Conformity

During chapter 16, the chapter talked about social psychology. One of the aspects of social psychology is how people surrender to others, with obedience and conformity. After reading about conformity, I couldn’t help but to think of all the different things I have seen and how much people have changed from the junior high years until today, because they are conforming to fit in with certain groups.
Some examples of this are Taylor and Alex. At the junior high Alex used to be in all honors classes, he used to be involved in different sports and was very well liked. As the years went on, he started to get involved with drugs because a kid on his basketball team who he hung out with was doing them to fit in with what they thought was the “cool” kids. After he conformed into one of them, and started to do these drugs on a daily basis, and he went from being an intelligent athlete, to a rehab patient, who might not graduate.
Second, my friend Taylor had trouble making friends during her junior high years, and being a girl, you just want everyone to like you, and be the “queen bee” well Taylor thought that she would be respected more if she could prove that she wasn’t this innocent little girl, who did everything that her mom said. So she conformed to a group that got her to start stealing and drinking, even though her parents have caught her and she has lost most of their trust, she still continues to do it.
These are just a few examples of how social pressure, and conformity can change someone for the worst.

Mood Disorders

During chapter 14, we learned about different psychological disorders, what causes them, their symptoms, and how they are treated. As we were learning about mood disorders, I kept thinking of my aunt and cousin. On my dad’s side of the family, I have a cousin names Shannon who suffers from bipolar disorder, while on my mom’s side of the family, I have an aunt named Susan who suffers from major depressive disorder. Major depressive disorder is a mood disorder where people have constant feelings of sadness and a loss of interest in things that used to make them happy.
My aunt was diagnosed with depression many years ago. Her depression has made her stay awake all night and then she gets tired and sleeps during the day. If she comes over to our house for a lunch or dinner, she will be here for a total of three hours and will fall asleep at least two times during those three hours. Another thing that she does it plays with her hair a lot. She will twist her hair and pull it out, which causes her to have bald spots. There has also been two occasions where her depression got so severe that she underwent electro-convulsive therapy. But she is also very highly medicated to keep her sane.

Stress Tests

During chapter 13 the main topic was stress and how to deal with stress. I thought that it would be interesting to find out if my perception on how stressed I am and how others would rate my stress level compared, so I took two different stress tests to compare the answers. When I think of myself, I feel that I have very little stress in my life, I have been able to figure out how to juggle everything that I need to get done so I don’t have too much to get done in one day. I also save a lot of time for myself to be with my friends and family.
The two stress tests I took were Awakenings Stress Test at http://www.lessons4living.com/stress_test.htm, and BBC One Quick Stress Test at http://www.bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/getinvolved/stresstest/. The awakenings stress test focused more on how much I took care of myself, if I gave myself time to relax, how easily I got irritated and if I had a supportive relationship with someone who I could go to for support. On the other hand the BBC stress test asked questions that related more too how easily I let myself forgive and forget as well as how long it took me to relax after being irritated.
I ended up scoring a six on the Awakenings test which meant that I have few hassles and I scored a seven on the BBC test which meant that I was in the normal category of the general population. These scores matched with the way I felt about my stress levels which is a wonderful thing because that means that I am not very stressed!

Dealing with stress

During chapter 13 the main idea has been stress. Stress is any situations that threaten or seem to threaten one’s well-being and thus strains one’s coping abilities. Stress is common after an illness, break up, assault, or type of trauma. When stress occurs, people have different ways of coping with it. Some people are more destructive and they yell, blame things on other people, become violent, or trying to use drugs and alcohol to overcome the feeling that come with stress. Also some people use defensive coping which deals with the body protecting someone from anxiety or guilt without even knowing it.
For me when I get stressed out I tend to use more constructive coping methods. I have my good friends Taylor and Shawnee who I can talk to and lots of times they can relate to what I am going through so they know what to say. When I have a lot of homework to do as well as work I write down a list of everything that I have to get done and cross things off my list when I finish them because it helps me to see that I am accomplishing things and makes my stress go away.
I have been able to figure out the methods that work best for me because one time I was pulling an all nighters trying to cram in a twelve page paper that was due the next day. While I was working on this paper I got a call from one of my best friends and they told me that their parents were making them move to South Dakota in less than a week. I started crying, I didn’t get any sleep, I didn’t finish my paper, I wasn’t hungry and since I was so stressed and failing to give my body what it needed, my immune system started to crash and I was sick with a cold for the next week. After that I figured out how to cope with my stress and it has really helped me juggle all the work that I have had to do this senior year!

