Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 73

However intricately we grasp how the ideas we come across interrelate, we need to be really clear about what the essay title is asking us to do. If the essay title is asking me to ‘Outline and evaluate the excitation transfer model of aggression’, then critical material about the way in which aggression has been defined in general may not be directly relevant, or may form part of a concluding conceptualisation towards the end of the essay. By contrast, the title ‘Critically evaluate some of the key assumptions inherent in empirical research into aggression’ is pitched at an overarching conceptual level, thus material about how aggression has been implicitly and explicitly defined would be key.

There may be more subtle differences in terms of the scope within an essay. The following two titles both highlight Piaget, but the first indicates that attention should be paid to his entire stage theory, while the second points to a series of experiments that relate to the stage theory:

‘Outline and evaluate Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development.’

‘Critically evaluate Piaget’s interpretations of his conservation experiments.’

Think for a moment about the shape of the essay that these different titles suggest. You can probably imagine that a lot of similar material would be relevant – for example, reference to conservation is likely to feature in both. But think on for a moment longer. There are likely to be differences between an essay that gets into the various nuances and critiques of the conservation experiments and a more global contrast of Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development with, for example, information processing perspectives.

Really mastering this neat fit between the literature that we come across, the relationships between these sources and what we need to do in our essay is an art, but both the beginner on their first essay and the expert on their millionth word of psychology have to ask the very same question: ‘How does this relate to what I am trying to write?’ Even asking this question will help free you from the limiting tendency to simply trot out ‘the Piaget essay’ (as if there were a singular Piaget essay) whenever you see the name. Further guidance about how to really answer the specific essay title can be found in Chapter 4.