LAST BLOG OF PSYCHOLOGY!!!! :D

This is sadly going to be my last blog for psychology. I'm going to take a dive back into chapter 13 in honor of this blog. Everyone knows that there were times that we wanted to use the defense mechanism repression in this class (just joking). I know that this is going to be one of those memories that I'm not going to repress. By the memory I wont repress, I mean the one of me finishing this final blog and final exam, which will mark the completion of my first college course. Because this is such a difficult thing to accept, being on the last few days of psychology and all that. I think that I might end up going into regression. So Bethany, if I start sucking my thumb soon you'll know why.
Psychology has helped me understand the world a lot better and has helped me view it differently than before. With the memory and sleep chapters, I have found better ways to study and actually remember what I did the night before.

second to last blog :)

This article that I read was about people basking in the reflected glory of others. In other words, it's about how people glow because of other's good news or get upset or angry by other's bad news. I found it interesting that after a sports game in either high school, college, or professional are spoke of differently. When the team people are cheering for wins, they say "WE WON!!" but if the team they are cheering for lost, they would say "they lost" losing the we and replacing it with a they, not being apart of the actual team as it would seem in the first example 'we won'. This is most likely because people wanted to be associated with people and things that do well so it will make them look better than what they do. That is also why people tend to act indifferent when their favorite teams lose, because they don't want to be thought bad of.

Chapter 16 blog

Attribution

· What is the process of attribution? The process of attribution is when we look at someone and create a theory as to why someone is behaving in a certain way or looking a certain way by giving credit to either the situation the person is in or their disposition.

· What is the fundamental attribution error? The fundamental attribution error is when we overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of the situations people are in. Like if you were to meet a person and they seemed rude, it might not be because they are a rude person like we may thing, it might be because they are just having a bad day.

Stereotyping in Everyday Life

· What are stereotypes? Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about a group of people, which are sometimes accurate but is often over generalized.

· How are illusory correlations related to stereotyping? Illusory correlation is the perception of a relationship where none exists. When we stereotype a person or a group, we automatically assume that they act a certain way or eat only a certain type of food. Many times stereotypes are made from illusory correlations. With the imaginary correlation of a group of people it creates a stereotype that keeps on building.

blog blog blog blog

This blog is on an article off pf psyblog called "The Chameleon Effect". This article answered these three questions: Do people automatically mimic others, even strangers? Does mimicry increase liking? Do high-perspective-takers exhibit the chameleon effect more? As it turns out people really do automatically mimic others without being aware of it. I think that by mimicking the actions of the person you are talking to makes you both feel more comfortable thinking that it will be less awkward by acting the same way. Even I tend to find myself shuffling around in circles when the other person moves closer of away. That also answers the second question. People are more comfortable around people like them, so by making the same movements and gestures you create a smooth and unawkward conversation.
One thing to remember is that this is an automatic mimic, that means don't go around mimicking people thinking that they will like you more. If a person mimics too much it gets creepy and instead of getting people to like you it gets them to dislike you.

Psyblog

I read an article about ads for unhealthy foods on psyblog today. Children in the United States, for example, are exposed to at least fifteen television commercials for food each day, remember that is for children and usually children are limited to how much television they watch a day, which makes me wonder how many adults and teens see. By advertising food products, companies aren't only telling you to choose their product over others, but to go and eat it right then. There was a test done on children to see if they would eat more food while watching food commercials or nonfood ones. The results showed that the children who were showed food commercials ate 45% more off the food provided than when not showed food commercials. There was also a test on young adults and it was also showed that one-third more of junk food was eaten. So it might be safe to say that by viewing unhealthy food commercials people are more likely to eat unhealthy. The commercials make you crave what you see and go out to find and eat it. Overall I think that this may be true. I have been known to eat junk food while watching television than when I'm not.

