Blog Post #13

I think all three of the studies were very unique ways to show some basic ideas about social psychology. Some used simple experiments and others used some extreme experiments. I thought it was interesting how in the Asch’s conformity experiment the correct answer is so obvious but people don’t want to be different than the group. In Milgram’s Obedience experiment I found it hard to believe how many people were willing to hurt someone else just because they were told to do so. I never would have thought that the people in the Stanford Prison Experiment would have adapted to their roles the way they did. It’s actually somewhat sickening to me what people can become when put in certain situations. The studies show us that groups of people and the ideas they follow really have a big impact on a single person. If these people didn’t have the others around them or the set “norms or roles” around them they would be and act very different. This shows that Human nature doesn’t want us to be different than those around us.

Social influence refers to how people act when in the presence of other people. Most people are affected by the people around them in how they think and act. In many cases a person acted differently when in a group than if they would have been by themselves. There has been times where a group of my friends was talking badly about someone and I didn’t agree with what they were saying but I still went along with it and acting like I agreed with everything, sometimes even saying things myself so that I didn’t feel left out. There was also a time when I was in Spanish class. The teacher asked us all a question which, I thought the rest of the class was answering wrong but since they all said the same thing I didn’t want to be different and say the wrong thing so I just agreed with them. It turned out it was the wrong answer but I didn’t want to be the only person saying something different.

The most interesting thing I learned in this class was most of the things covered in chapter 9-Thinking and language. I think its amazing how our mind actually works to solve different types of problems, the confirmation bias, and other things like that. Its also interesting how much goes into actually speaking and how thinking and language work together.

Blog Post #12

Someone has a psychological disorder when their thoughts, feelings, and actions, are deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional. Although almost all people feel these ways at one time or another in their life, actually having the disorder is a little different. The spells last much longer and go to a more extreme than in everyday scenarios. Just acting abnormally doesn’t mean you have a psychological disorder. In most cases the term abnormally may just depend on where you are, the time, and the culture you are in. The only way “abnormally” becomes a psychological disorder is when it becomes dangerous or harmful.
My aunt’s ex-husband suffered from bipolar disorder, which is when a person goes from one extreme emotion to the next, mania to depression. Mania is when you are hyperactive and wildly optimistic and depression is the complete opposite, you’re sad and unhappy. The fact that my uncle actually had bipolar disorder had a huge impact on why they got a divorce. He didn’t have it when they got married so my aunt had no idea that she would ever have to deal with it. My aunt couldn’t handle the situation at hand mainly because he didn’t want to take his medicine so he was getting worse. After she had left him he tried killing himself twice, once by overdoes and the second time by cutting his wrists. He went to mental hospital for a while but as soon as he got out it was the same thing, he ended up marrying this woman he hardly even knew and we were all constantly hearing about the crazy things that him and his new wife were doing. It was actually really sad. I feel so bad for my aunt having to go through that. I would never wish that upon anyone.
The most interesting thing I learned from this section was the actual number of people who suffer from psychological disorders. I can’t believe how many there are. It’s so common and I had no idea. But I suppose many people could be treating their disorders so I might not have any clue that something was wrong with the person right next to me.

Blog Post #11

I think my personality consists of organizational qualities, outgoing, responsible, open-minded, and caring. I think that all of these are positive. Being organized can never hurt you. I love knowing where everything is and planning out details so that you know exactly what’s going on. Organizing actually relaxes me and I like doing it. Being outgoing allows me to make a lot of new friends and just meet new people in general. I think life would be boring not going out and meeting new people. I am very responsible. People can count on me to get things done and I think that is something that everyone would like in a person. To know that they can trust them to get done what needs to get done. I think being open-minded to new and different things is a very good thing. Not only because doing new things can be fun and exciting but also because it just brings a little more variety to your life. It allows you too see new things or people without judging all the time therefore making new friends. I think because I’m caring I have a lot of people who trust me and I have a lot of friends that care for me in return. However, I do have some not so positive personality traits. I’m am 100% a perfectionist. Yes in ways that may be nice but it really just causes me stress that is unnecessary. I always want to do my best or be the best. I like getting the best grades and winning. I can’t say enough how much I get stressed out about trying to be perfect all the time, which I’m not so then I stress out even more. I’m also very analytical and I worry a lot. I think way too much into stupid things that I shouldn't even be wasting my time thinking about, like seriously the dumbest things go through my head. I’m constantly thinking about them and worrying about them which causes me more stress. I also at times may be a little short-tempered. This usually only comes out with certain people but having a short temper can never be good.

