PART 1: CREATEUsing Social Psychology in a Popular EssayIn this phase you will write a short essay (maximum 500 words) in which you use socialpsychological theory and research to explain a topic or phenomenon that ordinary people might care about. You can choose the topic; the only requirement is that it be a topic of general interest("Why is it so hard to save for retirement?" would qualify; "What kind of chameleon makes the best pet?" would not).
The social psychology can come from the lecture, book, or both.Being able to explain a complicated topic in clear, everyday language is an essential skill in many professions. Therefore, your assumed audience in this assignment is the general public-for example, readers of publications such as the New York Times or The Economist. This means that you cannot assume that your readers know much about psychology. You may assume that your readers know common facts (e.g., New York is a big city in the United States, you can take a plane to get there, in 2001 it was struck by terrorist attacks, there are many skyscrapers, etc.)but you may not assume that they know more obscure details about history, politics, fashion,movies, literature, etc. You also should not assume that they necessarily find social psychology interesting.
This latter point is important. The assignment is to use a theory to explain a phenomenon-not to use a phenomenon to illustrate a theory. Teachers use phenomena as examples to demonstrate a theory. They can assume that students are interested in the theory. You are writing for a general audience and you cannot make that assumption. Instead, you should try to raise the interest of the reader for your topic, by using social psychology to explain something interesting and non-obvious about a topic. That is, you should try to capture the interest of the reader about some topic (the financial crisis, terrorism, why it is so hard to stick to a diet, why political parties
THE ABOVE IS INSTRUNCTIONS TO MY ASSIGNMENT BUT I'M HAVING A HARD TIME COMING UP WITH A THEORY/TOPIC