Chapter 13 Blog

My personality is influenced by the environment around me. Everything and everyone around us tells a person how to think, feel, and act. If a person did something against the norm they would be looked and thought of in a negative way therefore making people think, feel, and act how others would like them too. The Humanistic Perspective makes the most sense to me for personality theories. People strive to be the better self and wish to have unconditional positive regard. My parents, friends, and coworkers influence how I act, think, and feel about things. If I was told something was improper then I would stop acting that way. Listening to people talk about others and different subjects influences how I think and feel about that person or subject. I think that in my life so far I have used all types of defense mechanisms at least once. The most recent mechanism I have used was the projection mechanism.
The first video I watched, which was “Moral Psychology”, didn’t really make that much sense to me. All of the references to politics were over my head because I don’t pay attention to politics and don’t understand them. The second video that I watched, “Traits (Human Experience)”, was a lot easier to understand and I could relate to it more. So for me the video on traits was more helpful. I like how in the video it says that you can always change your career even at fifty. The personality tests are really helpful because they show results that you weren’t aware of being true, also they confirm what a person may thing true but have the need to be confirmed by a test.

hmmmm blogging......

There are many times a person feels rejected in a lifetime. Every time you are rejected it hurts and puts you in a bad mood. The good news is that our psychological immune system protects us and our good moods usually come back within the next ten minutes of the rejection. Why does it hurt more when there are many people rejecting you instead of just one? It's because when we are rejected by one person we tell ourselves that the person who rejected us just has a different individual preference for people. When there is a group rejection it is harder to put the blame on the people rejecting you because there are multiple rejections, not just one person's preference.

BLOG!!!!! hehehe...

Everyone has a bad day once in a while and wants to stay home. I remember that as a child I always wanted just one day to sit around at be lazy during the summer instead of doing what my mom wanted me to. Being the person that I am, I obliged my mother and sat outside in the sun to get some fresh air. After a while I went inside complaining about feeling sick. My mother took my temperature, which i knew would be high. By sitting out in the sun I gave myself a temporary fever and got out of a day's work.
There were other times where i felt sick at night and didn't want to go to school in the morning. When I would wake up in the morning I would feel sick when I really wasn't. It was really just my brain telling my mind that I was sick, which provided me a day off of school. So I'm thinking that this is just another of the mind's tricks that secretly grant our wishes.

Chapter 9 Blog

I found this chapter on thinking and language as interesting as the one on memory. If we couldn't think or communicate in any way wouldn't it make us as lost as a person without memory? Humans think all the time subconsciously or consciously. Communication is a major part of our development and we thrive on it. Our ability to think out of the box makes the matchstick problem and the candle-mounting problem possible to solve. Though confidence is good for a person to have I think that it is bad if person becomes overconfident in themselves.

One blog after another.......

This article was called "Friendships Can Depend on Who You Meet First", it debates if the first person you meet in a new surrounding is special. I know myself I consider some of the first people I met special. Sometimes it's like you leach onto the first person you meet so you wont feel odd being alone. When sitting in a new class the person next to you, you may not know and you will want to get to know them and become their friend so you will have a person to talk to in class. This has happened many times to me, when I start a class at school the person who I sit next to I usually start hanging out with and become friends with. According to the article the first people you talk to in a new surrounding you will like them better than the other people.

PSYBLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so I read an article called "Why Left to Right Punches Are More Aggressive, Powerful and Shocking". This article interested me right from the start because I don't really know much about punches. Unfortunately to my disappointment this had nothing to do with punches. Instead it talks about people doing things from left to right. Have you ever noticed that most things are done from left to right? Well most things apparently are. People also tend to look at things starting from the left and look towards the right. This left to right thing affects how people view the world such as by making the left more dominate in pictures. The article tells a lot about the whole left to right deal. Over all this article was weird and interesting at the same time but i did learn that we are bias towards left and right.

Chapter 8 blog time!!

Memory defines everything that we are. We have to remember who we are, what we like, who are friends are and other things. Without our past it is hard to create a future. If we had no memory of the past we would have no idea of who we were or what we were doing. Life would be impossible, long, and confusing at times. If we forget what just happens to us then we will have no purpose in life. Clive has a difficult life to some people but as far as Clive is concerned his life is perfect and just wakes up every few minutes. If you could never remember you can't stay angry and stressed. I now think of memory as more valuable. I can say that I am grateful to forget some things and remember other things. I hope I never have to remember everything or forget everything. If a person could remember everything they would never forget those embarrassing memories or horrible events. I see my memory as a bigger part of who I am, I know that it would be nothing without it. Even with having my memory I don't trust what I remember because sometimes it is just a dream or something that i was told over and over again. Most of the time I can't tell one day from another because they are so much alike. The knowledge of memory distortion is an important concept to understand. If a person didn't understand that memory can be manipulated they would believe everything that they remember. One of the main problems with memory distortion is sending Innocent people away to jail just because someone said that it was them who did it. If we only went off of someones words many more people would be sent to jail when innocent.

