This is the complete guide on Psychology Extended Essay for the IB students. Whether you’re currently determining what subjects to work on or you’ve already made up your mind that you want to focus on psychology, you’ll find this guide quite helpful.
The guide covers everything you need to know about the topic. In particular, you’ll learn:
- What psychology extended essay is
- How to choose psychology EE topics
- The best psychology EE topic examples
- How to write the extended essay and
- Psychology extended essay assessment criteria
Let’s get started.
What’s Psychology Extended Essay?
The IB EE Guide defines the subject as the examination of interaction of sociocultural, biological, and cognitive influences on human behavior and experiences.
As an IB student, you should have a solid understanding of what falls within this subject when developing a topic to investigate.
The aims of writing an Extended Essay in IB Psychology is to demonstrate that you can conduct independent research on a given topic and develop the skills necessary for creative and critical thinking.
When your examiners look at the EE, they should instantly see a systematic process of research relevant to the subject and your expression of intellectual discoveries.
What’s the Role of Psychology Extended Essay?
An extended essay in psychology is a project that gives you the chance to research a topic of personal interest within the discipline of psychology, which may extend beyond the Diploma Program.
Students who choose Psychology actively investigate a research issue that will enhance their analytical and communication abilities, as well as their comprehension of behavior.
An extended essay in this filed should introduce you to the pleasure of intellectual discovery as you study the “systematic of behavior and experience."
When developing your topic, you should have a comprehensive comprehension of what fits under the realm of psychology.
To be clear, psychology covers the study of both human and nonhuman animal behavior. It has its own terminology, techniques, and literature.
For you to complete an extended essay in psychology, you must have a solid grasp of the subject and its techniques. Psychology is not a "residual" category for extended essay topics that do not fit into any other area.
You must therefore select themes that lend themselves to psychological inquiry and analysis, and you must carefully evaluate the assessment criteria while selecting a topic.
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How You Should Treat the Psychology Extended Essay Topics
A psychology extended essay requires you to examine a subject of personal interest in a systematic manner. You have to structure the assignment around a focused research topic, which you should strives to address throughout document.
You need to view the essay as an investigative and analytical argument than as a research hypothesis to be discovered through a formal psychological investigation employing research methodologies.
Data collection and research techniques, such as experiments, surveys, observations, and case studies, are unsuitable for an extended essay in psychology. So you shouldn’t include them in the essay.
You should examine your own personal interests as a starting point for the essay writing process. That’s because experiences demonstrate that personal interest plays a significant influence in the success of an essay.
After picking a topic of interest, you can reduce the scope of their essay and research question by considering subfields within that field.
Psychology Extended Essay Topic Examples
The following are examples of the best Psychology Extended Essay topics. These are just ideas, so use them as guidance to develop or come up with your own topic to investigate.
- What do you believe is the most prevalent cause of eating disorders and food indifference among adolescents?
- How do you see borderline personality disorder and how is it treated?
- Schizophrenia is an illness that requires considerable care. How do you describe it?
- Dreams are the most discussed topic in the world. What do you think about it?
- Attention-seeking disorder should be treated with a great deal of care and sensitivity from the beginning. What do you think about it?
- The dilemma of mankind has always been gender norms or gender prejudice.
- Child abuse and child labor are on the rise as global concerns. How can we alter it?
- How do you feel about prenatal development and its management?
- The parenting style has a significant impact on the behavior of children. What are your opinions on the subject?
- Aging is one of the most widely acknowledged facts of life How do you characterize this phenomena from a psychological standpoint?
- Divorce between parents has a significant impact on children's mental health. How should this be prevented?
- What are your opinions on the rising video game addiction among children?
Remember that a good extended essay topic in Psychology is the one that’s clear, concise, and can fit within the scope of the extended essay requirements.
IB Psychology Extended Essay Outline
Now that you have completed your research, it’s time to take the information you have gathered and put it together into a comprehensive Extended Essay for the IB Psychology.
Your EE should have three parts: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Here’s how to develop each section.
The Introduction
The opening statement of an Extended Essay is huge, so you should give it your best. Your goal with this section of your EE is to establish and explain your argument. It helps to include relevant background information as this goes a long way to make your argument sensible. Define complex words for clarity. And make sure this section isn’t more than two paragraphs long.
The Body
Once you have ensured that your introduction has established a strong argument and can easily grab the attention of your reader, start working on the body section. The body should be at least 6 paragraphs. As it is with argumentative essays, each paragraph of your IB Psychology Extended Essay should:
Present a unique idea or argument.
Start with a topic sentence, which is a summary of the main idea that you will be discussing in that paragraph.
Include an example with an explanation on how relevant the example is to your argument.
End with a closing link (or sentence) that introduces the reader to the next consecutive paragraph.
The purpose of a topic sentence in IB Psychology Extended Essay is to introduce and explain the point you intend to make in a paragraph.
A good topic sentence should be clear, concise, and have a strong link to the argument you presented in the introduction. In addition to building on the points you made in a previous paragraph, the topic sentence should also give a clear summary of your argument.
Conclusion
The conclusion of your IB Psychology Extended Essay is as important as other sections of the essay. So you should equally spend enough time writing it. The conclusion to your IB Psychology EE should naturally link to the introduction and summarize the significant points that you’ve made throughout the essay.
As with the conclusion on any given argumentative essay topic, the conclusion of your IB Psychology EE should not merely reflect a re-write if your main ideas. Instead, you should restate the ideas using different terms and phrases to retain the meaning without sounding too repetitive. Furthermore, the conclusion must never introduce a new idea to the article as this could easily distract your readers.
