The Triple Cheeseburger Essay – IB Psychology

Travis DixonAssessment (IB), Example Exam Answers

We don't have to make this overly complicated.

On the surface it seems like the new essays in IB Psych, Paper 1, Section C, are completely different to the old essays. Now there’s content linked with concepts and put into contexts and there’s no need for studies or critical thinking. However, scratch a little deeper and you’ll see nothing’s really changed. In this post I’ll explain my triple cheeseburger metaphor and how it can lead to excellent essays. 

The first essay you ever wrote in school probably used the hamburger metaphor. Your introduction and conclusion are the buns, and you’ve got three body paragraphs which are the fillings. We can use this same metaphor to write excellent Paper 1 essays in IB Psych. If you’re familiar with my three rules of three for essay writing, you’ll see this is just a simple rebranding of that approach.

We’ll then begin by working backwards from the marking criteria. We’ll translate that into a generic essay guide and put it to the test with a practice question and example essay.

The Marking Criteria

If you look below to the very convoluted marking guide, you’ll see to get full marks you need to:

  • Link between concepts throughout the response (including the introduction)
  • Show relevant knowledge and understanding of the content (i.e. topic)
  • Show relevant knowledge and understanding of the concept(s) (i.e. research methods)
  • Include well-developed critical analysis (i.e. critical thinking)
  • Argues to a clearly stated conclusion

Teacher Tip: The words might have changed, but the fundamental skills haven’t. We want students to explain psychology, use research and evaluate it critically. Simples.

The Rubric

Remember you don’t need a perfect answer – a 11 or 12/15 (73-80%) will do.

What this means…

I’ll be telling my students that their essays should have:

  1. An introduction – outlines the essay
  2. Content – explain the topic. Show your knowledge.
  3. Studies – explain how we know about the topic, either with studies or general methods used.
  4. Critical thinking – evaluate the studies and/or the topic using the concept
  5. Conclusion

The Questions

Remember that the essays will either be discuss, evaluate or to what extent. We know this means they need evaluation then since evaluate, well obvious. Discuss means evaluate and to what extent means give two sides to the story, e.g. evaluate.

 

Cheesy Concepts

Bias, measurement, perspective, responsibility, change and causality are all relevant to research methods. Therefore, we can use key research terms like internal and external validity to evaluate studies and link to the concepts. It makes sense to focus on teaching critical thinking the way we always have and then closer to the exams begin showing how students can link these to concepts. Similarly, the burger needs to be cheesy – the cheese are mentions of, and links to, the concept throughout the essay.

The point of the cheeseburger metaphor isn’t to encourage a simple 3-body paragraph essay. That would actually be really difficult. Rather it’s to encourage students to know what are the three simple focus points in the essay: the topic, the studies, the evaluation. It could end up like a kebab salad or a meatlovers pizza, that’s fine. As long as it has all three components in a logical order that answer the question it will score well – the topic, the studies, the evaluation.

The Triple Cheese Burger – Essay Outline

  1. Top Bun – The Introduction: Outline the scope of your essay, including the major points you’ll make and how these relate to the concept. This should include the specific topic, the research and the concept.

Cheese slice – Topic sentences and connecting phrases – Connect your points with a sentence or two that mentions the concept. This sticks everything together nicely like a melted bit of cheese.

  1. Patty 1 – Explaining the Topic: Show your knowledge and understand the topic in the question by explaining the content (i.e. topic) using accurate and relevant psychological terminology. This could be one big paragraph, or a series of smaller paragraphs. It makes sense to build your essay from the beginning with this content.

Cheese slice – Topic sentence and linking sentence at the end of the paragraph

  1. Patty 2 – Explaining the Research: The six concepts are all related to research. It’s impossible, therefore, to have a detailed explanation of the relevance of the concept to the content without actually summarising some research first. This could be individual studies and/or could be summaries of how research is conducted on that topic.

Cheese slice – Topic and summary sentences

  1. Patty 3 – Critical Thinking with Concepts: The six concepts are all relevant to evaluating content knowledge and research. Therefore, once the groundwork is laid with Patty 2 (the research), you can use that to show your “well-developed critical analysis” of the content and the research using the concept.

E: Bottom bun – The Conclusion:  A 2-3 sentence clearly stated conclusion that clearly summaries the key argument in the essay.

Example Essay

The following is an example essay using the triple cheeseburger method. It answers one of the essay questions from the specimen paper. However, I believe it’s an unfair question. The concept is “measurement” not “measure” and a concept is an abstract idea whereas “strategies used….to measure theory of mind” are very concrete things. That said, I wanted to test my cheeseburger essay against even the most preposterous questions. I think it works. How about you?

In the context of human development, evaluate one or more strategies used by developmental psychologists to measure theory of mind.

