F11 Psy 1001-section 018 & 019

Rose Tints my World, Keeps me Safe from my Trouble and Paaain

2011-12-20T02:04:55Z

Have a video.

The Id is a part of Sigmund Freud's hypothesis on the structure of personality. There are three parts to the structure: The Ego, which is the rational part of a person's mind; the Superego, which is a person's sense of right and wrong; and there is the Id, a person's basic instincts and impulses.

The Id focuses on pleasure, on what a person wants to do for themselves. The libido, or sex drive, is the most commonly known drive of the Id, though there are many others.

Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically a 90 minute long explanation of this. One of the most prominent lines in the film/play is "Give yourself over to absolute pleasure," and the whole movie is pretty much one giant singalong orgy, so I thought posting a song from it would be a nice example.

Stress (Writing #4)

2011-12-19T08:25:24Z

I think five years from now I will probably remember what we learned about stress the most. I think this because it is something that is in your life all the time and it is hard to get rid of. Learning about all of the different stress reduction and relaxation techniques will come in handy and I will remember them down the road. You can find stress everywhere in your life, whether it be school related, work related, family related, etc. For me, I find it very difficult to escape stress. There is always a lot of pressure put on me for different things. For example, there is pressure to do well in school and I have expectations to live up to. These expectations are brought up by my parents and I want to please them. Also, school can be overwhelming at times and I get stressed when I have a lot on my plate.
Another thing I think I will remember five years from now is the concept of developing. It is a basic part of life and an easy thing to follow as I get older. All of the stages that are included and each step to growing up are things I will remember.

Five years

2011-12-16T14:03:36Z

Personally, as I read the textbook I think about every concept and apply it to a real world scenario that relates to me somehow. As i read more on each chapter I feel like I have a slightly better feeling about being as a whole. I can understand more of the little things that go on everyday like why i become so stressed at the smallest things and how to cope with that stress and how to reduce my reaction to daily stressors in the future all the way to why i end up buying food at mcdonalds when i had only intended on getting a drink.

Over the course of 5 years i hope to remember most of what i can from this course, ill just sit back and hope it all becomes crystallized intelligence or perhaps as things go on from day to day basis's i will have situations that trigger recall of all these memories about psychology that i have. But if i have to choose one specific topic to remember i would go with calssical and opreant conditioning. This is a subject that sticks in my mind very well and no matter how much time passes im able to recall most if not all aspects of this concept. While reading about it this semester i remember everything about it from my highschool psychology class. Remembering this topic may not be especially important but its fun to relate it to day to day things, and to figure out why it is we do some of the things we do in our free time.

Groupthink

2011-12-16T13:57:15Z

Groupthink is concept where when people of a group need to come to a consensus on a topic they tend to work towards coming up with an idea thats favored by all instead of putting actual thought into the decision. This is very counter productive becuase the point of creating groups is to combine everyones knowledge and in fact it just dumbs everyone down.

Personally ive experienced this a lot. It seems to me that when im in groups everyone seems to have much less input then if it where their actual opinion. Sometimes in group when we split the work amongst the group we can get more thoughtful input on each little bit and end up with a final product that reflects the groups combined intellect. I had more typed out but i just tryed adding a picture and it deleted this whole blog post and i had to do it over -_-

Physical Maturation

2011-12-15T21:53:56Z

The Power of Puberty

Our bodies usually start changing in our teenage years, changing in physical appearance and that is when hormones change we teenagers start puberty. Menarche is the beginning on menstruation which allows women to have children, usually starting around 13 years of age. According to Snopes.com, there is a record of the youngest mother, at age 5. Lina Medina, a 5 year old child gave birth on May 14th, 1939. This extraordinary story needs extraordinary evidence, and this definitely shows that sometimes there are rare things that are real even when they sound extremely unbelievable. The scientific principle, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence proves that some times there are cases that are not what is commonly known.

In this article, it also says that Lina had to have a cesarean section at 7 months and 21 days. Her body was not matured enough to keep a baby safe for the full 9 months, typically associated with the amount of time needed for the baby to mature fully in the mother's stomach. Even though her body was not able to keep the baby for the full time, she had already started puberty. She started her menarche when we was 3 years old. This just goes to show that there are extraordinary cases that people would not believe if there was not cases that showed that a 5 year old could have her puberty and have a baby.

