The assignment is to pick two, three or four topics and write about them in the following way.
For each topic (1) you are to explain what the concept means relying on your notes and
classroom discussion. Then (2) you are to give one or more examples of how you have seen that
concept play out in your own previous and/or current life experience. Hopefully (3) you can also
give an example of how you may have seen that concept/topic manifest itself in our classroom
process with the various exercises we’ve done and discussions we’ve had.
You need to include two citations from peer-reviewed, professional journal articles. Not
websites! Those two articles could be about one of your topics or you can do one article for one
topic and another for another topic. If you are doing two topics, both of your articles could be
about topic A in which case you wouldn’t need a citation about topic B. Or one could be about
topic A and the other about topic B. If you do three or four topics, obviously two or more of
them will not have article citations since you only need to include two articles total between all
your two, three or four topics. You don’t provide a summary of the article, just cite it, and briefly
explain how it relates to one of your topics.
The paper should be between 7 and a ½ and 8 and ½ pages. I don’t care how you divide that
among your two, three or four topics. But make sure that each topic is at least one and a half
pages long (in the event that you decide to cover four topics).
Topics are: the stages of group life (forming, norming, dissolution, etc.),
specific and diffuse status characteristics, social comparison (including downwards and upward
social comparison), social facilitation, entitativity (common fate, similarity, etc.), norms, roles
(including role ambiguity and the two types of role conflict), reasons we form groups
(replacement hypothesis, FIRO, etc.), principles of attraction (similarity, proximity, etc.) the
differences between a group and an aggregate, conformity (conversion, compliance, counter-
conformity, independence), idiosyncrasy credits, the six types of power (reward, coercive, etc.),
and how power affects the target person (compliance, identification, internalization)