What's should I be writing my essays?

There are a couple of important things you need to be demonstrating in psychology essays. The first thing you need to do is to look at what the question is asking you and pick out key words. You need to make sure you know the understanding of these definitions, and show knowledge of this in your introuduction. Pick out from the question the sides of an argument you can make out, for example, if the question is 'to what extent is recycling behaviour associated with social conformity' - this an explanation of social conformity, and why recycling behaviour does relate to social confirmity and why it might not. Why it might not should include potential OTHER explanations for recyling behaviour. This will help you find a structure by finding your key points you want to convey in each paragraph, e.g.... they are linked, they aren't linked, it is more likely to be due to X,Y or Z. You will need to develop an argument (opinion) throughout the essay, so decide this early on too. Within your paragraphs you want to bring in evidence to critique and strengthen your argument. Find research with strong methodologies, such as a large sample size or a field study, demonstrating your point. Critiquing evidence in this way is extremely important, and can also help your argument by noting flaws in study for the opposing argument. You should follow a PEE structure - Point, Evidence, Evalutation. But make sure your evaluation builds on the evidence rather than just repeating your point. To conclude, you need to provide a summary of what you have said, and what arguments exist, concluding with your argument, which should be based on the strength of the available evidence.