Supreme Court said that the confidence of a witness was a good indicator of how accurate that witness's testimony is likely to be, evidence suggests this conclusion is false."

Example of Unacceptable Thesis Statements: "Lie detectors are immoral because they violate people's rights to privacy," or "Constructionist analysis of the constitution suggests that jurors have every right to hold pro-death attitudes and therefore such jurors should not be prevented from serving on death-penalty cases," or "Union rules do not protect social-workers in the same way that they protect workers in private industry," or "We should have stronger sexual harassment laws to protect women."  These are unacceptable for a number of reasons. The truth of the claim may not depend on empirical evidence! What kind of empirical evidence can determine whether something is or is not immoral? The issue may have nothing to do with psychology. Although it might be possible to find evidence that union rules do not protect some people as well as others by reading the rules, this is not about human behavior. Where is the psychology in this thesis?

4. The argument of your paper should present and analyze evidence for and against (if both are available) the thesis. (For example, evidence that the death penalty is applied to one racial group more frequently than another, but also counter evidence that the different sentencing rates may be due to other legally appropriate factors, should make up the bulk of a paper whose thesis concerns the effect of race on death penalty decisions.)

5. The paper should also have a conclusion that relates the evidence to the thesis. (For example, "although there are some problems with the quality of the existing research, the evidence suggests that, in southern states, at least, the death sentence seems to be given to African-Americans more frequently than to Caucasians. This finding seems to hold even when the nature of the crime, the number of aggravating circumstances, and the defendant's prior record are held constant.") 

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1. By the way, it might help some of you to know what others and I mean by critical analysis of a topic. To critically analyze a topic means that you first express some empirically testable idea. This means that you must think about the kind of evidence that might and might not provide support for your idea before you settle on a final topic. For example, you might have a general interest in making the legal system more just. This is lofty goal, but what should you do next? You might think that if jurors were allowed to ask questions of witnesses, jury decisions would be more just. OK, but how could you prove this claim? You might have read a National Review article by a reporter who said the Attorney General was in favor of this idea but would this constitute evidence? NO! Before you can possibly assess the value of your suggestion, you (or someone else who has done it for you) will need to figure out a method (or even better: multiple methods) of measuring how just jury decisions are. (How could you possibly know whether your suggestion, if implemented, actually made jury decisions more or less just without a measure of how just they were?) Next you will need to find some kind of evidence that examines whether juries that were allowed to ask questions really do reach more just decisions than those that do not. Let's suppose that you find a study that compares jury decisions in two countries, one that allows jury questions and the other that doesn't. Sure enough, in the former juries reach a higher percentage of just (measured somehow) decisions. Critical analysis would expect you to think about other explanations for the finding before concluding that you are right. Maybe jurors in the first country are smarter or maybe other aspects of the court systems differ in the two countries, as well. You need to think about the connection between your idea and the evidence that you find. You need to think about alternative explanations for the evidence that you do find. You need to think about ways of testing the alternative explanations to see which ones can be eliminated (e.g., nationwide IQ testing shows that jurors are equally smart in the two countries). In short the process consists of formulating an idea in a form that is suitable to empirical testing, finding the evidence, evaluating the evidence, looking for alternative explanations for the evidence that you found, and then finding evidence to help eliminate at least some of those alternative explanations.]

Introduction to Suggested Paper Topics

The following topic ideas are presented as suggested topics for the outline/paper that is required for this class.  The suggestions are the types of questions about which you should to be able to write a succinct five-page paper.  All of the following suggestions are presented as examples only (although you should feel free to write about any of those you find below). The idea is to provide you with topic examples so that you will, by imitation, be able to evaluate your own topic ideas to see if they are empirical and psychological enough. Remember that this is neither a class in political science nor a class in the law. It is a psychology class. I want you to apply methods/theories that we use in psychology to help us understand different aspects of the legal system. I don't want you to write a paper that analyzes a famous Supreme Court decision in light of the current political climate in the US. I don't want you to write a paper about a recent murder case and whether you (or even some expert that you know) believe that the murderer was mentally ill. Instead, you should write a paper about a psychological issue that is relevant to the legal system. You should write about a topic that requires that you review and analyze psychological research. Hopefully, this will become clearer when you read through the examples below. Remember, you can write about one of the suggestions below or use the suggestions as a guide to develop your own topic, i.e., one that is not included in the list below.

