November 2011 Archives

While I learned many things in psychology that I will remember my whole life the concept that will stick with me is social influence. Every day everyone makes wrong decisions because the majority of people around them are doing the same thing. Teens, young children, and even adults fall for it. Social influence could be something as simple and harmless as playing the game everyone else wants to play or something as dangerous and illegal as succumbing to underage drinking because the people around you are, people are influenced by society all the time.
The reason that this concept will remain with me is because it is so common in everyday life. I fall under peer pressure multiple times each day because I do not want to be different from everyone else. The most important thing to remember when dealing with peer pressure is that it can put you into difficult situations; you have to remember to be true to yourself. Never do anything that could put you or others in danger or breaks the law. Also, never do anything that compromises your beliefs and values. Social influence is a difficulty we deal with frequently, and while almost all of us want to fit in and get along with everyone else it is important to not fall for social influence too often because we have to remain true to ourselves or we won't be happy with our lives.

By: Tommy Merchak

I will take with me the six principles of critical thinking incorporating Occam's razor, falsifiability, replicability, extraordinary claims, ruling out rival hypothesis, and correlation vs. causation into my everyday life. Critical thinking is such a crucial part of everyday life and it is very important to know how to do. You need to be able to evaluate situations, claims, and everyday situations because it will lead you to making better more intelligent decisions and will ultimately benefit you in the long run. Using Occam's razor will teach me to look for the simplest answer to situations. Using falsifiability, I will take a claim and evaluate it to see if it can be disproved. Using replicability, I will take experiments and see if I can duplicate the findings to see for myself that the findings are indeed correct/accurate. Using extraordinary claims will lead me to be less gullible, always looking for that extraordinary evidence to back up the claim. Ruling out rival hypothesis will teach me to think deeper about a topic, narrowing in on what is being hypothesized about. Correlation vs. causation will take a lot of silly assumptions out of my life, not simply assuming that because something is correlated it is the causation.
The Link below is a comic about critical thinking.http://www.flickr.com/photos/23968709@N03/5464683190/

I am working toward a doctorate in theoretical math, and I have been troubled by the idea that the work I do is not applicable to anything in particular. The material that I study is fascinating, but sometimes it is hard to see how my work contributes to the world. During this course, I have had an opportunity to rethink this concern in light of our discussion about about the logic behind our actions.

We learned about an experiment where individuals with no connection between the two sides of their brains created explanations for the actions that they took, even when the side of the brain responsible for language had no way of knowing why that action was taken. Our lecturer suggested that this might be how our brains function in general: first take an action for reasons unknown, then assign an explanation to the action after the fact. We are brought up with the expectation that our actions will be considered before they are taken, so we become experts at finding reasons for the things we do. In fact, society expects us to have a reason for the actions we take.

For me it is refreshing to discover that we are often able to assign logic to actions that have been taken, after the fact. To me, this indicates that my theoretical math research does not need to be justified now. Rather, if I learn something new, I am likely to be able to assign a purpose for it in the future, since that may well be how our brains always operate.

What in the name of psychology had happen to the era where ladies who have a few extra pounds on themselves are viewed as beautiful and attractive. Back in the days, ladies having a few extra pounds on them showed that they are from a noble or rich family and are viewed as valuable "wife" materials where men would go out of their ways to "woo". But of course, that was a long, long, time ago. In the world today, being skinny is the new "it" look. And everywhere you look, be it the tv, or magazine, or the internet, being skinny is being promoted in one form or another. And the eating disorders appeared.

Anorexia is an eating disorder that make individuals have distorted images of themselves and they would see themselves as fat and ugly. Therefore, they would go on a quest, of the extreme, to stay thin. Girls who have anorexia would describe themselves as fat even though they are really bony. Even though anorexia is not as common as bulimia, which is another form of eating disorder, but standing at a 5 to 10 percent mortality rate, anorexia is one of the most life threatening of all psychological conditions.

There was a period back in high school, I was very obsessed with my weight. I had very low confidence in myself and thought that I was too fat. I could say what influence my thinking was actually my friends. I would always think that I am fatter than them and that I need to lose weight in order to not feel ugly around my girl friends. I remembered I kept a food diary to help me keep a close eyes on my eating. I also remembered being really proud of myself for eating very little in a day. But I don't think i was anorexic because after about half a year like that, something drove me to eat normal again, I don't remember what, probably because I'm a food person at heart. But I'm glad that I was able to think clearly to love myself again but most of all, I'm really glad I gave food another chance! We are now inseparable.

Positive illusion, in the text, is defined as the tendency for humans to perceive themselves more favorably than do others. These illusions allow us to have higher self-esteem and view ourselves as more attractive, intelligent, and likeable. There is much controversy as to whether positive illusions are healthy or damaging to a person. I think that slightly unrealistic favorable views of ourselves are healthy because they give us more self-confidence and keep us from being too insecure. An example of how lack of positive illusions can be mentally and physically harmful is anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is a psychological disorder in which a person has an obsession with weight loss and weight control. This disorder is said to be rooted from poor self-image and related to personal characteristics, such as high levels of negative feelings and perfectionism. "Possible factors that protect against the development of anorexia include high maternal body mass index (BMI) as well as personal high self-esteem" (http://www.medicinenet.com/anorexia_nervosa/article.htm). With lack of positive illusions, one can spiral into state of dissatisfaction with him/herself and end up with a disorder that can take over her life and ultimately damage his/her physical health.

In my opinion, repression is which means that you forgot some things that the memory makes you feel pain. In the book, it said that repression is means motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses. If when you remember someone or something, you feel ache or pain about that, forget it is a better way.
I think this topic is very important, because some people cannot have a happy life or even want to commit suicide all caused by the bad memories, if they can forget it then they have a better life.
There is an example for my best friend; she is good player for piano. Once she had a piano performance, however, she made a mistake for her playing, and her teacher and her parent feel really disappointment. And she felt sorry for them and guilt to herself. Since then, she became afraid of the performance, and never does it again. I know she was not happy now. To her piano is not only a instrument, but also a friend and a part of her life. So if she can forgot the bad memory about the performance, then she can does it again and live more happy which I wishes.
There are also many people who repress themselves and it is really important to help them out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xvnsIodU34

This was a very interesting chapter for me to learn about. I was unaware about a lot of things when it came to intelligence tests. I was always under the impression that intelligence test showed who the smartest people in the world were. Basically this test showed who the Einsteins, the Gates, and the Jobs were. But not I realize that even though the test at some extent does show this, it doesn't limit itself to just these types of people. IQ tests are to show a persons ability to problem solve and think on a individual basis. But what I think iQ test should be is a cumulative score between how book smart you are along with your personal skills. IQ test are not made to show how well a person can communicate with others or any other personal skills for that matter. If a person can communicate the things they know to others, I feel like that person should necessarily be considered intelligent. A test should be form to have a score that reflects your book smarts and street smarts combined. It was interesting to see in our discussion sections that all the teams that was on the side of being against IQ test always won. Employers realize that people with a high IQ doesn't mean they're the right person for the job. Interviews are great for weeding out those people that are sociably stable. I believe it would be smart to do a combination of interviewing and IQ test when employers are trying to select people for positions. This way you could find out how good a person is at problem solving but also find out about they're communications skills. Last thing I would like to mention is an IQ is really just a numbered and how people perceive it. There are a lot of people that do a lot for society with low IQs. To me it comes down to actions and how people apply themselves to really determine how intelligent they are.

IQ tests are something that are heavily debated in the hiring process in the workplace. With an IQ of about 100 being average, and the average college student around 115, the big debate is whether the hiring process should emphasize IQ over other factors such as experience and personal references.
My take on it is that IQ is very important, but should not be the only factor. Intelligence is key to being successful in most things, but that intelligence means nothing if you're not working hard and using that intelligence to get the job done efficiently and effectively. Hard work is just as important as intelligence, they should go hand in hand, those who are smart should know to work hard and succeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZtcTxWf4U

pretty sure I wouldn't hire him...

Multiple intelligence is the idea that people vary in their ability levels across different domains of intellectual skills. This theory is from the mind of Howard Gardner. This theory, according the Lilienfeld, has been enormously influential in educational practice and theory over the past two decades. Each of the multiple intelligence is a "Frame of Mind" or different ways of thinking about the world. There are eight different types of intelligence according to the theory. A person can specialize in certain intelligence type, but can do terrible in a setting that involves an intelligence type that they are not dominate in. The eight intelligence test are linguistic, logico-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistc.

I find it amazing how teachers can now form their classes to fit their students types of intelligence type. A teacher can focus on using teaching techniques that can help a student in certain ways. A student with high Musical intelligence will probably learn better when what their learning is paired with some form of rhythm or tune. The multiple intelligence shows that people are smart in many different ways.

I just took the test and here are my results:

The results I find are quite accurate! I love music and I work better when there is music in the background. As I am writing this blog and studying for Psychology I am listening to music (as of right now Kids by MGMT)! Interpersonal Intelligence is also high, which I agree because I love working with people. I love nature and I love marching band (which is probably why Kinaesthetic is high, and also I love doing yoga and I want to take a ballet class here at the U). Overall I believe that I do excel in these types of intelligence.

Every second of everyday people have emotions. In my own words emotion is defined as how we feel based on what has happened to us or from what we have experienced. I think this concept of psychology is important because it is one of the main things of a person's life. Emotions can alter decisions and change points of views. Emotions can vary based on culture too because of what has happen to that culture in the past. Sometimes we fake our emotions to please other or to make things seem different than they really are. For example if a person is very sad but when they are around others they smile and seem happy than people in their surroundings figure that the person is indeed happy and not sad. Facial expression and tone of voice can determine how a person seems to be emotionally. There are seven facial emotions that are easily recognized, they include happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and contempt as the text book "From Inquiry to Understanding" states. Sometimes things that we do not even acknowledge can alter our emotions and we aren't even aware of it. Exposure to things has effects on our emotions. People who are interested in Object A are more likely to seek things dealing with object A than a person who is not interested in Object A. There are many different items that can effect out emotion and there are also many different theories and concepts as to why they do affect them.

Personality has been conceptualized from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and at various levels of abstration or breadth. Each of these levels has made unique contrabutions to our understanding of individual differences in behavior and experience. After research, psychologists find a general taxonomy of personality traits, the 'big five' personality dimensions. These dimensions do not represent a particular theoretical perspective but were derived from analyses of the natural-language terms people use to describe themselves and others. Rather than replacing all previous systems, the big five taxonomy serves an integrative function because it can represent the varous and diverse systems of personality descripition in a common framework. These five dimensions are Openness to Experience(intellectual,polished,independent-minded), Conscientiousness(orderly,responsible,dependable), Extraversion(talkative,assertive,energetic), Agreeableness(good-natured,cooperative,trustful) and Neuroticism(calm,not neurotic,not easily upset) .

I feel that an interesting aspect of this past chapter was the idea of the big five model of categorizing personality. I think it realistically portrays the various, diverse traits that compose an individual, in a more accurate way than simply measuring the dislikes or likes about basic concepts. The Big five personality model helps to explain the social situation of different individuals in different situations by showing the complexity and intensity of the feeling directed towards a specific action. I think it's incredibly interesting how applicable the ideas said to be the main categories determining major personality attributes are to my life and many of the qualities displayed in the people around me. It is proposed that certain attributes can determine certain outcomes given specific situations but I feel that there are many contradictions to what is often predicted or stereotyped. The five basic personality traits are said to be the tendency to be open to new experiences typically seen through the ability to seek out situations bringing unusual outcomes, the ability/ tendency to be responsible or steadily work towards a cautious or achievable goal, and the possibility of being outgoing in a situation with other individuals. The factor of being agreeable and willing to adapt constantly, to 'go with the flow' is also able to be measured through this theory along with the tendency of an individual to worry or feel anxiously tense about certain situations. Personally, I feel I have experienced all of these aspects said to compose a personality, and to an extent, I feel they do impact the predictability of feelings and reactions to some people, things or events. To illustrate my point i found an article describing the applicability of many of these aspects making up the big five model. This article discusses differences in gender for entrepeneurs but also many interesting concepts regarding psychological well-being. At one point the article says, "People with high self-esteem are more likely to take risks and enter difficult and unconventional occupations because they believe in their abilities. This is an important part of the adjustment factor as it relates to stability and confidence (Ellis & Taylor, 1983; Hollenbeck & Brief, 1987)." Things like these really interest me about the overall study of psychology and are incredibly applicable to everyday life.
Sources Cited: textbook references and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6005/is_1-2_9/ai_n29064696/

Reading a book upside-down and creating synonyms for the word "amazing" are two different skills. The thing that they have in common is that they both can measure general intelligence. General intelligence includes problem solving abilities, spatial manipulation and language acquisition. The study of intelligence has made many breakthroughs but has also been hampered with questions like how genes and environment interact to create one's general intelligence. Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, has been conducting a study of just how influential your genes are on your intelligence. His research involves a study of thousands of children, asking them questions like "What do water and milk have in common?" Plomin will continue testing the children throughout childhood and into their teenage years. The trait that all of the children have in common is that they are all twins, and in twin studies researches can distinguish between the influences of environment from genetics. What he found was that the identical twins received closer scores than the non-identical twins did. I was interested in reading about what Dr. Plomin had discovered so I continued doing some research and found a new analysis of genes and intelligence. In the new analysis, researchers calculated that between 40 and 50 percent of individual differences in intelligence, both how much someone knows and how good they are at problem-solving, are due to genetic variations between people. The specific genes that effect intelligence have not yet been identified but this new study is the first that proves a significant amount comes from our genes.

We've all seen in class that IQ tests have been used as part of the hiring process for many jobs. Intelligence tests are not only used for jobs that can be applied for by you and I, but believe it or not intelligence tests are also used to assess football (soccer) players. Arsenal Football Club has each of its players take intelligence tests. The tests are written and administered by Jacques Crevoisier Ph.D, one of the elite sports psychologists in Europe who has worked for several high profile football clubs, including Arsenal and Liverpool of England. Crevoisier devised the psychometric test that is used today by Arsenal to test their players and since 2004 he has been compiling psychological profiles on existing and prospective Arsenal players below the age of 22.

Crevoisier uses a 117-question psychological assessment on youngsters to help managers deduce their strengths and weaknesses. It measures their psychological endurance, competitiveness, emotional control, stress resistance and aggression among other things. It involves asking a player how strongly he agrees or disagrees with statements such as:

• Even in training, I want to show I am better than the others.


• I am ready to hurt my adversary in order to win.

Some of the results of English players are alarming when compared to their equivalents in France, where he does most of his work. "Young English players come across as more committed and aggressive in the test but their self-confidence and concentration is not as good," said Crevoisier. This result matches stereotypes about English players in comparison to their European counterparts.

Professional football is a multi billion dollar industry, with clubs working with players from as early as 10 years old and investing significant time and money in them. Using intelligence tests and psychologists to make sure that the players align with what the club is looking for seems very important and can help identify players who are worth the time and effort and those who aren't early in their development. Such tests can also help aid the recruitment of adult players and prevent costly mistakes in the transfer market.

A sample of one of Crevoisier's tests can be seen here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1323963/REVEALED-How-psychologist-Jacques-Crevoisier-assesses-cream-Arsene-Wengers-talent.htm

Engineers aren't known for being the most socially outgoing people. When one thinks of an engineer, the stereotype is of a person that stumbles over their words, avoids eye contact, fidgets, and makes awkward comments. In fact, a fairly common joke is: When talking to an engineer, how can you tell an extroverted one from an introverted one? An extroverted engineer will look at your shoes rather than their own when talking to you.

Although this isn't the case with all engineers, there is some truth behind it. I'm in the mechanical engineering program and I have to deal with a lot of students that are just plain odd. The College of Science and Engineering is starting a program called the Gemini Project in order to combat this problem. The Gemini Project "teaches social and professional networking skills to students who may otherwise struggle in those areas and specifically targets engineering students" (MN Daily, 2011-09-26). After doing a little digging, I found out that there used to be a class that taught interpersonal skills but it isn't offered anymore. I think that a lot of engineering students would benefit from a class like this. The only problem is that if they are not comfortable talking to people they may not be willing to take a class where they know they'll have to interact with others.

Luckily, we aren't all like that. I'm living proof of an engineer that's eager to start random conversations and meet new people.

