Blog Post #13-Social Psychology

I find Asch's Conformity experiment interesting, because it made me stop and think of something I never really thought of before. Would I answer the right answer because I thought it was right or would I just go with the rest of the group? The more I thought about it, and related it to personal experiences, I decided I would go with the rest of the group. It would be kind of like a peer pressure thing. For Milgram's Obedience experiment, I think it was absolutely unnecessary to treat humans in such a cruel and unusal way just for a psychological experiment. I can't even imagine putting another human being in so much pain that they could not stand it, intentionally. I mean, can't people eventually die from being shocked at a really high voltage? Lastly, we have the Stanford Prison Experiment. I think this is an absolutely crazy experiment that never should have taken place. This is even worse than Milgram's experiment, in my opinion. Why would someone intentionally put another in so much pain and anguish, knowing the possible outcomes? To me, this is ridiculous and like I mentioned before, I could never do something to harm another person intentionally-especially just for a psychological experiment. However, it was interesting that psychologists did point out that not every person flipped during these experiments; certain people did remain sane and normal and not totally harmed.



A social influence can be seen in one's conformity (adjusting to one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard), compliance, and group behavior. The book gives examples of normative and informational social influences. Normative include influences resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval. Informational includes influences resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality. I think one instance where I am under "normative" influence would be doing my homework in general, but studying for a test in particular. I do not enjoy settling for anything less than like an A on any school assignments and I sometimes feel as if my parents expect that of me (even though they claim they don't..). If I didn't have my parents as role models, I can definitely say I would slack off more in school and probably wouldn't care all that much. Another example that I can think of being involved with social influences could be when I am voted as a "Team Captain" or "President" of any given club. Normally, I would sit back and watch work being done, give my two sense or help out if asked for it, but remain calm and relaxed. However, when I am awarded a leadership role, I feel it is my obligation to get the work done, and to the best of my ability.

The most interesting thing that I learned in this class is about our personalities as human beings. I find it fascinating that every individual is his or her own person and we all vary in personalities so much that you can never really find two people exactly alike. I definitely think it is a good thing though that we all our separate people. How boring would this world be if we were all alike. I always find a person to be a good person if they are their own person and not afraid of it! Overall though, Psychology has really intrigued me, figuring out how and why we do the things we do as human beings.

Blog Post #12-Psychological Disorders

The book defines a psychological disorder as deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional behavior patterns. Just because someone acts "abornmally" does not mean that he or she necessarily has a psychological disorder. The book states that being different (deviant) from most other people in a culture is part of defining a psychological disorder. Another step in diagnosed a psychological disorder is identifying whether or not this problem causes the individual distress. The last part is if it makes you change your way of life; it makes you dysfunction. The example the book used was that you may have a fear of spiders, and it could make you deviant. However, if it doesn't impact your life, it is truly not a disorder.

Personally, I have never known someone with a psychological disorder. My stepmom, though, watches a certain soap opera (don't remember the name of it!) where a character is schizophrenic. The book describes schizophrenia as a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. What I have gathered from this character is that she is kind of crazy. One part of her is a very caring, loving wife and mother. However, when the bad side of her creeps out she goes nuts. When she is her good self (oh, and the two people have different names, too) she really wants help and doesn't want to change into her other self, but it's something she really can't help. I would feel really helpless, and overall worthless, if I had this condition. I wouldn't really be able to control what I was doing or why I was doing it.

I think the most interesting thing I read in Chapter 14 was right in the beginning. On the bottom of page 594, it stated that homosexuality was once upon a time classified as an illness. That's crazy! I mean nowadays, it's truly just a way of life and you hear about it all of the time. It goes to show how the times truly do change. I think that it also shows we have opened up our hearts a little bit more to give, as a society, and not be so judgmental, although there still are some opposers out there. When the book then stated that a study showed that homosexuals do have a higher risk of having a psychological disorder, I can see why. They receive criticism for something they really can't help and they may suffer some horrid consequences because of this.

Blog Post #11-Personality

I think I have a very fun and outgoing personality. While I am very relaxed and laid back, I do take matters seriously and know how to act maturely. I like to think of myself as kind, caring, loving, and compassionate, especially when it comes to my family and closest friends. I am also open minded, always willing to try something new. I want and try to help those in need to the best of my ability. I love learning new things and have learned from my experiences. I love to talk, hence my outgoing personality. I just want to have a good time. Positive traits include: caring, because it makes others feel good; fun, because who doesn't want to have an enjoyable time with me; compassion, because it shows others that they mean something; open mindness, because it lets others know I am willing to take new steps to progress something; and maturity, because people respect me for it. Some not so good traits include: my outgoing personality, because it may at times me too outgoing and gets me into trouble; my ability to comprehend things, because I may come off too strong to people; and talkative, because my mouth sometimes gets the best of me.