Snopes article: Lina Medina

Hair and Fingernail Growth After Death

2011-12-14T04:28:48Z

http://www.snopes.com/science/nailgrow.asp

For this blog I will be evaluating a pseudoscience claim that hair and fingernails continue to grow after their death. I found this article on snopes.com and it is easy to evaluate without even having to use any of the principles of scientific thinking that it is false. However, if someone couldn't tell this just by reading the article they could use the principle of "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence". This principle states that whenever we evaluate a psychological claim, we should ask ourselves whether this claim runs counter to many things we know already, and if it does, whether the evidence is as extraordinary as the claim. Obviously this claim is very extraordinary, considering that when a person dies so does everything in their body and they begin to decompose. However the article does claim that the body does appear to do strange things after death, but all of them are because of the decomposition process rather than extraordinary or supernatural forces (such as continuing growth of fingernails). It is actually an optical illusion that our hair and nails continue to grow after death because our flesh dries out, and pulls away from the nails and hair making it look like the nail or hair is longer than before, when actually it is just the skin around it that is shrinking. It is just a misconception in the way that we perceive it, like many pseudoscience claims. Although this claim wasn't to hard to decipher untrue, it is always helpful to know the scientific principles when faced with a skeptical claim.

Missing discussion - DS Per:

2011-12-14T04:15:47Z

High Openness to Experience: Lady Gaga
Behaviors: She dares to do things that no other people would do. Her performances and songs always push her limit and express her willingness to take a risk. She is open to new experience and adventures.

Low Openness to Experience: Grumpy Dwarf from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
Behaviors: He dislikes and disapproves Snow White once he sees her. He refuses to talk to her, let her stay at their house, wash his hands, or sing with the rest. He sees everything as boring or annoying, which shows that he is not so open to new experience.

High Conscientiousness: Barack Obama
Behaviors: He is responsible and trustable, that's why he was elected to be the President. Not only people of the United States, but also people around the world believe in him and support because he seems to be careful and responsible about what he says and does.

Low Conscientiousness: Lindsey Lohan
Behaviors: She is known for being a bad girl. She is seen as one of the worst role model for young girls. Her behaviors and acts are not appropriate and responsible.

High Extraversion: Oprah Winfrey
Behaviors: Everyone likes her. She is the type of person whom you want to hang out with after work and talk about all the craziness that happened to you that day.

Low Extraversion: Computer Science students
Behaviors: This is a typical stereotype toward computer science students. They see to spend all their time playing computer games and writing source code for useless programs and most of them have no social interactions due to lack of time and interest. However, I believe it's false because I have a cool computer science friend who likes adventures.

High Agreeableness: Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
Behaviors: People like her. She is one of the rising female executive out there. Everyone wants to work with her, because she can turn her work enjoyable and effective. People who worked with her in McKinsey&Company, DC, and Google say about her nothing but good things. They still want to work with her if there is a chance.

Low Agreeableness: Gordon Ramsay from Hell's Kitchen
Behaviors: Anyone who has seen the show would agree with me. He is arrogant, unfriendly, and tempered. Once he was told as a second-rate human being.

High Neuroticism: Donald Trump
Behaviors: He is aggressive and energetic. Usually, ambitious and driven people like him tend to be moody and tense. They get upset when something goes wrong and get happy when things go their ways. Even though I don't know him personally, he looks to fit in this category.

Low Neuroticism: Dalai Lama
Behaviors: He is calm and genuine. He believes in piece and compassion. He tries to spread his words even though some people or countries do not support him. He never gets mad or frustrated. Millions of people believe in what he says and support his efforts to make the world a better place.

Dealing With Stress

2011-12-14T03:52:42Z

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/quick_stress_relief.htm

Everyone has stress in their lives whether it's from school, work, children, family etc. Chapter 12 in our psychology book talks about some stress reduction and relaxation techniques. I also came across an article online that I attached that also talks about ways to relieve stress in your life. The textbook states that the methods of stress reduction and relief differ for every person and require us to make changes in our lives. In my opinion I think that the best way to relieve stress is to gain control of the situation or stressor and to always try to stay optimistic about whatever it may be. The article that I found online says that some popular and effective ways are to talk to someone about it, take a break from technology, use your senses; such as smelling something energizing like lemon, or savoring a favorite treat, and even using memories to calm you down. I think when it comes down to it, it's just whatever works for you individually. The article also states to make quick stress relief a habit. Which obviously takes lots and lots of practice, but the article laid out a series of steps to help one through the process. The steps are as follows: Start small, Identify and target, Test-drive sensory input, Make "have fun" your motto, and Talk about it. I know in my position being a college student, especially at a time like now when finals feel like they are taking over my life, this series of steps could definitely come in handy. So just remember when dealing with stressful situations, you can overcome it and nothing is impossible.