Example Topics

Topics dealing with Crime.

You might begin by breaking this very large topic into two smaller ones:

1) Factors that influence or cause crime

2) Methods of controlling crime.

After all, it might be possible to control crime with techniques and methods that have little to do with the causes of crime.

A large number of potential factors might cause crime.  [It is important to note here that the issue is cause of crime and not just factors that predict or are associated with crime.  I would want you to analyze whether it is fair to draw causal conclusions from the data.]  The role that anyone of the following plays could make for a good thesis.

  1. Economic conditions (does being poor or growing up poor cause crime?)
  2. Genetic factors
  3. Intelligence
  4. Gender
  5. Race
  6. Age
  7. Gang membership
  8. Urban vs. rural factors
  9. Emotion
  10. Mental illness
  11. Rational decision-making (crime as business).
  12. Personality factors (there are many possibilities, e.g., authoritarianism, party affiliation, religious beliefs, external/internal control, etc., etc.: pick one or two, and not necessarily from this list)
  13. Drugs and alcohol (what causal role, if any do either of both play in crime?)

Methods to control crime:

  1. Deterrence theory (remember: specific deterrence is different from general deterrence).  This could include capital punishment (easily a major thesis in itself) but could center on deterrence of non-capital punishments, as well, e.g., fines, time in jail (prison), time on probation.
  2. Rehabilitation (what benefits if any do various forms of rehabilitation have? How are the claims supported?  Does the research provide solid support or could more research be done?  If new work is needed, what form should it take?)
  3. Probation and parole (surveillance theory).  Might we forget about prison and jail altogether and just put more money into surveillance of those who have been convicted.  (Idea is to increase the certainty of arrest given a violation by increasing surveillance, even via mechanical means, people have to wear transmitters permanently attached to their ankles.)
  4. Legalization of victimless crime as method to decrease crime rate (a. Legalize drugs?  But what else would we need to do?  What evidence is there to support legalization?  Is there any evidence that shows that legalization will result in an increase in crime rate?  b. What about prostitution?  Would this cause a rise in rape or sexual promiscuity? c. What about white collar crime? How much do want to regulate economic activities with criminal sanctions? Do we want the civil system to handle it not via criminal sanctions but via reimbursement of damages done?)

Topics dealing with Jury Decisions.

As one of the most researched (at least by Psychologists) areas in Psychology and the Law, this general topic is filled with reasonable question topics.  The main dependent variables in almost all of this research are the guilty/not guilty decision and sentencing.  Most often the studies involve simulated juries, i.e., students who know that they are in an experiment but are told to act as if they are on a real jury.  Sometimes the "mock" juries deliberate and sometimes they do not, i.e., individuals are asked for their opinions. There are a few exceptions to the mock jury research.  One is Kalvin and Zeisel's The American Jury (published in 1966).  This is a classic book that reports results from analyses of real jury decisions.  (It is filled with ideas for good question theses.)

Some of the topics that one could easily take a side on.

  1. What effect does jury size have on jury decisions?
  2. What effect does the decision rule (unanimous, majority, etc.) have on jury decisions.
  3. Are jury decisions affected by "extra legal" variables, e.g., the race, dress, attractiveness, and so on of the defendant (each of these would be a separate topic)?
  4. Do juries follow judicial instructions to ignore certain information?
  5. What role do specific personality variables of the jurors play in jury decision making?  (This is a broad topic that should be narrowed down to one or two specific factors, for example, what role does party affiliation play, how does gender effect guilt decisions?  Do different personality variables play different roles in different types of cases?)
  6. What role do specific attitudes play in jury decisions.  For example, are people's opinions about the death penalty associated with their guilt innocent decisions and if so, how should this affect the way jurors are selected for service in capital trials?  This topic is often referred to as "death qualification" of jurors or the Witherspoon issue.
  7. Another set of issues related to jury decision making concern the beliefs that key actors in the legal system have about jurors and what makes a good a juror. Lawyers are interested in picking jurors that will be sympathetic to their positions.  As such they have to make attributions about potential jurors and the factors that they believe will make the jurors pro-prosecution or pro-defense. This raises all sorts of issues about attribution theory and person perception in the courtroom.  What measures, if any, do lawyers use to select jurors?  Are the measures valid?  Do the measures actually predict juror behavior?  (This topic is one way to think about the process of voir dire.  These questions concern voir dire and how voir dire should be done.  How can the defense improve its chances through the selection of jurors?  What questions should be asked?  Does body language make a difference?  What about other characteristics of jurors.)