I like to think of myself as a very optimist person. I like to look at the brightside of things, and try to avoid the negatives. Sometimes, however, I am pessimistic, but it's usually towards something that doesn't even matter that much, like the Packers losing their football game in the final minutes. Because of my optisim, I think people see me more as a happy and joyful person, which I want. I wouldn't want people to portray me as this grumpy, serious person. I also think that I have a better outlook on life because of my optimism. It keeps me going and allows me to succeed in things such as school or work.

For starters, I know that my maturity level changes from when I'm talking to an elder to say I am hanging out with my friends. I'm still the same person, but the things I do or say become more natural to what a teenager would do when I'm with my friends. If I'm with an elder, I need to act more appropriate and come off as mature. If I acted the same all the time, no matter who I was with, people would perceive me as different. I need to know, and I do realize, that you need to act certain ways around certain people. A second trait that may change between situations would be me being laid back. Although I am content most of the time, there are times when I have to stand up for myself or those around me and let someone know what is on my mind. This would make me come off as more of an..angry person I guess. Overall, I am very laid back and casual though. I only want what is best for me.

Projection-people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.Once I told a friend I couldn't do something with her, because my Mom said I had to stay home. However, the truth was I really didn't want to go, because of the person that was going with her. Regression-an individual faced with anxiety retreates to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixed. An example in my life would be when my dad moved two hours away from me and I had to resort to my mom for everything, she was always there for me, and still is. I am forever grateful to her because of that. Repression-banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. I think that when once I did something I wasn't supposed to do, I knew my mom could not find out (it wasn't illegal or anything, just something my mom doesn't approve of). So in my mind, it's like I reconstructed the memory altogether to form an alibi that I could tell my mom instead. So far it has worked, and I don't think of the actual memory all that often.

Blog Post #10-Thinking & Intelligence

In Chapter 9, I learned about intuition. The book defines intuition as an effortless, immediate, automatatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning. One's intuition can stop them from solving problems correctly, making wise decisions, forming valid judgments, or reasoning logically. The book explains "Intuition's Dozen Deadly Sins." The "sins" that I found most intriguing, and that I can mostly relate to are hindsight bias and overconfidence. Hindsight bias is when someone looks back on events and falsely surmises that they knew it all along. For example, let's say I get one wrong on a test. I get my test back and I think to myself, "Oh, I knew that was the answer! Why did I mark the wrong one?" This would be my intuition getting the best of me, hence the hindsight bias coming into effect. Overconfidence is one's intutitive assessments of his or her own knowledge are often more confident than correct. I remember it was stated in the book in a previous chapter that, "humans tend to be more overconfident than not." I believe this is completely true and that we as human beings do not like to think of the actuality of real life and can talk ourselves into anything.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. To perceive emotions is to recognize them in faces, music and stories. To understand emotions is to predict them and how they change and blend. To manage emotions is to know how to express them in varied situations. To use emotions is to enable adaptive or creative thinking. It is said that if one is emotionally intelligent, they are self-aware and enjoy higher quality interactions with friends. They can read others' emotions well and know what to say to a friend who is grieving, needs encouragement, or just solve a problem. I would consider myself to be emotionally intelligent. I think this is important, because I am able to build better bonds with the people around me, especially my family and close friends. I feel like I can relate to people and can help them in whatever ways that they need it. I can perceive emotions, tell it by someone's facial expressions. Some people may puzzle me, but for the most part I'm pretty good. I understand emotions, because I can tell if someone is angry, for instance, and know how I can change them to feel happy. I can manage my emotions. I know when and when it is not appropriate to express certain emotions. For example, it's ok to cry during a sad movie, but not ok to be laughing. I can use emotions in activities, such as, a school musical or during a school project.

In Chapter 10, I learned why genders differ in mental ability scores. I learned that girls spell better (I think it's because we actually care about people perceive us and what we can do), are more verbally fluent, better at locating objects (AKA not losing everything), better at detecting emotions, and more sensitive to touch, taste and color. Boys are better at mathematics and outnumber us women at the low and high extremes of mental abilities. Boys are also more likely to be found in special education classes, because they talk later than sooner.

Blog Post #9-Memory

Memory is definitely important in defining who we are as human beings. Everything we have done in our past is a memory and because we remember such things, we learn and grow through our experiences. If we didn't have a memory, we obviously wouldn't know how to do the average everyday things that we do. I don't know how people would go on with their lives, if everyone really didn't know what they were doing.

Clive Wearing is a very talented musician, whether it come to conducting, composing, singing, or playing an instrument, he can do it all. One day he had a headache which turned into an ongoing fever and then he began to forget things, even his own daughter's name. The doctors then realized that his left, right, and frontal lobes were messed up, hence his forgetfulness. Wearing often repeats himself. His life involves only one moment, whatever is happening around him. It hits his brain and then it will fade away. He has no past memories and no future to look forward to. He will look at his watch to record the time and what he is doing, but then when he looks back at it, he talks himself into that he was unconscious when he wrote it, and then he'll just rewrite what he wants it to say. Music comes to him automatically though, it's the one thing that is a safe for him, but once the music stops, he starts to have convulsions. My sympathy goes out to Clive's wife like no other. I give her MAJOR props for sticking it out, knowing that her husband has no idea what is truly going on in his world. If I were in her shoes, I would probably go crazy. I like to think of my memory as being pretty good, so this case makes me appreciate it that much more, getting to remember even then little details from memories.

