I have learned so many things throughout this Psychology course. However, just like any other semester-long course, it is impossible for me to retain all of that knowledge. While many things will slip from my memory, I know there will be a few psychological concepts that I will definitely be able to remember in five years. The one concept that I believe I will be able to recall most clearly in five years is the concept of love and intimate relationships, and how psychology influences them. In five years I will be almost 25, the age where many people start to settle down with someone that they believe they can spend the rest of their life with. To find this person, attraction and the psychological influences come in to play. There is a good chance that I will be attracted to someone that I see on a regular basis, and according to our textbook, I will find someone with the most "average" looking face the most attractive. And if I am already in a relationship with someone, I will know about the triangle of love, and I will be able to categorize how my relationship is based on passion, intimacy and commitment. Hopefully it will be all three!
inofe001: April 2012 Archives
I decided to research further whether birth order within a family actually has effect on personality or behavior. It has long been believed that the first born in a family tend to achieve more, middle borns tend towards diplomacy, and later borns tend to take more risks. However, when I did more research, I found that most of these claims were exaggerated.
I read the article "How Birth Order Affects Your Personality" by Joshua K. Hartshorne on ScientificAmerican.com. To first address the claim that first borns tend to achieve more, he gave the widely used evidence that 21 of the first 23 astronauts were first borns. He digs deeper on this fact, actually finding that birth order only really creates personality differences among siblings in they are from a very large family. 21 of the first 23 astronauts may have been born first, but, for example, coming from a small family where there are only two kids, those astronauts had a 50% chance to be born first, whereas a child from a five kid family has only a 20% chance to be born first. Family size also affects personalities because of how the resources of the parents must be spread out. More children means more resources need to be used, and each child may not receive the same benefits that children with only one sibling receive.
Personality has less to do with birth order, and more often can be attributed to family size.
When I visited the website reportermag.com and read the article "Beauty in Different Cultures", I learned that every culture finds beauty in very different forms. According to our textbook, our culture correlates averageness to attractiveness. That is, we find beauty in faces that appear average to us. However I learned that in countries like the Philippines, Mexico, and India, where the natives have very dark skin, those with a lighter skin complexion are viewed as more attractive than others. The opposite is true in countries with natives having lighter skin; a darker/tanner complexion is more "beautiful". I was also stunned to find out that the women of the Kayan tribe in Thailand in Burma believe that their attractiveness is related in the length of their necks! In fact, they wear metal rings around their necks at a young age to push down their collarbones to give the appearance of a longer neck.
According to my research, while our society finds beauty in the most average looking of faces, other cultures find exotic or rare things attractive. Our society may find beauty in what seems normal and comfortable to us, but other cultures may find beauty in that which is new and unusual to them.
