Recently in Writing 4 Category

While we were discussing about the development of human behavior, the topic was especially about whether violent video games or violent imagery on TV shows or movies causes aggressive behavior of children. I totally agree that violent imageries give huge impact on children's aggressive behavior. Everyone might realize that young children learn something by watching and following what others do. Also, as young age children, violent things motivate them more that peaceful and friendly things, because they might think it's cool to be a super hero. Children learn things more quickly than old age people, so I think it's going to be very dangerous to expose too much violent shows to the children.

I actually read a lot of news and articles about shocking facts related with violence. For example, there was a teenager boy who addicted to play violent video games. He plays game more than 10hours a day. The game was about shooting and killing the enemies with guns and knives. And one day, his mother told him to stop game and when the boy refuses to stop, she took away the video game from him by force. Then, the teenage boy killed his family using the knife when they were in bed. There are several more articles about similar issues. Parents should realize how much impact the video games have on children. Even shy children can change violently through seeing them in short time. So, I would like to conclude that violent imageries never going to be helpful to educate children, and parents should be more careful to let them watch the show or anything like that.

Psychology proved to be one of my favorite classes this semester but the topic that was most intriguing to myself would have to be conformity. Conformity refers to altering your behavior because of group pressures or to fit into a stereotype that you want to be apart of. I always thought it was interesting how people can let this happen and stray away from what they think is right or wrong based on external influences, such as people. The Asch study made the event of conformity even more ridiculous when a test subject would give the wrong answer because the rest of the group did, even when they knew it to be wrong.
I never have thought of myself as one to conform when in reality I probably do it regularly. I always believe that my behavior is consistent with who I represent myself as and not what others are influencing it to be. Although this may be true sometimes, when looking at the people I surround myself with I will often conform to the behaviors of my friends and the groups I am apart of. Although it makes sense to have similar tendencies and behaviors as your friend group the result can be a cross group deindividuation. What I mean by this is that people who become to comfortable in the group there in will end up always going with the flow of others around them, resulting in not necessarily a loss of identity, but a change of identity that is similar to those you surround yourself with on a regular basis. This is not a bad thing, but what I believe is that people should never limit themselves to a certain group of people, especially if they have a negative influence on you. CHANGE IS GOOD and helps you develop into a more concrete individual by learning to step outside your comfort zone and do something completely different then what your regular friends would.

When I was recently reading the Psychology textbook, I came across a very interesting topic in chapter 13, which was on Social Psychology. On page 496, I came across the "social comparison theory," where we evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others.

According to the book, doing this allows us to understand ourselves and our social worlds better. For example, they note how if you want to find out how good you are at psychology, it is only natural to compare yourself to other psychology students around you.

There are two different forms of social comparison. In "upward social comparison," we tend to compare ourselves with people who seem superior to us in some way, like a new football player who compares himself to the best player on the team.

Opposite to this is downward social comparison, where we compare ourselves with others who seem inferior to us in some way, like that new football player comparing himself to a younger football player.

Both upward and downward social comparison sometimes boost our self-concepts.

I found this section to be so interesting, because I am guilty of both modes of social comparison. I especially use downward social comparison in sports, where I frequently think to myself "this guy is clumsier than I am, there is no way I will lose." And I know for a fact that I use upward social comparison in Academics, "if that person can get an A, I can too." Using upward social comparison is what kind of drives me academically. When I see a friend that consistently gets good grades, I want to get on their level and throw an A back at them, so I tell myself that I can do just as good as they did.

Anyway, that's my last blog for the year, hope some of you find it interesting, and make sure to tell me what kind of social comparisons you take part in. Good luck on the final everybody!

One of the most powerful things I learned is probably operant conditioning. I have witnessed operant conditioning before taking this class, but I never really looked more into it. I can say that operant condition is most evident in childhood. When a child does something "good" you reward them, when they do something " bad" we either take away something (negative reinforcement) or give them something they don't want (positive punishment) so they behave the way we want them to.