The big five traits are that most broadly describe personality. They are traits that can describe each of us depending on individual ratings. They are traits that are found in most cultures all around the world. The traits are openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, neurotism, and conscientiousness. A person can either score high, low, or somewhere around the middle. For the extremes, someone who rates low on openness to experience may be intellectually unquestioning and unbending and someone who scores high on openness to experience may be less conventional and more inquiring. Someone who is high on extraversion may be outgoing and chatty. Someone who is low in extraversion may be quieter. Someone who is high on agreeableness may be entrusting and pleasant. Someone who is low in agreeableness may be more guarded and unconfiding. Someone who is more neurotic (which interesting enough would be the lower rating) may be worried and stressed. Someone who is less neurotic may be more tranquil. Finally someone who is more conscientious may be more reliable and orderly whereas someone who is less conscientious may be more irresponsible and forgetful. However, I think it is important to note that different have a different way of displaying each trait. For example, two people may have the same low score in extraversion, but one may be quieter than the other and the other may be less involved with the social world than the one. I also do not think that when it comes to personality there should be a better rating on trait. It is just the way a person is; we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I also want to note that well I agree with the theory, I do not agree with all the scores I got. I think I know myself well enough to know that I am more conscientious, for example, than my rating suggested.

As mentioned in chapter 10 of Lilienfeld, overall intelligence can be analyzed through "g", a factor that describes the differences in intellect among people. This implies that there is only one general type of intelligence. Psychologist Charles Spearman speculated that "g" corresponds to the magnitude of an individual's mental energy. Furthermore, Spearman proposed the idea of "s" which expands on "g" by describing specific abilities in more narrow domains that influence "g".

Although the generalizing nature of "g" may cause its analysis to be seen as incomplete or even offensive by some, I can also agree that it may be better to analyze intelligence from a broader view. Most other models of measuring intelligence can be related back to "g". For example, Sternberg's triarchic model may indicate that an individual possesses high practical and creative intelligence but lower analytical intelligence. It could then be simply stated that the individual has higher general intelligence. Some may argue that some other dimensions of intelligence were neglected in such analyses, but it is possible that many of those dimensions are already factored into each of those three large groups and thus have been indirectly considered in the general analysis of "g". Sometimes, the simplest perspective may be more efficient since it encourages researchers to take a step back and "look at the big picture".

A media icon that some people may interpret as possessing a lower "g" could be Jessica Simpson. Her interactions with others, as shown by the media, appear to lack practical intelligence. However, this does not factor in her musical talents and thus cannot sufficiently indicate a low "g". (Below is a clip of the media's portrayal of Jessica Simpsons level of intelligence)

assignment#5_NV

There are many theories of intelligence, and it is important to understand more about these different theories to better understand ourselves as well as others, especially when working with others. Being aware of a person's intelligence in a specific area, or even their level of intelligence relative to correlations based on other factors, will help in understanding where best to put him or her within a company, team or task. It is also crucial to understand the truth about the different stereotypes and myths about intelligence.
In my life I have seen people have higher abilities in certain areas such as music, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills. I believe that the environment has much more to do with these characteristics than genetics. The interpersonal skills I have gained were from my habit of watching people. Growing up I was a shy child who would rather watch people than speak and be the center of commotion. This has changed a bit now, but I still retained much of that awareness of another's feelings, and the need to include them becomes almost overwhelming because I am empathetic. I wouldn't say I am a genius in this area or any master of some sort, but I do have a strong sense of interpersonal senses when observing or interacting with people. I also agree with the textbook about the fact that above average people in certain things where they have high intelligence in usually engage in that activity the most. Experts and masters of various things such as singing, composing, or speaking have simply practiced more than the average person to gain an above average result.
I find that this relates also to the careers and lives of successful people. They find what they have higher intelligence in, or what strengths they have, and utilize them as much as possible. Yet the question remains on where intelligence comes from, and whether people like Taylor Swift could have high music intelligence in any music related activity versus music she is used to writing and singing. What really is musical intelligence? Is it applicable across different music, sounds, cultures, and instruments?

The most common and appealing belief about intelligence is that proficiency resides itself in multiple skill sets. Robert Gardner theorized that there is a different type of intelligence for linguistic, logico-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic skill sets. Similarly, Robert Sternberg developed a hypothesis for intelligence called the triarchic model which breaks intelligence down into analytical, practical, and creative sub-categories. Despite their simplicity, these hypotheses bring more questions than answers. There is no insight given into the structure of the brain and how it affects these different types of intelligence. The defensive argument would be that all of these categories are all mere manifestations of general intelligence. However, if we wanted to write a computer program that simulates the brain and highlights these different skills, it would be exceedingly difficult given these theories. It is people like Jeff Hawkins (see video) who want to develop a more accurate theory of the brain in order to develop computers that work in a similar way. He argues that the popular concept of intelligence is that intelligence is determined by our behavior following a stimulus. It is also generally how computers work today. An input enters and an output exits. He goes on to stress the importance of predicting what is going to happen next. He says it is this prediction system that is the most important part of our intelligence. Therefore different people do better in certain skill sets because they are better able to predict what will happen. A person may be able to finish a sentence or know what the next note of a song will be, but perhaps we worse at predicting something else. The difference between Hawkin's idea and Garnder's may seem extremely semantic, but by regaining our vision of the mind as a single entity with certain characteristics, scientists can better relate the power of our brains to computers. It is also important to create this picture so we can make a better picture about how the brain literally works as opposed to just what is outputted.

The video above features Jenelle Evans, infamous for her bratty behavior and poor parenting on MTV's series Teen Mom, instigating and engaging in a physical altercation. Anyone who has watched the show would agree that Jenelle is an unfit mother, and this video is a clear indication of her unstable personality.

To me, parenting is a very intimidating subject. In order to be a "good" parent, there are characteristics one must possess to properly raise a child: a mature mindset, selflessness, responsibility, and mental and financial stability, to name a few. Very few would argue that, and frankly I'm not sure if I currently possess any of the characteristics necessary to adequately raise a child. That's what makes teenage parenting a very controversial subject: how many teenagers actually meet the criteria to offer a proper upbringing for their child?

Beyond the matter of age, Diana Baumrind has identified three major parenting styles, as shown in Scott Lilienfeld's Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding (388):

• Permissive parenting, in which parents adapt a more lenient attitude with their children, give little discipline, and are more affectionate towards their kids.


• Authoritarian is the second style of parenting, in which parents are strict authority figures who enforce discipline with minimal affection.


• Authoritative parenting is a combination of permissive and authoritarian styles; parents show an even balance of discipline and affection towards their children.

So which of these styles makes a good parent? Growing up, my mother was very permissive. She let me do what I wanted, spoiled me, and never disciplined me; she took on the role of "peer" versus "parent". I currently have a wonderful relationship with my mother (total mama's boy), so I appreciate the loving route of parenting she took. Nevertheless, there are times I wish she had been more strict. There was hardly any restriction in my eating habits as an adolescent, and consequently I have a terrible diet and a ridiculous sweet tooth to this day. And I'm a spoiled princess. My father offered an authoritative style, leaning more towards authoritarian; although he is very supportive, he also expects a lot more out of me and is very intimidating to approach. My current relationship with him is considerably more distant. Lilienfeld's text suggests that an authoritative style of parenting produces children with the "best social and emotional adjustment", to which I would agree. Although any child would prefer a permissive parent, I believe a parent can certainly maintain a loving relationship with their child while keeping the ability to lay the law down.

And what about our beloved teen mom Jenelle? There is another style of parenting, identified by Maccoby and Martin (388) known as uninvolved, in which the parents pay little attention to their children. The fact that parenting plays such an absolutely detrimental role to the development of a child's personality is what makes parenting so scary to me, and it's even more frightening to imagine how her child is going to grow up.

This week in my blog entry I'd like to consider something akin to the activity we did last week in our discussion sections. Below is a link to a career-selector personality quiz that claims to be based on Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers' personality typology.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

For me, this is what it reported:

Qualitative analysis of your type formula
You are:
• moderately expressed introvert
• slightly expressed sensing personality
• slightly expressed feeling personality
• moderately expressed judging personality

Recommended careers for you are:
• Social work
• Religious education
• Education
• Counseling
• Health care administration
• Medical assistant
• Nursing
• Radiologic technician

For me, the qualitative analysis is pretty close, I suppose, but only one or two of the careers are anything I've ever considered or think I would enjoy at all. Of course, there are several possible explanations for this, the simplest being that this particular one just isn't a good test. But it draws into question the entire concept of choosing careers based on personality analysis. Is this an effective way to choose career options that might be good fits, or a just a way for high school students to amuse themselves?

I think it's certainly true that people are happier in careers that play to their psychological and personal strengths and don't strain their weaknesses too much. It makes sense that a test that could identify these psychological strengths, weaknesses, and predispositions could be a useful tool in identifying careers in which a person might be comfortable and happy. The problem is that it's difficult for these quizzes to take into account other factors that are important in career choice, such as talent for the actual skill involved in the job, interest in the subject matter involved, and interest in and talent for the type of preparation required. For example, I might be happy enough being a religious educator, except that I'm not a particularly religious person and have little interest in anything related to in-depth work in religious studies. I might like to be a nurse, but I'm not so great with needles. And I might like to be a teacher, but the educational program one must go through to teach elementary or secondary education would make me jump out a window. Of course, there's no way for the test to know these things about me, or about anyone else. Because of this, I think it's safe to conclude that while these tests may be useful for determining what a person's personal strengths and weaknesses are, they are less useful when used to simply "generate" a good career choice for an individual.

Everybody knows the situations, where they don't want to tell the truth, because otherwise consequences will follow. On average every college students tells about two lies a day. Most people claim to know, if a person is lying or telling the truth.
A common way to prove, wether people are lying or not, is the polygraph-test, invented 1915. The test is based on three types of questions: Relevant questions, which are related to the actual allegation("Did you do it?"),irrelevant questions, which are neither related to allegation nor lying in general ( "Is your name ...?") and control questions, misdeeds about which most people tend to lie when they are in situations where they feel pressure (" Have you ever cheated during an exam?").
The modern polygraph-test measures several physiological reactions that are most likely to appear when a person is lying. The references are blood pressure, respiration, and skin conductance, a measure of palm sweating. Due to change of those physiological reaction, criminalists determine the convicts of lying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIYnrwNSJo The movie "Meet the parents" shows a funny scene of the farther who works for the CIA and practices the polygraph-test on his future son-in-law.
In my opinion this test is on the one hand a good opportunity to detect lies, because those reactions occur automatically in case of a lie and this makes it very difficult to cheat. This can be related to the Cannon-Bard theory, which indicated that an emotion-provoking event leads simultaneously to an emotion and to bodily reactions. In this particular situation the emotion-provoking event is the stress that the polygraph-test occurs. Still, this testing method isn't 100 percent reliable. It is still possible that people are telling the truth, but still have those reaction due to their stress-factor that they have by taking the test. That is why sometime innocent people get arrested. I would suggest that following to this testing method, there should have been several testing methods used to consider a suspect guilty.
An examples for an additional method is the guilty knowledge test (GKT), which the premise is to test individuals for knowledge that only a guilty person could posses. This is done by means of multi-choice questions, usually consisting of six possible answers; one of which is correct, the other five being equally plausible to an innocent suspect.

Sources:
Psychology- From Inquiry to Understanding, Scott Lilienfeld
Youtube

Our book lists a multitude of variables that are correlated to IQ in good ways. Most of these variables are not strongly connected but from the general trend one might try to say that in general people with higher IQs are not just smarter, but also happier, more successful, and longer living to name just a few.

Today IQ is embraced by some as a status symbol. Mensa "The International High IQ Society" describes their goal as the "fostering of intelligence". They offer lectures and networking for anyone regardless of race, color, creed, religion, politics... so long as your IQ is in the top 2% of the world. This raises an interesting question why only the top 2%?

A person's IQ breaks down to no more than their ability to learn and reason. Though it's correlated with other variables, we can't make any conclusions about something that the top 2% of the world's IQ has that the other 98% don't have. Furthermore, other high IQ societies exist with even stricter guidelines for admission, the most strict being the Mega Society. The Mega Society requires that a person score in the 99.9999th percentile. In other words your IQ must literally be one in a million. Minnesota, with a population just over 5 million would likely only have 5 residents who qualify. Its certainly an honor and we should be studying WHY they are so much better at these IQ tests than so many other people. I feel however that in many ways these organizations are meant to make the members feel superior to those who are in the rest of the population.

The book continually reminds us of the anecdote about Christopher Langan. He is often regarded as the smartest man in the world, but at the same time is lacking in the social intelligence required for someone to truly succeed. He dropped out of college over disagreements with his professors. Since then, he's bounced around through various minimum wage jobs including a bouncer. If someone like Christopher can be one of the few members of the Mega Society, I question what the point of it all is.

For more on Mensa, check out their website: Mensa.org

Ego is a term refers to a tendency at which people focus on themselves. And reality principle reflects the circumstance on which people have to avoid some actions from ego based on some realistic considerations. This phenomenon is fairly common in daily life.

When I was in primary school, once my mom give me some money to buy a bag of candy I loved very much as reward of my good grades. I ran to the candy store happily all the way because my mom barely gave me money to buy candy or toy. And I've been long for that kind of candy for a long time. But on the half way, I saw a beggar sitting in a corner with a very little kid with shabby clothes. The beggar looked at me and moaned that the kid was hungry and they need food. I really wanted to ignore them and went to the candy store to buy my candy but I just couldn't. Because I couldn't ignore the reality that the mother and her kid are hungry, they need food to survive. Then, I stopped and took out the money for candy and gave them to the mother. I got a little disappointed because my candy is gone. But I still didn't regret till now because they need help.

Here I'm still wondering a question: when is reality good for us and when would it become a limitation to us. If we have only ego without considering reality, would people, to some extent, become more brave and creative?

In chapter 9, the author introduced the concept of intelligence quotient, which is defined as systematic means of quantifying differences among people in their intelligence (Page 327, Lilienfeld textbook, intelligence qoutient). The author also mentions different means of calculating IQ and the influence factors of IQ. Among these ideas, I found the genetic influence on IQ most interesting.

First of all, in the textbook the author introduces three studies to research genetic and environmental influences on IQ: family studies, adoption studies and twin studies. The family studies allow us to examine the extend to which a trait "runs" or goes in intact families, those in which all family members live together in the same home (Page 337, Lilienfeld textbook, family studies). The trait we are studying here is the intelligence. The research from the family studies shows that intellectually brilliant individuals had many first-degree relatives (parents, siblings and children) who were also brilliant, but fewer second-degree relatives (such as cousins) (Page 337, Lilienfeld textbook, family studies).

Secondly, the adoption studies is another way to research influences on IQ. Compared to the family studies, the adoption studies emphasize on the environment influence in the research. Adoption studies allow us to separate environmental from genetic effects on IQ, because adoptees are raised by parents with whom they share an environment, but not genes. It has shown a clear contribution of the environment in IQ. However, research also shows that adoptees's IQ tend to be similar to their first-degree relatives (Page 338, Lilienfeld textbook, adoption studies)

The last comes the twin studies. Compared to the family studies ad the adoption studies, the twin studies mostly focuses on the biological perspective of IQ research, but it also shows that environmental factors influence IQ. The twin studies is based on the idea that identical twins share same genes, and therefore we can research their IQ based on the assumption of same genetic structure. A research conducted by Paul Thompson at the University of California in Los Angeles shows that, in identical twins, certain brain areas related to intelligence showed a 95 to 100 per cent correlation between one twin and the other - they were essentially the same. Other researches show that the identical twins' IQ correlation have been .7 to 1.0 where fraternal twins' IQ correlation is between .3 to .4. The higher the identical than fraternal twin correlations shows IQ is influenced by genetic factors. On the other hand, the twin finds shows that identical twins' correlation for IQ is not 1.0 but a little less than that. Therefore we can conclude that environmental influences also matters on IQ. In my opinion, the twin studies focuses both biological and environmental perspectives, and it shows most results and evidences in researching of genetic influences on IQ.

In addition, while research shows that both genes and environments have influences on IQ, the correlation and causation scientific thinking principle tells us there is a possibility that neither of the two factors is the main influence on IQ. There might be a third party contribute to IQ, genes and environment. For example, the education one received can contribute to higher IQ, which will change the environment he/she is in and may also change the genes for his/her offspring.In this case, genes and environment are correlated.

