DS make-up writing: May 2012 Archives

Some mental disorders tend to be fairly heritable while others seem to be developmental. Among those that are categorized as highly heritable is bipolar disorder. A mood disorder causing the patient severe depression and manic episodes, bipolar disorder is very difficult to treat and to live with.

No parent would want their child to be at a heritable risk of this, and yet the chances of heritability are heartbreaking. If one parent has been diagnosed with bipolar, the chances of any of their children inheriting the disorder is around 15%-30%. If both parents have bipolar disorder, the odds jump to 50%-75%. The 2003 study that revealed these results showed why bipolar disorder tends to run in families; it is carried in our genes, so to speak. A twins study showed that if one identical twin had bipolar disorder, the other twin had an 85% chance of having it as well. Even if an adult manages to control their own bipolar disorder, the odds are against them when they have children.

When reading the final chapter in the textbook on psychological treatments, I came to find out that not all psychotherapists are actual licensed professionals. This brought me back to an episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the main character, Larry David, sees a therapist in an attempt to get his estranged wife back. Larry coaxes his therapist into playing a robber who Larry catches in front of his wife, as an act of heroism. The therapist gets arrested by the authorities and ends up in jail. I come to wonder how an unlicensed therapist comes to that occupation? What kind of qualifications makes that person an actual therapist? Wouldn't they just be a listener?

The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies (it's not better than Batman Begins, despite what some say say). While I was watching it the other day I realized how closely the Joker's social experiment could be related back to the concepts we have learned about in psychology. For those who haven't seen the movie this is the Joker's 'experiment': there is one boat filled with inmates from a prison and the other boat has ordinary citizens from Gotham on it. The Joker tells both boats via loudspeaker that they each have a box with a detonator and that they have until midnight to blow up the other boat, and if they don't both of the boats will blow up at midnight. Spoiler alert: neither of them press the button and Batman stops the Joker from pressing the button to detonate them both. And now my question to you is, would you trust the other boat not to blow you up if you were an ordinary citizen? What if you were an inmate? Based off of what we have learned in psychology I would not trust the other boat to not blow me up whether i was the inmate or the regular citizen because they are so many things that can happen in stressful social situations like that. One example would be group polarization: the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the original inclination of its members. Also, if social polarization did occur it is very likely that they would get worked up and deindividuation would occur causing someone to overreact and hit the button. I personally would not press the button in the hopes that there was someone else thinking the same thing as me on the other boat. But who knows!

A few months a go I read an article in the New York times that was urging parents to limit the time their young child watches tv. Their reason was that it has been studied that it affects children's development if they watch a lot of tv before the age of 2. The article also said that it's bad for the parent to watch tv around the child. Even if the child is playing with toys at a distance, the child glances at the tv about 3 times a minute. I'm not surprised to hear this because in fact I've heard it a lot and I know of parents who don't allow their young children to watch tv. But what surprised me is that the article said video games are okay. Games on consoles or smart phones do not pose the same threat because it forces the child to interact versus passively sit. This is what peaked my interest. I know everyone has seen that child who is just too young playing with mom or dad's smart phone or tablet. Considering these devices are relatively new and available more than ever before, it makes me think that there are few if any studies looking at how children's brains develop with the constant interaction with these phones. Or even if these studies see a difference between smart phones and video game consoles. While this article may be right about limiting children's tv viewing, I feel there isn't enough empirical evidence to say video games are okay at such a young age.

One important chapter that I read was chapter 12. It talked about being able to cope with stress. In the chapter they provided a lot of different ways to overcome stress. They also talked about a lot of ways stress can creep up on you and the different forms it can come in. Stress is defined as tension, discomfort, or physical symptoms that arise what a situation, called a stressor. The important thing that I will remember is to never let it get the best of me. Stress can cause many severe problems such as peptic ulcers or even suicide. Now I may not have that much stress at the moment but even the thought of it is kind of scary. Trying to remain calm and handle one thing at time seems to be the best way to do it. Finals just passed and that was a very stressful time especially when you are on the borderline of passing or failing a class. Worrying about one final at a time is the first thing you can do. You can even narrow it down further to just one problem at a time. Over complicating a problem or having a negative attitude just causes more stress. You dont want to bring more stress upon yourself if you dont have to. Managing all of this is something I will remember and continue to do.