One of the best places to begin in this area would be an article by Gerbasi, et. al., 1977 that appeared in Psychological Bulletin on mock jury research.  The Saks and Hastie text book also has a nice discussion of this area.

Still another related area concerns "change of venue."  What factors determine how judges decide whether to grant change of venue motions?  Are these factors reasonable? What evidence exists to support the use of these factors?

Topics dealing with Psychiatric Testimony.

Psychiatrists play a role in a number of decisions within the criminal and civil systems.  In the criminal systems they testify about the mental state of the defendant. Was the defendant insane at the time of the crime?  Could the defendant think rationally? Was the defendant brain washed (remember Patty Hearst?)?  Was the defendant acting in what he/she believe (however irrationally) was self-defense?  Is the defendant dangerous to himself or others?  (The latter is a very big topic.)

        Within these areas one of the most important issues is the accuracy of the information that psychiatrists give the court.  How reliable and valid is the testimony that they give?  Is there a way to get from psychiatric theory to the everyday decisions that the court or jury must make?  Is psychiatric theory consistent enough (scientific enough) to base real life decisions on it (assuming theories even exist)?  What types of assessment procedures (data) do psychiatrists use to support the information that they give?  Is there agreement about how to define mental illness, dangerousness, and other psychiatric concepts?  Do the measures and claims that psychiatrists make predict the future behavior of the individual?  (This is a major topic area and could easily be broken down into a number of sub-topics, e.g., how well does the MMPI predict, how well does the Rorschach predict, how do predictions based on standard measures compare to predictions based on "base-rates" and simple demographic information?)

        In civil cases, psychiatrists testify about matters relating to commitment proceedings (Should someone be committed to mental hospital against their will -- whatever that means?) and about child custody (What is in the best interests of the child?). Sometimes psychologists and social workers get involved in these proceedings as well. In addition to questions about the accuracy of the testimony of these "experts", one could investigate whether psychological theory has anything to say about these matters that might possible help the decision maker.  For example, compare how the court defines "best interest of the child" with how psychological theory might define it.  What psychological evidence exists (if any) establishing that the court definitions are reasonable (or not)? How do the courts actually decide these types of issues (what factors predict custody decisions, what factors should predict custody decisions?)

        Most of the above questions are very broad and you will have to narrow them down or write a long paper (at least 40 pages) to cover them well.  I have listed them here to give you a starting point in thinking about this general area of interaction between psychology and the law.  Some readings and/or people who are important in these areas are:

Child Custody: S. R. Okpaka, Rutgers Law Review, 1117, (1976)

Mental Illness: Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness or R. Dawes: The House of Cards (1996)

Death Penalty: Ellsworth and Levy, Law and Society Review, 167 (1969)

Dangerousness: John Monahan (has written extensively about this topic)

Psychiatric Testimony: Ennis and Litwack, Cal. Law Review, 693 (1974) (This one is critical of psychiatric testimony)

There are many others but these should provide a place for you to begin exploring some ideas.  As is true for any area about which you might choose to write be sure that you use empirical evidence to support your thesis.  I do not want a paper that does an analysis of single case or that only looks at legal opinion.  You must back up your claims with empirical evidence and you must use the evidence that you do report with great care (i.e., you should not simply accept the author's conclusions; you should critically evaluate the quality of the research and the ability of the methods and findings to support the points that you wish the make).  [The form and structure of Okpaka paper comes close to an ideal paper in the area of psychological and psychiatric testimony.  Notice how she uses legal opinion to lay out the issues and then asks whether there is empirical evidence to support some of the claims being made.  The interplay between psychology and the law is well done. However, the author does use legal opinion to justify claims about how decisions are made on a day to day basis in child custody cases (an empirical issue that can be studied by observing what factors actually predict judicial decisions) and I believe that this was naïve of her. Legal opinions may be produced to justify decisions based on other factors.]

