The most interesting aspect of this class in my opinion has been the recent subject of abnormal psych, dealing with mental disabilities and what is considered as "abnormal". I always considered the words abnormal and normal obsolete; Normal is just a setting on a washing machine anyway.
But some of the cases we seen in discussion, such as the man dealing with schizophrenia breaks my heart. When I was watching the video, the main thing going through my mind was how his mother must have felt, because she had to watch her son fight through delusions and what he believed to be people out to get him.
The reason the abnormal psych part of this class will be the one I most likely remember the best in 5 years is mainly because it hits home for me. I have a brother with bipolar and there are many other extended family members who would be considered to have some of the conditions described in the abnormal psych section. I tend to remember the things I am most interested in, so the abnormal psych topic will be the most prevalent one that this course has taught me about and that I will remember best.
lame0090: April 2012 Archives
We all have emotions, the main 7 being happy, sad, angry, contempt, fear, surprise, and disgust. We can be happy and on top of the world, or sad and feel like nothing will ever get better. Most of our emotions can be described without words and with our body language. But in the recent years, our society is increasingly moving towards text messaging and email, and away from face-to-face communication. We show emotions through things like USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to express anger or excitement, or short answers like "k"to show something might be wrong. But we also use emoticons to show how we feel. the problem with them is does a simple face made of simples really get across the point of how we are feeling? Given a simple smile, :) , many things could be interpreted. 
Emoticons have their pros, such as acting as almost a substitute ( a weak one) to body language, but at the same time, emoticons take away from writing how you actually feel. As we move more and more towards text communication, what do you think is the biggest consequence? Do you think text and email communication impair our abilities to communicate in person?
I'm good at rollerblading, baking, and many other things, but lying does NOT fit in to the categories of things I'm "good at". One look at my face and even the silliest most unimportant lie can be detected. Dr. Lightman ( for those of you who are familiar with Lie To Me) wouldn't even need to try to figure out if I was lying. But then again, could he even if he had to? The T.V. show "Lie To Me" (if you ask me, it was a shame they stopped airing it!) features Cal Lightman who is a professional human lie detector, who figures out people pretty much 100 percent of the time. But as fun as it is to believe, is that really realistic? Unfortunately, science tells of differently. Human lie detectors have not much greater than chance statistics at detecting lies on others. 
Even if someone were to be abnormally skilled in detecting lies by examining facial expression, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that they could ever achieve what Cal Lightman achieved in his show, and almost 100% success rate at detecting lies. BUT what if we could tell everytime someone told us a lie? What would you do? Call the liars out? Sit and watch in amusement? I think it would be really tempting to throw out hints that you know they are lying. I don't mean to sound like a terrible person here, but if they have the nerve to lie to me, I think I would deserve at least a little bit of fun at their expense. But, on a more serious note, if someone actually could be trained to detect lies in others based on facial expressions and gestures, what do you think that would mean for our countries justice system? I personally think that there would be too much corruption, because a professional "Lie detector" with a personal vendetta against another person could falsify lies. Even though its mostly fictional, the thought of human lie detectors truly is a fun one to think about!