Obesity

During chapter 10 we learned about motivation and the motivation that make someone to eat. When someone eats too much they can become overweight and even obese. Obesity can be genetic or even just lack of exercise. I have a cousin who is extremely obese. She is nine years old and is over 200 pounds. The roots of her obesity are both genetic, environmental, and lack of exercise.
My cousin Leah has a mother that is also very obese, which is where she gets her genes from. Also not only does she have her genes, she observes what her mother eats and eats accordingly. When we are at thanksgiving she won’t go to get vegetables, fruits, mashed potatoes or anything, she goes straight for all of the desserts. With her mother not being a good role model, she thinks that eating like this is ok. She also lacks an adequate amount of exercise. She is involved in softball, but she doesn’t try that hard because when she does she gets tired too fast, needs a break, and gets behind everyone else.
For all the people out in our world who are obese like my cousin, should watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. He shows how eating healthy can be fun and gives out great recipes that make eating healthy tasty so children of this generation don’t have to suffer from health problems like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

At the beginning of chapter eleven, the focus was on prenatal development and how drug and alcohol use can interfere with proper development. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a collection of inborn problems associated with excessive alcohol use during pregnancy. Approximately one baby a day is born diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.
A friend of my family works at a state run facility in Willmar Minnesota called Affiliated Community Medical Center. This facility deals with thirteen to seventeen year old adolescents that are so violent that their parents don’t want to deal with them or are so heavily medicated that they need help, but who they deal with most are people who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. One thing that I thought was really interesting was when he said that when a women is drinking, the alcohol can stay in her system for up to twenty-four hours but it can stay in the babies system for up to seventy-two hours. When these adolescents go here, they visit with psychologists and also attend classes to help these children to get further in life. These children didn’t choose to have these problems in life, it was their mothers who made horrible decisions and ruined the lives of their children.

Most Intelligent Person

I believe that my sister is the most intelligent person that I know. I think she is the most intelligent because all through her grade school years she got straight A’s and graduated in the top ten percent of her class. Not only did she do well in high school, she is doing great in college. She is doing so well she has made her schools dean’s list and started college with having over a full semester of credits already done. She knows how to play the clarinet and the piano very well. She can speak both English and Spanish. Also, something that really impresses me is that she does not procrastinate and does all of her work to the best of her ability. But not only is she good in school she also is someone who people get along with others well. She has high people skills and tends to always know the right thing to say. Another thing she does well is knowing herself and what she wants out of life. She sets realistic goals and has accomplished many of them. One that she has really worked toward is being able to travel a lot while still going to college to get a degree. And this summer she is going to New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Egypt, and London.
Her intelligence best fits with G theory by Charles Spearman which says if someone is smart in one area they are also smart in another because she is good in social, analytical, and practical intelligences all at the same time. My sister is someone that I also consider to be a great role model because she possesses all of these great intellectual behaviors that make her the most intelligent person that I know.