Social Facilitation vs. Social Disruption

2011-12-14T02:16:32Z

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003193849290409U

Something that I thought was worthy of discussion and further thinking was the differences of social facilitation vs. social disruption. By definition social facilitation means the mere presence of others can enhance our performance in certain situations. On the other hand, social disruption means a worsening of performance in the presence of others. The article that I have atatched talked about a test that some psychology students conducted. In this experiment, they wanted to see the effects that eating had on either social facilitation or disruption. The subjects ate either alone or with other people for five days straight. Interestingly enough, the subjects ate more when they were in the presence of others. Using scientific principles I can say that correlation doesn't equal causation, so there could have been other factors contributing to this finding, but this study shows a casual arrow between the number of people that you eat with and the amount that you consume. I would have thought that in the presence of others, people would demonstrate social disruption because they don't want to out eat their peers, and look like a pig. Maybe people eat more in groups because they get caught up in conversation and don't pay attention to how much they are consuming, or maybe it's because they see others eating more and feel they should continue eating with them to be polite. Whatever it is, my hypothesis clearly was proven wrong. I also thought that this finding could be beneficial to people on diets or trying to lose some weight, to try and refrain from eating with groups. With the obesity rates in our country, many people could find some benefit from this finding.

Hold the Supplements?

2011-12-12T04:59:09Z

Many people swear by their natural supplements and daily vitamins. They are so concerned for their health that they will almost try anything to make sure they are getting the nutrients that their bodies need. This is shown by how much money is spent per year, close to $20 Billion dollars. Recently Jaakko Mursu, a researcher in the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, conducted research on whether or not these natural supplements are actually effective or even harmful.

Interestingly enough he found that most of these supplements do little or nothing to help you. He found that there is evidence that these supplements have no benefit to its users. The only real good place for these supplements is when you are actually lacking a vitamin or mineral such as when one becomes pregnant.

Its very surprising to see that common supplements such as your daily multivitamin has a 2.4% higher absolute risk for death compared to those who take no supplements. It gets as high as 5.9% for those who take folic acid supplements.

There seems to be some type of connection that people make with these alternative forms of medicine or CAM's (Complementary and alternative medicine), that even though there is warning against them the fact that they are "Natural" makes them impossible to be dangerous, even though that is very much not the case.
Link to story

Sleep Paralysis

2011-12-12T01:41:37Z

Although not one of the most spectacular findings of psychology, I know that sleep paralysis one of the things I've learned in this class that I'll never forget. The main reason why I'll remember this concept is that it explains one of the supernatural beliefs in my culture.
Sleep paralysis goes along with REM sleep. It can occur when a person is aware(awake) while the body shuts down or when a person wakes up(becomes aware) before REM sleep ends. Most of the time the person cannot move because their body is still in REM sleep although more frequently their eyes can still move. One of the more interesting things about sleep paralysis is that it is sometimes accompanied hallucinations or a sense of danger from the lack of control over the body.
In my culture and like many other cultures, sleep paralysis is interpreted in many bizarre ways. Some cultures use many supernatural explanations such as abductions, demonic meetings or ghostly encounters. Well in my culture, it is interpreted by a ghostly encounter which the ghost sits on a person who is experiencing sleep paralysis. This ghost then will refuse to move until interrupted by another person or when the ghost decides to leave.
People educated in psychology would be skeptical to think there's any truth to this interpretation and I honestly think sleep paralysis is a more feasible explanation.

Extra Credit: Group Brainstorming--beneficial or not?

2011-12-09T02:40:09Z

Many of us have worked in groups throughout our education and careers with the idea being to come up greater ideas than what we ourselves would have come up with. We've been told time and time again that groups work better than individual thought for a few reasons. One, more people equals more ideas. Two, more people equals more creativity. And three, a group allows for better chemistry among group members. These are just a few advantages of group brainstorming. However, group brainstorming can cause some problems.
The first of these problems, and probably the most important of them all is social loafing. Social loafing is when individuals do not feel the need to put forth all of their effort because of the number of people in the group.Most would call these group members "slackers". We've all been part of groups where one or two people keep straying off track or maybe we ourselves have been this person a few times. Social loafing may be influenced by culture. People in more individualized cultures like those of the U.S. and Europe may be more likely to "slack off" than members of other collectivistic cultures like China, because these cultures pay more respect to group harmony, success, and failure (textbook 516). One way to prevent social loafing from happening is to make sure that everyone in the group evaluates everyone.
Another disadvantage to group brainstorming is that not everyone may participate because they may feel uncomfortable or inferior sharing their views. This is especially true if there are a couple domineering types in the group who keep talking and don't want to hear anyone's opinion but their own.
Overall, I think it depends on the type of person you are when it comes to groups and group brainstorming. If you are a more introverted person, groups may make you uncomfortable and inhibit your ideas or if you are a very authoritative person, group members may not like you. However, I personally think that groups are beneficial to everyone because of the social aspect they provide and group bonding that hopefully results. Groups provide us with social skills that will be used throughout our lives and our careers such as dealing with people whose views we may not share and learning to compromise.