Twins: Nature or Nurture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egXIk_4-qMY&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLA028B06086BFD6F7

Freud thought the three agencies, id, ego and superego are combined in personality. In this hypothesis, id is the combination of our mosti primitive impulses, ego is the our mind to make decisions and supergo is our sense of molarity. Freud believed that these three characters work together in our daily life to build personality. Still I believe his idea because these three agencies are quite related to our personality. For instance, to one thing, alcohol, different people have different attitudes. id follows the pleasure principle, which is the tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification, so someone, who loves alcohol, follows his or her id to decide to have wine. Also, there are some people who decide not to drink. in this group, ego plays an important role because they may think about the bad effects of wine. so they finally choose not to have alcohol. furthermore, the molarity works as some young people are attracted to the taste of alcohol but when they are educated, they have an thinking that having alcohol before 22 is immoral. in this case, whether a person decide to drink alcohol is the result or reflect of his or her personality. so those three agencies coordinate to differ different people.
however, i still have some questions about this hypothesis. for example, according to Frued, different personalities make different decision but how can we explain the same decisions are made by different personalities? and there a huge variety of personalities in the world. how do those three agencies work to build up them?

Freud thought the three agencies, id, ego and superego are combined in personality. In this hypothesis, id is the combination of our mosti primitive impulses, ego is the our mind to make decisions and supergo is our sense of molarity. Freud believed that these three characters work together in our daily life to build personality. Still I believe his idea because these three agencies are quite related to our personality. For instance, to one thing, alcohol, different people have different attitudes. id follows the pleasure principle, which is the tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification, so someone, who loves alcohol, follows his or her id to decide to have wine. Also

With an array of eight different defense mechanisms out there, it is only natural that many are displayed in movies and television shows. However, many people do not even realize that they occur. Two defense mechanisms I will be taking a look at in movies will be regression and displacement.

Regression, like I said, will appear in many movies, however one of my favorite examples is seen in Step Brothers. In the car scene, Will Ferrell regresses backwards and begins to act like a child in response to news that his mother is getting remarried. Although it is not relevant, he clearly states the he will not call Robert his father. He acts out in this way as a way to not deal with the hardship of his mother getting remarried. This regression allows him to act in a simple, childish manner of his youth.

Displacement is shown in the movie Anchorman in a very popular scene. After Will Ferrell hits Jack Black while he is on his motorcycle with a burrito, Jack Black proceeds to crash. This makes him very upset because he loves his motorcycle. In response to this event, Jack asks Will what his most beloved item in his life is. Will promptly responds that is dog is. Jack Black takes his dog and punts him into the river. This shows displacement because Jack Black takes his anger out by doing something of equal calibur in response.

Have you ever had an encounter where you feel like you have already been there, done that? More than two thirds of us have experienced this sensation known as Déjà Vu. This experience makes you feel as if you are reliving something that never happened. The experience is familiar, but the details are elusive because it never really happened before. The odd sensation of Déjà Vu seems to occur more frequently to people who tend to be able to remember their dreams. It also seems to occur when people encounter a familiar experience that they unconsciously remember. Déjà Vu could also be due to "an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the temporal lobes," as noted in the Psychology Lilienfeld textbook. I can recall many experiences I have had with Déjà Vu. Most of my experiences with Déjà vu seem to have occurred because I encountered a familiar experience. Some people believe they are experiencing a memory from a past life. These claims cannot be falsified.

Howard Gardner proposed the Multiple Intelligences Theory in 1983. The basis of this theory is that the one's intelligence is not solely based on one specific area of ability, but is instead an accumulation of different areas of intelligence that gives all of us our own distinct knowledge and abilities. Gardner hypothesized that there is a huge range of different cognitive abilities, but that none of these abilities show a very good correlation to one another, which has been almost disproven by other researchers.

I do believe that Howard Gardner was right in believing that there is a wide variety of different things that make up each of our own, individual thought processes. Some of us are more knowledgeable in creative things like music or painting, while others are better at mathematics and science. It's just the way that our minds are built.

The Big Five are a collection of traits that measure personality. The combination of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism can tell a lot about a person. In the video below, the hosts explore how some of these traits do and do not appear in celebrities.

One of the first people they talk about is Tom Cruise. They also spend the most amount of time judging his personality. Although these traits do not measure all factors of his personality, they do measure a good amount and can tell a lot about a person. By knowing a lot about these traits in other people, employers can better judge who will be the right person to hire and who will work best with the tasks they are given.

Upon looking at these traits, I can easily see where I stand and what careers may suit me in my future. I know that I am pretty open to new experience, so having variety would work well for me. I am not very conscientious, so a career where I can make on the spot changes would work well for me. I am usually not very extraverted, so a job where I could work alone would be beneficial. I am agreeable and I can easily get along with many different people, so I can work with a wide array of other people with no problems. I can occasionally be neurotic, but that would work well when there are deadlines or things need to be done. Overall, I think the combination of these would fit perfectly with my career path in mind and work: interior design. I can combine all of my personality traits to get my job done and do well at it in my future.

I thought the Piaget Theory was very interesting due to the fact that I grew up around an in home daycare my whole life. My mom has been doing daycare for 24 years and it's amazing to see all the different personalities and learning abilities of the kids that she takes care of. I like how in the book Piaget mentioned that "kids aren't miniature adults." I believe for that to be very true due to the fact that I have been able to watch many kids grow and develop in personality, attitude and inteligence. Not only that but I've also been able to sit there and compare these young kids with either their parents, my mom or another adult. It's amazing to see the difference that you would never think about if you weren't interested in the subject. When Piaget mentioned that kids think that their teachers live at school because that's the only place that they've seen them really makes me think about back when I was in elementary school and whether or not I thought that was the case, and I probably did, but I never would have thought about a situation like that if it weren't for the Piaget Theory. The discoveries he has made have really had an impact on how I observe my moms daycare kids but also how I can also kind of relate to what is going through their head just by some of the research he has done. This theory was fascinating to me.

One example of just how strong of role genes can have on one's personality is the story of identical twin brothers, Gerald Levey and Mark Newman. Separated at birth, they never knew the other existed and were raised in different households, eliminating any common environmental influences. After finally discovering each other and meeting for the first time at the age of 32, the list of common characteristics the two shared was astonishing. For starters, they both ended up becoming firefighters, one in Queens and one in New Jersey. Along with being identical twins, they grew the same mustache and sideburns, making their appearances basically undistinguishable. They share a long list of common favorite pastimes, including hunting, fishing, going to the beach, watching old John Wayne movies and pro wrestling. Even something as minor and their preference in beer was the same; both men drink Budweiser beer, holding the can with one pinkie curled underneath and crushing the can when it's empty. Gerald and Mark take identical twins to another level with their long list of similarities.

The fact that they were reared apart from one another shows a shared environment plays only a little role in adult personality. This was proven in an astonishing investigation by University of Minnesota researchers, directed by Tom Bouchard. The study known as the "Minnesota Twins" study, accumulated over two decades of samples of identical and fraternal twins reared-apart. The results showed that identical twins, like Gerald and Mark, reared apart have many common personality traits, far more than fraternal twins. When compared to twins raised together, the twins appeared to be just similar in personality. These results ended up being one of the strongest ever examples of how strong of role genetic influences have on personality.

For people to describe human personality there must be an understanding of the five dimensions that create one's said personality. The Big Five personality test is, in a lot of ways, is similar to the Strengths Test that I was given as an incoming freshman at the University of Minnesota. These five dimensions that are often coined the "Big Five" are: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The five factor model for the human personality has been studied by numerous psychologists in the world of psychology, but wasn't perfected until the 1980's. Because the Five Factor Model provides a simple and broad understanding of personality it has been said among psychological critics that there are many more domains to human personality that are ignored. The purpose of the Strengths Test and the Big Five personality test is to help explain certain traits/qualities that a person possesses and just knowing these details about your personality can aid in discovering a future career for example. For a lot of college students one of the hardest elements of college can be deciding what you want to do when you are finished, or how you will support your family. I think that these tests are helpful because everyone has different traits/qualities that make up their personality. And the reason that someone loves their job might be the reason why a co-worker hates it. These tests are helpful because it is basically an inventory of what makes you who you are and what qualities about yourself are stronger than others. From my perspective it has been supportive knowing my strengths and using them to help me succeed in college.

http://www.strengthsquest.com/content/141728/index.aspx

It is widely known that former preemies are more likely than full term babies to suffer from learning deficits or learning disabilities at school. Up to 45 percent of infants weighing less than 3 1/4 pounds at birth have one or more abnormalities on testing at school age. It's usually not possible to predict at the time of discharge or during early development who might develop these difficulties. Common problems include Coordination problems like Difficulty writing, drawing, or doing jigsaw puzzles. Language problems such as Difficulty following directions, learning to read, or remembering words. they may also have thinking problems pertaining to Difficulty with memory, spatial relationships, or abstract concepts.
while these facts are known to most of us the video i have posted shows another story. giving birth to children as little as a week early puts that baby more at risk, than full term babies, to develop learning disabilities of deficits. While the numbers aren't as staggering as preemies that are months early it still raises a question about inducing pregnancy slightly early in seemingly healthy babies. Should it be allowed if not necessary?

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4yNAI1HrAE

Being that I am the youngest of 4 children, the question of whether or not older siblings truly are smarter is a curious one. Off the top of my head an argument can be made for younger siblings having a higher, more broad sense of knowledge. I think this would come from learning from sibling's mistakes and essentially going through experiences multiple times if siblings had already been there. On the other hand, a case can be made that, since older siblings hadn't had the opportunity to sit back and watch that they need to possess drive and initiative to learn for their selves. This is however more of a "street smarts" look at it and the studies done I believe assess the situation as an accumulation of multiple intelligences.
According to Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding, Robert Zajonc's initial claim that younger siblings were in fact less intelligent was brought about in the 1970s. However, this claim faces criticism in identifying the placement in the family as being indicative of the overall IQ of the offspring. Other factors such as social status and various family situations can taint pure results. But there is compelling evidence in the form of several studies that back up Zajonc's findings.
Bio Ed Online published an article, Older Siblings Are Smarter, in which it was determined that "eldest siblings are, on average, 2.3 IQ points more intelligent than their younger brothers and sisters". The article points out that possible reasons for this could be the parental demands placed on the older children as well as those same kids mentoring their younger siblings.
However, there are many explanations that go against these findings and that correlation isn't exactly causation. One example would be, in larger, less economically stable families, younger children simply might not have the necessary resources available to them.
This topic applies to me because I am the youngest, yet academically smartest of my siblings. According to an article Sorry, kid, first-borns really are smarter, attained from MSNBC.com, this makes sense. It states, "While the first-born tended to do better on measures of intelligence, the younger siblings had higher overall grade point averages." The reasoning provided by the article says that first-borns are smarter because at one point they were the sole attention of the parents but, like mentioned previously, the younger children had the opportunity of learning from and receiving mentoring from the elder children.
This also relates to me because about a week ago I participated in a study conducted by the University of Minnesota in which birth order was related to overall IQ and what factors accounted for this. I have not received any of the results but clearly it can be seen that these studies are still ongoing.
These findings leave me with a couple questions. If indeed older siblings are smarter, and its only by a mere 2 IQ points on average, how can we not be fooled that it is simply because of the strains society typically places on these kids that accounts for the differences? Also, are these results more so due to nature in that as mothers have more children they are getting older their selves and maybe as the years go by in between pregnancies, their higher age is contributing to lower IQs for their youngest?

Older siblings are smarter
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3401

Sorry, kid, first-borns really are smarter
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38683279/ns/health-childrens_health/t/sorry-kid-first-borns-really-are-smarter/#.TsmqoRxcJI4

IQ testing in my opinion is not a very good method to measure a person's intelligence. First off an IQ test is a standardized test, so therefore there must be a way for a person to improve on the test after each time they take it. If there is a way to study for the test and a way to improve then how can we say that an IQ test is true measure of intelligence? The IQ test measures common intelligence that most people would consider to be a "smart" person but the IQ test doesn't measure anything that involves social dynamics or other types of "street smarts."
The text also talks about how the SAT and ACT are closely related to a person's IQ score, but yet at the same time someone's SAT and ACT score can be raised through studying. I know when I took the SAT I had a tutor and my tutor would tell me the tricks of the SAT test and how the people who make the test try and trick you. I was able to improve my score through studying but at the same time I wasn't any smarter I just knew what to look for on the test.
If we look at the common definition of what people consider and intelligent person to be then the IQ test does test for that kind of intelligence, but intelligence covers way more than the common pop culture definition. The IQ test is nothing more than a way for people to measure who is going to be one of the smartest people in school. There is so much more to intelligence than just the basic IQ test and I think that a new test should be formed that will look test all of the aspects of someone's intelligence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZtcTxWf4U

Hundreds of people travel to Loch Ness, a lake in the Scottish Highlands, every year to hope to get the chance of spotting the mythic creature living in the lake. The myth/ hoax was brought to the world's attention in 1933 and sense then there have been numerous "sightings" by many people. While a very limited amount of evidence exists about the creature, hundreds of people still believe that the creature lives and even scientists have began in the search. For these believers one key theme from Psych 1001 could be used to falsify their claims, and that is ruling out rival hypotheses. Though there is a chance that the Loch Ness monster exists what we must all keep in mind is there alternative explanations for the sightings and evidence collected on the creature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB_c2RwpbXU

Attachment theory describes the dynamic of long term relationship of human. This usually happened with infant and their mother. We are able to recognize the face of their mother when they are baby. At that time, baby will perform attachment to their mother.

Let us watch a video:
According to the video, we can remember the face that baby shown to us, when her mother in front of him, the baby laugh and looks really happy. But if his mother goes away from him, he suddenly starts to cry. Thus, we conclude that the baby is attachment to his mother, which is a kind of attachment called secure attachment.

Also, there are other three different patterns of attachment theory. Take another video as an example:
Also, there are other three different patterns of attachment theory. Take another video as an example. There are four patterns of attachment behaviors. Children who are securely attached generally become upset when their mother leave, and are happy when their parents return. Children who are ambivalently attached tend to be extremely suspicious of strangers. These children display considerable distress when separated from a parent, but do not seem comforted by the return of the parent. Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid parents. Children with a disorganized-insecure attachment style show a lack of clear attachment behavior. Their actions and responses to caregivers are often a mix of behaviors, including avoidance or resistance.

It is my view that as a psychologist gets to know his/her client's over time, and carefully observe their behaviors and listen to them, attachment patterns begin to emerge and can be clearly recognized. However, it will take time and concentration on observation.

The section of the book with regards to happiness I found very interesting. Some things that are correlated to happiness I wasn't surprised about, and some things I wasn't surprised about. The one thing that didn't surprise me at all was that happiness doesn't decrease with old age. I know from reading psychology magazines that self esteem increases as we age, I assume because our crystallized is always increasing and doesn't decline much with old age. This is also increased with the positive effect, which suggests that we remember our positive experiences way more than our negative ones. As we age, these positive experiences accumulate and make us happier when we reminisce upon them. The other thing I wasn't surprised about was that regular exercise makes us happier, because it's a staple of bringing oxygen to our brains, in addition to being a staple in good brain health.

The one surprising thing I found was that marriage made people happier. I know that a great marriage in theory would produce more happiness. However based upon divorce rates in the country, it would seem that most people aren't very happy after all. Also, I was a little surprised that money and happiness wasn't correlated to happiness. For me, I love technology and so when I make purchases that make my life easier like a great laptop for example, I'm convinced that it increases my utility. I knew that a lot of people over estimate how much money would make them happy, but I was still shocked that there is literally no correlation between money and happiness. I suppose that all of these conclusions are based on science, so I need to adjust my opinions in order to lessen my cognitive dissonance on these matters.