The Big Five

While learning about personality, we learned that there are hundreds of different traits that a person could have. Robert McCrae and Paul Costa said that most of these traits can be resulting from just five higher order traits that are known as the “Big Five.” These five traits are Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Doing a self report on the Big Five I would say:
I am higher on the extraversion scale because I am very outgoing. I enjoy going to parties, especially parties where I get to meet knew people and I like being around other people. When I am sitting at my house by myself I am always wishing that I was at a friend’s house. I would score myself very low on the neuroticism scale because I am very friendly. I always find myself introducing myself to new people. And while most people are nervous about going off to college by themselves without all their former friends as a security blanket, I am counting down the days until I get to meet my new roommate. I am very open to experience. I am always traveling around the world to experience different cultures and see how other people live their lives compared to myself. I would score myself pretty high on the agreeableness scale because whenever my friends need someone to vent to or have some one cheer them up they usually come to me because they know that I am someone who won’t go out and tell other people about what is going on. Also I would score myself very high on the conscientiousness scale because I am not a big procrastinator. A great example of this was in my foods class. For Innovative snack lab, our big project that we have to do is a cook book with different recopies we find our selves along with ones that we make up on our own. This project was assigned at the beginning of the semester and isn’t due until the end of May. I ended up finishing mine back in February. I feel that my personality has helped me to be a person that many people tend to get along with and one that people enjoy being around.

Multiple Personalities

During chapter 12, I read about personality. I learned the different theories on how our personality is influenced. Whether it is influenced internally, environmentally, observed, or reinforced. I also learned about different personality traits people have if they are introverts, extraverts, open to experience, conscientious, ect. While reading about these different personalities, I kept thinking about this movie I watched called Sybil directed by Daniel Petrie. This movie is a true story of a woman named Sybil, who had a very traumatic childhood and she developed 13 different personalities.
Multiple Personality Disorder (also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder), is a severe dissociation which causes a lack of connection in someone’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Someone with Multiple Personality Disorder has two or more personalities, each of which has a different way of viewing the world. Each personality might also have a different way of reacting to different stimuli. For Sybil, she would black out and wouldn’t remember how she got to certain places. She would also act shy and speak softly at times and she was more outgoing and energetic at others. She developed Multiple Personality because she tried to protect herself from psychological pain that was too much for certain personalities to handle.

Memory loss

During chapter 7, we talked a lot about short term memory, long term memory, and memory loss. For someone who has a normal memory, their short term lasts for about twenty seconds and can hold five to seven items at a time. For long term memory, it is essentially permanent and can hold an unlimited amount. But, if someone has been in an injury, they can later suffer from memory loss. Depending on the injury, someone can suffer from either retrograde or anterograde amnesia.
My uncle is a perfect example of someone who suffers from anterograde amnesia because he can’t remember events that have occurred after the accident. My uncle is married and has two children. When he was 33 years old, he was in a horrible car accident. Driving down the high way, a truck hit the back side of his car and it caused it to roll over several times. He was unconscious when the police arrived at the scene. Now many years later he suffers from memory loss. He can remember that he is married and knows who his wife is, but he can’t remember what a marriage actually is. If he is retold what it is, he will know for about twenty seconds then forget, and can’t remember. He also knows that he is a father to two wonderful children but he can’t comprehend what a father is and what he is supposed to do. As he observes other fathers and hears his friends talk about their children he can understand what a father is for as long as his short term memory lasts, but will later forget.

Operant Conditioning

In chapter 6, the topic was different types of learning. Some types of learning are classical conditioning using conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and responses, operant conditioning using reinforcements, and observational learning. During the chapter we watched a lecture about autism and how operant conditioning could be used to help teach autistic new tasks by giving them reinforcements such as food, kisses, and praise when they did what they were told, but received no reinforcement when they threw tantrums and used aggression.
I thought that this video was really interesting to see how the treatment was performed because I have a cousin who is autistic and I have been able to see first hand how he has progressed. When he was little he wouldn’t communicate with anyone, instead he would scream and would run from one thing to another. Over the years of treatment he has developed many skills. Now he is twelve and can communicates with everyone and does not stop talking. For example, during family get togethers, he fixates of one thing and obsesses about it. For him, he goes to every person he has seen before and says “hey, I know you,” and he can remember where he has seen you before and will keep talking about how he knows you until he sees another person that he remembers. He is also able to attend school with normal students and keeps learning everyday. His therapists have used operant conditioning to allow him to associate with others and build skills to help him become more independent.

