Skip to Main Content

Smiling and Facial Expressions Research: Home

Midlakes Secondary School Online Databases

Online databases support the school curriculum and students’ information literacy skills with high-quality content from popular and educational sources including full-text databases, ebooks, and digital magazines. 

 

 MIDLAKES SECONDARY SCHOOL ONLINE DATABASES

  CLICK THE LINK ABOVE TO ACCESS OUR ONLINE DATABASES.  USERNAME AND PASSWORD WILL BE PROVIDED.

 

Writing Assignment

PSY 100​​Writing Assignment

 

Instructions: Please carefully read and complete the following steps. Answer all questions using complete sentences.  This is a multi-part assignment: Please complete each part in order, paying attention to due dates. Your submissions for the assignment must be typed with 12-point Times New Roman font and double-spaced with one inch margins and no cover page. You are required to spell- and grammar-check this assignment before you turn it in.  PLEASE PROOF READ YOUR WORK.

 

Part One: Reflection

Sincere smiling communicates happiness and acceptance to others.  Imagine you decide to spend a day smiling at everyone that you encounter.  Write a short essay (2-3 paragraphs) addressing the following question: 

1. What do you think will happen?  Describe your initial thoughts and feelings about the activity, including how you would feel, and how you think other people would react to your smiles.  
2. Make predictions based on your past experiences, assumptions, personality, and attitudes.

 

Part Two: Research

Psychologists have been researching facial expressions generally, and the human smile specifically, for many decades resulting in a large number of published studies investigating everything from smile intensity to gender differences.  

Please go to the library database, conduct a search and choose one peer-reviewed journal article that is a research report on smiles/smiling to read for the next part of this assignment.  
Ask me if you are in doubt about whether the article you have selected is acceptable.  Please save your article and send me a copy of the article. I will post a place to submit it on schoology.

Then complete the following: 

1. Carefully read the article.  Write a few sentences that explain what the article you selected is about.  What was the research question?  Explain what the researchers learned as a result of the study, (i.e., what results or findings are reported?).
2. What was the method?  Please identify the research design that the investigators used for the study you selected for this assignment (e.g., an experiment, a survey, a correlational study, observation, a case study, etc.).  Explain in detail how you know what kind of research design was employed for the study.  
3. This should be a single page long. Double spaced!

PART 1 & 2 DUE MAY 29th- Rough Draft so I can check and make sure you are on track. 

 

 

 

 

 

Part Three: Summary and Reflection

Finally, explore the connections between your prediction and past experiences smiling at people, the article that you selected, and the approaches to psychology we have been studying. Remember that psychological approaches include the theories of psychology (like learning theory) as well as specific perspectives (like the biological perspective).  

1. Identify one or more approaches (e.g., humanistic, psychodynamic, social learning, biological, etc.) that your smile experiences and/or your research article represent or fit into and explain the connection.  Provide a separate explanation of the approach for both your smile experiences and research article.  You may choose the same approach for each.
2. Reflect on your past experiences and on the research you found and integrate your writing from Parts 1 & 2.  What did you predict?  What has been your experience?  What does the research you found suggest?  Was your experience the same or different from the research?
3. This part of your paper should be 2 or 3 pages, formatted as in the instructions above.

 

DUE DATE: June 12th