I think many of us can relate to this concept even in college. When we study and do our homework we get good grade which increases the chance of that we will continue to study. Now if we don't study we will get bad grades and there is the potential of academic suspension of an email informing our adviser that we aren't doing well in our classes. Most of the time we don't even notice that it's happening or know what it is that is happening. I think that everyone who now knows what operant conditioning is should take full advantage of it and use it for good and not evil! Toodles!

Ever since I can remember knowing what Marijuana was, I can remember people telling me that it was a gate-way drug. What did they mean by this? These people were telling me that if I tried smoking pot, that eventually it would lead to me wanting to experiment with harder drugs. I myself chose to dismiss this claim at a younger age.

I bring this up because I do now believe that it can be a gate-way drug. I am not saying that it happens to everyone but to straight up say it does not lead to harder drug use I think would be a lie. I have watched a family member of mine get involved in the drug scene beginning with marijuana. It started out with just picking up small sacks here or there just to get high like any other teenager. Once he realized that he enjoyed the feeling of being high and was sick of paying for it, he began slanging it. Next thing I know my cousin who I thought I knew pretty well was experimenting with ecstasy, mollie, and even at extreme points heroin. When he was found dead in his apartment there was evidence off all of these drugs present.
It doesn't have to be that extreme where it ends in death, but I have also watched two close buddies of mine stray away because of drugs as well. Both starting with the dealing of marijuana and then having the dreams of wanting more. I have watched them both get into and use multiple times drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy. I have been fortunate enough to watch one of them exit that field however.
I do believe that marijuana makes it a whole lot easier to get into these types of drugs because as I can tell you from experience, you always want more of that "feeling". Like we learned in psychology our body builds up a tolerance to the effects of these drugs and the only way to experience that "high" is to either take more or try something stronger.

The reason I am writing about this in a blog is because I recently read an article from TIME magazine that said that there is no evidence that marijuana is a gate-way drug. In the article however they stated the reason for the massive correlation between marijuana and other hard drugs is because of two things. One, the taste, they stated that people who are extremely interested in altering their consciousness are often more likely to want to try other ways of doing it as well. The second reason is that marijuana dealers are easier to get a hold of compared to those who deal hard drugs. Because of this people will go through their marijuana dealers to obtain harder drugs because their dealers are "trusted" and know where to get them.
The problem I have with them saying it is not a gate-way drug is because of what is stated above. They said that marijuana is the first illicit drug people try because it is the easiest to obtain. Once they try it they want to experience other ways of altering their consciousness. Is that not a gate-way into hard drugs then? or am I missing something? They also talked about how users will go through their marijuana dealers to get hard drugs because they know how to obtain them. Is marijuana not acting as a gate way there too? I would be very interested to know what you all think about this argument. This is just my opinion from personal use and also observing others personal use of this drug.

If there is one concept in psychology that I learned this semester that I think I will remember and use for a long time, if not the rest of my life, it's the correlation vs. causation fallacy. I notice people falling victim to this fallacy all the time. I don't always call them out, but I am thinking in my head, "No, that's not necessarily true." I even got to use it in my public speaking course. I had to debate on the affirmative side of legalizing marijuana. I used the correlation vs. causation fallacy to debunk the gateway drug argument (people who are open to smoking marijuana are already open to trying new things; it doesn't necessarily mean they do harder drugs because they smoke marijuana, it's just a correlation, not the causation). I think it can be very helpful in the future, especially when analyzing different things in our society. It can help us resolve the roots of our problems. We might be able to throw out possible causes of our problems if we keep correlation vs. causation in mind. What do you guys think? Is correlation vs. causation helpful in society? What are some examples that you have seen since learning about it?

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.

Psychology is a very broad field and offers a large amount of information that can be learned at various times. The spectrum spans from the nature vs. nurture debate all the way to classical conditioning. Choosing a concept that I will remember five years from now was pretty difficult to do because there are so many and I would like to remember everything from psychology. But this could never be done completely!