I am thinking differently of our memories now, because I always used to think that it was there to help us remember things and there was nothing more to it than that. In the book, memory is defined as the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information. I didn't really understand that pretty much everything that we can sense in our environment can be put into our mind's memory. That is my breakdown of what automatic processing is. I still think of my memories the same, I just can understand why they can be so detailed now, I have always thought of myself as having a good memory (unless it comes to something I just choose not to remember). I did the "Recognition" exercise. You were given 16 different pictures of pennies and you had to choose what the actual penny looks like, it took me about 7 tries to get it right. This goes to show that everyday things, a penny in this case, you see all the time don't register in your brain and you don't remember exactly what it looks like. Another example could be the design on a pop can, such as Coca-Cola.

I found it intriguing to read about Jill Price, a woman who just can't forget. I feel really bad for her actually, you would have to find that annoying after awhile. In the book, it was mentioned that, "If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing." I completely agree with this. Yes, you obviously would be sick if you had no memory, that is definitely a more common case in today's world (such as amnesia). People don't really stop and think though if it was just the other way around, what would happen if we remembered EVERYTHING about our lives?

Blog Post #8

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. An example I found in the book would be a female rape victim. She feared particular people and places, but in general, it was all people and places. Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. An example of this could be a little kid told he or she will get a candy bar if they go to the bathroom while being potty trained. Furthermore, this example would be considered positive reinforcement. The difference between the two is that in classical conditioning, an individual learns associations between events it does not control while in operant conditioning, an individual learns associations between its behavior and resulting events. I think this is cool, because it goes to show that there are differences between things in your life that you can control and what you can't.



Positive reinforcement is increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. An example would be winning a gold medal for placing in a competition. An individual would probably push themselves harder and harder knowing that they could be rewarded for being good. After all of their hard work was done, and if they did place, they would get the medal and all of their work would have paid off. Negative reinforcement is increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. An example would be your mom telling you to clean up your room all of the time and then you finally do it. An individual would procrastinate so they wouldn't have to do this work, but know that they would eventually do it. After they finally got fed up of being narked at, they would finally give in and clean up the room. Afterwards, they would probably feel a sense of relief of finally completing the task. Punishment is an event that decreases the behavior that it follows. An example would be getting a spanking when you didn't listen to a parent. You obviously did something that you knew you weren't supposed to, but did anyways. As a result, you get punished, and you feel bad for your actions (most of the time anyways.)

I think the most interesting thing I read in Chapter 7 was about prosocial and antisocial effects. I never actually stopped and thought of why people do the good (or bad) things that they do. Prosocial behavior is defined as positive, constructive, helpful behavior. Antisocial is obviously the exact opposite. An example the book tells of prosocial behavior is if you want children to be encouraged to read, read to them or make books available to them in their environment. Furthermore, there are negative effects people have on each other, called antisocial effects. An example the books shares is if a child has abusive parents, they may tend to be more aggressive than other children. I can relate this to my life because of my two little siblings. I have a sister who is 5 and a brother who is 2. They mean the world to me and I only want what is best for them. By me doing the things that I want them to do too, I realize through the concept of "prosocial effects" that I may be able to accomplish this.

Blog Post #7

Sensation is what we sense in our environment. We use all of our senses (hear, feel, touch, smell, see) in this process. Our nervous system plays a big part in sensation, having our sensory receptors telling us to respond to whatever we sense. Perception is taking what we sense in our environment, and breaking it down into what it really means. For example, we could sense that something is brushing up against our body, but it would take perception to figure out just what the thing is.

Even though I've learned about this in previous science classes, I think it's always intriguing to learn more about color vision. The example given in the book shows us how a tomato really is everything but red, because it rejects the long wavelengths of the color red. The book also mentions that we can discrimante about 7 million different colors variations-that is absolutely crazy. But about everyone 1 in 50 people is color blind. It's usually a male that is affected, because this defect is sex linked. I also learned that according to the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory, our the retinas in our eyes contain three different color receptors, and when they are stimulated in any combination, we can percieve pretty much any color. Learning about this helps me to realize why we visually see things the way we do.

I typed in "sensation" and read the article "Seven Ways Music Influences Mood." Having a strong sensation is one of the top reasons. It says that music can provide deep, thrilling, emotional experiences, especially if you are performing. Also on the list was entertainment, revival, diversion, discharge, mental work, and solace. Altogether these seven objectives have a main goal-to control and improve a mood. I can totally relate to this article. I have a very big passion for music and I resort to it in pretty much any situation. Music is a way for me to relax and just think about something else for the time being.