IB Psychology SL Extended Essay Example

You identify a clear psychology topic and attempt to keep the investigation centred on the relationship between beauty standards, social media, and eating disorders.

You state a research question early and use it to organise the report into sections.

You indicate an intention to use secondary research and to select sources for relevance and scholarly value.

The focus becomes too broad because the essay tries to cover three clinically different disorders within one question.

Key terms such as social media exposure, beauty standards, thin-ideal internalisation, and societal pressure are not clearly distinguished.

The methodology is not reproducible because the search process, databases, keywords, and source-screening steps are not clearly described.

You show a basic understanding of anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and the general role of body dissatisfaction.

You use several psychology terms appropriately, such as body dissatisfaction, body surveillance, restrictive eating, and compensatory behaviours.

You attempt to connect the source material to the disorders rather than relying only on general opinion.

Some terminology is inaccurate or inconsistent, including the repeated misspelling of ARFID and the use of causal language where the evidence is correlational.

The discussion sometimes treats association as proof of disorder development.

The section on ARFID is conceptually weak because the disorder is not primarily driven by body image or weight concerns.