Intelligence and IQ were something I hadn't thought much about before reading the chapter. There sere several things the chapter pointed out that I found interesting. I had heard the nature v. nurture debate on IQ/Intelligence but had never fully explored the multitude of factors that affect IG/Intelligence.
I was surprised to learn that birth order and being a "later born" child would affect anything with IQ/Intelligence. I was not surprised to learn that education plays a huge role in IQ/Intelligence.It showed that IQ lowers during summer vacations, which I think is exceptionally relevant as there was just discussion about the University of Minnesota considering switching to a full year schedule. Would the Intelligence/OQ benefits outweight the costs of a grueling full year schedule? Even though students would still be able to opt out of certain semesters for a break, if we ran on a full-year schedule I think most people would feel like they had to commit to a full year. I think a full year could potentially raise intelligence but I feel like there would be a high burnout rate, as well as less time for other activities and opportunities that primarily take place in the summer now. Would it make that much of a difference ro would it just be like now, except taking a semester off, instead of the summer like the majority of students do now?

For some, sleepwalking is a reasonably regular occurrence. 4 to 5 percent of adults and 15 to 30 percent sleepwalk occasionally. While some do mundane things like walk to the kitchen and ope the fridge or go to the bathroom, others go so far as to get in a car and drive or even to have sex with another person. This phenomena is referred to as sexsomnia.
I first heard about sexsomnia at the beginning of this semester when we read about in my criminal justice class. The article, "Sleep, Sex and the Law" by Jesse Bering was informative as well as intriguing. It brought up incidents where that had been rape or sexual assault that had allegedly occurred while asleep, and left the courts to deal with it. The most interesting case was of two French men. A straight employee had invited his homosexual boss over for dinner and after a gratuitous amount of wine, they both went to bed separately, the boss on the sofa and the employee to his bedroom. He woke up in the morning with anal lesions that suggested penetration and no recollection of anything happening. The boss said it was consensual, and after he spent two years in jail, the court agreed with him and he was released. What do you think? Is something like sexsomnia a farfetched scapegoat or a legitimate issue?

The most interesting part of the social psychology chapter to me was the section on prejudice and discrimination. I had always thought that prejudice and discrimination, especially based on race, ethnicity and whatnot, was something that children learned from the people around them over a significant period of time.
Jane Elliot's classic Brow eyes v. Blue eyes study put that notion to rest. Almost immediately after outlining the new hierarchy that whichever eye color was better, the children were hooked. They took almost no time at all debating whether to believe her or challenge it and started to treat it as fact. I was surprised at how easily the blue eyed children stepped up into the dominant role, but I was even more surprised at how passively the brown-eyed children fell into the submissive role. They put up no fight and accepted their "fate." It was also unsurprising, yet still very important to not the difference in performance of the two groups, with the dominant side performing better.
This makes me extremely concerned for the people who still face discrimination today. If we continue to treat some groups as second class citizens who are "lesser" than the white, privileged heteronormative ideal citizen, they may be hindered in their development and success throughout life by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue to shame certain people instead of encouraging them, who's to say that they have an equal chance at anything?

I'm very interested in the importance of REM sleep and what kind of effect it has on the body when it's restricted. Rats restricted of REM sleep seem to die within a few weeks, which would point towards it being an essential step in sleep. When humans are deprived of REM sleep, we tend to have an REM rebound--a noticeable increase in the amount of time we spend in the stage when sleeping.
When in REM sleep our bodies are basically paralyzed, and our minds are very active. Why is this so important to our survival? Why do our eyes flutter about? It has been related to the dreaming within REM sleep, one example being someone who's eyes were moving back and forth and later described his dream to be that of a ping pong match.
I've also read that some drugs such as marijuana inhibit REM sleep, and therefore chronic marijuana users should have a lack of REM sleep especially in consumption before bed. What kind of health effects does this have on those people? I do know that those users also have REM rebound after long periods of marijuana use, which isn't surprising.
Maybe someday we'll have a better understanding of how REM sleep functions.

