To: Eva Ruiz
From: Max Foran
Date: June 10, 2020
Subject: Peer Review of Expanded Definition of Cognitive Dissonance
I have just finished reading your definition of cognitive dissonance. It is both informative and interesting. As you build up your definition, the definition itself becomes clear and easy to understand. I particularly like how you have chosen to write your parenthetical definition in a sentence as this gives a setting for which the term cognitive dissonance might be used.
Here are some revisions of my own that I might recommend:
Purpose:
Your purpose statement accurately describes the goals and the objectives for the assignment. However, the introduction of an audience may help to improve the context for your definitions. For example, perhaps you could begin by creating a situation in which cognitive dissonance might need to be defined, like a university psychology professor speaking to her students. In this way, you clearly demonstrate an audience who would be unfamiliar with the technical term.
Audience:
I particularly like how you avoid using psychological jargon in defining your term. Keeping it simple helps the reader understand and unpack a difficult term. One thing I would mention, however, is that there are a few spelling and grammar errors throughout the document (I noticed many in the example you provide). Although the content of your definition is already strong, the presence of several errors might take away from your credibility in defining the term. The good news is that this is an easy fix.
Organization/Flow:
I believe that you have chosen suitable expansion strategies for your definition. Giving us the history of the term helps us to understand the term’s origin, and it gives us the needed context of the field of psychology.
In regard to your example, I believe that it would be more effective if you described different types of cognitive dissonance rather than focus on one particular situation. The presence of varying examples of cognitive dissonance might help the reader to identify cognitive dissonance better in the future.
One final point to add would be to aim for conciseness in your required conditions/reduction strategies expansion. I found that a few sentences in this paragraph are hard to follow. One suggestion I might give is to stick to one important idea per sentence, and to build on that idea with additional sentences. In this way, the idea in every sentence is clear and you avoid run-on-sentences.
With that being said, I quite enjoyed reading your definitions and believe that you have helped to improve others understanding of the term. I hope that you find my feedback helpful and constructive.
(Original post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/03/unit-13-definitions-2/)
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