Topics dealing with Eyewitness Identification.

  1. Is cross-racial identification worse than within race identification?
    1. If yes, does this hold only for racial groups?
      1. What about gender effects?
      2. What theories explain results?
      3. Are the results consistent?
      4. Can the results be generalized to real witnessing situations?
    2. If no, how do we explain the intuition, "They all look alike to me?"
  2. What is the relationship between confidence and accuracy?
      1. Why is this issue important to legal system?
      2. Are results consistent?
      3. What theories explain the relationship?
  3. What is the relationship between stress (or arousal) and accuracy?
  4. How does accuracy change with time?
    1. Is there a standard time course or does it depend on other factors?
  5. What role does the age of the witness play in the accuracy of their reports?
  6. Can events that occur after witnessing a crime effect a person's memory for the crime and criminal?
  7. What role does personality play in witness accuracy?
    1. Do some types of people make better witnesses?
    2. Is crime related to witness accuracy?
    3. How well do personality factors predict witness accuracy?
  8. What role if any does drug and alcohol use play?
  9. What factors affect lineup fairness and can lineup fairness be measured?
  10. How well do juries distinguish between accurate and inaccurate witnesses?
    1. Can they discriminate fact from fiction?
    2. Are they good at lie detection?
    3. What factors improve or hinder their performance?
  11. How good is witness performance overall?
    1. How might we answer this question?

In thinking about any of these topics, you should always consider the evidence. How does the evidence relate to the issue?  Are the measures reasonable?  Is there enough research to draw a conclusion?  Are the results consistent?  Is additional research required and if so what should it look like?  Consider the work that has been done at a very detailed level.  The details always count!!!!!  Approach everything you do with a questioning attitude.  Ask, "How do you know?", "What is your evidence?", "Why didn't you ...?"  Do not accept a conclusion until you have thoroughly thought about whether the evidence for that conclusion is sound.

Some researchers have divided the eyewitness area into two sub-areas according to whether the independent variable being studied is an "estimator" or a "system" variable. Estimator variables cannot be changed to improve the accuracy of eyewitness memory. For example, the length of time that a witness saw a culprit is not something that we can control but it is something that we can measure and that might affect the accuracy of a witness. On the other hand, the procedures used in running a test of the witness's memory might easily be changed. For example, will witnesses make fewer errors if the people in a lineup are presented simultaneously (all at the same time) or sequentially (one at a time)? If you decide to write something in the area of eyewitness identification, you might want to keep this distinction in mind.

These are just a few of the topics that you could investigate in the eyewitness area.  Note how specific each is.  Make sure that the topic that you finally choose is narrow enough so that you can do a thorough job of researching it in the time that you have available.  By thorough job, I mean that you should follow the trail of references and read most if not all of the work that is relevant to your topic, even if the articles are in journals that are not necessarily on my list.

Many of the topics that I have listed above already have recent review articles written about them by major people in the field.  This should not only help you find the relevant literature, these papers should also serve as models for how to write such papers. Nevertheless, just because these papers may be well researched and structured, you should not assume that the authors have drawn the "proper" conclusions from their analyses.  Many times authors are blinded by their own ideas and interpret results in a manner that best supports their ideas rather than in way that lets the evidence speak for itself.  You should try very hard not to suffer from the same problem.  Be self-critical.  Question your own work and ideas as much as everyone else's does. Always ask what kind of evidence is needed to support your case and note where the holes are in your arguments.

Topics dealing with Role of Social Science in the Law.

