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PSYC 3301 – Literature Review
A literature review is an important component of the Introduction section of an APA-style research
report. When conducting a literature review, you should search PsycINFO and Google Scholar to find
articles that are relevant to the topics you’re studying. In your case, you should find articles that discuss
facial expressions, social liking, and how others’ expressions affect our perceptions of them.
The literature review serves several critical functions:
• It should provide readers with all of the essential basic information that they need to
understand your current study. This oftentimes involves citing research that defines your basic
variables (e.g., facial expressions, social liking).
• It should tell readers about prior findings that are relevant to the current study. In this case, you
might talk about what other variables are known to predict liking, and what prior studies have
found about the links between facial expressions and liking. Although no literature review is
ever comprehensive, you should typically try to provide as unbiased of an overview as possible.
In other words, give readers a relatively accurate idea of what research has already been done
relevant to your topic. Don’t conveniently ignore articles that don’t fit the story you want to
tell!
• It should build a strong case for why your study is important. You should build a strong, logical
argument for why your hypotheses may be correct.
• It should explain how your study fits into the existing research literature, and what your study
adds to our overall knowledge of the topic.
How do I find articles?
1. You can find relevant articles by searching PsycINFO and Google Scholar. When searching for
articles, try a variety of synonyms for each keyword. For example, you might try searching for
“smiling and liking,” “facial expressions and liking,” “smiling and attraction,” “emotional
expression and attraction,” and so on. In PsycINFO, be sure to check the “Peer-Reviewed” box
to ensure that your searches only return peer-reviewed papers.
2. When you find a relevant article, look at the papers that article cites in its introduction. This can
be a good way to find other papers that are relevant to your research topic that might be harder
to find with keyword searches. Find those cited articles and look at the articles they cite (and so
on).
3. When you find a relevant article, click the “Cited By” link (in Google Scholar) or “Times Cited in
the Database” link (in PsycINFO) (Google Scholar oftentimes has the most complete citation
record). This will show you the papers that include citations to the article you found. This can
be helpful for finding papers that built upon the findings of the article that you found.
Assignment Requirements
For this assignment, you will write a 4-8 page literature review for the study you are planning to conduct
this semester. Your literature review must be written in APA format (e.g., 12pt Times New Roman font
with double spacing; appropriate citations). Although a typical literature review will contain anywhere
between 20-40 citations, you only need to include a minimum of 12 citations (although you can certainly
include a greater number of citations if you desire).
• You must include a minimum of 12 peer-reviewed, scientific sources. With exceedingly rare
exceptions, you should not cite newspapers, websites, magazines, textbooks, or other non-peer
reviewed sources.
• Your literature review should NOT be an article-by-article summary of the papers you’ve found.
Rather, your literature review should present what is currently known about the topics you’re
studying and build a strong case for your hypothesis.
o BAD (an extremely brief example):
▪ Roberts and colleagues (2006) looked at how people’s personalities change as
they get older. They found people tend to become more agreeable,
conscientious, and emotionally stable. A different study found that beginning a
relationship or new job predicts increasing in agreeableness and
conscientiousness (Bleidorn et al., 2018). Hudson and Roberts (2016) followed
people over 3 years and found that people who became more committed to
their jobs increased in conscientiousness. Gunty et al. (2011) found that people
experience personality changes after traumatic life events. The changes were
biggest for people who did not feel very distressed. The present study is looking
at the changes that happen after people get fired.
o GOOD (an extremely brief example):
▪ As people get older, their personality traits tend to change (Roberts et al.,
2006). One reason people’s personality traits are thought to change with age is
due to the life events they experience (Bleidorn et al., 2018). For example,
committing to a career appears to cause individuals to become more
conscientious (Hudson & Roberts, 2016). Conversely, de-investing in one’s job
appears to make individuals less conscientiousness (Roberts et al., 2006).
However, little is known about the effects of getting fired (versus voluntarily
withdrawing from one’s job). Preliminary research suggests that traumatic life
events may have stronger effects on personality traits than more normal events
(Gunty et al., 2011). Thus it is possible that getting fired would cause people to
decrease in conscientiousness much more strongly than would voluntarily
withdrawing from one’s career. The purpose of the present study was to
examine this possibility.
▪ Try reading the introductions of other journal articles for examples of good
literature reviews (but do not plagiarize them)!