How to Write a Psychology Extended Essay
To write a comprehensive extended essay in psychology:
Read and understand the IB’s EE handbook and, if your teacher issues additional instructions, make sure you follow them.
Choose a preliminary topic and a tentative research question for your extended essay in Psychology. Some questions to ask yourself when choosing the topic to work on include:
- Why is my topic and research issue significant to me personally?
- Is there a particular discussion, book, or other source that can assist me in narrowing my focus or choosing my topic and the research question?
- What do I perceive to be the greatest obstacle as I begin this process? How do I handle this difficulty?
We recommend that you consult your supervisor, so they can provide input about the suitability of your ideas for project.
Start your research early. Begin your research with Google Scholar, JYKDOK library, and EBSCO Academic Search Elite.
As you write you write your essay, your focus should be on developing your case by citing pertinent concepts, theories, and studies from academic psychology research publications and scholarly literature.
- Do NOT make any claims that you can’ back by evidence from psychological theories or investigations.
- Provide a well-balanced argument in answer to your research topic.
- In addition to describing your sources, analyze them in light of your research topic.
- It is OK to modify your essay's topic and research question as you write. Your sources may yield novel insights.
- Always pay attention to the EE evaluation criteria as you work on your subject
Consult with your EE supervisor for first reflection. Your supervisor will provide prompt comments on your progress. In addition, the instructor will advise you on your initial reflection.
Psychology Extended Essay Assessment Criteria
The following is the assessment criteria used by IB to evaluate psychology extended essays:
Criterion A: Focus and Method
The key to writing an essay with concentration is a targeted research subject. Although there are several extremely good questions, inferior essays in the psychology subject tend to have difficult questions.
Keep in mind that each component of the essay must directly address the research topic. Be careful to make sure that you don’t spend an excessive amount of time explaining concepts and theories before answering the topic directly with relevant research.
Criterion: Knowledge and Understanding
Stronger essays define essential concepts and present research pertinent to the study. On the other hand, weaker essays often employ language without explaining its relevance to the study or subject.
For instance, claiming that a research showed minimal instrument bias without providing a detailed explanation for why this is the case can cost you valuable marks.
You need to make sure your essay doesn’t have inaccuracies in the usage of words such as external and internal validity and the identification of research techniques.
Criterion C: Critical Reasoning
When writing a psychology extended essay, you must discuss, analyze, and evaluate the significant studies that you cite. Your work can’t be merely descriptive. In other words, you can’t just offer a list of various studies, frequently without a connection to the study issue.
Instead, your essay should include evidence against or for the thesis and then demonstrate why your main argument is stronger.
Criterion D: Presentation
Despite the fact that citation is something that teacher directly examine, you need to make sure your Psychology extended essay has clear citation.
Do not use footnotes for anything other than citations, since it frequently interferes with the reading of the essay.
The key to effective presentation is understandable text. Spacing is an issue in several writings. You must either indent your paragraphs or leave a blank line between them. The last mistake you want to make as far as presentation is concerned is hindering the readability of your extended essay.
Criterion E: Engagement (Or the EE Reflection)
Strong remarks illustrate your research journey and development as a researcher. These reflections elucidate your capacity to identify problems, adopt necessary modifications, and demonstrate their reflexivity throughout the research and writing process.
Weak extended essay reflections detail meetings with the supervisor, reiterated the essay's results, or described the students' passion for their topic.
Choosing a single area of your research journey to describe and analyze in each reflection is preferable than attempting to cover all aspects of their investigation.
Revising Your IB Psychology Extended Essay
Ending with a strong conclusion doesn’t make your essay complete. You have to edit the assignment thoroughly to make sure it meets the assessment standards of IB EE.
Start by looking at the obvious grammatical errors that could make your IB Psychology EE to mean something other than what you intended. Sometimes your eyes may not notice minor spelling and grammatical errors. That’s why it’s important to use a tool such as Grammarly or Hemmingway App for assistance.
The next in your revision is to ask yourself the “so what?” question. This is where you ask yourself whether your essay communicates the intended message very well so that when your audience asks questions, the essay provides the answers that they need – and in an instant.
The most important questions to ask when trying to answer the “so what” factor are as follows:
Does this essay provide the information that my audience should care about in the first place?
Do the ideas addressed in my IB Psychology Extended Essay add to what others already know about the essay?
As yourself these two questions and you can be sure to make your essay greater than what it currently is.
Advice for IB Students Taking Psychology Extended Essay
Some of the most intriguing, engaging, and successful psychology extended essays don’t always focuses on the course material.
Typically, essays constrained by the guidance provide detailed, emotionless descriptions of classic psychological research. Supervisors do not require in-depth understanding of the student's topic; this is a less relevant component in topic selection than resource availability, student engagement, and essay length.
Generally, "pop psychology" or "self-help"-related topics are inappropriate for the extended essay. Psychology, as stated in the definition, is a systematic study.
In an effort to comprehend behavior and experience, psychologists undertake research studies and construct theories.
Extended essays in psychology must feature support by meticulous and appropriate citation of relevant psychological theories and/or studies. This suggests that academic and psychological research publications and books are the finest resources.
Conclusion
The IB Psychology Extended Essay focuses on an in-depth investigation of an area within the field of psychology. While it’s on a subject presented in the IB EE prompt, your teacher may also allow you to explore a topic of your interest.
This subject gives you the opportunity to explore research questions that can not only promote your understanding of behavior but also develop your research, writing, creative, and intellectual discovery skills.
In this lesson, you will learn everything about the IB Physics EE, from what it is to writing a comprehensive Extended Essay on the subject. Let’s get started.