How Children Learn the Earth isn't Flat

There are several different ways that children between the ages six and eleven see the earth. The different ways are: a rectangular earth that is flat and you can fall off, a disc earth which is also flat any can fall off, a dual earth is "thought that one 'Earth' is flat which we are standing on and there is another 'Earth' in the sky that is round. Their answers revealed they saw the planet as flat when asked about 'the ground', but round when asked about 'the Earth' ", hollow sphere is where we live inside the earth on a flat area, flattened sphere is the "thought that the Earth was a flattened sphere so that there were areas on the top (and the bottom) where people could live", a sphere the way the earth really is, and mixed models in which models could not be constructed.
Many times the children think that the earth is flat because you aren't sliding all around because of gravity. At that age though they don't know much about gravitational pull so they think it has to be flat. Though they think it is flat they also think it is a sphere. The reason for this is because parents and teachers tell them it is a sphere. With this information you would think that if a child wasn't told the earth was a sphere they would think it was just flat with no distinct shape.

The Truth About Self-Deception

In this study to see how much people lie to themselves, they recruited 38 students and told them they were going to take part in a study about the "psychological and medical aspects of athletics" when really they were tricking them thinking that depending on how long they could submerge their arms in cold water was how good their health was.
This whole experiment is somewhat confusing to what they are doing and thinking. What i understood that those who were told that it shows good health the longer you are able to hold your arm there held it there as long as possible. Apparently some of the students said that the water changed temperature and got warmer which it didn't. Their brain lied to them so that they could stay in the water longer. People easily tell lies to themselves to justify things that they do and what happens in life.

Chapter 7

In this chapter I found the trained rats interesting. It shows that they aren't brainless creatures, but ones that can learn just like humans can. They have to be clever in order to realize that they have to push on a lever to get food. You could use the same concept with a family pet so you can leave them unattended at home and not have to worry about them being fed. I think my parents conditioned my siblings and me to be nicer to each other. If we were nice to each other we were given a penny. When we argued and got into fights we lost two pennies. This made us not fight because back then a penny was a lot of money to us and we wanted all that we got. Through this my parents got their money back once in a while and eventually a somewhat quieter house.

Seven Sins of Memory from psych blog

When we look back, experiences and events are never the same as when we experienced them. When we look back we may remember different people being there and forget things that happen. According to the article the seven sins are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, mis attribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence. Without out memory we would be lost people not knowing who we are, what we do, or who we know. There are other articles attached that are related if you would like to know more about them. Relating to this article there are many times which I review a memory one day and then the next remembering it happening a different way. If you talk to someone about the memory or they tell you their view of the same memory yours will be altered to fit both yours and their memory. Sometimes people keep telling themselves that something happened that didn't and eventually they remember it as their altered version of the memory.

Chapter 6

I thought that this chapter did a good job explaining the senses and perceptions. I enjoyed the perception part the most. The images shown were confusing and sometimes made your head hurt. The way we automatically group shapes is so automatic we don't notice it. We create shapes and objects when they aren't there. How we recognise things for what they are when we see something else is amazing. The image i really liked was of the dog house on page 265. How we adapt to see different things and see different images when suggested shows how much we are influenced by people around us.

Chapter 6 Illusions

I went to Roget's 'Palisade' Illusion, Flash-Lag Effect, "Stepping feet" Motion Illusion, Motion Induced Blindness, "Breathing Square" Illusion, Scintillating Grid, Pyramid Illusion.
From these tutorials I learned that you see things that don't really happen. These illusions show how our brain and eyes trick us into thinking we are seeing moving objects or the disappearing of objects. What surprised me was the flash-lag effect and the breathing square. I thought that the objects were really disappearing and getting smaller and bigger. Yet again my trust in my sight has been reduced. IT makes me want to take a closer look at things we see in every day life.

