PSYC 101 Final Writing Assignment

Topic: An Overview of Anxiety as Common Emotional Experience and Anxiety-Related Psychological

Disorders

In this course we have learned about emotions as part of human life and various emotion-related
psychological disorders. Anxiety is described sometimes as part of people’s emotional experiences,
sometimes as psychological disorders. Most people experience anxiety sometimes in their everyday lives;
it is part of being human and how humans react to certain challenges, such as exams, medical
procedures, job interviews and etc. On the other hand, some people are diagnosed as having “anxiety-
related disorders”.

In this writing assignment you will use the knowledge learned from this course to analyze and discuss the
emotion of anxiety and fear both as part of everyday life and as psychological disorders. You will integrate
the knowledge learned from various sections of the course. You will cover the following topics.

1. How would the major emotion theories explain the various aspects anxiety and fear? Discuss and
compare the understanding of anxiety and fear from the following perspectives.
- Functionalism and evolutionary theory - the functions and dysfunctions of anxiety and fear
- The James-Lange theory and related theories, such as the face feedback and behavioral feedback
hypotheses (fake it until you make it)
- The Schachter-Singer two factor theory
- The Lazarus cognitive appraisal theory

2. The clinical perspective – when would anxiety and fear become a clinical problem? What are the
differences between Freud’s “realistic versus neurotic anxiety”? Discuss the classification of different
types of anxiety disorders in clinical psychology. Explain how would the theories discussed above explain
one of the anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety (choose one type of anxiety disorders for this part of
your discussion, no need to cover all anxiety disorders)?

3. Discuss how a person may use behavioral and mental processes to manage the physiological arousal,
behavior inhibition/avoidance and negative thinking associated with anxiety and fear, based on the
knowledge reviewed above.

General requirements
Write in your own words. This is the bottom line. Everything else is secondary to this.
No direct quotes. Zero direct quotes. Direct quotes will not be counted as student’s own writing.
Cover the key concepts related to the topic.
Write a proper title page (APA style) and opening paragraph to give an overview of the paper.
Write a proper conclusion paragraph to summarize the paper and draw some conclusions.
Write with good grammar appropriate for academic paper.
Use section headings to divide the paper into sections.
Polish your paper to make sure there are no spelling errors.
Use APA-style in-text citation and references.
Minimal length: 1400 words not including the reference section.
Due date: Sunday by Midnight Week 10