PSY 1001 Spring 2012 Section 014 and 015

Conditioning throughout my life

2012-05-07T01:36:39Z

After going through all the types of psychology this semester, from behavioral theories to abnormal psychology, I'm going to say that condition is the one thing that will really stick with me from here on out. In my opinion, it's simple, elegant, and applicable to daily life, from training a pet dog to your kids. However you put it, conditioning has a major role in day to day life for every individual, regardless of upbringing, gender, race, etc. To me, conditioning is something that's in the back of my mind every time I see Buffalo Wild Wings and start to salivate, or how I always grow anxious when I see that a psych study guide is four pages long because I know I'm being fear conditioned like a rat. But more importantly is how I'll use conditioning myself.

As a parent, conditioning is obviously extremely important. Negatively punishing my kids for something like missing curfew or putting bread in between the cushions of my couch is inevitable, and understanding the consequences and potential side effects of what I do can help me become a better parent. Conditioning will become something that will help me both become a better parent and have my kids grow into responsible, respectable adults.

Or, you know, I could use it to condition my friend's girlfriend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_mIEnnlF4

psychology through life

2012-05-05T17:17:42Z

This semester has been a tremendously interesting semester. One of the things I have found most interesting is how the mind changes over time, and just how many things can change and adapt, or conversely deteriorate.I find it amazing at just how complex every single process in the brain is. I knew that their were billions of connections in the brain, but just how interconnected every sensation, every thought, every emotion is...it is just mind-boggling to me. Having seen many disorders present in my family over time, it gets me thinking just how many more things could go wrong, or go right, in every person's brain.

Classical conditioning, operant conditioning is everywhere!

2012-05-03T16:29:22Z

We've all learned about the classical and operant conditioning techniques to train our dogs, cats, or other animals. However, have you thought about using these techniques against another human being? No, I do not mean put someone in a cage and give them an electric shock here and there. Isn't it true, that all of us, in one way or another have felt good getting praise for whatever accomplishment one has achieved, such as an A in a class? Doesn't this make one feel great? Releasing some dopamine? Now let me ask you this, is there a single person on this earth who hates that feel? For most of us, because everyone has different situations, we would desire that feeling continuously. Thus, it leads to trying harder to achieve that status where one will be feeling one's reward center being activated. What would that resemble? I don't think these conditioning techniques are limited only for animals or the mentally ill, it is all around us. All of us, studying in college, aren't we all driven by the award center to get good grades or volunteer? Whether we want to believe or not, every one of us is affected by the conditioning techniques that we have learned throughout our daily lives. Here is a good example to finish up the semester.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euINCrDbbD4

The "Secret me"!

2012-05-03T04:08:48Z

During the course of this semester I have learned many valuable things about Psychology. I have come to see how important knowledge about psychology is to us in everyday life. However, the one concept that I found fascinating and that I will absolutely remember years from now is the new finding that has been made in the field of psychology about consicousness and the brain. Consciousness is not the cause of our behaviors but rather is the product of what we do. We are not consciously aware of evey choice or decision we make, the decision is actally made in our brain and the function of conscious awareness only comes in later to help us explain why we did what we did. This proposal, made by psychologists and tested and supported through the use of MRI scanning of the brain activity, had left me in total surprise at first. I had always thought of consciousness as part of science and hence unquestionable, but now I realize consciouness is actually a pholosophical concept that helps human beings explain their behaviors. Therefore, this whole debate of who or what is really in charge of our day to day decisions and behaviors, our conscious self or our brain, is so intriguing to me that it is concrete in my memory. I will remember this from psychology years from now because I find this discussion thought provoking, mind boggling and fascinating, I had never before questioned the existence of a conscious self but now this new finding makes me wonder who I really am as a person, in other words, it makes me think whether I really have control over my decisions in life. Further research is being done to fully understand this concept and I am looking forward to learning about it in the future. In the process I hope to learn more about who the "secret me" is!

visual: this is a picture that reflects "who I am," the conscious me guided by my brain!

Beauty investments

2012-05-02T23:58:35Z

This topic will remain with me for a long period. It really showed me that humans basically did not change. Females still search for men with money, and males look for good looking females.
But this drives me NUTS! and here is the thing:
Women literally think that men are looking for good looking women. They think that if they have nice body shapes they can conquer any rich man. I will discourage all women that think this way. First, most of people who become rich are smart. They know the basics of investment. The main rule is that the coolest investment is the one that appreciates over time, and the worst investment is the one that depreciates over time unless you want to temporary use the investment! Humans get old as time passes. The same applies to beauty. It becomes uglier as time passes. So women that have their looks as their main asset are the worst type of investments because it depreciates over time.
Who wants to invest a lot in something that will be useless after 20 to 30 years?
So try to solve the prioritization problem of looks and brains first, then think about conquering rich men.