I choose to remember drugs, not that they are good, but because of all the bad things that can arise from them. I hope to use the information gained in psychology to make wise decisions in the future about whether to take them or not. Stimulants, such as nicotine has been around for a long time and is legal. But if this drug is used in excess over long periods of time, it can have harmful side effects. Narcotics are around to relieve pain and induce sleep so they are relatively common, especially if I choose to go into a healthcare field. A majority of narcotics can be abused and very harmful to the user however. Lastly, I need to be weary of psychedelics. These hallucinogens can produce alterations of the mind and could lead to some bad decision-making. LSD trips have been known to ruin people's lives.

Drugs have been and will continue to be out there in today's modern world. There will continue to be alterations to them and some will become even more dangerous. How can we as psychologists, use our skills to fight against them? Are there good, illegal, drugs out there?

I am six years old. I sit at the bar with my parents, feet dangling off of the goofy leather stool, mesmerized by the lights, the music, and the smokey haze that fills these fantastic rooms. My father's friends let me roll the bar dice, laughing and cheering me on, and as I take a sip of my kitty cocktail I decide that life is perfect in this moment.

Now I sit here at twenty, yet even the thought of the scene I just described brings a smile to my face. I went back to this same bar, and the bars like it where similar events occurred. They seem smaller, dingier, and the stink of the smoke still clings to your clothes even after they banned cigarettes a few years back.

Why do I bring up this kind of disheartening observation?

-Because it seems to me that memory reconstruction was at work here. Remember that our memory is not picture perfect, but rather a pieced together recollection of past events. Rather than passively reproduce our memories, we recall our past experiences and actively reconstruct them. I believe that when I think back to days such as these, I piece together the best of a large number of situations and produce one enchanting scene. I am certain that emotion also plays a key role, because as a young child everything was so much more exciting. I am sure that I heavily attribute this excitement to the positive feelings that overcome me when I think back on my childhood.

In the same way, I imagine that looking back on Psychology someday, my memory won't be quite the same as the experience itself. Maybe I will remember the horror of cramming for exams, but I hope that I instead remember the insight I gained into the science of psychology, and hopefully apply it to an array of situations in my life.

Chapter one, the discussion of the principles of scientific thinking, logical fallacies, and the discussion of other biases that get in the way of logical thinking will stick with me. Christopher Hitchens, who is my favorite outspoken atheist, implicitly uses these concepts when he debates about religion. I have a video of him making many of these arguments which is definitively worth watching. Watch! Hitchens had a beautiful mind!

Occam's Razor: Christopher Hitchens talks about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. He says, demonstrating the principle of parsimony: What is more likely? That all natural order is suspended, or that a Jewish mink should tell a lie? Watch: 1:30-1:50
The next segment of this video Hitchens asks about the spread of Christianity, he asks what is more likely: That Christianity spread because the innate truth of the Bible, or because Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Watch: 1:50-2:15

Extraordinary Claims: Hitchens talks about how the extraordinary claims the Bible make don't hold up to extraordinary evidence. He says how the claims come from "the less literate parts of the middle east. Don't appear to the Chinese where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the dessert and have another revelation there. Watch: 2:20-3:05

Principle of Falsifiability & Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis (escape hatch that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification) Hitchens says that all of science and world history could be part of god's plan and there is no way an atheist can disprove that. Essentially intelligent design as science can't be science because it is unfalsifiable. Watch: 3:05-3:25

Terror Management Theory (theory proposing that our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural worldviews): Hitchens explains the view of death he holds as an atheist. He explains the view of deaths theists have and why they use an afterlife as a comfort. Watch: 8:22-10:30

After reading almost the entire Psychology 1001 book, the chapter still highlighted in my mind is Human Development, especially regarding childhood development. Coming from a large extended family and being an older relative, I was the professional babysitter for all my younger cousins.

At first this responsibility was met with hesitation. Should a one-year-old be walking without help? How old do babies really need to be to eat certain snacks? If they're crying, should I just let them cry themselves to sleep? But even if I didn't know every specific rule, who wouldn't want to get paid $20 for an hour amount of work?

