Wednesday, September 5, 2012
How will I refine my research question?
I will broaden out my research question to be able to elaborate more on my topic. Without a good research question a research paper will not be a success. My topic is over a psychopath named Edward Gein. I want to dig down deeper as to what made Edward do the things he did..What makes people turn into a serial murderers? Most psychopaths start out as normal people and sometimes charming to their surroundings. Yet underneath the front they are self-centered and dishonest. Edward Gein was abused as a child by his mother and he never had his father around. Was it a genetics that encountered Edward's monsterous actions or did his mind set turn him into a psychopath? In a study 30-38% of psychopaths show abnormal brain wave patterns. Personally, I think each psychopath has a tragic event in their live which mentally screwes up their thinking/learning ability. Edward Gein learned only from the social outside world by horrific comics, as he already had horrific events at home. The way his mother treated him he thought was normal in the outside world, which was abusing others. What was different about edward he took it father than just huting others, he killed and manslaughtered innocent people. Edward was mentally messed up in the head from how his mother treated him.
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A broader research question will be very important to digging deeper into the topic. At the same time, do not let it be too specific. Maybe consider looking at similar cases and similar people to Edward.
ReplyDeleteThe topic your group has picked is very interesting and I believe that you all will be successful in your research assignment. Good luck to you and your group!
You have a couple of related issues here, which you could pick out to make a narrower, more manageable research question. "What makes people turn in to serial murderers" is a huge question on its own, so you'll need to narrow it. If that's the way you want to go, you'll probably need to pick one or two contributing factors to focus on. Sure, Gein was abused and isolated, but other people who have been isolated from society and abused managed to go through life without killing anyone -- so was it a matter of the type of abuse, was it abuse in conjunction with a mental illness, etc.?
ReplyDeleteOr you could look at patterns of criminality in psychopaths -- do all psychopaths become serial killers, or do most live relatively unremarkable lives? If they don't all become serial killers, what one or two factors seem to make the biggest difference in violence levels in psychopaths?
You also talk about brain abnormalities in psychopaths... So another angle you could take would be to research two competing explanations for what causes psychopathy. Is it caused by a brain abnormality or by behavioral/social factors? Or, if you take the side that it is caused by a brain abnormality, you could examine whether it's genetic or caused by trauma...
This sounds like an interesting topic. It always amazes me to hear that a psychopath's brain is a very thin line bordering genius. Their minds as surely different from the average Joe. However it will be quite fascinating to see what you find out about if his behaviors were largely brought about by genetics or environment.
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