Obedience

2012-05-02T23:51:59Z

I was really excited about this:

Modern Results
Burgers' (2009) study had results similar to the ones found in Milgram's previous study. The rates of obedience were very similar to those found in the Milgram study, showing that participants' tendency to obey has not declined over time. Additionally, Burger found that both sexes exhibited similar behavior, suggesting that obedience will occur in participants independent of gender. In Burgers followup (2011) study, he found that participants that worried about the well being of the learner were more hesitant to continue the study. He also found that the more the experimenter prodded the participant to continue, the more likely they were to stop the experiment. The Utrecht University (1986) study also replicated Milgram's results. They found that although participants indicated they did not enjoy the task, over 90% of them completed the experiment. The Bocchiaro and Zimbardo (2010) study had similar levels of obedeince compared to the Milgram and Utrecht studies. They also found that participants would either stop the experiment at the first sign of the learner's pleas or would continue until the end of the experiment (which the researchers called "the foot in the door scenario"). In addition to the above studies, the pattern of results that found participants to be largely obedient appears cross-culturally in participants from Spain, Australia, and Jordan.

That's amazing! Make yourself an authority, and you can control 90%.

What I learned about learning

2012-05-01T21:02:11Z

I have learned a lot this semester in psychology. There are many lessons I can take away from this class and use in my everyday life. Learning everything from personality to IQ to psychological disorders can help me better understand the world around. Specifically, I think the learning chapter in the class will be very helpful in the future. I plan to have kids in the future and discussing the way kids learn and at what paces they develop will be very helpful when I have my own kids. It is interesting to know that kids have a certain range of emotions at one age and that expand to a certain age. This knowledge will help me to be a better parent to my children and help me understand their development process. Also, the personality chapter will help me discover the kind of person my children might be and where they might get certain traits from. It also will help me identify strong points to capitalize on and weak points to work on. Overall, I found the class very interesting with a lot of useful information to be used in many aspects of one's life, from work to personal. I really enjoyed the class and discussion sections for they helped me gain good insight into psychology

Shaping our Emotions and Motivations to achieve Happiness is Key.

2012-05-01T20:29:14Z

I felt this course outlined a wide array of interesting topics and taught me about the essential make-up of our personalities and intelligence as a human race. What I found to be most interesting and impacting is the discussion on emotions and motivation. These two principals are the driving force for how we feel and how we act on those feelings to express who we are to the world. Our emotions allow us to communicate with others our intentions and desires and can even motivate us to accomplish everyday tasks. Without this expression of emotion, there is nothing unique about our human race. It gives life meaning because it gives life importance and allows us to give it luster.

Our emotions can be considered very fragile because they can be influenced by everyone and anyone. Moreover, these emotions help us interpret various stimuli in our life that can lead to either fear or happiness. These interpretations direct our exact thoughts on a particular object and can motivate us for better or worse. Furthermore, the mere exposure effect, seen through constant familiarity, or even the facial feedback hypothesis are interesting theories on how our emotions correspond to outside and internal stimuli. This chapter helped me to realize further that my actions and experiences are important to shaping who I am. Even more so, I have the ability to shape my emotions and control how I feel through my many life endeavors. Happiness is always the key and always will be. I am very happy this class helped further my understanding on how to understand and shape my emotions to achieve this life-long happiness

Below is a song that makes me happy if I am ever sad.

Sources: Textbook

The concept I'll remember in five years

2012-05-01T02:59:01Z

Throughout the semester, I have learned a lot of things about the field of psychology. To me, one of the most interesting concepts i learned was the confirmation bias. The confirmation bias means to seek out evidence that supports our hypothesis and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them. I think that the confirmation bias is an one aspect of psychology that I observe almost every day and I think that it is important to keep in mind. I see a lot of friends and family who demonstrate the confirmation bias when talking about school, the news, and just about any other subject. At times, I even find myself using the confirmation bias and try to keep in mind to look at both sides of the subject. The reason I think that this happens is because people do not like to be proven wrong. They tend to only look at the evidence that supports their opinions and disregard other evidence refuting their claim. This is especially hard for me because I like to know what i am talking about and do not like to be proven wrong. Overall, I need to keep in mind that I need to look at all evidence for both sides of an argument, and remember to use the 6 scientific keys in order to make sure i am correct

Five Years From Now...

