essay writing prompts

Useful hints and tips on how to write a psychology paper


A psychology paper is just like any other paper. The only difference is the specific subtopic of the paper. Whatever psychological topic you have to or choose to write on will require the same amount of research or studies as any other paper. You need to make the topic stand out and make sure the paper is well written like you would any other. It is the same as any English paper, but instead of writing about literature you will be writing about a psychological topic.

How to do it

  • Do a lot of research
  • Focus on your topic
  • Back up all of your claims or observations

Do a lot of research

Make sure that you thoroughly research your specific topic. You want to have enough information to fill the entire paper. You don’t want to have to use filler and extra words just to meet the word or page requirements. You want to know what you are talking about and be well versed in your topic. The better you know the topic the better your paper will be.

Focus on your topic

Don’t go off on any tangents. You want to stay focused on the topic at hand and have a lot of varied and useful information on hand. When writing, be certain that you have a clear sense of the paper. It should be cohesive and have a good flow to it. If it flows well from one paragraph to the next and feels like one paper, not a choppy mess, than it will read well. You want to engage the reader and have the topic be the focus and source of all of your writing. When you read it back it should feel like one well-written paper on a specific and obvious topic.

Back it up

If you make a claim, for example that children grow up better with parents who don’t fight in front of them, or make an observation such as that people carry their childhood ideas with them through adulthood, than you have to be able to back it up. Make sure you have facts, statistics and specific information to prove everything that you say. Without that it is just a theory that you have yet to even attempt to prove true.

Writing a psychology paper or any other paper for that matter, it is important to remember the writing basics. You research well, engage the audience, prove what you set out to and keep it organized. If you do all of that, any paper you write should be nothing less than stellar.