1.       Lie detection (Is it a valid technique?  How does the law decide that a technique is or is not "factual" or scientific?)

2.      Hypnosis (Should it be used to help witnesses remember things?)

3.      Statistical analysis  (When should the court, juries, etc. use statistical analysis of social data in the court?  How should it be evaluated? For example, should the fact that the racial distribution of its employees over the past 3 years has been 95% white and 5% Hispanic in a geographical area that contains 30% Hispanic mean that his company is discriminating against Hispanics in its hiring practices?)

4.      Expert testimony: When should experts be allowed to testify about:

a)     Eyewitness reliability (or how about ear witness reliability?)

b)     Best interests of child in custody cases

c)      Civil commitment to mental hospitals

d)     Survey research

e)     Results of interviews with children about child abuse

f)        The creation of false memories by incorrect interview techniques

5.      External validity (How should we deal with the problem of generality when social science evidence is presented in the court?  After all, the court is dealing with a particular instance.  How do we know that the general rule applies to the particular case?)

Topics dealing with Decision-Making in Legal System.

This is one of the broadest of all of the topics and includes everything from police decision making to parole board decision-making.  How do judges decide sentences, bail, etc?  How do police decide whom to arrest?  How do prosecutors decide whether to plea bargain?  How do probation officers decide what to recommend?  Etc. Etc.  One could pick any of the many places that important decisions get made and examine the research that has been done on that topic.  Usually, a topic can be narrowed to something like: racial (or extra-legal) factors in judicial sentencing or the role of appearance in police decisions to detain.  The point is that it would generally be very difficult to cover all of the work on any one decision-maker without focusing on some narrower issue as it relates to that decision maker. Thus, topics in this area probably should have a thesis something like: X is a factor causing the decisions of Y decision-makers in the legal system. This can be made more interesting by adding a discussion of whether this factor should or should not be causing the decision (according to law, according to what the decision-makers say they are doing or should be doing). (As an example, see the section on bail setting in the book.)

One can look at decisions that clinical psychologists make or that psychiatrists make about criminals or about participants in civil suits from a decision-making point of view. For example, one might hypothesize that when deciding whether defendants are competent to stand trial, decision-makers based their decisions mostly on whether the defendant understands the court procedure. (By the way, the test this idea would require that we examine the extent to which other factors, e.g., the capacity of the defendant to disclose facts about the crime, affect the decision maker. We need to know this because the hypothesis is making a relative statement, i.e., the decision is based mostly on one factor as opposed to others.) This could be made more interesting by asking whether this is a good feature of the system?

 

Overview of an Example Paper

The following may help you think about the kinds of issues that you should worry about in your paper. It is designed to show you what is meant by critical analysis of a problem and the link between theory and data. "(ref)" shows where references would be inserted to support the general or specific claims being made in the paper.

Thesis (just so you know what it is): Green men living in the sewer cause the food at UCSD to smell.

General Intro: Why is this topic important.

The smell of the food at UCSD determines how much is purchased and whether visitors will return to UCSD [ref <-- this first sentence is an empirical claim about human behavior and therefore needs support; how do you know that the smell of food actually determines how much food is purchased. How do you know that the smell of food determines the visitor return rate? Has anyone actually tried to measure food smell and relate it visitor rate or is this something that just seems obvious to you? You may believe this claim is obvious, but Show Me The Evidence! If you make an empirical claim (no matter how obvious it might seem to you), then you need to support that claim with a reference or you need to present the claim in a tentative fashion. For example, "it seems reasonable to assume that…" lets the reader know that you don't have evidence for the claim. Alternatively, you can say, "Common experience suggests that…"]. Food purchases and visitors might have an effect on our tuition rates. [Here we don't need a reference because we said, "might have" an effect rather than does have an effect.] Some have even argued that food smell will affect the health of students [ref -- who has made this argument. Note that we label it as argument and not as evidence. Just because someone provides an argument that is consistent with your position doesn't make the facts used to support the argument true. Citing the conclusions of others (usually from books) that the author claims are based on empirical evidence is not the same as citing the evidence -- after you have reviewed the evidence yourself. The author might be biased. The author might have missed key problems with the evidence. For example, an author might conclude that one variable caused another from evidence that is correlational. By citing the author's conclusion, you give the impression that the research evidence has shown a causal connection when, in fact, it has not.]. People are always interested in keeping healthy [ref <-- Note that the claim in this sentence also involves the behavior of people and therefore must be referenced. You can't just make a claim about human behavior without either letting the reader know that it is just your personal belief or that there is evidence to support the claim. Many people lose points on their papers because they make claims about human behavior that they believe are obvious and because they believe the claim is obvious, they fail to provide support, e.g., women commit fewer crimes than men. The latter is obviously true, but you would need to provide a ref to support the claim were you to say this in your paper.]. Therefore, it is important to learn what determines food smell. One possibility is that green men living in the sewer cause the food to smell [ref if someone else's idea, but not necessary if you created the idea].