One of the great questions when interviewing for a job is how capable will the person be for the position. Many interviewers think that an IQ test is an appropriate way to test to see if someones qualifies for a job. This is an important concept because it will apply to me and many other Psychology 1001 members sometime in the mere future. The question I am going to try to cover today is should IQ testing be used by companies to see if people are qualified for positions.In the textbook there were both many arguments for and against why we should or shouldn't use IQ tests. The textbook brought up an important point to me in that it says that IQ tests only test for certain categories of intelligence, and fail to test how well people function in society. IQ tests to fail to test people in many of the categories needed for specific jobs, only testing in intelligence or spacial memory which are not used in every job. The textbook also brought up the point that the higher IQ someone has in usually correlated with awkward social skills. People who spend their lifetime with their nose in a book learning information usually dont learn the needed social skills to be good with communication.
On the other hand IQ tests do a good job at filtering out potentially smart employees from the not so smart. If you are trying to hire for a position that requires a lot of intelligence and not so much communication skills than an IQ test would probably be a good way to test for employees. The IQ test can also test for people who would be harder workers because a higher IQ is usually correlated with how hard someone worked to gain the knowledge, but like always correlation does not mean causation.
When doing this i was question myself on what i preferred and i thought that companies should not use the IQ test for many reason. Many questions came to my mind though. Will they ever create an accurate IQ test that will be capable of seeing potentially good employees? Will they still be using IQ tests in the future to test intelligence? Will companies still be using IQ tests when im trying to find a job in the future? Are there other tests that could possibly test better qualified employees rather than an IQ test?

http://www.hiresuccess.com/is-employment-testing-legal.htm

The belief is psychic detectives is understandable coming from the survivors or violent crimes or the families of victims who hope either for answers or contact with lost loved ones. What is not understandable is police and criminal investigators taking these "readings" seriously. According to Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph. D., "No psychic detective has ever been praised or given official recognition by the FBI or US national news for solving a crime, preventing a crime, or finding a kidnap victim or corpse."
Some people consider these predictions harmless, but in reality, police departments waste valuable resources either responding to "psychics" who attempt to insert themselves into criminal investigations either by having to rebuff their offers of assistance, or, more tragically, by following the blind guesses of conmen in the hopes that it leads to answers.
From Natalee Holloway and JonBenét Ramsey to Elizabeth Smart, there is almost no high profile missing person case that doesn't include publicity-seeking psychics and their useless predictions.
One case that illustrates the cruelty of psychic detectives is the story of Shawn Hornbeck. This young man disappeared on October 6, 2002 and after months without progress in the case, Shawn's desperate parents went to television psychic Sylvia Browne. During their meeting with this so-called psychic (on the Montel Williams show), Shawn's parents were told that he was dead. Craig Akers, Shawn's father, stated that this was, "one of the hardest things that we've ever had to hear." And yet, Shawn wasn't dead. Four years after his disappearance, Shawn was recovered alive along with another boy who had recently been abducted. But for more than three years, the hope for his safe return was diminished by Sylvia Browne, an opportunist and grifter.

This is the story of Flo and Kay, the only female identical twin autistic savants ever to exist.

"In some ways they're retarded; in other ways they're geniuses"

These sisters are monozygotic twins. They each share 100% of their genes and were reared in a similar environment. Their personalities are identical, as well as their intelligence. When Flo and Kay were born, they were deemed retarded. Their skills were never harnessed or understood-- they were teased and ridiculed in school, and even their mother even attempted to kill them. The term mental retardation as defined by our textbook is an IQ below 70 and an inability to engage in adequate daily function. The word genius is termed by being in the top 2% of the IQ range and is usually accompanied by an extremely demanding or prestigious occupation.

Savant Syndrome supports the view of multifaceted intelligence as suggested by Howard Garder. There are different ways of being "smart." There are 8 different types of intelligence, as shown in table 9.1 on page 322 of the textbook. Savants typically fall within 5 general categories: Music, Art, Calendar Calculating, Mathematics, and Mechanical and Spatial skills. They have "g," or general intelligence at an overall level from the core of these specific abilities, "s".

As seen in the video, Flo and Kay are calendar calculators-- they can tell you what day of the week it was from any year. They also remember things that affected them directly, such as what the weather was like on a specific day or what their favorite TV host was wearing. They do this with extreme ease, much like a genius-- one must spend at least 10,000 hours in a specific domain to achieve such remarkable abilities. From first impression, however, most would conclude that they are mentally retarded. They are at both extremes on the bell curve of intelligence.

On a side note, twin studies allow us to see the genetic influences on IQ. On average, Identical twin studies have a correlation of .7 to .8 in IQ showing that it is in fact influenced by genetic factors-- this is especially clear in the case of Flo and Kay.This is also in support of personality having a genetic component, because both sisters are identical in personality-- however, this could be due to their mental disability, which makes the sufferer much more introverted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-B0_m6fW94

This unit of psychology relating to personality reminded me of one of my favorite movies, which is called The Three Faces of Eve (trailer posted above). Based on a true story, this 1957 production is about a woman named Eve who has multiple personalities. As the movie progresses it becomes clear that Eve's personality "split" because of traumatic events that she experienced as a child. Later on, the viewers find out that Eve unconsciously resorted to the defense mechanism called repression, which involves a distressed person forgetting emotionally stressful events to self-protect. I wish our textbook had covered personality disorders more, because I find them extremely fascinating. I decided to do some research on this condition and discovered this online article.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

I learned some very interesting things. For example, switching between personalities can take days. Also, some of these personalities can even be animals, which I thought was very unexpected and probably a very bizarre experience for the person housing such personalities. However, a lot of the symptoms were fairly predictable, especially after viewing The Three Faces of Eve. These people suffer from headaches, depression, mood swings, etc.

I wonder what the statistics are pertaining to this disorder. It would also be interesting to see how many people suffering from this disorder eventually end up overcoming it.

Have you ever wished that you could be more outgoing? How about more assertive? A faster thinker? Well, according to Peter D. Kramer, that may become possible through cosmetic psychopharmacology. This practice is where normal, healthy individuals take drugs to move their psychological state to one that is more desired or socially rewarded. Medications that have been studied for this use are typically used as antidepressants, like Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac. Kramer has found preliminary evidence that even in individuals that do not have mental illnesses, these drugs can induce more interest in socializing, a state that Kramer coined "better than well". Cosmetic psychopharmacology is under debate because it could be seen as unethical. It challenges the belief that our personalities are what makes us ourselves, and being able to change that goes against nature. It could also cause issues to arise from an evolutionary psychology viewpoint, because according to them emotions are survival mechanisms. Making people calmer and less responsive to things that could lead to anxiety could decrease the ability to react in dangerous situations and decrease survival. Yet others who support cosmetic psychopharmacologies say that it is just like a cosmetic surgery, it should be the individual's right to choose whether to participate or not. All of these components are part of the controversy that is still under debate, which is a complex issue that will take some time to resolve.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/mental-health-meds-as-social-drugs

A Freudian slip is an error in speech or memory that is believed to be linked to the id, or the unconscious mind. According to Sigmund Freud, these mistakes surface buried psychological conflicts. Freud's Psychoanalytical Theory of Personality revolves around three main beliefs.
Psychic determinism is the belief that all psychological events have a cause. Freud believed that we are controlled by powerful forces within us that lie deep in our unconscious awareness.
Symbolic meaning, no matter how minor an action seems to be, Freud believed that no action was meaningless. All actions can be linked to a mental cause even if we can't figure out what that cause is.
Freud also believed in unconscious motivation. Unconscious Motivation is the belief that we rarely understand why we act the way we do or say what we said. According to some, the mind is like an iceberg. The unconscious mind or the id is fully submerged in the water making it difficult to retrieve information. The id is the largest part of the iceberg indicating that our unconscious plays a greater role in our personalities than our conscious or ego.
Though Freudian slips tend to be funny, they lead us to question whether or not the speaker's unconscious was an acting force in these mistakes or was it truly an accident. Freudian slips revolve around psychic determinism, symbolic meaning, and unconscious motivation. These three assumptions create a very detailed and believable argument as to why Freudian slips occur.

Do all psychological events have a cause? Psychic determinism is this assumption. According to Freud (and the textbook), we cannot help but fall victim to the "inner forces" that lie outside our conscious awareness (546). This leads to the concept of the "Freudian Slip."

A Freudian Slip is basically making an unintentional error in speech that is supposedly revealing of your subconscious feelings/conflicts (546). It is because of psychic determinism that these errors in speech are regarded are more significant than simply a speaking mistake.

Freud also believed that sex drive was a particularly powerful, and often unconscious, motivator. This is most evident in his "Stages of Psychosexual Development." He argued that even infants and children are innately, yet subconsciously, sexual. For example, in Freud's "Oedipus Complex," he says that boys are supposedly romantically in love with their mothers and want to eliminate their fathers as competition. This supposedly happens during the "phallic stage" which occurs from approximately the age of three to the age of six. (551)

Therefore, because Freud's ideas of libido as a motivator and psychic determinism, it should not be surprising (if we do indeed "believe" in Freud's theories) that some Freudian Slips are especially sexual in nature.

This is evident in a compilation of Freudian slips "caught on tape." It is evident that none of these people intentionally make this error in speech (ie: a broadcaster says, "Why did I say that?" and the game show hostess says "Where is my mind today?) However, the question remains whether or not these errors in speech were actually caused by powerful inner sexual desires, or were simply just speech errors.

Nonetheless, they are pretty funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEIslG2McpA

The Rorschach Inkblot Test is known as the best projective measurer. It was created by psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in the early 1920's. The test consists of ten symmetrical inkblots, five in black and white and five containing color. The test is frequently used today. It is know to be used on subjects about 6 million times every year!

The test is done by asking subjects to look at each inkblot and having them tell what the ink blot looks like to them. The examiner then takes the information collected and places personality traits with the results. An example is that obsessive-compulsive people usually pick out tiny details in the blots.

This test is important because it is one of the most commonly used tests today to find personality characteristics. There is a lot of skepticism of the Rorschach test. Many believe that the results are not that valid and believe that a lot of psychiatrists rely too heavily on the Rorschach results because it overshadows more important valid information.

As illustrated in the cartoon above, the question of whether we are able to alter our own IQ scores interests many people. Our textbook suggests that we have very limited ability to change our own IQ scores. In fact, one of the main arguments presented by the text for the relevance of IQ testing is that our scores are relatively static, at least over a short amount of time. If IQ scores could be changed by testing, then the effectiveness of IQ scores in predicting lifelong outcomes would be called into question.

In contrast, there is a popular belief that we have the ability to improve our scores on exams of this type. While perhaps not too many people are particularly motivated to improve their IQ scores, there is a lot of interest in finding ways to increase our scores on college aptitude tests because these tests often directly determine students' college acceptance and funding. According to our text, SAT scores are closely correlated with IQ scores. Does this mean that studying for the SAT is worthless?

The discussion of this in the text is unclear. The text suggests that score improvements could be due to practice effects rather than studying. This seems like poor logic, because it does not address the question of whether we can significantly improve our SAT scores. Rather, the text explains that the improvements observed in SAT scores cannot be attributed to studying techniques. Further, the argument that studying for the SAT makes no significant difference does not make sense in light of the format of the SAT. For example, many questions on the verbal portion of the test rely on knowledge of a fairly limited collection of obscure vocabulary words. Attaining this body of knowledge takes only resources and memorization, not particularly high intelligence.

This raises the questions, first, if studying can improve scores on the SAT, could studying raise IQ scores as well? If SAT scores only improve with practice, could IQ scores become higher with practice as well? Finally, if we are able to raise our IQ scores through either studying or practice, does raising our IQ scores also improve our likelihood of attaining the many positive outcomes associated to high IQ scores?

In a society that values education and intelligence at a very high level, it is only natural that their model citizen has an IQ of 210, an IQ score that is off the charts. Kim Ung-Yong was born in the year of 1962 during the month of March in Korea. By June, a mere 4 months after his birth, Kim was already able to speak. Talking in most infants usually does not take place until they have reached about one year in age. Kim's speech was perfected by 6 months. This means that Kim could talk and converse with his parents before most infants are able to muster together 3-4 word phrases! Additionally Kim had picked up the art of reading at a supersonic speed. In America most children learn to read in kindergarten, first, and second grade, By second grade most children are able to read many texts in their first language. In Kim's case, he could not only read texts in his primary language, Korean, but also those in English, Japanese, and German. Not to mention, his ability to read all of these four languages was fine tuned by age two, three years before the average child can read! By age three, Kim had dabbled into calculus and high level math concepts. When Kim was 5 he showed off these intense math skills on a Japanese television show. Kim was mathematically at the level of an average high school student or freshman college student. All throughout his childhood and adolescence Kim was considered to be a child prodigy. Naturally, Kim enrolled in university classes at the ages of 7 and 8, when he was offered a position at NASA to study. After attending multiple prestigious American and international universities, Kim ended up switching his major from physics to civil engineering. His work is extensive and he has published many scientific journals and articles. As of the late 2000's Kim serves on the faculty of Chungbuk National University. You can also find him in The Guinness Book of World Records!

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldtvc9L3Ps1qbw5qb.jpg
Here is a link to Kim performing complicated math at a young age.

There have been many studies done to determine the relationship between twins, both identical and fraternal. I will focus on identical. The University of Minnesota has conducted studies over the past two decades, compiling the largest sample of both identical and fraternal. Their findings might shock you. Identical twins tend to be strikingly similar in their personality traits. They are also far more similar than fraternal twins reared apart. The similarities in anxiety proneness, aggression, impulse control, emotional well-being, traditionalism, achievement orientation. In many cases the identical twins reared apart are more like each other because there wasn't any competition when they grew up. This finding is sufficiently surprising, shared environment plays little or no role in adult personality. It is funny o note that this finding suggests that if parents try to make their children outgoing, for example, by exposing them to friendly children and encouraging them to attend parties, they're likely to fail in the long run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_(film)

A common hoax is using identical twins in magic tricks. The magician explains that the two have some sort of mental connection. He then pricks one, or shows one a card. The other twin either knows what card the other has, or feels the prick. Because I cannot get TV onto the computer I have used the web link to Wikipedia. Here a magic trick performed by twins, in the recent movie The Prestige.

Everyone is unique- you know that. But how different? We are all interested in how we are different from others. Shy, active, enthusiasitic, cool...there are more than a hundred words can be used in describing a person. However, the psychologists are more interested in transforming these qualitative data into comparable quantitative ones. Thus various personality tests sprouted and the most well-known one is the Big Five model. This model categorizes personal traits into five bigger dimensions. They are:

• Openness to Experience:Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience

• Conscientiousness:A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.

• Extraversion:Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.

• Agreeableness: A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

• Neuroticism: A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability

If you wonder what's your score in each dimension, here is a free online version of Big Five Personality Test for you to take!

Some other personality test categorize personality based on the nature of color, the year you are born, or many other interesting dimensions. Here is an interesting personality test that is developed by professional psychologists:Find Your Hogwarts House: The Harry Potter Sorting Hat Personality Test. Take it if you have time!

After reading the personality chapter in the text book I've come to consider genes and the environment as an important concept in twin studies. Shared environment plays little or no role in adult personality. Through studies done with twins reared together and apart, it is evident that identical twins reared apart are about as similar as identical twins reared together. This clearly shows that genes are more significant in personality than the environment. Growing up, I met a pair of fraternal twins that ended up being my best friends. Because they were fraternal, they looked more like sisters than twins. Nicki was tall, athletic, and skinny were as Jessie was shorter, more creative, yet still skinny. Getting to know them, I knew that they were twins, but they acted completely different from one another. Growing up with them made me come to the conclusion that it was their genes that had more of an affect on their personalities. If it were their environment, then they would have very similar personalities because of growing up in the same household, attending the same school, and hanging out with the same friends. Although I understand this concept pretty well, it makes me wonder that if Nicki and Jessie were identical, would their personalities be more alike considering they would share 50% of the genes?

Everyone has a different personality. It may only be slightly different from someone else, but people differ. There is no model that is one hundred percent accurate for a personality structure, but through a large amount of research the personality structure that has so far been the most correct is the Big Five model. It contains five personality traits that keep consistently popping up in research. These five traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

This model is interesting to me because if you find out someone's personality you can better understand their habits and get along with them more. In my last discussion section for Intro to Psych we found out what personality we had. I had high conscientiousness and low extraversion. It made perfect sense to me. I have a tendency to be a careful person and have been told repeatedly how responsible I am. I am also someone who does not like to go to parties for a long time if at all depending on what type of mood I am in. Big social gatherings usually make me exhausted after a short period of time. It helps to know your own personality as well as other's because you can figure out what your strengths are and what type of situations (like large social gathering's for me!) to stay away from.

The TV show NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) provides the perfect example for the Big Five. The show is about special agents, stationed in Washington D.C., that investigate all major criminal offenses. The investigative team consists of Gibbs, the boss, his three special field agents (DiNozo, McGee, and Ziva), and Abby, the forensic specialist. Each member of the team has his or her own personality that helps make the show so entertaining to watch.