Theory of mind (TOM) is is the ability to realise that other people have their own thoughts and feelings that are different to their own. TOM is measured using a range of strategies in human development like the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), correlational studies and the Sally-Anne task. While each of these strategies are useful, they have some limitations that will be explained.

TOM sounds like a simple cognitive process but like memory, it has been broken down into many sub-types. Also like other cognitive processes such as memory and language, different people have different abilities in TOM which psychologists can measure. TOM is an important cognitive process to study and measure the development of in children because it is linked with many behaviours. For example, TOM is important in the emotion of empathy. If you lack TOM then it’s difficult to consider how someone else might feel or see the world. This reduces your ability to feel empathy. It’s not surprising that people with autism have low TOM as they also find it harder to recognise emotions in others and to feel empathy. TOM is also positively correlated with moral development in children and amygdala volume.

One way psychologists measure TOM is in correlational studies. They want to see if some co-variables develop alongside TOM abilities, like figuring out the mental or emotional states of other people. In these correlational studies, the TOM ability is one co-variable and the other might be amygdala volume, IQ, socioeconomic status or some variable the researchers think is linked with TOM. For example, in one study they used brain imaging to measure the volume of the amygdala in kids and adults. To measure TOM they used the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test” (RMET). This involves giving people just a photo of someone’s eyes and the participant having to guess which emotion they’re experience (happiness, surprise, anger, etc.) In total there are 36 photos. So to find if TOM is correlated with amygdala volume they correlate the RMET score /36 with amygdala volume. These studies show that there’s a positive correlation between amygdala volume and TOM as measured by the RMET test. In other words, kids with larger amygdala volume score better on the RMET test, whereas kids with low volume score lower. This suggests a link between amygdala volume and TOM development.

However, there are some issues with using these as a measurement of TOM. Firstly, correlation doesn’t mean causation. In this case, it’s assumed that the larger volume in the amygdala is leading to improved RMET scores, so better TOM skills. However, it might be the other way around – perhaps people have well-developed TOM skills from a young age and so this increases the size of their amygdala over time. There might also be other moderating variables that affect this connect. For example, socioeconomic status and adverse childhood experiences can affect the amygdala development. Perhaps these traumatic experiences as a kid are also affecting the TOM skills. Therefore, using correlational measurements we can’t draw cause and effect conclusions.

Another problem with using the RMET is that they’re still images of people’s eyes. They also show only just someone’s eyes. It’s shown people with autism and asperges have a harder time understanding people’s emotions from eyes, but they might use other cues to understand someone else’s emotions, like body language or mouth movements.

Another common research method used to measure TOM is the Sally-Anne false-belief task. In this task, children watch a puppet show with two girls – Sally and Anne. Sally has a basket, and a marble and Anne has a box. Sally puts her marble in the basket, leaves and then Anne puts the marble in her box. Then Anne comes back. To measure TOM kids are asked where will Anne look for her marble? To get the right answer you have to understand the perspective of Anne, that she would leave and have no clue to look in the box and not where she left it. When given to 5-year-olds, about 80% of kids get the right answer. However, the opposite is true as kids with asperges or autism only get it right about 20% of the time. This suggests a lack of TOM in these kids.

One problem with measuring behaviour in fake tasks like this is that it lacks consequences. If the kid gets the wrong answer there’s no consequence – it’s just a puppet show and not real life. The findings might not generalise to real-life situations when TOM is useful. For example, just because a kid might get the Sally-Anne task wrong, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t understand how someone might feel if they stole something from them in real life. A lack of understanding of a puppet or a cartoon strip is not the same as lacking empathy and understanding in real life.

In this essay, I’ve argued that TOM is an important cognitive skill to study for psychologists because it is correlated with other important social skills like morality and empathy. TOM is measured in studies using correlational studies, the RMET test, and tasks like the Sally-Anne task. While these can provide some useful insights into possible causes of TOM differences and effects of TOM differences, they have weaknesses based on our ability to understand causality and their real-world applicability. (900 words)

Now you’ll notice that it lacks balance on content with the topic. That’s fine for me. I’m aiming for a 11-13 point essay and this would easily score that. In fact, the question doesn’t give us much to say about theory of mind anyway.

Example Essay – Colour Coded

To see how balanced my gourmet triple cheese burger really is, I’ve colour coded the sections below as they relate to the buns and the three patties: content, research and critical thinking (concepts), I’ve also highlighted the cheesy yellow bits that use key terms from the question to stick everything together.

 

 

Like any scaffold, this is a guideline not a law. Of course it could be broken. The purpose of the triple cheeseburger analogy is to give students a framework to begin their essay writing practices. It is only after they write a few essays that they’ll become confident enough to break away from this and try their own style.

This also guides my teaching. I don’t want to talk about abstract concepts in my psychology course, I want to begin with cool psychological content. Then teach how we know this stuff and finally when they’re ready develop the skills to critically evaluate the research.