Fun in the school hall

After class one day this week i randomly decided to walk on the left side of the hall. One of my classmates joined me in this experience but failed to get the full effect. Instead of walking beside me this person decided to walk behind me and let me take all of the hits. This was a very scary experience in my life. In the end it was looked at as humorous and a stupid thing to do. The kids going the opposite was just kept on walking strait expecting me to move out of the way. A few kids did say i was going the wrong way and told me to move. Going against the norm can be very dangerous if you aren't careful. I think i ended up hugging the wall halfway to the lockers. There was a look of terror on my face and a few others as we were about to collide but at the last movement one person moves out of the way.

What day is the worst?

So i found an article that tells which day is the worst of the week. I think that most of us teenagers can agree that it would be Monday right? The day we all come back to school. Maybe it would be Friday the beginning of the weekend. Well both of those guesses are wrong according to researchers. Three hundred fifty one people were questioned every day of the week as to how their day went over a period of time. The graph above is of the research taken and it shows that the worst moods were on Wednesday and the best moods were on Sunday. Our actual mood doesn't change nearly as much as what we think it is. So really when someone asks you about your mood you could honestly say about the same as usual.

Chapter 5 Blog

I really enjoyed most of this chapter. The old age part of the chapter didn't really enthuse me. The developmental pictures on page 174 and the description of the different stages were really interesting. I enjoyed learning about the different stages of development throughout a humans life. If puts in perspective the stages of which everyone has so go through. The developing child video was interesting to watch. It amazed me that children at age two can't do simple calculations such as finding snoopy and one age three can. How much a the knowledge that a person has grows in such a short time if unbelievable. I actually remember doing some type of test like Piaget's test of conservation on page 183 when I was younger. The study of different cultures on page 190 and 191 were really interesting. I never expected to read something along the line of the male staying home and being close to the children. Something that I'm not exactly looking forward to is what comes with old age. The chapter talks about the loss of physical abilities. I like my physical health and want to keep it. The loss of memory is another thing i don't want to have happen to me. I hope that i will me one of the lucky people who can remember most of their life.

Psyblog Time!!! on Conceptual Consumption

So i found a blog called "Why Do People Watch Scary Movies, Stay in Ice Hotels or Eat Bacon-Flavoured Ice-Cream?" and to be honest i didn't really know why people do such things. According to the article it claims the reason we do crazy things like that is to be able to 'possess the experience' and 'look like interesting people.' This I find a little bit weird of an explanation but yet it just might be true.It is also said that people by thing that they never use just to show the object off and rub in other people's faces. Of course there is the giving things and money to charity which makes you feel good and others think you're a nice person. If you think about it people always buy and do things for a certain reason. People usually do things for one of three main reasons. They do it for the experience, the positive feeling they get afterwords, or for negative experiences.

Food Cravings?!

Okay, so I'm going off of something that I experience like every day. I know we will probably get to this part of the book eventually but I figured I'd just do this anyways. So every day a person needs to eat food in order to survive. Junk food is naturally the humans' favorite type of food to pig out on. What I want to know is, why is it that when we are done eating and aren't hungry any more, do we still want to eat food. It's like I know I'm not hungry because I just ate but then you think of something like a fruit roll up and you're like that sounds so good right now. So why does our brain tell us that we need to eat it even though we know we don't. It's like we are addicted to food and just can never stop eating it. I'm sure that we learned about the part of the brain which causes this but i can't remember at the moment. Then there's the thing with women and loving to eat chocolate, but i guess that can be for another time.

Chapter 4 Blog

I found the whole twin studies very interesting, mostly because my two best friends are twins. I never knew that even though a person could be an identical twin and have different genes. I often Wonder what will happen when they have to start their own lives as in going to different colleges and getting married. They have always been there for each other and rarely separated.
The gender differences in general was interesting to read. It mostly confirmed what I already thought as true. I really liked the cartoon on page 148 with the woman saying, "I had a nice time Steve. Would you like to come in, settle down, and raise a family?" I found it funny because as far as i know women don't say things like that. Usually in my mind it's the male asking a woman inside. Something else i found interesting was how true it is that we categorize boys and girls. People say that girl are the ones that are suppose to play with dolls, when I know for sure that boys play with them also because my brother use to play dolls with me. Like wise girls aren't suppose to want to play rough or play with cars and trucks. I don't see why people should categorize in that manor. If a child was not influenced by the environment to play with certain toys they would most likely play with any toy they were given.