Agent Gibbs is the type of boss that everyone wants to please. He is the one that the team looks up to and goes to for guidance. He is responsible and only acts if he knows it is the right decision, which is always his gut response. Gibbs is the perfect example of a person with a conscientiousness personality. The three special field agents all have different personalities. DiNozzo is the "social butterfly" of the group and is always cracking the jokes. His personality would be best known as extraversion. McGee has a neuroticism personality in which he is usually tense and lacks self-confidence. Ziva, who has an agreeableness personality, usually tends to be social and concerned when others are in danger. The last personality trait in the Big Five describes Abby, who is [open] to experience. She is the "odd ball" on the team that everyone loves. She is intellectually curious and very unconventional. Together, each and every one of their personalities provides a hilarious, as well as a captivating TV show to watch.

First 35 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YesmmW21pGw&feature=related

First minute and 20 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtO9KFifYr8&feature=related

whole clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaZdaickRJE&feature=related

By: Tommy Merchak

Everyone knows that cigarettes increase your risk of lung cancer dramatically. That is a prime example of correlation vs. causation. Smoking a tobacco cigarette and inhaling the smoke has cancerous chemicals that lead to cancer. Since smoking in general usually leads to lung cancer you may be surprised about the findings of smoking marijuana. I have been researching this topic for years and did a couple searches before creating this blog to see if any new results have been found. Well, simply put, smoking marijuana has NOT been proven to lead to lung cancer. It hasn't even hinted at lung cancer; actually according to the article from the Washington Post the most recent study has found it may actually have preventative qualities, "the chemical THC, may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous". I am not saying that it has been proven that marijuana is good or that it does not lead to other cancers but pointing out that there is extremely little to no evidence that smoking marijuana leads to lung cancer. This proves that correlation does not always lead to causation. The YouTube link below is an interview with a doctor and his take on lung cancer and marijuana.
Ripley believe it or not!
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pBw0bgmgA)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html

Intelligence is a very interesting topic of psychology because many people are unsure of how to test it. This is because there are many different kinds of intelligence. When someone calls another person intelligent, what do they mean? They could be talking about the person's general intelligence, fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, or many more different kinds of intelligence. Most IQ tests will measure a person's general intelligence, however; many jobs will require someone who has a higher practical or creative intelligence, but will not require a very high analytical intelligence.

I found the idea of different intelligences to be very interesting because before reading this chapter I always viewed intelligent people as "book smart", or analytically intelligent. Emotional intelligence is another type of intelligence which I think is very important. Someone who has a high emotional intelligence can control their emotions when they are under stress and stay focused on the task in front of them. They will not let outside factors affect their work. This is a very important quality to look for in an employee because it can help predict how committed they might be to their job and if they will be prone to something like depression or substance abuse. Below is a video about an EQ test that favors companies testing EQ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTdT1c_M4Dw


I do not think emotional intelligence testing should be should be the only reason of hiring an employee, but that companies should also test for a few of the multiple intelligences or the Triarchic model of intelligence, such as creative intelligence that is required for the position they are trying to fill . The company should combine these results with the job interview and application with how well they think the applicant will be able to adjust to the job. If a company only tests for general intelligence then they are falling victims to the scientific principal of ruling out rival hypothesis that some people who test low in general intelligence may be very high in a specific kind of intelligence they are looking for.

While looking at the claims on snopes.com , I came across a very interesting one saying:
"A penny placed on the tracks will derail a train."

I decided I wanted to look more into this and read about it, and what I found out was actually really interesting.

As said in the facts about this statement, kids have been placing pennies on railroads pretty much as long as pennies and railroads have been around. There has never been any evidence that doing this derails a train, showing that this claim does not fit with both the scientific principles of extraordinary claims and replicability.

Extraordinary claims fits because the evidence is not as strong as the claim. There is NO evidence what so ever that it will derail a train, so this claim requires more detailed evidence than a less remarkable claim.

I also found replicability to play in this claim, because like stated before there is absolutely no evidence that his has ever happened. People have been putting pennies on railroad tracks for generations, so if it were true there would be a least one train that got derailed from this practice.

There have not been any derailings from putting pennies on a railroad track, however there have been fatalities with this practice. Usually because the person doing it does not move out of the way fast enough and ends up getting hit, or the penny shoots off the track once hit by the train and ends up hitting the person who put it there in the first place. So it is safe to say that doing this is not safe at all, because you never know what could happen. The possibilty of you derailing an entire train though is extremely unlikely. I think it would be safer just to go to an amusement park or museum of some sort and flatten your penny in one of those machines...you may have to pay 50 cents (well 51 cents including the penny) but at least you wont get hurt AND you get a pretty design on it. :)

Below is a video showing that a placing a penny on train tracks will not derail it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZqgBxNlgz0

An important concept in the biology of sleep is sleep apnea. Sleep apnea occurs at most withtin 20% on the general population. It is a sleep disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep. Sleeping with sleep apnea includes: snoring loudly, gasping for air, and sometimes a halt in breathing for more than 20 seconds. A lack of oxygen and a buildup of carbon dioxide leads to multiple problems including: night sweats, weight gain, hearing loss, irregular heartbeat, and most of all fatigue during the day. Lots of people are not aware of the fact that they have sleep apnea until they go see their doctor and describe some of the symptoms like being tired and gaining weight. Sleep apnea is important to understand and deal with because it raises the overall risk of death by 17%! Children with sleep apnea usually just get their tonsils removed, but for adults with sleep apnea removal of the tonsils usually doesn't work. Thus, many adults with sleep apnea wear a face mask when they sleep that blows air into their nasal passages, forcing the airway to stay open. My stepfather has sleep apnea and has to wear a face mask every night even when we go on vacations. Unfortunately, sleep apnea may not be something adults can get rid of easily, bu there are methods to help ease their sleep, lessen their risk of death, and decrease the feeling of fatigue. I do still wonder though why removing the tonsils of an adult does not usually work to eliminate sleep apnea.

I remember a couple of years back trying to master Howard Berg's Speed Reading program. Being that it was on cassette and that he was miserably boring to listen to, the results weren't too positive. It seems as though there has become more of an emphasis on speed reading today with the always on-the-go lifestyles maintained by most people. This is as well the case for a typical college student as the effort to skim read a chapter the night before an exam is likely an all too familiar feeling. With this, people look for ways to comprehend material in a short period of time, leading to speed-reading programs.

Speed-reading programs are basically courses designed to enhance reading rates. Extraordinary claims like "Double your reading speed and comprehension in just 7 days!" are made and draw in students and professionals who are desperate to get the most out of their hectic days. Most colleges, including the U of M, have speed-reading courses made available to their students. However, these programs are being targeted as "scams" as skeptics argue that comprehension rates drop drastically when attempting to increase reading speed significantly. In regards to the Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, "research conducted on speed reading experts who claim to be able to read at over 1000 words per minute with full comprehension has found that their claims are false (Homa, 1983) and that these two readers who were studied failed miserably in comprehension rates.

Be that as it may, it is in my belief that these programs will always be around as new generations try their hand at increasing their own reading rates. Internet sites like "speedreadingsoftware.com" even rank these courses and have their own top ten! So if we know that these courses are a scam and positive results are exaggerated, why are they still around? Its simple. Money. Companies know that there will always be a consistent set of people looking for that edge and these programs with their bold claims will always draw in an audience. With the rapid advances in technology however, it begs the question, will we ever be able to live up to these extraordinary claims or is it just wishful thinking?

When looking at snopes.com for a claim, I came across one that said "The rubber tires on a car protect you if lightening strikes". It took me by surprise, because until I read this I still believed that!

When reading about this, the claim isn't so far off, but there is a much easier explanation to why cars are "safe" during lightening storms. Instead of it being the rubber tires, because the lightening will bounce off of them and keep you safe. There is really a much simpler explanation.. you are safe because the of small metallic frame of the car. This showing a perfect example of Occam's Razor. If you car gets struck my lightening the metal in the frame of the car will keep you safe from getting the brunt of the shock. You may still get hurt but you will be a lot safer inside of the car than outside. The frame almost acts as a shield taking the charge of the lightening and having it go down to the ground instead of to you.

So no worries, you are still safe in your car when it is storming out. Just know that it isn't because of the rubber tires, but because of the actual car itself! It is our own little shield against mother nature when she is at her worst (okay..well maybe not her worst..) :)

When looking at snopes.com for a claim, I came across one that said "The rubber tires on a car protect you if lightening strikes". It took me by surprise, because until I read this I still believed that!

When reading about this, the claim isn't so far off, but there is a much easier explanation to why cars are "safe" during lightening storms. Instead of it being the rubber tires, because the lightening will bounce off of them and keep you safe. There is really a much simpler explanation.. you are safe because the of small metallic frame of the car. This showing a perfect example of Occam's Razor. If you car gets struck my lightening the metal in the frame of the car will keep you safe from getting the brunt of the shock. You may still get hurt but you will be a lot safer inside of the car than outside. The frame almost acts as a shield taking the charge of the lightening and having it go down to the ground instead of to you.

So no worries, you are still safe in your car when it is storming out. Just know that it isn't because of the rubber tires, but because of the actual car itself! It is our own little shield against mother nature when she is at her worst (okay..well maybe not her worst..) :)

It has been shown that most people prefer average looking people over exotic, unique looking people. Judith Langlois and Lori Roggman state that being average isn't necessarily a bad thing. They found that people preferred average faces 96% of the time! This is quite shocking to most people because everyone seems to have a preference for some unique look. Some believe the reasoning behind this is because people who are average tend to have more symmetrical faces. People are known to be more attracted to symmetrical features. I find this research interesting because it is something that people don't really think of too much about. It never comes to a person's mind that the reason they think someone is attractive is because they are average looking.

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Some people in this world need to have an addiction- they need to feel the pull and connection towards something to feel whole about themselves. Addiction has always been seen as a psychological or psychical dependence and involvement with something. Generally, that something is typically and socially perceived as negative, such as an illegal substance. However, it doesn't always need to be. Addictions can range from anything between work, certain behaviors, or God.

These compulsive needs generally form from the unconscious mind; they are very hard to avoid, and are almost always out of the person's control. These compulsions have extreme negative consequences on one's mental, social, psychical, or financial health. While one is obsessing with these compulsive needs, they generally cut out other activities and contact in their life. The root of addictions are more often than not directed towards a different purpose, an excessive purpose- one that isn't linked to the expected goal. For instance, a girl who feels like she doesn't get enough love and attention from her parents may develop a shopping addiction: the clothes and the shoes are always there for her when she needs them, they make her feel good about herself. She replaces the nourishment that she really needs with materialistic "love and attention." When she goes into a store and leaves without making a purchase she may feel empty inside, like she's missing part of herself. Not making a purchase causes her to have anxiety- this is exactly what happens with a behavioral addiction.
Subconsciously, addiction can arise in any form, affecting anyone. They all have different levels of severity and may require different levels of attention and support.

I personally feel, or know, that I have a "soft addiction" to my BlackBerry- I affectionately call it my "CrackBerry" ...But let's be honest addiction to a smartphone is nothing new in the twenty-first century. My BlackBerry is always by my side: I sleep with it, I eat with it, I even have it in the bathroom while I shower. I panic inside when I can't find my phone, and don't even get me started on when I accidentally leave the house without it. When I went on a mission trip this past summer, I brought my phone with even though it was advised that we didn't. But my heart sank when we reached our destination and I virtually had no reception. After our week was over and we started the trip back home, I had tears of when I was able to fully use my phone again. It isn't the actual physical cellphone that I have a fixation with, it's having all forms of instant communication at my fingertips.

Researchers and people alike have been debating back and forth on the topic of whether playing violent video games or exposure to violent media lead to aggressive behaviors. As for me, I don't think that playing violent video games or watching violent media will create violent behavior. However, I feel like if kids who tends to already be aggressive, and are expose to violent things, they may in turn be even more violent.

My brother for example, he is the sweetest kid ever. But I remember one or two years ago, he used to be pretty aggressive also for kids his age. Especially when he was watching show like power ranger or any show that has "kung-fu". You can see him kicking thin air and copying the "kung-fu" moves on TV. And when he played with his friends, he would "show off" his kung fu moves. Even though he didn't mean any harm, but his friends of course got pretty upset. Our family was a bit worry about his behavior, and for some time, I was afraid that he would grow up acting like that and be violent. But he is not violent or aggressive at all. His behavior have changed since then. He doesn't kick or punch like he used to. And he just sits still when we watch some sort of action movie; he doesn't act out the moves anymore. So when I watched the video in discussion about the changes in the behaviors of the toddlers, it reminded me of my brother. Kids likes to imitate what they see. Even though they were more aroused after watching power ranger does not necessary mean that it made them violent. They may just simply imitating what they saw.

Also if there is a connection between violent things versus crime, then why was there a decrease in crime as the sales of violent video games went up, according to one of the article we looked at in discussion session? The article says: "The myth that video games cause violent behavior is undermined by scientific research and common sense. According to FBI statistics, youth violence has declined in recent years as computer and video game popularity soared. We do not claim that the increased popularity of games caused the decline, but the evidence makes a mockery of the suggestion that video games cause violent behavior. Indeed, as the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared: "The state has not produced substantial evidence that ... violent video games cause psychological or neurological harm to minors."
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/05/10/video-games-dont-cause-children-to-be-violent

I think that genetics play a big role if the person is violent or not. Also the environment that they live in and how they are brought up. Playing violent video games or watching violent media may increase or bring out violent in kids who tend to behave that way already. I also think that kids who are already violent would more likely buy violent video games. So I don't think that violent video games and media plays a direct role in aggressiveness in children.

Do you ever remember having the, "Everyone gets to do Everything and I Never get to do Anything" talk with your parents? I sure do, you probably do too, unless you were the youngest child, in which case, you were the "Everyone that got to do Everything." Those parents who go around buying their teenage kids alcohol and throwing them parties and letting them run amuck are doing nothing close to parenting, they are doing their kids a dis-service. While they may seem like the "Cool parents" at the time, it doesn't do anything for your kids, other than tell them they can brake or disregard rules/laws without consequences. Well my parents were definitely the parents that didn't let us do everything, they did let us do somethings, but they also did their best to use their judgement on what activities they allowed us to participate in or what television programs we were permitted to watch. For instance, I was not allowed to watch such shows as Power Rangers, Rugrats, or Pokemon, this limited my options for television time, it forced me to be more creative with my free time, I turned to music. It also helped shape my values as a child, instead of watching shows like that, I watched programs such as Arthur, which did its best to use a family of aardvarks to teach life lessons to children. Music is still my outlet for creativity, and with the values that were instilled in me, I don't produce music about how horrible life is and how much hate I have toward the world, rather I make music that, while talking about the struggles in everyday life, it focuses on the hope that there is out there. Here is a sample of my music, and how my parents influence on me affected what I'm doing with my life. While I don't believe them prohibiting me from watching Power Rangers was a pivotal point in my development, it was just one of the many good choices they made in raising me with a core set of values.
http://soundcloud.com/robmahlummusic/falling-feat-joe-jaeger

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that?

This is a direct excerpt from Lawrence Kohlberg's famous "Heinz Steals the Drug" test to study the reasoning behind moral development. His moral development theory broke down the influential thought processes into 3 main different stages: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional morality. The first taps into basing decisions on the rewards and punishments. The conventional morality involves societal values. According to Psychology: Inquiry to Understanding, most adults never pass this conventional level, however, there is the third post level which focuses on the internal moral principles such as fundamental human rights and values.
This theory is important to understanding the thinking that goes into moral questions. A simple example that I have encountered is when a wrong answer on a test was overlooked. I have been faced with this decision and had to choose whether to own up to that mistake by telling the teacher, or ignore the finding and keeping the extra points which would put my grade over to the next grade level for the class. The reward is obvious, but the punishment is merely a misrepresentation and assessment on my ability and knowledge on the subject. So the "wrong" feelings which influence me to choose the first action are more derived from my conventional and postconventional moral levels. Society expects me to be an honest student, and I would not like to risk the relationship I have with my teacher.
But there are some criticisms of Kohlberg's theory such as how the theory focuses only on the thought process of moral dilemmas, not the actions that follow. Someone can choose the "right" decision, but it takes courage to act upon that decision. Rationality is important and does have a major influence in ethical problems, but compassion, courage, and various other factors must also be taken into account. It took courage for Heinz to steal the cure and save his wife.