After presenting introduction and presenting your thesis, the next thing you should do is explain what your model (theory) implies?

If green men cause food to smell, then we might expect measures of food odor at UCSD to indicate higher than normal putrid levels. We should also expect to observe covariation between the number of green men living in the sewer and measures of food smell at UCSD. A recent survey by [ref] of student opinion at UCSD indicates that food odor is one of the most frequent complaints about the food. In fact, when this survey is compared to a similar one done in 1987 (ref), one finds a two-fold increase the number of food odor complaints from 1987 to the present. [At this point since evidence that might relate to our thesis was presented, we had to decide whether to accept it or suggest some alternative explanations. We chose the latter because this paper is designed to show off our critical thinking skills.] But clearly, the higher odor noted this year might be due to other causes. Students in the 2000s might be more sensitized to food odor and/or more health conscious and/or more willing to express themselves. Unfortunately, we were unable to find any evidence about whether the food odor sensitivity of college students has been increasing in the recent past. However, a recent count (ref) of the number of green men in the UCSD sewer system suggest that there are enough to cause the smell that has been observed in recent months. [At this point, we have to make a choice about whether to continue discussing the changes that occurred from 87 to the present or move on to the real issue. Remember the real issue is not whether the food odors have increased but whether green men cause whatever order exists in the sewer system. Because we were able to discover more direct evidence about the key issue, we chose to move on.]

In fact, a recent time course study (ref) showed that as the number of green men varied from year to year, the amount of food sold at UCSD also varied. Years with higher green men were associated with lower food sales. [Finally, a key type of evidence. Here we have presented co-variation evidence. At least we know that the hypothesized cause, green men, and an effect, food sales, are associated in a manner that we might expect if green men and odor were related. However, note that this is not ideal evidence because the effect, food sales, is not exactly the one with which we are concerned, odor.] Another study (ref) demonstrated that other colleges without green men living in their sewers had many fewer complaints about odor than UCSD. [Note how we have presented two different types of evidence in an attempt to assess the idea that variation in the number of green men is associated with the amount of odor. In the first, we present time course data -- the cause changes naturally over time and we ask whether the effect also changed in predictable ways over the same time period. But note, the effect observed in this evidence was not odor but food sales. We have to make the inference that odor affects sales. This inference could be wrong. It might be made stronger if we remind the reader that odor is also associated with sales -- remember the first sentence? The second type of evidence compared different geographical units (groups of people). It is still a co-variation study in that we are examining how odor varies with number of green men (across colleges instead of in the same college over time).]

Here we start presenting the specific alternative explanations for the evidence initially presented in support of the thesis.

