Paper Instructions:

The final paper is required to be at least 10 pages (double-spaced, 1 margins, 12-point Times New Roman font), not including references. The paper will follow the same format as the presentation, in that students will be required to write about: 1) the historical accounts of the chosen extremist group (approximately 4-5 pages) and, 2) the psychological factors which relate to the extremist group (approximately 5-6 pages).

Students may use open sources (e.g., Wikipedia, YouTube, video sources) and/or expert sources (e.g., novels) when acquiring information on the historical aspects of the extremist groups. However, students are required to rely on expert, peer-reviewed sources (e.g., PsycINFO) for the second portion of the presentation/paper focusing on the relevant psychological factors. Students

 

are welcome and encouraged to utilize sources assigned throughout the semester. That is, students are encouraged to apply the material (e.g., social, cognitive, clinical) from the readings/papers in class and discuss their relation to the specific extremist group in question.

As each of the major topic areas covered in class may not be appropriate for each extremist groupor alternatively, if students simply wish to focus on two or three more in-depth topics, rather than covering all of themit is not required to discuss each major topic area covered in class. Furthermore, even if you do not see that a major topic area is related to your group (e.g., clinical), you can make note of this and expand (e.g., discussing how a particular extremist group did not appear to evidence signs of psychopathology, thus increasing the importance of otherwise normative cognitive/social factors and supporting theories that overt psychopathology is insufficient to explain away extremist behavior).