How Meditation Improves Attention

This article is interesting to read if you are into mediation. According to studies people who meditate have larger attention spans. Other studies have shown that meditation can benefit motivation, cognition, emotional intelligence and awareness to maybe control our dreams. I think that by meditating we will have better psychological and physical benefits. Maybe if we know how to concentrate more there will be fewer people falling asleep while in classes, this might even improve some of our grades. There are some neat tips on how to become a mediator if anyone wants to check it out it's on the psyblog.

How to make people believe in telepathy

I think that telepathy is a joke. You can't send messages from your own brain or mind to someone else. A brain can only transfer information to other parts of the body. In the article it doesn't say if telepathy is possible but it says people are more confident that they can telepathic if the two people involved can meet, talk first, and do a few practice runs. Telepathy used to be considered possible when someone guessed what a card showed when a person was thinking of it. I would call that a lucky guess not telepathy.

Consciousness and the two track mind

I learned that we know more than we know we know. A good example from the book is the hollow face illusion. Our eyes are telling the mind that the face is protruding but our brain is telling us that the face is hollow. So really our mind is believing one thing while the brain another. With this study I would trust my brain more than my mind. Another interesting thing I learned about was the different stages of sleep and the brain waves. I thought that you dream toward the end of your sleep, but when it really occurs many times throughout the night.
What I found the most surprising was what we dream and what goes on in the REM sleep. I thought that men had sexual dreams, more often than what was recorded, as a young adult and that we had more sweet dreams than negative ones. I won't mention what I learned and found interesting about REM sleep, instead if you want to know look on page 96 in the first paragraph (it may not be totally appropriate).
Also I disagree with Freud's wish-fulfillment theory. When I dream it's not about things I want to happen in the future. For example, once I dreamed that i killed someone and trust me I really didn't and don't want to kill that person. But I do think that actuation-syntheses is more likely to explain dreams. You might really be creating a story from books, movies, and real life events that you know or have heard of. I know i read and watch some weird books and movies and i do have some occasional weird dreams involving the same plot or characters.

Late Night Blogging!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!

So I finally found an article that caught my eye, it's called Why Thought Suppression is Counter-Productive. I was wondering why things we don't want to think about randomly come into our head at the worst of times. Is it because we are thinking of something along the same line and it creates a like to the old memories? It's like every time you try not to think about something you think about it more. I found out a little bit about why we can't keep things out of our minds while reading this, some people say that the reason why we can't block out some thoughts as well as others is because we had less practice blocking them out. Another thought is that if you just clear your mind and don't not try to think of it you will stop thinking of it. I myself think that the second way of not not trying to think of it works better, what do you think?

Blogging again...

So.. I read an interesting article called "Are You a Liar?" I found this one interesting compared to some others that i have read like the sitting up straight one. In the article there was an experiment of how much you lie to a person when you just meet them. After reading this i kind of want to meet someone new and tape the conversation. According to the article the average number of lies being told in a conversation with a stranger is 3 times in every 10 minutes. By the graphs shown it looks like people lie most about how they feel. That makes a lot of since considering when ever someone asks me how I'm doing I usually say I'm doing fine or good, mostly because that is the normal reply you give to people you don't know. It's not like you want to bother people with your personal problems when you have no idea who they are.