I think it depends on the situation whether I’m optimistic or pessimistic. Sometimes I can be very optimistic but other times very pessimistic. But I think more often I’m probably a little more pessimistic. Not bad, but usually when it comes to situations where I have to count on other people, I always prepare myself for if they wouldn’t follow through with what they were supposed too. It just makes my life a little more stressful because it makes me worry more. When it comes to me counting on myself in things such as events in a track meet, I’m very optimistic. I tell myself that I can win and I think that helps a lot. I think a lot of my success has come from me envisioning myself winning and being optimistic about it.

One of my traits that change is my temperament. Like I said before some people I just don’t have very much patients for. But for most people in most situations I have all the patients in the world. Some people just rub me the wrong way and it doesn’t take much for me to get annoyed or angry. My sister is one of these people and at times so I my boyfriend. This change is adaptive because as the people around me change my personality may change too. Another one of my traits that change is my Motivation trait. When it comes to school, sports and things like that I am very motivated. I’ll be the first one done. But sometimes there are times when I am so lazy the little things like getting off the couch suck. This depending on the type of situation I’m in has different personality traits. So I guess in the times where I need to be motivated I am but when I don’t really need to be I’m not at all.

When I was younger I remember this one time when I was talking about how much I didn’t like one of my classmate’s outfits but I really wanted it for myself. Now I know it was just jealousy but it was my reaction formation defense mechanism. I was expressing my feelings opposite of what I was really feeling inside. Another time I was playing dodge ball in phy. Ed. And this kid smoked me in the back of the head with a ball so then I went and whipped the ball at someone else harder than I needed too. This was showing displacement by shifting my aggressive impulse to something else less threatening than the thing that actually caused my aggression. When I was in 7th grade I missed a day of school the day before a test. While I was gone my teacher did a little review for it. When I came back the next day and took the test I failed it. I blamed it on the teacher for giving the other kids answers during the review while I was gone. This was showing rationalization by me trying to find other reasons to justify why I failed the test rather than just owning up to the real reason.

Blog Post #10

In chapter 9 I learned about all the parts of the brain involved in language processing. It’s pretty incredible how many parts work together to get what you want to say out of your mouth. The fact that there's five steps to something I used to think was so simple is very interesting. Without one of those steps nothing would come out like it was supposed to, or it might not even come out at all. Now that I know this I can understand a little better why people around me may have things such as speech impediments or similar things relating to the language process. One thing that I found interesting that wasn’t in the book, it was in the assignment, was that males are better at that type of thinking that females are. They had a graph showing that males had a better reaction time than females did when deciding whether a letter was just rotated or rotated and backwards.
When someone has a Creative intelligence they are able to think of new, productive ideas. They don’t necessarily score high on an intelligence test where there are right and wrong answers because what they are good at are the things where there are no answers at all. Just good ideas. I guess I would say that I am creative but only in certain ways. A lot of people think of creative people as artists and things like that, but that is not me. I’m not very creative when it comes to artistic ability. I am however in other areas, like in something simple like thinking of neat ways to show new information to someone. I can’t think of something specific right now because most of it is random creativity on my part. It usually comes out though in school projects and things like that where I have to think of a way to explain something difficult in an easy way. I think having creative intelligence is very helpful because it can set you apart from everyone else. It makes you unique. Although I have some creative intelligence I think I have emotional intelligence as well.
I learned about the different degrees of retardation in chapter 10. There was actually a few things that surprised me in this. One was the fact that someone with a mild case can still only obtain academic skills up to the 6th grade level, I thought it would be higher than that. I also never really thought about how the number of people with a mental disability can effect social security and even the death penalty. Now when I am around someone with such a disability I can hopefully understand a little better how much they can really understand about whats going on around them. I think this information could be helpful to a lot of people because I think people with mental retardation can be really discriminated against by other ignorant people you don’t understand them.

Blog Post #9

Memory is so so important. It has helped humans evolve into what we are today. Without it we would be no where. We seriously might not even be alive. Especially if we couldn't remember something like the location of food or anything needed to survive. Clive is just confused all the time. Even though he can remember things in the past, it won't be too much help for his future since he can't retain anything new. It's almost like he's something not living. He's just stuck in time. the world is changing and he, mentally, is not. I think its great how Clive's wife handles it all. I don't think I could do it. I wouldn't have enough patients for that long of time. I would get tired of him not remembering anything. It just makes me very thankful for my memory. I wouldn't want to put someone I love through what Clive's wife has to go through either.