But, it is possible that the green men living in the sewer are not causing the odor. It could be the red women. [<- This is one alternative explanation. Notice below that where there are more red women there are more green men. This is why red women can be an alternative explanation for the odor. Red women co-occur with green men. If green men and red women change together naturally, how do we know whether it is the increase in green men or increase in red women that is producing the observed results?] A recent government report (ref) shows that green men prefer red women over blue ones. As a result, it is possible that the number of red women in the sewer increases and decreases along with the number of green men. To test this possibility, Berkeley (ref) discovered that the number of mixed color (red/green) babies born in the hospital varied over time at a 13 month lag behind the variations in the number of green men living in their sewers. This evidence is consistent with the idea that the number of red women rises and falls as the number of green men rises and falls. Therefore, to eliminate this alternative explanation, we would have to hold the number of red women living in the sewer constant while varying the number of green men. Unfortunately, this crucial test has not yet been done. Although Healthy Choice reported a study (author, 1991) showing that when they added a selective poison (one that was designed to paralyze the hearts of green men) to the sewer system in Ann Arbor, the odor of their food decreased, this test does not eliminate the possibility that the actual cause of the odor is red women. After all, the number of red women living in their sewers may have decreased as the green men started to die off.

Another possible explanation for the association between green men and odor is that green men may be attracted to the already putrid smells of UCSD food. The smellier the food, the more green men may be attracted from other sewers. If this explanation were correct, we would expect that if we controlled the food production process at UCSD in an attempt to control odor, we should observe a reduction in the number of mixed-color babies being born in local HMOs. This study has yet to be done.

Another possibility, yet to be explored, is that it is the green men who are visiting, rather than living in, the sewer who are the actual culprits. We might expect the number of green men visitors to be greater, the more green men who are living in the sewer. It is conceivable that visitors leave behind a by-product of their visit that causes the food to acquire a bad odor.

In a laboratory experiment, author & author (1995) determined that body oil obtained from green men who volunteered for the study seemed to cause food to rot faster than normal when applied in very high concentrations to food. [Note that this is the first place we mentioned a "mechanism" for the green men-odor hypothesis. This mechanism could have been presented earlier. It could have been part of the thesis. What you include in your thesis depends on the nature of the evidence you find and what you really believe is going on. It is not always necessary to include a mechanism, but including one can show that you are thinking about the problem. For example, were I to have left the mechanism out, you might have wondered how green men caused odor. We make our thesis harder to refute and therefore not as good by not providing detail about the mechanism because it isn't clear to readers what we have in mind. This is a common problem with many causal theses in the psychology/law area. For example, many people seem to believe that drugs cause crime. But what is the mechanism? Do drugs have a direct effect on behavior? If so, how do they work? If not, is the effect merely the result of the fact that drug use is, by definition, a crime, etc.? Many people seem to believe that longer sentences reduce crime. But, what is the mechanism? Is it that longer sentences keep people who would have committed additional crimes from doing so or is that longer sentences deter those who might have committed a crime for the first time, etc.?] Although this result is consistent with the general theory, the fact that it was a laboratory experiment and that the green men volunteered limits the generality of the findings. It is possible that the green men who volunteered differ from other green men. It is also unclear whether the oil would have the same effects on food in concentrations that are normally found in the sewer. Unfortunately, a thorough search of the literature suggests that researchers have not yet measured the actual concentrations of this oil in sewers around the country nor have they examined how the concentrations have varied over time. [Note that the last part of this paragraph deals with another issue in critical analysis, namely, generality. Can we generalize the results from the research domains, namely, labs and oils, to the domain of interest, namely, sewers and odors?]

Taken together, although the current research is consistent with the proposed theory, various limitations and the lack of crucial tests prevents us from drawing a firm conclusion about the theory. Future work should examine.... [Here you can outline several studies that should be conducted (within practical limitations, e.g., it would be impractical to recommend that we execute all eight year olds who score above some cutoff on some "potential violence" scale or that we set up a laboratory on Jupiter to study the effects of rare gases under high pressure on reaction time).]

I hope that this helps. If it does not, please speak with either the TA or with me about your paper before you commit yourself. If you are uncertain about how to write a psychology paper, e.g., the format to use for the references, the style of writing, and so on, you can find some very detailed instructions at an excellent site prepared by Dr. Plonsky at the University of Wisconson.

By the way, if your topic involves aspects of the criminal justice system, the Vera Institute maintains a list of links to other websites that is a good starting point if you want to find evidence about criminal justice system functioning. It contains a list of many different criminal justice sites, e.g., Rand, government agencies, etc. Most of which make reports on various topics available via the web. (Check out the Study Aids page for additional sites.)

