Assignment: Emotional Experience

Assignment: Emotional Experience
Assignment: Emotional Experience
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Track your experience of positive and negative emotions over 4 days this week.
Write a 700- to 1,050-word paper in which you address the following:
Did you experience more positive or negative emotions during the tracking period?
What did you notice about the range of emotions you experienced during the 4 days? What type of experiences generated the strongest emotional responses?
Explain the psychological benefits of positive emotions as discussed in this week’s readings.
What are some strategies to help cultivate positive emotions in your life?
Include the chart you created. Use the University of Phoenix Material: Tracking Example as a guide.
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.
Application. Papers written at the application level are still organized by source articles rather than by topics or themes. However, with each source article being reviewed, there is a direct and explicit link from that article to the topic of the current paper. The student summarizes the source article and then applies the findings from that article to the topic of their own paper. These links are neither integrative nor summative, and there are few or no connections drawn between source articles.
Analysis. Writing at the analysis level typically includes more detailed descriptions of source article information. Students discuss the specifications of the studies they are including and can identify patterns that emerge. Like students at the application level, they link the source articles back to the main idea of their paper, but they add a layer of complexity by identifying the component parts of the source article that directly support their argument.
Synthesis. When students’ writing reaches the synthesis stage, the papers have a qualitatively different look to them. The most notable change is organization based on themes rather than on source articles. Froese et al. (1998) noted that students often summarize articles sequentially rather than comprehensively integrating the various findings. Sequential organization represents a failure to accomplish synthesis. Using synthesis, the students are able to determine the main points not just of source articles (a comprehension task) but of the paper they are composing. Source articles are spread throughout the paper and applied to the arguments and ideas presented, using the students’ own organizational schema to direct the flow of information. Ideas from various sources that support a theme are brought together, compared, and contrasted.