The Brain and Behavior

The first activity that I did was the Ambiguous figures. It confused my mind so much seeing too many things in one picture, especially the one where there is a box and it has different objects going through is. That one gave me a major headache from looking at it so long. I learned you really have to study the pictures in parts to see the whole.
The second activity that I did was the voyage to serendip. It was hard to find serendip and i figured the easiest ways to find things sometimes is to randomly choose a path or not search directly for things, but to look for the unobvious ways.
The third activity was Contrast/Color "Illusions" this one really made me realize how much our brain can sometimes trick you. By the play of light i thought that the different squares were different colors. They look different under different way of lighting such as shadows, but when you move the square out from under the shadow and put it next to the other square it is the same color. It's a really confusing concept when you write it but if you try it you'd understand what I'm trying to get to.
The forth activity was map your own blind spot. I've known for some time that my eyes have blind spots, but it makes me wonder if the opposite eye can fill in that blind spot. Seeing how big the blind spot really is makes me wonder how much we are really missing. Sometimes while driving there is a car that appears when just a minute ago there was no vehicle, thinking about it now i wonder if the car was in the blind spot in my eye or the one in my car.
All of these activities make me wonder what is really going on I'm my head that i don't know about. I think now I'll be more careful choosing color objects in the store, I don't want to end up with mismatched clothes. The blind spot activity makes me want to figure out if it's really the car's blind spot my eye's. This defiantly makes me think about how we look at things and how we actually view them.
When first starting this chapter I never really thought about how our brains are made up of neurons. Even though I knew my brain was made up of cells I didn't realize how complicated the brain really was. It amazes me how much the neurons communicate and how fast they can move. I would go to sleep to give the cells a chance to rest but they work even then.
I found it interesting that not just one part of a brain does one thing, but multiple parts of a brain work together to create one final result. That more than one part helps you actually smell, see, and move.
Before i never really understood before how drugs triggered or blocked your natural chemical releases or functions. The figure 2.6 helped me to see how drugs fooled our brain. With how complex our brain is you'd think it would have a better defense system against drugs inserted into the body. If it actually did I think it would be a bad thing because all of the drugs and chemicles the doctors give humans to get better wouldn't work.

Just another blog....

I read the article Sit up Straight! Be Confident! And I thought that it didn’t speak the whole truth. In the article it says if you don’t sit up straight in school you aren’t that confident. I disagree, I know many people who are confident in themselves who are just too lazy to sit up straight in class. Even I get really tired of sitting up straight. Just because we want to kick back and relax while we are in school shouldn’t put a person under the category of thinking negatively.

Thinking Critically

Research is important because if we study different areas and conduct research then we will know why some things are the way they are. Also by research we know what we as people should not change and things that we could change to make ourselves better people.
A research article that is relevant to my life is Essentials of Group Psychology. One thing I realized after reading this article how true it is that you start to have the same attitude toward some people or things as the other people you hang around with. In groups of friends there is always one person who does all of the ordering if you are in a restaurant or is the first to introduce themselves to a new person who is sitting next to the group. Being in a group gets you to try things you normally wouldn’t try on your own. That includes the good and the bad of course. This article was a really good one to read and there is a lot you can get from it.

Just some things I found interesting in this chapter.
There was an experiment conducted in earlier years that children who are fed breast mild as a baby have a higher intelligence score than those who were fed formula. I personally never thought of the effect it had on intelligence. The only other experiment with formula and milk that I have heard of was that children who are fed breast milk have a better digestive system.
On page forty-three in our text, there is a box about a survey taken by African American children. According to the survey most African American children would rather play with a White doll than a Black doll. It comes as a shock to know that they would rather play with a White doll. This survey makes me wonder if they just wanted to play with White dolls like the little White girls did.

Blogs - YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!

Before I read anything I said that psychology had to deal with the mind and the way people thing and after reading a little bit about psychology I think it is really the science or study of behavior and mental processes of the brain. Which I think is almost the same thing.

Psychology affects everything we do in our life from how we act to what we eat and wear. People learn how to act the way they do by watching other people around them and copy what they do and wear. We subconsciously think of what we can do to make ourselves fit in with the others around us.

Something I found interesting in this section was the study of playing peek-a-boo with babies. How babies think you actually disappear when you hide and think you reappear later on. The real concept is really quite interesting to me.

Another topic I found interesting was the nature-nurture issue, which goes into the debate of whether or not traits are developed through experience or if people are born with them. I think that people are both born with traits and learn traits from watching people. Mostly because if you take a child and put it with a different family I think that you would see traits in the child from both parents and the people that he or she lived with.

Hello Everyone!!!

Hi I'm Cassandra Drohman, I go to Flambeau High School, I am 17 and soon to be 18. My siblings did really well in school made my parents expect a lot of good work from me so it made me want to try hard to do well in school and be as good as them. Also my mother working in a library encouraged me to read a lot more than other teens, so if you couldn't guess I am a book worm. I think it's important to know what is psychological and what is not. I think that psychology has to do with your mind and the way people think. People go to psychologists is they have something going on in their head and they need help figuring it out or talk about it, so mostly i think psychology is the study of the mind.