2012-05-01T02:31:46Z

Five years from now I'll probably be done with school and in the beginning years of starting a lifelong career. With this I'm sure I'll be thrown into new experiences with new people; this is when I'm sure some of the things I learned in Psych 1001 will come to mind. All the things I learned about personality from the "Big Five" to how people's childhoods can affect their personalities later in life made me think about the people around me. I feel like even in 5 years I'll still have thoughts in the back of my mind about why people do things or what people's actions say about their personalities. I also think that everyone has those moments when they're not sure why they did something and all that I learned about Sigmund Freud's id, ego, and superego explained that to me. When I do something even I can't explain I'm sure I'll remember those concepts and how the id is mostly an unconscious thought process. This also ties into meeting new people during post-college experiences ;I fell that after taking Psych 1001 I'm more apt to give people the benefit of the doubt after they've done something stranger now that I've learned about the quirks of the human mind....

Something I'll Actually Use in the Future

2012-05-01T02:03:39Z

This introductory psychology class has been a lot of work but it was also quite interesting, which is a nice change from other required classes. I think the concept I will use the most in my future is the theory of attraction. This is a major concept that people will use when making one of the most major decisions of a person's life, choosing a lifelong partner. Starting during adolescence, males and females develop these new feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex. These feelings continue for the rest of one's life. As a person enters all levels of school, they start to develop relationships. Although these young, immature relationships usually don't last, they still have these feelings and they are acted out through the relationships. As people age they still look for mates. Typically as people leave college they start to consider people to be their potential lifelong partner and resulting in marriage. This seems to be a major driving force in people's lives. Work and other things may get in the way but they seem to take a backseat to a person's love life. This is why I consider the theory of attraction to be a major takeaway from this class.

The Thing I'll Remember in 5 years.

2012-04-30T17:43:01Z

After thinking over what is important enough for me to remember in 5 years, I thought about all the things I remembered about taking Intro to Psychology as a freshman in high school and what I remembered in that class. What I remember the most from that class 5 years ago was talking about how our brains are influenced by sensations and perceptions. The fact that how we perceive things isn't always what is actually is happening; I think that this is the one thing that I will remember 5 years. Optical illusions are something that people will always like, this is evident from the homepage of Yahoo! About once a month they will post a link/article about optical illusion. Perception however doesn't just involve illusions; it also involves concepts like selective attentiveness. One of my favorite videos that we watched in discussion was the video about this guy asking for directions and in the middle of him holding the map 2 guys holding a painting come and the first guy is switched with a second guy, most of the time the person is so preoccupied with giving directions that they don't notice that they aren't talking to the same person anymore.

One to Remember

2012-04-30T05:45:34Z

The most interesting concept that I will forever remember is that of Sigmund Freud. In particular his theories on the Id, Superego, and Ego. Two years ago I first read his theories and it struck me how powerful our unconscious is. That we make decision based on primal motives. It strikes me that we can have an uncurious so powerful and not beware of it at all. Although I find this interesting along with the rest of most modern psychologist I believe that he was not able to falsify most of his claims. A pioneer in the world of psychology I will forever know the man Sigmund Freud, but it will forever be tainted with the knowledge he may have been a little crazy and had some mommy issues.

Stressed in five years? Ask me how to deal?

2012-04-30T04:58:54Z

When I looked back at this semester and reminisce on all the things we learned, one thing really sticks out to me: stress. This whole year I have really been stressed out by the transition, school work, environment, and track. Stress has affected me badly here. I have had sickle cell trait crises and it all relates back to the stress and hydration. A buildup of stress can also cause headaches, digestive problems, eating disorders, insomnia, fatigue, and lower our resistance to other illnesses like colds and flu. I decided to be active about remembering and acting upon way to relieve stress. I've learned so many ways to deal with stress this semester. One thing I think I feel like it helps me a lot is proactive coping. I anticipate my stressful situations that promotes effective coping. Additionally, I talk to my friends about my problems instead of holding it in. I make daily planner as well now and eat healthier. When I feel just a little bit stress, I take breaks or take naps. In five years, I'll be able to tell my friends how to deal with stress if they need my help.
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_signs.htm
.

The Downward Spiral

2012-04-30T04:55:51Z

After reading the chapter about stress, I am forced to think about all of those people who spend all of their life trying to improve their performance on the job, and how their position depends on their ability to maintain a clear head and exceptional problem-solving skills. However, nobody is perfect, so sometimes they make an error on a project that delays it and someone else has to fix. Such mistakes are more tolerable from rookies, but when you have 25 years on the job, people expect you to be perfect. And although those high-ranking workers are better than the rest, they are still people. And when they mess up, more people are watching them and discussing those mistakes. Then the individual begins to worry about performance, which in term makes it even worse (the repression of thoughts does not work). And, at that position, where one mistake leads to more, it is very easy to disappoint your boss and be on your way home, which you can afford for only so long. So, the question is: is it worth it to have a high rank even if it means a single mistake can cost you your career, or is it better to stay in the middle of the pack?