In five years the two concepts I think I will remember most heuristics and conformity.
Heuristics are mental shortcuts that help us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world. I will remember how heuristics work most of the time by making us not overwhelmed by thousands of pieces of information, but they occasionally can fool us. They are meant to simplify reality but they can over simplify it, by leading us to false conclusions, which is helpful to know. One common heuristic to remember is the representativeness heuristic. This is when we judge the probability of something based on similarities to another. Another common one is the availability heuristic. This is when we overestimate the likelihood of an event happening based on the ease with which we can think of it. So I will remember how my mind can play tricks on me by creating these shortcuts, that aren't always correct.
I really like the picture above because it is an example of non-conformity. Conformity is the tendency of a person to change their behavior as a result of group pressure. I will remember this, because the results of the Asch study were very surprising to me. Being in college and around groups of people a lot, I feel like this is something that is around me every day. I like the picture above, because it's a good example of being yourself, even if you are the only person hanging upside down, and other people look at you weird like the birds above. Learning about this in psychology will help me to not conform and be myself.
I didn't know much about psychology before entering this class, so in extremely general terms I will remember that psychology, or a psychologist, is a lot more than a person sitting there talking about their feelings, while another person tries to help. I learned that psychology is a science, and conducts studies, experimental or correlational, that explore everything from the mind to behaviors and more.
Sources
Lilienfeld Textbook
Katie Johnson