I definitely think differently about how memory works. I can see now that a lot goes into just one simple memory and there are so many types of memory. After doing one of the exercises I don't really trust it as much not at least when it came to me memorising certain Numbers and then hearing other numbers. I got totally messed up and I could not remember the right numbers. If you don't concentrate on some of the things or are distracted it is very easy to forget them. I thought I had a really good memory, which I still do but only when I'm not distracted. Also its very possible that a lot of my memories aren't accurate like I thought they were. That's kind of scary to me.

I didn't really realize there were so many parts to memory. Like how Clive can remember things far in the past like his wife, but not the recent things. There's just so many parts working together. I can see now that there's a lot more to a memory than I thought. I think or at least I hope I won't take advantage of my memory as mush as I have in the past. I never really thought about how something I thought was so simple was really not and I'd never thought about being without it. I don't' know what I'd do if I lost my memory. I would be completely lost.

Blog Post #8

Classical Conditioning is a way of learning by relating certain things with anticipated events. So it would be like after so long, every time you saw or heard something you knew that something else was going to happen along with it. My cats obviously salivate when they see food. So when we moved the food into a container that makes noise when we opened it, the cats eventually learned that the sound of the container opening meant they were going to get fed and would come running. Operant Conditioning is a way of learning by either reinforcing or punishing a certain behavior in order to strengthen the behavior. So In other words when you do something and how your parents react, will either cause you to behave in that way more if it was reinforced or less if you were punished for it. I’ve learned that if I do my chores I’m usually rewarded (reinforced) by getting to go out with my friends. So now I do my chores without even being asked. This is all very interesting to me because I think it’s amazing how you can have such an impact on animals and people. I mean you can alter someone’s behavior, to a certain extent anyways. That just seems crazy. This applies to my life in the fact that I can think of many examples in my own life where I’ve shown classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Both examples in this blog and a lot of the ones we’ve mentioned in class like the lightening one and a ton more, all show my own classical and operant conditioning.

Positive reinforcement is when you are “rewarded” for a certain behavior in order to get you to behave that way more. Negative reinforcement is used to remove certain things in order to increase a behavior. Since my grades were good I got positive reinforcement by getting a curfew extension. So as long as I kept up my good grades I could keep my curfew extension. When I was sick I took medicine so that way I would feel better and after taking it I did. Punishment is when you get in trouble for behaving a certain way. I was punished when I arrived late for my curfew and the next time I went out I had to be home early.

Honestly I thought all the statistics that were mentioned in the section about observation learning were extremely interesting. I mean I knew people watched a lot of TV but I for one, didn’t realize it was as much as they said and two, I didn’t realize what was actually going on with the violence on TV. All the stats that went along with the antisocial effects were crazy, like how most of the time violence on TV goes unpunished or is considered justified and the pain of the victims aren’t really shown. All of these things influence kids in one way or another. I think its getting really bad and I really don’t like watching it myself anymore and I don’t plan on letting my kids, in the future, get into the whole violence craze that’s going on right now. It kind of gives an explanation to why people are doing the violent acts they are. I’m not saying its right but that could be part of the reason why it’s going on.

Blog Post #7

Sensation and Perception are how we take in our surrounding environment and how we react and interpret it. Something I learned from this chapter was when you touch something that is cold and warm at the same time it feels like burning hot. I think that’s interesting because it just doesn’t make sense you would think that it would just make it somewhere between warm and cold. It changes my thinking because sometimes thinking logically isn’t always going to be right. Your brain may perceive things differently than you would think. I’m going to start comparing some things that, through logic, would appear one way and how our brain actually perceives them.

The article I read was called “18 ways attention goes wrong”. It gave a list of how you’re attention can go wrong. Like when something in the brain is damaged you might do things you wouldn’t usually do or not do things you usually would. It gives examples of what the brain can do automatically when your senses take something in, whether it is through sight or touch or any of the 5 senses. I thought it was interesting what some of the things your brain automatically makes you do and how your senses can create weird illusions. All of this makes me think a little more critically about some of things people do without thinking. It just makes me more curious and it’ll be interesting to watch other people do certain things and try to figure out what could be making them do that.