Exploring the factors of motor development, social development, Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories helped cement in my head a clearer picture of childhood development. Although Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories have pros and cons, they lay out a developmental stage of learning and thought processes. As someday hoping to be a mother, the factors of motor and social development helped me understand the more biological side of childhood development.

So as you all go on to have families in the next 10-20 years maybe you should double-check the criteria of your babysitter. Even if it is only one night a week, do you trust your children to someone who doesn't even know around what age babies start to walk?

I would have to say that the most interesting and perhaps relevant thing I will remember from this course is the concept of perceiving. It amazes me that our eyes only relay information to our brain and it is truly our brain which interprets and does all the work for us. Furthermore we can perceive things differently than other individuals based on our individual unique processes of thoughts. Many of the tricks that our mind can play on us are seen and perceived the same person to person but interestingly enough, some things are interpreted different by different people. I like to think that the most fun and interesting thing is that our mind can play tricks on us based on what we expect to see.

I think I will always think back to this class when I come across the topic of perception in the future.

The concept in psychology that I think I'll remember five years from now is the video about autistic children. I absolutely fell in love with its idea. I could not believe that with consistent attention, those children got so much better and the evidence was so obvious. They were a mess before and it seemed they were not even aware of their surroundings like their parents and even food. I am still amazed at how much better the children acted with positive reinforcements. It also seemed that the best reinforces were based off of love, like a smile or a hug. Another item from this class that will stick with me will be the discussions about perception and going through the many different pictures of illusions.

I loved how some sidewalk chalk artist would draw completely 3-D images on the 2-D streets. I did so many double-takes because I could not see how it was actually on the ground. The artists were very amazing. I think it is cool how we know how our brains are flawed. We get "tricked" when we see things that don't make sense. We all perceive differently which makes life different for everyone. I liked connecting what we learned in the book to how it applies to the real world.

I'm so excited that I've found yet another way to be more critical towards blanket statements people say. Thank you Psychology 1001!

Early on in this course I was happy to learn the many heuristics we utilize as the cognitive misers we are. Consider the situation where people were asked if more murders were committed in Detroit or in Michigan in a given year. Majority of the respondents said Detroit because it's easier for our brains to think of the news stories with murder rates in large cities such as Detroit, Chicago, LA, or New York; however if one were to take just a minute longer to think about this question, we'd realize the city lies within the state, in this case Michigan, and therefore obviously the state would have a higher murder rate assuming that at least one additional murder was committed in another city.

I find myself already using this approach when people, including myself, state generalized sentences like "It's more dangerous to live in a large city." Prior to taking this class, I may have shrugged off a statement such as this; however, since taking this class I can't help but suggest that perhaps we think these "general" thoughts not because they're based on diagnostic facts but because they're what are most available in our memory.

And if I may add one last thing that is unrelated to heuristics, I was deeply moved by Dr. Paul Broks entry, "My Confession," where he bravely acknowledges that his clinical psychology expertise appears to be irrelevant or peripheral during his own "dark times." I think this submission is extremely touching and grounding. When life goes to sh*t, sometimes all we can manage to do is hold on

The amount of things I am going to learn in school during the next few years is going to be so vast that what I have learned in psych will probably take a review to remember for the most part. There is one topic I will almost surely never forget, and that is the concept of universal adaptability. In all reality, it will be the small parenting section mostly.

I may not be having children in five years, so this will be remembered a little further on. But when I have children I will make sure to try and keep their universal adaptability alive. On top of this, I will for sure remember the different parenting styles. I think this is partly because I have already learned the parenting styles in a separate class and they are already stuck in my brain. Also, when I have kids I would like them to have the greatest opportunities possible. Because of this, I think if I can make it easier for my children to detect different sounds it may be easier to adapt to different languages and therefore increase their chances to learn and use the languages further expanding opportunities for jobs and enjoying travel.