• Your literature review must be entirely in your own words. You may NOT directly quote or
paraphrase any sources. Rather, you should summarize the existing literature (with citations)
and build a strong argument for your study (with citations).
• You must include citations for all definitions, ideas, and arguments that are not your own
original ideas. Once again, these citations must be to peer-reviewed journal articles, not lecture
slides, the textbook, websites, etc.
• Your literature review should summarize what is currently known about facial expressions and
social attraction
• Your literature review should explain how your current study fits into the existing literature.
• You must clearly state your hypotheses and explain why you believe them to be true, based on
past research.
• Your literature review must include a References list in APA style that includes all of the papers
that you cited.
Grading Criteria
Style
• Paper is in APA format (up to 3pt)
• Author uses headings appropriately. Headings effectively organize paper (up to 3pt)
• Author uses citations appropriately (up to 55pt)
o All ideas that are not the author’s own original ideas contain citations (up to 20pt)
o Citations are appropriate (e.g., scientific articles and not newspapers, Wikipedia, online
sources [with very rare exceptions]) (up to 10pt)
o Paper contains a minimum of 12 citations (2-5pt/citation missing)
o The author does not merely summarize prior research, but rather also uses prior
research to support premises in their own strong, logical argument (e.g., “Prior research
has found A [citations]. Prior research has also found B [citations]. Logically, if both A
and B are true, then C. As an analog, C and D are similar [citations]. And, A and B has
been solidly shown to cause D [citations]. Thus, it seems like a compelling idea that A
and B should cause C. Nevertheless, although there’s been limited research on C [e.g.,
citations], there has not been research into whether A and B cause C. So, we are
studying whether A+B=C”) (up to 20pt)
Content
• The author provides a naïve reader with basic familiarity in psychology all information s/he
would need to know to understand the present study (up to 30pt)
o All constructs in the study are defined appropriately, with citations (up to 15pt)
o The author surveys appropriate literature, giving readers an overview of relevant and
important findings (up to 30pt)
• The author makes a strong, logical case for the importance of the study (up to 20pt)
o The author provides rationale, based in previous literature, for why the variables in the
study should or should not be related to one another
▪ The logic makes sense!
o The author clearly explains how the present study fits into the existing literature, and
why the existing study is important.
o The author clearly justifies any hypotheses or research questions, based on prior
literature.
▪ The logic makes sense!
• The author provides a relatively fair overview of the existing literature (up to 10pt)
o The author accurately summarizes the existing literature (e.g., doesn’t say “A causes B”
when the prior literature has only found that A and B are correlated).
o The author relatively unbiasedly summarizes the existing literature (e.g., doesn’t say “A
causes B” when half of existing studies fail to support that claim).
• The author provides a summary of the present study, and provides the reader with clear
expectations as to the hypotheses (if applicable) or competing expectations (if only a non-
directional research question is proposed) (up to 10pt)
Writing
• The writing quality is good (up to 5pt)
o Clear, concise, grammatically-correct
• The paper is well-organized (up to 10pt)
o Uses headings effectively
o Logical flow and organization of paragraphs makes sense
• The paper is well-structured (up to 5pt)
o Introductions, transitions, etc.
• The paper is engaging (up to 5pt) PSYC 3301 – Literature Review
A literature review is an important component of the Introduction section of an APA-style research
report. When conducting a literature review, you should search PsycINFO and Google Scholar to find
articles that are relevant to the topics you’re studying. In your case, you should find articles that discuss
facial expressions, social liking, and how others’ expressions affect our perceptions of them.
The literature review serves several critical functions:
• It should provide readers with all of the essential basic information that they need to
understand your current study. This oftentimes involves citing research that defines your basic
variables (e.g., facial expressions, social liking).
• It should tell readers about prior findings that are relevant to the current study. In this case, you
might talk about what other variables are known to predict liking, and what prior studies have
found about the links between facial expressions and liking. Although no literature review is
ever comprehensive, you should typically try to provide as unbiased of an overview as possible.
In other words, give readers a relatively accurate idea of what research has already been done
relevant to your topic. Don’t conveniently ignore articles that don’t fit the story you want to
tell!
• It should build a strong case for why your study is important. You should build a strong, logical
argument for why your hypotheses may be correct.
• It should explain how your study fits into the existing research literature, and what your study
adds to our overall knowledge of the topic.
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