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.