People have been trying to detect lies effectively for ages. Many people have tried to find a 100 percent accurate way of detecting lies and one of these possible solutions is the polygraph. The polygraph has actually been around since 1915 and has been claimed to be 98 percent accurate. Basically, using sensors attached to the person that connect to the polygraph, the polygraph measures the person's blood pressure, pulse, respiration and the amount of sweating on there palm when they are asked and respond to certain questions they might be lying about. It is thought that when someone is lying these physiological signals will increase.

Using a few of the six principles of critical thinking, the effectiveness of the polygraph can be determined. First replicability. If someone is tested using the polygraph more than once, the polygraph might conclude the person was lying the first time yet telling the truth the next time even though they answered the same question the same way twice. This is because they might have been nervous for the first test yet much calmer and more relaxed the next time. By using the principle of ruling out rival hypothesis, you can come up with another reason for someone failing the test. They might have been telling the truth but nervous about being falsely accused and therefor displayed increased pulse and sweating. Another problem is falsifiability. If someone is convicted of lying by the polygraph test, it cannot be proved that they were actually telling the truth.

Below I found another method of lie detecting that has been used in the past that relies on a few of the same principles of the polygraph: http://antipolygraph.org/
I can relate to this because if someone accuses me of lying and I actually am lying I usually confess to it. I think this is the main reason why the companies of polygraphs are so confident in its effectiveness. Because many people will either tell the truth when under the pressure of a lie detector, or they will confess if it accurately accuses them of lying. There are obviously exceptions to this therefor I would not recommend that the polygraph be used as a sole mean of lie detecting but as a possible mean for getting a confession out of someone.

There is in most cases a grain of truth to many of the false claims brought up in Psychology. The "Mozart Effect" is usually a quick subject for people dispute. Disregarding claims that Mozart's music raises intelligence should be considered a logical reaction to studies that were not able to replicate the effects of such a bold assertion. However, there seems to be a hidden story that is in the background. Some evidence has shown that music in general has aided in recovery of stroke or Parkinson's patients. There could be many reasons for some beliefs that music can help people become smarter or even recover from an illness. Perhaps the effects are purely brought about by an increase in happiness. It could be reasonable to believe that a better attitude allows people to work harder towards a goal. If that is the case then it would provide a fantastic research opportunity to isolate what aspects of music that people enjoy and how different people enjoy different genres of music. But why do people think that Mozart specifically may be the composer for increased intelligence? Interestingly, Mozart is a composer that delves very far into the types of music that people will enjoy. His music is written primarily for the point of pleasing his listeners. It is for this reason that he very rarely wrote music in a minor key. One argument for the Mozart Effect is that his music is extremely complex and teaches critical thinking, but if that were the case, then there are many more composers that would fit the description as well or better than Mozart. Therefore, it would make more sense to believe that it is the emotional impact of music that brings people any changes in intellect or attitude. It would also explain the how it is very difficult to replicate among a large group of people because different music may make different people happy. http://fora.tv/2009/03/17/Glenn_Wilson_The_Power_of_Music#fullprogram

I had a lot of trouble finding recent articles about media violence and its effects on aggression. Most of the work on this kind of phenomenon seems to be from the late 90s or early 2000s, and I really wanted to know what the most recent understanding of the issue was. Finally I found a database that would let me search only for articles published in the last three years, and I found this article from 2009 - a broad, "Meta-Analytic" approach to studies of media violence and aggression:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347608010378

According to this study, which was the most recent I could find that was directly pertinent to the issue of media violence's effect on aggression, many of the earlier studies that found a positive correlation between media violence and aggression (which this study defines as aggressive behavior, which, for obvious reasons, could certainly be considered a public health risk) have largely failed to control for confounding factors such as publication bias, personality, gender and family history, as well as methodological failures such as poor measures of aggression. When the results of such studies are corrected for biases, confounding variables and measurement problems, the authors of this review argue, they are usually statistically insignificant.

Personally, I grew up with parents who were pretty relaxed about what I watched and read, and I think I turned out pretty well adjusted - I've always been suspicious of claims that kids who saw violence and sex on TV were likely to be correspondingly aggressive and promiscuous as adolescents and adults. But who can forget such disturbing incidents as the 1999 Columbine High shooting, which was blamed largely on violent video games and movies, or the horrific murders committed by Ted Bundy in the 1970s, which many claim were linked to, and possibly precipitated by, his compulsive viewing of violent pornography? I think it's certainly possible that there is reason to think there may be a relationship between committing particularly violent acts and viewing violent material - it makes sense, doesn't it, that such disturbed individuals would be drawn to expressions of violence in media sources? But this study shows that over a broader sample there is little statistical evidence of a pattern of correlation, let alone causation.

The topic I wanted to talk about today that intrigued me is IQ tests in the United States. The first thing that caught my mind was the Flynn effect, which says that IQ scores have been rising about three points on average per generation. In one of the sections it talks about an author named Arthur Jensen who contended that IQ is highly heritable and that ones environment doesn't play much of a factor. I don't really agree with this. Well obviously genetics plays some role in the cards we are dealt, however it doesn't solely determine our intelligence.

One thing that they mentioned in the book is that diet is a key factor. I agree that diet matters, but the question is how much. It cites malnutrition as being a factor of low IQ score, which I agree with but just because one isn't eating at a deficit, that doesn't mean they are eating healthy either. Americans have a high percentage of the population that is obese, and it seems like they would be healthier if they ate less. So basically if more Americans had better brain habits with regards to diet, I think it would improve IQ scores on average. The point I'm trying to make is that just because we don't eat at a deficit, that doesn't mean our IQ will necessarily benefit.

The best point that was made in the book in my opinion is education. It says that education has a .5-.6 correlation with intelligence and IQ tests. I suppose this is obvious to some people, but to others they still believe like Arthur Jensen that we are constrained by our genes. That's not true obviously considering that the more education that one possess, the more synapses they have in the brain. In conclusion our genes do not constrain us fully but with a good environment, an education, and hard work, one can increase their intelligence and IQ.

After reading Chapter 9: Intelligence and IQ Testing, I was curious about Mensa, the club mentioned on page 335 as being for people only with IQs in the 98th percentile. According to the Mensa website, the organization, founded in England in 1946, exists for the sole purpose of "enjoying each other's company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities." Basically, it's a social club, similar to a book club, but without the books and with a more rigorous member selection process. The group hosts regular social gatherings where the members sit around and talk about, stuff? Strangely, this society of supposedly superior thinkers, "takes no stand on politics, religion or social issues."
If indeed there is some advantage to an intelligent person surrounding his or herself with equally exceptional people, one would think it would be to act as a sort of international think tank. But with the club's expressed objective of simple social gatherings and lack of stance on political, religious, or social issues, what's the point?
Rather than paying to gather with a bunch of people who are smart, wouldn't it be smarter to gather (for free) with a bunch of people with similar interests? They may not be as smart, but I suspect the conversation would be more stimulating.
After my investigation, I find it hard not to view this group as a pretentious circle of snobs who pay to hang out with other like-minded people with no real areas of interest.

During this week in psychology we learned about how tv violence can affect children and how aggressive they are. I found this an extremely fascinating topic because I grew up playing games like Call of Duty and Halo but have been told i am the least aggressive person ever. There are arguements for both sides of the case but it seems like most of the results for the arguement fall on the side of violence does cause aggression in children. from the video we watched in class it shows that depending on what the children watch depicts there actions. When the children watched Barney they were more likely to express with joy and play kindly with each other. On the other hand when the children watched Power Rangers almost all of the kids got up and started playing fighting games. Even one of the quiet girls ended up playing in the violent games when she was so quiet and timid before. In the articles we read before class it states that violence is obtained from the things we watch and remember as a child. If you grow up playing violent video games you are more likely to grow up with violent behavior, and Americans are worst then other countries with violence. On the other hand another article stated that violence does not depict violence. One article states that violence has actual decreased over the past couple of years since more violent games have come out. This was shocking to me to find the results but still believable especially in my case. There were not many questions that came to my mind when reading about this stuff except for how long after children watch violent movies will their behavior remain in the violent state?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4igXjIC3Y

A strong intrapersonal understanding can be a significant component when it comes to identifying one's life motivations and goals; while assessing my own personal motivations and goals, I often evaluate the roles of my parents and their parenting styles from my childhood and adolescent years. As mentioned in Lilienfeld, parenting styles differ significantly across collectivist cultures and individualistic cultures. Collectivist cultures, such as China, value group harmony and obedience to authority and thus exhibit more authoritarian parenting styles. Individualistic cultures, such as the United States, value achievement and independence and therefore exhibit authoritative parenting styles. As for myself, I have always had difficulties identifying with just one culture. Because I was better able to understand the individualistic culture of the United States in my adolescent years, I would eventually experience a clash with my preceding understanding of the collectivist culture of my household. This clash of cultures naturally pushed for the ambivalence in my cultural identity and, therefore, a more multi-dimensional way of thinking. Although studies done on authoritative parents in Caucasian middle-class American families and hybrid parenting in African American families are helpful in the understanding of the effects of parenting styles, future research could take yet another approach by observing the stress level of the children who have experienced the differences between parenting styles.

Additionally, the role of the father in a person's life also contributes to their social and moral development. Lilienfeld discusses how fathers tend to be less affectionate than mothers and are preferred as a playmate. Of course, these tendencies vary across families of different structures and differ in relation to the roles that each parent partakes in. This diversity is more noticeable in modern day society, probably because families have diverged from traditional gender roles. Below is a clip about the 2009 Australian Father of the Year. It is a sweet reminder of how the diverse roles of the father in the household are united by the purpose of providing the most love for their children.

Assignment#4_N.V.

The Mozart Effect is a term coined to describe the results of a famous experiment done in 1993. The results of this experiment showed that college students could perform better at spatial reasoning tasks after listening to Mozart than they could after listening to a relaxation tape.

This study was blown way out of proportion in the mid 90's, companies purported that Mozart music had the power to make people more intelligent. This lead to an explosion in tapes and discs of Mozart being sold to parents under the guise that if their children listened to it, they would become smarter. The problem was that there was little to no way to prove or disprove many of these claims, and when the tests were replicated they often provided inconclusive results. In other words, if we look at it from our scientific thinking principles, the results are both non-replicable and non-falsifiable.

The real Mozart effect is far more subtle than these companies were claiming. It's been shown that the actual Mozart effect only typically lasts for around an hour. The theory is that Mozart music boosts alertness which therefore improves performance on these tasks. Many questions are then raised, will other classical composers produce the same results? Will any music produce the same results? These are all questions that have been studied with varying results. For more information on the Mozart Effect read page 377 of your text book or watch the video below.

We usually first become aware of the fact that we are hungry when we feel "belly is empty". For everyone, this is a strong incentive to eat, but it is not physiologically. The level of glucose in the blood is more important.

The food you get to eat converted to glucose or converted by the liver into fat for later use. When the levels of glucose are low, the liver sends signals to the hypothalamus. In other hand, the hypothalamus also tells you what the type of food we need and when do we fell satisfy.

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder. People who have it eat very large amounts of food and many also use inappropriate ways to reduce their bodies' weight. Several factors may contribute to this condition, Cultural bias toward thinness, Dieting or restricted eating, Changes in the level of brain chemicals, Emotional stress and Physical changes in the digestive system. Anorexia nervosa is another eating disorder, if you are underweight more than 15% below your ideal weight. It does not have definite causes of disorder. But they are probably attracted by the longing of being thin.

It is interesting that cultures with standards of beauty that have more respect for a woman's personality or other traits, and cultures that appreciate heavier women, have little or no trouble with bulimia or anorexia.

The influence of television on children
It is a very common situation that children of our society spend several hours in front of the television. The question is now if, and in case yes, in what way is television influencing us. A frequent discussion about media and its' influence is violence. Studies have shown a strong correlation between watching television with violent content and their potential of aggressive behavior. This behavior occurs more likely, when violence is presented by funny characters, as the LOONEY TUNES.
The behavior of children in the early ages is influenced a lot of their observable learning. Children of that age tend to imitate what they observe; this is the case as well by watching television. Due to the high rate of sexual content and violence presented in television, they are already exposed to this content, without really knowing what this behavior has as a consequence. They see people get murdered, but they don't really know what it means to murder someone, especially not if it is done by a cartoon character. Now, after this phenomenon was presented in discussions and reflecting me of that we tend to imitate some fight situations as a game after watching shows as the Power Rangers. That makes me believe in this hypothesis. Furthermore I've always been a quiet and calm personality who avoids fighting in real world situations. Maybe it might be due to my preference to comedy shows/movies and the denial of horror movies. The same result might be concluded in relation to sexual content.
As a conclusion, I would consider television as an unconscious influence of children, in particular for children of 4-10 years old. My suggestion for that problem would be to educate parents even more implicit to be aware of this influence. This is the case if the guard the content children watch in television and if there is a case of violence or sexual content, they should take their time and talk about what the children just have seen and make them aware of the consequences that this behavior might have. By watching television in this special, parents have control of what their children get expose to and furthermore children get a sense of the consequences their actions will have in the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFqcsOx_x6I&feature=related
This video gives several information about the effect of television on children.
Sources:
Youtube
Discussion of November 1st: Human development
Seeing and believing: the influence of television, by Greg Philo

I have never really thought of what makes a person emotional but William James and Carl Lange have helped me to. The James - Lange Theory meaning is emotions result from our interpretations of our bodily reactions to stimuli. This theory applies to a person multiple times a day. In the Lilienfeld textbook, they use the example of a hiker running away from a bear in the forest. One would think that we get scared and run but that is not the case at all. William James initiated that the hiker was scared because he or she ran away. James also stated that it is only a correlation between the two (running away and being afraid). William James and Carl Lange did not agree on this theory all together. They dispute about, for example, the hiker was afraid so he or she ran away. Another example is we feel sad because we cry. I feel that many people would argue that but in my opinion it can be right or wrong. The example of the hiker, to me seems to make sense but the crying example is a little hard to comprehend. Research dealing with spinal cord injuries has been done with the James - Lange Theory. Researchers claim that if a person have a high spinal cord injury then they are less emotional compared to patients with low spinal cord injuries who are are more emotional. These studies cannot be too certain because the researchers knew which patients were which before conducting the study, this could affect results quite a bit. This theory is a difficult one to grasp but it is also very interesting.

According to incentive theories, our motivations often come from good goals. The Linliefeld book gave a research whose result shows that people usually don't enjoy the performing to obtain an external goal. In our daily life, people just can't help falling into struggling with themselves. I think It's the phenomenon of incentive theories because the incentive theories can make people both become more motivated and reduce the interest of the same specific event.

I have such experience of struggling. In my high school, I have a tangled feeling of love and hate about my academic school study. I love studying is because that the knowledge taught in school is undeniably interesting and gaining more knowledge can be a great help in my future life while kept being told by teachers and my parents that getting good grades would bring you scholarship and even a bright life made me felt really bored and freted.

I've learned that people always need incentives to do business or do other things in my economy class. However, from the perspective of psychology, awards or some other incentives will reduce people's passion of actions. How can we explain this controversy? Is it from incentives' effect and affect? Can both of them make sense?

Gene-environment interaction is about the effects of nature and nurture during people's development. And the gene-environment interaction is a situation that nature and nurture depend on each other to effect the development of people. This concept reflects the fact that how nature and nurture actually play their roles. Environment can stimulate the effect of gene and vice versa. According to the example of the textbook, the research on MAO gene, a history of maltreatment and violent behavior showed that children with the low MAO gene and a history of maltreatment were at high risk for violent behavior while children only with low Mao gene weren't. Gene-environment interaction is important because it illustrates a relationship between nature and nurture in the field of human development. This concept also can be applied to our daily life. For instance, a bad child will be more possible to have better behavior when he or she lives in peaceful environment. This may be related to this concept. Also, when schools educate students, they adapt this concept by providing good studying environment so that students can fully perform their intelligence.
Although I have already understood the meaning of gene-environment interaction, I still question about how gene works on human behavior during development.

Over the past century, the "correct" method to parenting has varied wildly. The suggested approaches have swung from parent-centered, where the child can basically cry all they want and get no attention, to child-centered, when as soon as the child makes a noise the parent is there and ready to help (388). No matter the method parents use, there will always be a debate about which is best.

