Psychology papers such as lab reports and APA-format articles often require an abstract. Think of an abstract as a one-paragraph summary of your paper. The abstract should include all of the major elements of your paper, including an introduction, hypothesis, methods, results, and discussion. Although the abstract should be placed at the beginning of your paper (right after the title page), you will write the abstract last, after you have completed a final draft of your paper.

Find more information in this article on how to write an abstract.