Memory is one of the greatest mysteries still to us. The full capacity of the human brain is something that humans do not use. We just a small fraction of its full potential. To think about what we could do and remember if we used 100% of our brains in crazy. Some people use more and have memories that remember everything they have ever done. While these are rare cases, even regular people that can experience, make sense of their experiences, and then store them in your mind is amazing to me. Memories react and behave in a way that can have physical and emotion effects on us. We remember things that we want to remember, but also things that we wish we could forget. There are things one can take to prevent bad memories from creating a larger more severe problem for people. Another very interesting thing is that people can create false memories. Just like the movie Inception, you can actually implant false memories into people. Not in the way the movie does, but people do it all the time with their childhood. In fact, most memories we have of our childhood are recreated and not really our own memories. Memories are fascinating and our understanding is constantly evolving.

Don't you hate when your doing a group project and there is those two girls in your group that don't do anything and gossip the whole time? Well, that is an example of social loafing. A topic discussed in chapter thirteen, Social Psychology. It's not fair when the teacher announces that everyone in the group gets the exact same grade, but then you and one other person end up doing everything in class, going home to work on it and then talk during the whole presentation. Then of course the two stupid girls who didn't do anything get the exact same grade as you. It isn't fair, but in reality there is nothing that we can do about it. If you go and tell the teacher that you did everything, all they are going to do is ask the girls if they helped out, or what they did. Which those girls can just make something up. It is very frustrating but if happens to the best of us.

The topic of Eugenics is a very interesting one. I really enjoyed that it got brought up in lecture. A lot of people do not really know much about it. People in Minnesota especially do not know the history of Minnesota's contributions. Dight who was ahead of the programming of the Eugenics agenda in Minnesota was actually a University of Minnesota graduate. Knowing that it is kind of scary thinking that such horrific ideology can come from a University such as this one. But when you take a step back and think about it you realize it is not as unreasonable as you previously believed. This massive 45,000 student Liberal university may or may not have a greater chance of being infected by putrid ideas depending on how you look at it. Many thoughts flow through the university and are shot down by peers or professors. But that one idea that sticks into the community and if most of the intellectuals jump aboard that idea can become wide spread. Almost as a living organism the idea/s can change into something it was not intended to be. So being what I ask is for people to be open minded and critical with everything at every point. Once you agree to an idea it does not mean you have to stick with it all the way through. Build your morals and make proper decisions.

I had a great year in PSY 1001

I am interested to positive psychology, so I want to write about researches on positive psychology. Positive psychology focuses on human strengths and help people live better lives. One of popular Harvard open courses is Positive Psychology and I like how the professor discussed happiness. Positive psychology help people pay attention to good parts of human beings as psychologists usually focus on psychological disorders. For example, according to the textbook, people can be recovered even after suffering from severe psychological disorders and terrible events. At present, positive psychology has been a young but popular field. Various self-help books are selling all over the world and they tell people to consistently repeat positive self-help statement, such as "I am smart!" and "I did well!" However, some researches show that positive psychology is not so effective sometimes. A research done by University of Waterloo shows that people with high self esteem did not feel better about them after repeating positive self-help statements while the statements make people with low self esteem feel worse about themselves. So, I think topics related to positive psychology is worth researching. Maybe positive psychology is not so magical.

I found this unit to be pretty crazy with the big 5 personality traits, the concept that all of everyone's personalities can be more or less summarized with only five traits. Since I learned about this idea, it's been fun to try and pin numbers onto people. For example, at my work, there are a few people who are routinely late to work--they probably are low in conscientiousness. However, one of them gets yelled at regularly for it and doesn't really protest; whereas the other gets away with it just fine. This could be a fault of my employer, or it could represent the relative agreeableness of the two co-workers. Perhaps the reason one of them doesn't get regularly yelled at is because he has a higher agreeableness than the other (something I would not at all be surprised to see confirmed).