According to Diana Baumrind, there are four different categories for Caucasian middle-class families: permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, and uninvolved. The permissive style allows a lot of freedom and uses very little discipline. The authoritarian approach is pretty much the opposite and the parents are extremely strict. Authoritative is a nice balance between the two, using the best features of each, and uninvolved is exactly how it sounds, the parents mostly ignore their children.

Seeing as how I'm a Caucasian male from a middle-class family, I found this pertained to my life and I've seen each of the four approaches. Luckily, my parents fit into the authoritative category and I turned out pretty well (I think). When I would get good grades or help out with work around the house, they would reward me with a special dinner or even a simple "thank you". On the flip side, if I fought with my brother or if the cops visited our house (I was innocent!), I was disciplined accordingly. Through this approach, I learned the difference between right and wrong and I have a great relationship with my parents.

I have friends that come from each of the four categories and it's interesting to think about how it affected them. One of my friends always seemed very sheltered and would rarely come out to socialize on Friday nights, and I didn't realize what caused this until I met her father. He seemed like an ex-drill sergeant and definitely fell into the authoritarian category. Then I had other friends that could pretty much do whatever they felt like and their parents would actually buy them alcohol because they told them to. This always struck me as exceptionally irresponsible and now those friends are either still living at home or taking care of their own children.

I'm grateful that my parents raised me the way they did and I let them know every time I call home.

First of all, I would like to give Professor Briggs credit for finding this video since I originally watched it after she posted it in her blog. For those of you who haven't seen it before, here you go...

I was able to parallel this video to Paiget's proposed claim that "cognitive change is marked by equilibration: maintaining a balance between our experience of the world and our thoughts about it" (Lillienfeld, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2010). This whole concept ties into schemas and our expectations of how the world works.

The way we interpret new experiences depends on Assimilation: absorbing new experiences into current knowledge structures or Accommodation: the altering of a schema to make it more compatible to an experience.

As we can see in the video, the baby uses both. She originally believes that every magazine works like an iPad (assimilation); you can see that she is confused as to why her fingers don't make the page change. Eventually, after many series of trial and error she figures out that she needs to manually flip each page (accommodation), that is, until she becomes frustrated and goes back to the iPad.

We can see that our world is an ever changing place, and that technology is becoming more and more sophisticated every day. Without these processes, we would be forever confused and have to reinterpret daily activities every time we were confronted by them.

When reading about IQ's and the different levels of intelligence amoung the different age groups it really made me curious, are there specific methods that people believe to "make you smarter?" The answer is yes, and one of the most common methods is called the Mozart Effect. This is the belief that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. Some people think this idea is crazy, but others swear by it, but if you believe in it, your not crazy. Research proves that listening to Mozart can in fact make you smarter, especially if you begin listening to it as an infant. The Mozart Effect especially specializes on the spacial temporal reasoning, or in other words, small mental tasks. Some researchers believe that not only is it able to help you with memorization or small mental tasks, but it also helps with healing of the brain and ear. The soothing sound of music is able to incorporate with the healing of the ear and brain. These facts are very interesting to me because now not only is Mozart known for his incredible musical abilities but now also for being know as the man that created music that makes you smarter, I don't believe that was ever Mozarts goal but they now have proof behind it. Researchers asked families to participate in a study where a couple families had their children listen to Mozart young while the other families didn't. After a couple of years they took stats and did research on the information recieved from the families to see if they could correlate the kids that listened to Mozart to be smarter than the ones that didn't, and they proved the Mozart Effect.

The main topic in chapter 10 is development and how everything plays in it. I have grown to be someone that is different from what the textbook and what people would think. Early in my life my parents got a divorce and I had to live under a single-parent environment. According to the book divorce can lead to a "serious emotional toll on children" but this is not the case with me and my little brother (at least I think so). The book also says that most divorce actually don't have a substantial affect of long-term emotional damage, which in my case I agree with. Thinking about myself and hearing about what others think about me It would seem that I've had a happy family that has been together and that I've been raised by two loving adults, but in reality I've had a tough life with my family. My mother was the one that took care of my brother and I since then and I believe she has done a great job. Although I wish she would attend more of the things that my brother and I do I realize that she has to work and make sure that she can take care of us. Along with my family roles on my development there is my sexual identity/orientation. The whole debate on whether being gay or lesbian is a nature or nurture thing is tough to answer, but my answer is that I was born with it and that I did not choose to be gay. I remember that when I was young I would play with what girls wanted to play and to this day my family still makes fun of me for that. I've gone away from the social expectation for my gender but I also try my best to fit those expectations for being a boy. I have gone past the Adolescence age in Erikson's stages and now understand my identity and I know who I am.
Overall I believe that I go against the typical research of development. With all the problems that have gone in my life and how society is on my sexual orientation people would assume that I would be the saddest person or have emotional problems! I'm pretty sure that I might be one of the most mellow and happiest person in the world! I've grown and developed into a happy person and knowing who I am.

My mother! Look how happy we are! Probably because I just graduated high school!

Goldy and I at the Women's Volley Ball Game! Happiest point of my weekend!

Did you know that if you watch violent tv shows and/or movies you are almost twice as likely to act out in violent behavior vs kids that don't watch violent tv shows and/or movies? I recently read an article that reflected on many studies and experiments that researchers did that proved when parents agree to let their children, especially ages 2-4, watch violent tv shows/movies, they are way more likely to have more frequent temper tantrums or sudden acts of violent behavior. They belive this to be true because when young children witness actions like these they don't know any better to know they're wrong, if they see someone else doing it they automatically assume it's okay for them to do it too. When these researchers took a random poll of how many parents have let their child watch a violent show and/or movie, nearly 75% of them said their kids had seen atleast one. With those statistics, seems like we are going to have a lot of violent or aggressive children in the next couple of generations. Researchers have mentioned to families with young kids to try and do their best and limit how many shows and/or movies are shown around the house with violent behavior, and if their is one shown to make sure to try and explain that it is bad and to show them the right way to handle the situation. All though most of these kids are very young they still need to be taught right from wrong. If they aren't taught young it gets harder and harder to change their behavior as they get older.

Lawrence Kohlberg describes moral development in three levels with two stages apiece. The first level is know as the preconventional level. This stage focuses on younger children their their approach to learning moral reasoning. The second level, conventional, focuses on ten year olds to adults. This level focuses on people doing the right thing because it is expected and because it is the best for the group or individual. In my opinion, this level is the most important because it lets you see how people have turned out due to their earlier years of learning moral reasoning.

Television shows have begun to focus on this aspect recently, especially in regards to adults. One show, H.O.P.E., focuses on a person becoming a controller for some other person's life, and they must lead their life choices to keep the person alive. Their goal is to lead them down the perceivable right path for one person in particular.

Another television show that utilizes the same concept in Person Unknown. In one part of the show, the suspects were given a limited amount of gas masks. When they received them, they knew at some point they would have to use them, but who would get them? Those that just wanted to save themselves used them, however this backfired. It turns out the masks emitted the gas. This selfishness would have possible killed them, but it proved they cared more about just them and not who would have legitimate reasons for staying alive, like having a child. Another scenario appeared where one person was given a fortune that said "Kill your neighbor and you'll go free." She would either have to decide what is right, which would be not killing them, or what is wrong, killing them.

These television shows take an exciting look at the different between right and wrong in a moral dilemma.

The relationship between Dominic Ehrler and the gray Thoulouse goose, Maria is definitely a unique one. After viewing the video, there is no doubt that there is a strong attachment between the two. As observed in the Nobel Prize awarded work of Konrad Lorenz, geese easily imprint on the first thing they see after hatching. After imprinting, the goose will become fixated on the animal or person and develop a very strong bond. In Lorenz's work, he was able to make the goslings imprint onto himself.

The relationship viewed between Dominic and Maria appears to have something to do with imprinting. However, in the video it is not mentioned when Maria started following Dominic through the park. According to Lorenz, imprinting only occurs in a specific window of time, about 36 hours. This window has been found to be larger, especially with mammals that are more intelligent than geese.

Although not as strong as observed in goslings, a weaker form of imprinting is oftentimes viewed in infants. They form a strong bond with the people who most often in their lives and tend to them at a young age. Infants develop emotional bonds with these people, who are usually their parents. The relationship between Dominic and Maria is clearly a unique one, but the concept of imprinting demonstrates how crucial parental or dependable figures are in both animals and humans.

Mere Exposure.docx

Take a look at this 2010 article in the journal of Psychology of Music, "A limiting feature of the Mozart effect: listening enhances mental rotation abilities in non-musicians but not musicians." http://pom.sagepub.com/content/38/1/107.short

Basically, the experiment ran a set of spatial cognition tests on four groups of people: non-musicians who had just listened to Mozart for a particular amount of time, non-musicians who had sat in silence for the same amount of time, musicians who had listened to Mozart, and musicians who had sat in silence. The researchers based their hypothesis (that musicians would not exhibit signs of the Mozart effect) on the location of processing of melodic information. In non-musicians, melodic information is processed only in the right hemisphere of the brain, near where spatial cognition is centered. In musicians, it is processed in both hemispheres. The results of the study supported their hypothesis - non-musicians who had listened to the Mozart performed better on the spatial cognition tests than non-musicians who hadn't, but among musicians the Mozart produced no significant difference in spatial-cognitive performance.

What I'm curious about with regard to this study is what explains this phenomenon. Is there simply a point of diminishing return with musical exposure - that is, musicians' brains are already more developed in areas that are affected by listening to Mozart, since they surely listen to a good bit of Mozart and similar music, and so they always perform at a higher spatial-cognitive level than non-musicians? Or does the Mozart effect have to do solely with immediate arousal of that area of the brain, so that musicians perform no better on average than non-musicians on spatial cognition tests, and worse than non-musicians that have just listened to Mozart because the Mozart has caused an unusual level of arousal in the right brains of the non-musicians who aren't used to it? Because the study doesn't tell us whether the musicians performed better than the control-group non-musicians, we can't know from this study, but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has anything to say about it.

As we've seen in our text book, scientific studies have shown that in general people prefer faces that average looking. Average faces are preferred because they reflect the absence of genetic mutations, disease, and other abnormalities. Average faces seem to reflect stronger genetic make up, and as a consequence these individuals are seen as better options for mating.

An average face is not the only feature that seems to be more attractive to the opposite sex. A study carried out by psychologists at Northrumbria University saw British women between the ages of 18 and 44 surveyed. The study was conducted to analyses the preferences of women when it comes to facial hair on men. Researches used computer technology to alter the faces of 15 men so that each face showed varying degrees of facial hair. ranging from clean shaven to a full beard and everything in between.

The women who viewed the pictures were asked to rate them in terms of masculinity, aggressiveness, dominance, attractiveness, and maturity. In addition, each participant was asked to rate the men based on how desirable each would be as a short term or long term partner. Based on the answers given by the 76 women who participated in the study, women find men with light stubble as most attractive and most desirable for a sort or long term relationship. The faces altered with full beards were seen as most aggressive, masculine, and mature. They were also thought to look five years older, however they were rated as least attractive as well as least desirable for relationships. Clean-shaven men were rated as the least masculine, dominant, and mature, and were second to last in terms of attractiveness.

Obviously this study will have to be replicated many more times and across a far more diverse group of participants before it can be taken seriously. However, some of you may want to re-think your 'No shave November' plans based on the results.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3345796/Women-prefer-men-with-stubble-for-love-sex-and-marriage.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-5rnB4SOSE
Can listening to Mozart really make people smarter? The answer is yes, especially for baby.
Music plays a important role when a baby was born. It is like a pre-language and this function can enhance the ability of cerebral cortex to develop the set of type, thereby increasing the high-level brain function. A research by university of California found that when a baby is listening to Mozart, the ability of his brain to identify the space is also increasing. The experiment also demonstrated that Mozart's music has a big effect on the children who was before three years old because at this time children's brain function is not yet fully mature, so the stimulate by music has a deep and long influence. But why this effect could happen? we need a scientific explanation. It is hypothesized that the Mozart effect arises because listening to complex music activates the similar regions of the right cerebral hemisphere as are involved in spatial cognition. In conclusion, i personally believe listening to Mozart can make us be smarter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fhc0t_QNhs

Yesterday, a friend was telling me about a group of people classified as "supertasters." I had never heard of this concept before, so I decided to look it up and came up with this video, among other things.
Personally, I have never really been able to understand picky eaters because I am not one myself. However, after learning about supertasters through this video and other materials, I realize that I may have had a lot of misconceptions about picky eaters. It turns out that many picky eaters may very well be supertasters and can have up to a hundred times more taste buds than the average person. Flavors that might be mild to an average person can be almost intolerably strong to a supertaster. I guess I thought that being picky was a state of mind that could be unlearned if one was determined enough, but clearly there is another side to the story. Picky eaters may not have much control over their food preferences because that is just how they are biologically. This topic was really fascinating to learn about because it unifies and contrasts biology with psychology, and I think it would be a very interesting thing to study in a lab. I wonder how many of my picky friends are actually supertasters. This has certainly changed my views and judgements of picky eaters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fhc0t_QNhs

Yesterday, a friend was telling me about a group of people classified as "supertasters." I had never heard of this concept before, so I decided to look it up and came up with this video, among other things.
Personally, I have never really been able to understand picky eaters because I am not one myself. However, after learning about supertasters through this video and other materials, I realize that I may have had a lot of misconceptions about picky eaters. It turns out that many picky eaters may very well be supertasters and can have up to a hundred times more taste buds than the average person. Flavors that might be mild to an average person can be almost intolerably strong to a supertaster. I guess I thought that being picky was a state of mind that could be unlearned if one was determined enough, but clearly there is another side to the story. Picky eaters may not have much control over their food preferences because that is just how they are biologically. This topic was really fascinating to learn about because it unifies and contrasts biology with psychology, and I think it would be a very interesting thing to study in a lab. I wonder how many of my picky friends are actually supertasters. Out of all the picky eaters in the U.S., how many are supertasters and how many are picky for other reasons? This has brought up a lot of questions for me and has certainly changed my views and judgements of picky eaters.

This week's discussion topic was the debate of whether violent video games and T.V. programs have an effect on children's behavior. There is a belief in some that watching these violent displays can increase the violence in children while other individuals believe they are not related. The nature versus nurture debate plays a large part in this dilemma. Does watching violent shows (nurture) cause aggression in children? Or do our genes (nature) cause us to be violent? I personally believe that both nature and nurture play a vital role in the aggressive behaviors of our young.
There is no doubt in my mind that these violent actions depicted on T.V. and in video games lead to the vicious behaviors in children. Most of the television programs being ran today are violent. These programs lead children to become emotionless to the violence shown on T.V. Children gradually begin to believe that violence is the solution to their problems. Children then begin to imitate what they see every day on the television. This also is applicable for video games!
I believe that parents should monitor the programs their children are watching and limit the amount of time spent in front of the television each week. Parents should also point out to their offspring that such behaviors are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. They should discuss ways to resolve problems in alternative ways that do not involve violence. Should the government restrict violent shows to be played on T.V.? This is the current question being argued today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx0X61jT5dw

Here is a link to a video that discusses violence on television.

i was looking threw videos that i thought might interest me and this one popped up. it is about the effects of spanking on young children. i found that the majority of videos and articles are very anti spanking. this doesn't surprise me. it seams that spanking has been reduced as a viable punishment since i was young. I am quite a bit older than the majority of the students in this class and can honestly say i remember being spanked by my parents. i personally think that when used sparingly that spanking can serve a purpose. the video comparing it to terrorism it a little ridiculous.
That being said i do see how spanking could teach children bad responses at a young age. "The reason for this may be that spanking sets up a loop of bad behavior. Corporal punishment instills fear rather than understanding. Even if children stop tantrums when spanked, that doesn't mean they get why they shouldn't have been acting up in the first place. What's more, spanking sets a bad example, teaching children that aggressive behavior is a solution to their parents' problems."

I don't don't know if I'd spank my children. (luckily i don't have to worry about that yet) even having grown up around it i don't feel any negativity towards my parents for spanking me. i guess it's something I'll have time to think about.

spanking video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qitpLXBZ1iE
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983895,00.html#ixzz1d8tOsZ52

I identify myself as a female, because, according to my body parts, that's what I am. However, I ask guys out on dates, I cannot cook to save my life, I clean only when its absolutely necessary, I don't love shopping, and I like scotch. According to stereotypical society these behaviors do not fulfill my gender role as a female- or the behaviors that tend to be associated with being female.