Another Example: The Three Strikes Law

Just in case my attempt to provide a humorous but useful example of how to write a paper was not helpful, a recent article (Macallair & Males, 1999) provides another example of a paper on a topic that is clearly more relevant to the class: has the three strikes law been effective in deterring crime? When you read the article, you should note how the authors explain the logic of the connection between the hypothesis and the empirical implications of that hypothesis. If the three strikes law is effective in deterring crime, then we should expect to see the crime rate go down more in those areas that have the three strikes law (often called a de jure test). In addition, areas that use the law more should show a greater decrease in crime rate than areas that use it less (often called a de facto test). If the three strikes law deters crime, then the crime rate should be lower after the law went into effect than before it went into effect. Notice the use of age of defendant as a tool to further investigate the empirical implications of the hypothesis. Finally, notice how the hypothesis implies a number of different possible empirical outcomes and how a good analysis of the hypothesis examines all of these implications.

On the other hand, the study did not thoroughly discuss alternative explanations for the results that were presented. For example, might it be that the three strikes law is having an effect, but something about the method and procedures used prevented the authors from seeing the effect? Why might the rates of crime for younger people be going down faster than that for older people, even if the older people are those who are more likely to receive three strike penalties (other than that three strikes penalties are deterring the older criminals more)? Might it be that younger potential criminals are learning by observation rather than by direct experience? Might the consequences to older criminals be causing the younger ones to "think twice" or to be more careful? Are younger criminals more likely to be influenced by observing negative consequences than the older criminals? We can't tell from the current paper. Had the authors considered alternative explanations such as these, this would have been an "A+" paper.

Critical thinking exercise

From time to time, I find articles in the news media that make my hair stand on end. I am continually amazed by the lack of sophistication that the reporters in the media have about research that relates to human behavior. Because many of you are or will become consumers of the news and because I am sure that you do not wish to be influenced by conclusions that you read in the news that are not justified, you should approach the news with healthy dose of critical thinking. As a first exercise in this regard, you might read the following recent article from the New York Times. Think about the design of the research that is reported in the article. Are the conclusions that are reported in the article supported by the design of the research? Can you think of alternative explanations for the reported results? The article talks about the causal effects of drug treatment programs on long term changes in drug taking and criminal behavior. Are the conclusions justified? After you read the article and think critically about it, check out some of my thoughts.

Examples of Poor Scientific Reasoning

You can find a number of examples (only some in psychology) of poor science being used by people who care more about the “goal” than they do about the truth of their claims. For example, some have argued that global warming will increase disease but see a recent counter claim by Fienberg. Another discusses some of the research on whether playing violent video games increases aggression; compare to this from Stats.org, a website that checks statistical facts often misstated in the news. You might read these to get a sense of some (but not all) of the components of critical analysis. Of course when reading all of these, you need to determine whether those who are publishing these “FACTS” are telling the truth. Many maybe more interested in convincing you that their values are correct than in presenting you with the truth. Some are so sneaky as to present themselves as fact checkers when they are in fact something else, e.g., Statistical Assessment Service.

Searching for Research

There are several major sources that you should check for published research on your topic. The first is PsycInfo, a database of all published articles in psychology journals. You can find PsycInfo by going to the UCSD site that lists all of the databases that are available to you via UCSD on the web. Find PsycInfo among the list and go to that site. There you can search using QuickSearch or a more advanced search. If the article that you are looking for was published after 1985, you might be able to find the full text of the article in the PsycArticles database. Check it out before you go to the library. You can also use Google Scholar, a new search engine in beta testing by Google. This search engine also searches journals and publications but includes journals that might not be in PsycInfo. Depending on your topic, you might have to look outside of journal articles for your research; in that case you might look at the study aids webpage that I maintain. This page contains links to government websites, legal websites, and so on. You can also try Google and other search engines directly. But when you do, be aware that material on many websites is NOT peer reviewed and those maintaining the website might have an agenda other than finding the truth.