Myths about Dreaming

A dream is a series of images, ideas, and emotions that occur while you sleep. There are many different myths about dreaming such as falling to the ground in your dream means that you actually die in real life or that you can’t control your dreams.
For me, I used to have many myths about sleeping and dreaming. I used to think that if I woke up remembering my dream, I dreamt that night, but if I woke up not remembering a dream, I didn’t dream. After reading this chapter, I learned that you dream during REM sleep and if I woke up in the middle of my dream I would be more likely to remember it than if I woke up during NREM sleep. But just because I don’t remember my dreams, doesn’t mean that I don’t dream. Another myth I had was about the actual dreams themselves. I used to think that if I thought about something, such as a person or winning an award, as I was lying in bed, I would then dream about what I was thinking about when I fell asleep. In reality, no one knows for sure, but there are different theories about dreams. One of the theories about dreams is wish fulfillment. Wish fulfillment is the theory that people dream about fulfilling ungratified needs from waking hours. Also, another theory is the problem solving theory, which says people dream to engage in creative thinking about pressing personal issues because dreams aren’t restrained to logic.

Color Blindness

Throughout chapter 4, we learned about different senses such as vision, hearing, smell and touch. But vision is one of our most valued senses. Our eyes see an image and send it through the retina and back to the Visual Cortex, here the image is then processed and our brain tells us what we are seeing. One of the defects people have with vision is color blindness. I thought that color blindness was really interesting because I couldn’t imagine not being able to see the world in different colors. I then researched about color blindness and read an article about a man who was an artist but was color blind, how did he do it??
Neil Harbisson, 25, is an artist who was only able to paint in black and white but is now able to paint in color ever since he discovered a device called the Eyeborg, invented by Adam Montandon. The Eyeborg allows him to convert colors to sound. Harbisson said, “When I paint it is as if I am composing music on a canvas.” The device uses light vibration, vibrating fastest from violet and slowest from red. With this device, Harbisson has been able to expand the horizon for his paintings and has also traveled around the world showing off different paintings he has created.

Drugs and Neurons

Throughout chapter three, the main idea was about the brain and how information is sent from your brain to the rest of the body. Neurons are tiny brain cells that transmit information to different parts of the brain. Each part of the brain then controls a certain area of your body or a certain function such as language or balance. But what happens when a drug is taken? I always hear about different drugs and how they might make a person feel or act, but I never knew why this was happening. So, I thought it was really interesting to learn about why you act differently when you take certain drugs.
One substance that I looked at in depth was cocaine. Cocaine is a drug extracted from the leaves of the coca plant. It is a stimulus that affects the body's central nervous system. When cocaine is introduced to the body it blocks neurotransmitters from being able to bind with the opposite side of the synapse. When this happens, the brain is not receiving the correct signals and the user generally feels invincible, carefree, alert, and energetic. Then when cocaine is leaving the body and neurotransmitters and slowly making it across the synapse, the user typically feels depression, and anxiety. With something as small and complex as a neuron, even a small amount of a chemical, that is not typically involved with the sending and receiving of information in the body, can have a dramatic change on how the body feels and acts.

Naturalistic Observation

Throughout chapter two, I have learned about different types of research methods. There is experimental, naturalistic observation, case studies, and surveys. Each of these studies has different pros and cons that might influence the information found. The one study that I found most interesting was naturalistic observations. Naturalistic Observation is when researchers engage in careful observations of behavior without disturbing the natural state of the subjects. This kind of observation is good for seeing behaviors unfold naturally and not in artificial conditions, but it also makes it hard to get these observations without affecting the participants and how they behave.
A show that I have recently watched, that is a great example of naturalistic observation, is Undercover Boss. During this show, the researcher (the Boss) goes undercover to fit in with the natural flow of a company. The bosses have to go undercover so people act how they would on an everyday basis and not change their behavior to be more professional or try to work extra hard to impress the bosses. After observing the subjects (the workers), for seven days, the boss reveals who he actually is. By seeing workers and interacting with them on their own level and seeing problems first hand, the bosses were able to change policies and rules to make working at their companies enjoyable and people friendly.