Since these factors are concrete, and have been shown to be relatively consistent across the span of one's life, this idea has also helped me to be more accepting of others, even if they might have some irritating traits. After all, if somebody is pretty much pre-programmed to be low in agreeableness and neuroticism, well, I might not be their best friend, obviously. However, this unit has shown me that there's more to that person than those traits, and what goes on in their heads is completely different than what is going on in mine, so I may as well just accept it and try to get to know that person on a deeper level.

To make up for missing this week's discussion session about research I looked into some current research that is going on in the field of psychology. One thing I thought was very interesting is the current research going on regarding eyewitness misidentifications. The Innocence Project has efforts to prove wrongly convicted prisoners innocent through DNA testing. University of Oklahoma psychology professor Scott Gronlund is conducting research that compares eyewitness identifications of simultaneous and sequential lineups. Scott Gronlund shows mock crime videos to participants who then must pick out the person who committed the crime in a lineup. Groglund believes that simultaneous lineups are more effective in identifying the guilty party. The basis for his opinion lies in the fact that when an eyewitness looks at a simultaneous lineup the eyewitness is able to compare features of the suspects and make decisions based on this. Simultaneous lineups are better at actually identifying someone who committed the crime but sequential lineups are better at protecting an innocent suspect from being accused of the crime. I think that through continued research experiments, Scott Gronlund will be able to develop a better idea of which lineup is better. Both lineups have their advantages but through this research we may be able to decide which lineup type will be more effective in the US court system.

As most of Freudian theories are difficult or impossible to refute, scientists see little importance of the theories when describing human's behaviors or thoughts. However, it is irrefutable that Freud is one of the most influential people in the field of psychology. His suggestion of the existence of unconscious state was so fascinating that many people were attracted and especially popular culture seems to love explaining people's deep, inner need or desire by using Freudian theories. Freudian Defense Mechanism is one of the most popular theories and I'd like to suggest one example of them in real world.
Ted Arthur Haggard is an American evangelical pastor and he was the founder and former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was also the founder of the Association of Life-Giving Churches and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). His career tells you how he was an active, influential person in the religious world. However, in November 2006, escort and masseur Mike Jones insisted that he had paid him to engage in sex with him for three years! The reason why Jones decided to reveal this was because Haggard publicly condemned homosexual, while he was engaging sexual relation with him at the same time.
This kind of case is not the only one. We often see a conservative politician, who assails homosexuality openly, being involved in gay scandal. A Freudian would explain this by adopting Reaction-formation, transforming an anxiety-producing experience into its opposite. People, who reproach homosexuality so badly that seem to be a homophobia, are actually experiencing sexual desire toward homosexuals but transforming the desire into opposite feelings, because they are afraid that their unconscious desire would not be accepted in the society.

Everyone encounters problems in their lives. It could be something trivial, such as a bad grade on a test. Or something major, possibly a death in the family. We all have our own ways of coping with these minor and (hopefully not) major problems. But what happens when you are too overwhelmed and the amount of problems are building up in your life? Some research suggests that becoming involved in group therapy sessions could benefit you.
I chose to look a little more deeply into the workings of group therapy sessions and the positive and negative benefits given from them. The popularity of group therapy has lead to an increase in demand for psychological services in the general population. They are efficient, less costly, and possibly more effective than some other individual treatments. But what exactly do these treatments work best for? After finding out more about it, i discovered that group sessions work best for situations in which the problem is somewhat embarrassing for the "patient". With anything that is embarrassing, it is extremely reassuring that there are people out there that struggle with a similar problem.

Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most widely known and successful "group therapy"
sessions in the world with about 1.7 million members. They use a twelve step program along with an extremely valuable support system. There are some critics of this particular group therapy. Those in opposition raise the fact that approximately 68% of participants drop out within the first 3 months. This is a number that Alcoholics Anonymous is dramatically trying to reduce. On top of this, some argue that Alcoholics Anonymous destroys the social lives of those involved in the program. What is your opinion on Alcoholics Anonymous and the benefits/consequences that it provides to participants?

I found a youtube video from a talk showing one side of the debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n86JKqA8o4w