haska006: April 2012 Archives

Going into this class, I figured that I would just try and get through it with as little effort as possible. However, over the weeks I found myself stimulated and interested in the course material. I will take away many things from this course, but the biggest thing that I think I will remember in the next five years is the personality unit. In particular, I think that the Projective Tests will be the thing that I remember the most. These tests include the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Thematic Apperception Test. I find this very interesting because you can find out a lot about people with something so basic.

I enjoy trying to "read" people to try to gain insight on others' perspectives so I can attempt to see things from all angles. I think that this could be useful to figure out how people are feeling based on their reactions and descriptions of basic, ambiguous objects or situations. Figuring out these slight cues in their words and actions may be helpful in determining how I decide to go about interacting with them for the remainder of the time being spent with them. This is just one of the many things that I will remember, but this will probably be the most helpful thing I will utilize in social situations.

The following video shows some examples of Rorschach Inkblot Test:

One of the more interesting phenomena in the arena of social psychology is the bystander effect. In 1968, psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané tried to find the factors that resulted in these occurrences. Their first hypothesized factor is pluralistic ignorance. As defined in the textbook, this is when people make the error of assuming that no one in the group perceives things as we do.

I, myself, have fallen under this influence many times, thinking when something is wrong that I must be seeing it wrong, since no one else is doing anything. I find the example in the text book particularly interesting, since I have experienced this situation many times and usually I do not do anything. The example paints a scenario of walking to class and you happen to walk by a student lying on a bench, dirty and poorly clothed. As you walk by, you experience a number of thoughts. I often wonder to myself: is the person homeless? Sleeping? Drunk? (After all, it is college). Since everyone around me walks by, I usually do the same. In situations that seem odd to us, people tend to look around and observe what others are doing as a cue for how we should act. If everyone else walks by and does nothing, there must not be anything wrong. The video clip below, I'll admit, is cheesy but makes the point. In this case however, people do actually help out. [Notice that when later passersby see others helping, they feel something is wrong (spilled coins) and try to help]