Brain: free will and stress

2011-12-08T21:55:46Z

Is every action you take predetermined, or are your choices truly your own? If our behavior results from chemical reactions in the brain, how much freedom do we have? Research suggests that even if free will is a lie, we may be better off believing in it. People behave more selfishly and dishonestly if they're led to believe that humans don't control their own actions. Check out this article from New Scientist (free registration required) to learn more about what scientists have to say about whether you make your own decisions.

It's no secret that meditation has many mental and physical health benefits. Now, researchers say meditation may even make people behave more rationally in their decision-making, USA Today reports. Scientists did brain imaging of people who practice Buddhist meditation and others who do not, and found that those who meditate used different parts of the brain when faced with an "unfair" choice.

Want to beat stress before it hits you? Scientists at Leicester University in the United Kingdom are working on a treatment that would do just that, the Medical News Today reports. A study published in the journal Nature focused on a protein called neuropsin, created by the amygdala, the brain's fear center. When the amygdala ramps up production of neuropsin, that leads to chemical reactions that result in feelings of anxiety. In mice, at least, researchers showed that blocking such proteins could reduce the stress response. This could lead to treatments for people with anxiety disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder one day, but bear in mind that these are only preliminary findings in animals. They used mice in mazes to measure stress reactions (and how often do you find yourself feeling stressed in a maze?).

Also intriguing for mental health treatments, but only in mice, MyHealthNewsDaily via MSNBC reports on a new study showing that antidepressant medications may help brain cells grow and survive after a trauma to the brain. The drugs may even result in enhanced memory and brain function, the study authors found.

Speaking of brain injuries, a high-calorie, high-protein diet may improve the outcome for some military service members with brain injuries due to battlefield explosions, we at CNN reported. The Institute of Medicine report released a report Wednesday calling for changes in nutrition - namely, providing more energy and protein to traumatic brain injury patients early after the injury.

Finally, in case you missed it, doctors are suggesting a new definition of Alzheimer's disease. They recommend having a "spectrum" of symptoms that range from early signs of dementia to severe impairments.

Critical Thinking

2011-12-08T17:55:30Z

I grew up with two scientists for parents. My father was a genetics professor at UW Madison, and my mother is a genetics counselor at the UW hospital. I was raised with critical thinking, and even though I do not have much interest in science I have realized the impact of critical thinking on my life.
Critical thinking guards individuals from falling prey to biases and natural human errors. Scott Lilenfield argues that critical thinking is unnatural to human beings. I find this compelling because I think of it this way: Humans are naturally selfish and self serving, for survival purposes. Critical thinking, in essence, is your mind playing devils advocate, and monitoring your thinking. This is the curse of human consciousness, the fact that we are aware of our consciousness. Anyway, a critical thinker is much more likely to make a good decision because they are able to look at questions from multiple perspectives and make a decision that is based off of reason and fact rather than emotion and gut response. This way of thinking does not come naturally, and you often cannot reason with people who do not think this way, because they can always find ways to defend their point of view due to personal biases. Instead, critical thinking must be taught from the bottom up so that people can see for themselves their flaws in thinking.
Critical thinking has been beneficial to my life in many ways because I feel like I can separate my decisions from my head and make a well informed choice. It is easy to fall into biases, but with practice we can all use reason to make the world a better place!

Understanding Introverts

2011-12-08T05:07:52Z

Introverts are regularly seen in a negative light, often because their way of behaving is misunderstood. About 25-30% of the population exhibits introverted qualities. These include territoriality, conservation of energies, concentration, solitude, and etc. Because most people are extroverted (they have opposite qualities of introverts), there are many misconceptions surrounding the behavior of introverts. The first one is that introverts are anti-social. In reality introverts just prefer engaging in solitary activities such as reading, daydreaming, because that is how they're wired. I'm sure there is a biological explanation to why they prefer solitary activity over social ones. The second misconception is that introverts like small talk. If you meet an introvert, there won't be much conversation between you two, so you feel the best way is to engage in small talk to break the ice. However, because introverts tend to be alone most of the time, they spend a lot of time thinking about, well anything, so engaging an introvert in a deep conversation is actually better. The third misconception is that introverts do not like socializing. Humans are social creatures, and everyone likes socializing at some point. Introverts just like to do it for shorter time periods because they need time to recharge, another misconception that introverts spend time alone because they want to. The last misconception is that introverts are socially aloof. The only place where this is true is in Hollywood movies, but in the real world, introverts are aware of conducting themselves properly in social gatherings, have manners (to the extent they're instilled by parents), and customs of their region. Understanding the false assumptions surrounding introverts can make extroverts more tolerant towards them.