Even though I identify myself as a female, I didn't need to "un-gender" myself in order to break some female stereotypes.

Our textbook suggests that knowing about gender concepts- like gender identity and role- is very important for understanding how and where we fit in socially (391). Is "know about gender concepts" the same as "knowing our gender identity?"

Earlier this year, a family in Toronto decided to keep their baby's- named "Storm"- gender a secret. In an article/segment from the Today Show in May, the parents decided to keep the baby's gender a secret because they want to allow their child to pick their own sex when "it" is older. However, is choosing your own gender identity possible? According to the book, differences in gender appear even before social influences (like parenting) have a chance to work on an individual, giving evidence that gender identity is inherently biological (392). In addition, according an interview with a developmental psychiatrist on the segment, babies are not born as a "blank slate" - or born without predisposed male or female tendencies- because, as the psychiatrist says, male and females have different brains. Therefore, "Storm's" parents arent really giving him/her more freedom by letting him/her choose his/her own gender, because he/she was already born a certain way.

In addition, in the article and segment, it says that the parents have encouraged their other children to "be creative with gender" instead of completely disclosing their sex to them. This is perhaps a better way to encourage their children to break gender stereotypes (or choose the ones they want to conform to!) instead of robbing them of a gender identity in the first place.

Today Show Segment

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Video on Common Male and Female gender stereotypes

Sources:
http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/25/6715267-he-she-or-it-family-keeps-babys-gender-a-secret
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIwWS2atEmc&feature=player_embedded#!
Lilienfeld, Scott O. Psychology: from Inquiry to Understanding. Boston: Pearson/Allyn Bacon, 2009. 9-10. Print.

I would say the imagination are inspired by the reality. Cyclops, the one eyed giant that appeared in classical literature "Odyssey," is not merely agreek myth character but it is a real thing in life.

Recently a cyclop baby shark, sliced from the belly of a pregnant shark caught by a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of California earlier this summer, is by all reports the real thing. Scientific American has a detail report about it. Many times the developmental deformities are associated with the myth characters. This kind of birth defect, which only one eye formed, is called "cyclopia," a severe form of holoprosencephaly caused by genetic or teratogens. Most of the infants with cyclopia soon died after they were born.

Despite the genetic aspect of cyclopia, a teratogen, called cycloamine (2-deoxyjervine), would be blamed for cyclopia. The term stem "terato-" means monster or marvel in greek. By analyzing the word we know that a teratogen is a chemical substance that causes monster-like developmental anomalies in animals. Cyclopia were formed in babies when their mom ingest corn lily, which contains cycloamine, as a herbal treatment for vomiting, cramps, and poor circulation (three conditions that are quite common in pregnant women.) This teratogen blocks a protein called Sonic Hedgehog (yes, it's a real protein ) that involves in telling the differentiated cells their proper destination. Without proper signals, the cells don't know to where they should migrate, so they stayed at the same place and formed a mal/non-functional blob of tissue . It results in the failure of separation of the single eye field into two bilateral fields during the developmental stage. The forebrain in cyclopia animals is not divided properly as well. With such brain defects, the animals with cyclopia soon died after they were born. (That's why we didn't see one-eye people walking around us today.)

Here is a summary of Cycopia in a picture:

Many pregnant woman were exposed under the teratogens. Caffeine found in coffee and some soft drinks, alchohol, X-ray radiation, PCBs (environmental chemical that are used as dielectric and coolant fluid in capicitor, electric motor, etc. ), and many other more chemical substances have different level of influences the developmental health of the mothers and the babies. The effect ranges from behavior disorder, structure abnormalities such as cleft lips, to death. To ensure a healthy developement of babies, it is important for the pregnant women to make smart choice for their diet and have sufficient knowledge to avoid possible exposure to teratogens.

Source:
http://vi.sualize.us/view/247291867d6cfe451fc8e4654cafcb41/
http://daphne.palomar.edu/bheinz/interesting__chemistry.htm

Phobias are created when a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus that produces an unconditioned response which creates a conditioned response with the conditioned stimulus. In the case of phobias, the conditioned stimulus is the phobia and the conditioned response is the extreme fear that is paired with the phobia. Some phobias are more common than others. The three most common phobias are arachnophobia (the fear of spiders), ophidiophobia (the fear of snakes), and acrophobia (the fear of heights). There are also many extremely odd and uncommon phobias such as lachanophobia (fear of vegetables), triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13), and decidophobia (fear of making decision). I have a close relative who has a phobia to iron lungs. Every time she viewed a photo of an iron lung or visited any museum with an iron lung, she would start hyperventilating and would attempt leave the room as soon as possible. She reported that every time she saw an iron lung she would see herself in one. No one knows actually what unconditioned stimuli that could have been paired with an iron lung that could have caused her phobia. However, her phobia is not really debilitating. She does not have to be in a situation where she has to look at an iron lung on any given day. But for many people, their phobia can affect their day to day life. Everyone must at one point face decision-making, the number 13, and vegetables. If you have severe phobias to height, where you are able to work and live could be greatly affected. The best current treatment for phobias is exposure, where patients are gradually forced to face their fears and slowly learn that there is nothing to be afraid of. In other words, the conditioned response becomes extinct. It a process that can take time, but in the end, can greatly improve a person's every day life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqIqT-8M6I8

There has been a debate about violent video's effect on children development. Some people believe that the violent content of video games would increase aggressive behaviors for children while others don't. After reading some articles online, I personally believe that violent video games would increase aggressive behaviors for children.

After reading some articles about violent video games' affect on children, I found the study conducted by Brad Bushman of The Ohio State University most convincing. The study shows violent video games increase aggression even long after the game is turned off. In a study conducted by Bushman, participants are assigned to play violent video games and non-violent ones, and it shows that at least for males, the game increase the tendency of aggression for a long period after the game is off. It also founds males who think more about the violent games are more likely to have aggressive behaviors, while females who played the violent video games and thought about the games did not experience increased aggression 24 hours later.

Secondly, scientific thinking principle can be used to consider the debate about violent video games's affect to aggressive behaviors of children. In the article "Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence", the author argues that violent video games do not contribute to aggressive behaviors because the young age violent crime has decreased since the early 1990s while at the same time, the sales of violent video games have increased. However, the decrease of young age crime may be led by other reasons such as the increased police force at the communities and better school education. This claim violates the correlation vs. causation scientific thinking principle. The researchers also mentioned that it is not entirely clear what to make of the results that violent video games don't contribute to aggressive behaviors, but there is clearly an influence of playing violent video games on aggression. According to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the article does not have a lot of evidence to support violent video games do not contribute aggressive behaviors, violence video games contribute to aggressive behaviors seems more likely to be true.

Thirdly, I believe that violent video games contribute to aggressive behaviors of children more likely to be true based on my own experience. In high school, I used to be a fan of Counter Strike, which can be defined as a violent video game. During the school year I played this game, I feel excited when think about aggressive behaviors and believe it is cool to behave in that way. I got involved in physical fight in my junior year, and it can be contributed by the Counter Strike game.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514213432.htm
Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence?

Many different things can define sexual attraction. For years, scientists have tried to discover what people look for in a mate. Research shows that there are three major factors: proximity, similarity and reciprocity. We look for someone who is physically close, someone who has similar interests, and someone who will love us back. It is in our genetics and like it or not, we "judge books by their covers". When we first see a person, our mind automatically scans their body and rates it accordingly. Many factors can influence our ratings. Subconsciously we look for someone who is healthy and who has good mating potential. Men tend to lean toward woman based upon physical attractiveness and youth, where woman lean toward men who will provide well for their children. Both sexes, however, find certain images more attractive than others. One of the key things we look for is symmetry. Studies have shown that we rate symmetric faces and bodies much higher than the opposed. We also look for the opposite sex to portray a certain body type, and most of the time we tend to mate with someone who is similar to our own attractiveness level. Whether it be how proportional our hips are to our waist or how we walk, we like what we like. Every person is looking for "that one" who they can spend the rest of their life with and remarkably, a lot of people do.

The Dating and Mating Pool:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-the-dating-and-mating-pool.html

The Beauty of Symmetry:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-the-beauty-of-symmetry.html

Sexy Swaying Bodies:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-sexy-body-motions.html

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7Noc0D0KInw/Sc1hmMfnvWI/AAAAAAAAABw/N-Vn6peJOIo/s200/pinochio+lie.gif

A "supposedly perfect physiological or behavioral indicator of lying", the Pinocchio response like Pinocchio's nose uses people's bodily reactions to detect lies. These reactions are both physical and biological, and detected by both man and machine. I am most interested by the polygraph because it is constantly used in movies and TV shows. The polygraph test measures suspects' physiological responses following three major types of yes-no questions. The assumption is that dishonest suspects experience anxiety and heightened autonomic activity when confronted with questions that expose their falsehoods.(This is why the questions are set up in a yes-no format). The first type are relevant questions, "did you do it", those bearing on the crime. The second are classified as irrelevant questions which don't related to the crime in question. The last are control questions which reflect probable lies. Typically inquiring about trivial flaws, trying to put the suspect under pressure.
The polygraph test has been used throughout popular culture numerous times, beginning around 1950 when Ralph Andrew created and hosted a show called Lie Detector. FOX's show The Moment of Truth might take its use to far by pitting people's honesty against their own sense of modesty. Contestants are given a test administered by an expert, each question the answer truthfully they earn money for. If they answer a question and the detector reveals they are lying they lose. The most popular use would be in daytime talk show such as Maury Povich and Jerry Springer.
Does the Polygraph test work? Though it usually does better than chance for detecting lies, it yields a high rate of false positives. These could be a crucial flaw rendering the test useless. Many experts agree that the problem is that the polygraph test confuses arousal with evidence of guilt. It's an "arousal detector," not a lie detector.

Every time you turn on the TV or open a magazine you will come across a picture of a beautiful stick thin woman. Society tells us that in order to be beautiful we must be very thin. Because of this, some girls starve themselves in order to look like the women society tells us are beautiful. While, according to Psychology: From inquiry to Understanding, only .5-1% of the population has anorexia, 1 out of 3 other girls are affected by another eating disorder, Bulimia. Those statistics are staggering. Society needs to put more girls in the media who are normal weight so that the image of beauty everyone has does not cause girls to starve themselves or making themselves vomit up whatever they eat.

Both eating disorders can be life-threatening in the long term. Bulimia can cause heart problems, tooth enamel wearing out, and tears in your esophagus, and Anorexia can cause a loss of menstrual periods, hair loss, heart problems, and fragile bones. It is very dangerous to develop an eating disorder. I have watched a couple of my close friends and even my aunt struggle with eating disorders. It is tough to get through to them and help them to understand that they are beautiful just the way they are normally because society is telling them the opposite.

Seeking motivation? Good news! Motivational tips, articles, speeches, and videos abound. I will look at two motivational videos and discuss why each might be effective in terms of the discussion of motivation from our textbook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twrvl_C5Bfk
This video uses arousal to provide motivation. The intense music builds in volume and speed throughout the video. The speaker uses competitive language, setting up a dichotomy between winning and losing (rather than, for example, doing one's best). The imagery includes race cars, hockey players, football games, and bike racers, all moving very quickly and in competition with those around them. The focus on doing better than those around us provides extrinsic motivation. The intensity of the video causes the observer to experience an increase in adrenaline and feelings of excitement. Evidence of this appears in the comments for the video, which include statements such as, "It gave me goosebumps," and "I'm going to demolish everything in my path."

However, we might question the effectiveness of this video. For one thing, the adrenaline rush that the observer experiences is short lived, so this may only provide motivation to do something spectacular in the very near future. In addition, according to the Yerkes-Dodson law, too much arousal may have a detrimental effect. By the end of the video, the music had grown into such a cacophony and the images changed so rapidly that the observer might be aroused beyond the optimal level. For example, one comment says, "this makes me want to jump through a wall."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZsSQvv9ygM&feature=related
In contrast, this second video uses peaceful music, inspirational quotes, and photographs of historical figures to provide motivation. The music remains melodic and rhythmic throughout the video, with little change. The quotes include statements such as, "Try not to be a man of success, but a man of value," and "Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." These and other quotes on the video focus on one's view of oneself, rather than accomplishing some task. The video attempts to build intrinsic motivation by de-emphasizing outward rewards. The implication is that the historical figures pictured became legends through intrinsic motivation.

This video does not increase arousal, so I did not find it to be motivating in the short term. However, if it succeeds in building intrinsic motivation, it could be more effective over the long term.

By: Tommy Merchak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvM8fE3zCWY

(Video^) When someone says that the world is ending the last thing we might do is take them seriously and panic. That is because it is such an extraordinary claim that there is no way you would even consider them to have any idea of what they are talking about. Such a claim requires extraordinary evidence. I'm sure you are familiar with the 2012 theory that claims the world will end on December 21, 2012 but if you are not, I will fill you in. This is the predicted doomsday because it is when the Mayan calendar stops and predicts the end of the world. This is really the only proof of the event; and a prediction, well, that isn't exactly proof. However, even though there is no extraordinary evidence, that doesn't stop the world from being caught up in the event. There are thousands of websites dedicated to the devistasious event and they even made it into a multimillion-dollar blockbuster film called 2012 (trailer below). All the hype, fear, excitement, anxiety, and whatever feelings you might get from thinking about the end of the world are ordinary feelings you should experience. This extraordinary event has no other option but to be labeled false/unjustified simply because there is no extraordinary evidence to back it up. Even though there is no evidence, you never know...

http://www.december212012.com/articles/mayan/10.htm

At the age of 20, David Oakford traveled the solar system, met Jesus, got a tour from a God-like being, vacationed in Gaia, hung out with other spirits, and saw his own soul-all without dying. What David seemed to have experienced is Near Death Experience (NDE). His story is popular within the online media of blogs regarding similar experiences; however, after some critical review of his extraordinary claim, one may find an alternative explanation for his travels.
While reading David's first account of his NDE, I found his extraordinary claim lacked a significant amount of evidence. The only thing he brought back was his changed beliefs and expectations of the world around him and himself. Although this journey led him to find a peaceful purpose in life here on Earth, the actual account cannot be measured since it is a metaphysical claim experienced through his subconscious.
But there are possible alternatives that could have affected David's metaphysical experience regarding his life prior to his journey. According to the article, David was an unloved and restless child, who "turned to drinking and alcohol". The cause of his near death was due to an overdose of drugs. This leads to the possibility that his journey was a mere hallucination or conjured illusion memory due to psychedelic or anesthetic drugs which give off symptoms of hallucinations, low heartbeat, and low temperature-fairly close to that of a dying body.
The fact that he nearly died most certainly was due to overdose of drugs. But the reality of his near death journey is unknown. The detail of his account does make me wonder how humans can not only describe such experiences in full account, but also how such an experience can completely turnaround a person's beliefs. Luckily, David's experience influenced him in a positive way, giving him a spiritual purpose here on Earth.

Works Cited
Lilienfeld, Scott O. "Consciousness." Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2010. 179-80. Print.
Oakford, David. "Soul Bared: A Metaphysical Journey." Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. Ed. Kevin Williams. 2010. Web. 23 Oct. 2011. .

Developmental psychology is defined as the study of how behavior changes over the life span. Many studies and experiments have been conducted on the development of infants and children, and many theories have been hypothesized about how and why we develop the way we do mentally, emotionally, and physically. Many characteristics of the behavior of infants have been founded and studied such as stranger anxiety, attachment, and imprinting. One man named Konrad Lorenz went on to create one of the most famous studies on imprinting that ended up earning him a Nobel Prize! Lorenz's experiment involved the observation of geese. What Lorenz was about to discover was a mere accident. Lorenz stood by one day as goslings were hatching. Lorenz was "the first, large moving object" they goslings saw upon hatching. With this Lorenz essentially became Mother Goose. The goslings followed Lorenz around as if he was their real mother. This process became to be known as imprinting. Lorenz later discovered that something called a "critical period" exists in birds and other species that experience imprinting. A critical period is "a specific window of time during which an event must occur". If the Lorenz's goslings had not seen a large, moving object such as himself or a goose within about 36 hours, the goslings would not have imprinted to anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqZmW7uIPW4
Here is a link to a video of Konrad Lorenz's geese in action.

Humans don't necessarily imprint as severely as geese, but we do in a sense form an incredible bond with our primary caregiver as an infant. All in all, at very young ages we are still able to form close bonds, or relationships, with those who provide us with nourishment and care.