Not My Type Blog

Attribution:
The process of attribution is where we simply attribute one's behavior to internal disposition or external situations. We may try to link someones behavior or why they do the things they do because of something in their personality or because of something that is taking place in their life. For example, we may think that our friend is being irritable towards us not because she is like that all the time, but because something is happening in her personal life to make her become that way. She may have had a fight with someone close to her, had a bad hair day, flat tire, or any of the above to make her that way. That is the process of attribution, just our ability to link why someone is being the way they are.
The fundamental attribution error is the overestimation of the influence of personality and underestimating their influence of situation.

Stereotyping:
Stereotypes are when we generalize a belief about a certain group of people. For example, blondes are dumb, skaters are burnouts, all those which a group is associated. Illusory correlations are when people tend to overestimate a link between 2 variables and the correlation is slight or not at all. examples of this is, the team won the game because they prayed beforehand, wearing his lucky socks made him run faster, all things like that where there is a link associated, but no actual proof made. This is how stereotypes are made. One time can lead to a stereotype and belief for down the road. In turn they both work slightly the same.

Personality

I think there is alot that has shaped my personality. When i was little we grew up in the suburbs of chicago so my parents werent as lenient as they are now. After moving up north here it has made a big difference. I guess you could say to my friends i grew up with back in illinois i am a country girl now. i dont enjoy the same things they do for fun and they dont enjoy the same things i do for fun. In that aspect my family and friends have made a huge impact. I have had my heart opened up and stomped on by a guy i was with for 4 years so i guess you could say i have major trust issues now. I grew up as a tom boy. My dad loves snowmobiling and so do i now. my friends back in illinois frown upon even the thought that i race snocross now. But that is who i am i guess. So several things all building up to make me who i am today. and from this whole chapter if i were to say there were one theory that i took from this it would be the one made from Rogers. It is basically letting you aknowledge who you are and who you would like to be, it allows you to view yourself in a possitive matter letting you surround yourself with positive and genuine people also. That is the way i think it should be. after all, you can generally judge someone based on the people they surround themselves with!

Chapter 13 movie

I enjoyed the human experience video and how it took his personality to help them find a future career. I think that at the stage of life we are all in...soon to be graduating seniors, i think it is very important for us to be finding where we want to go in life. If we know more about ourselves and our personality then it will be able to help us discover what we will want to do with it and turn it into a career someday! So that movie was very appealing to me. However, i disliked the movie on Morals. It seemed to me like it was only confusing the basic concept of values and morals and what we do with them. thats only my opinion though. But i didnt think it clearly got to the point of what they were maybe trying to get across. Oh well. None the less it was a very very interesting chapter.

Big Five Assignment

After completing the big five inventory and receiving my results i found them very interesting. Some things were very on and some i felt were off. It was on that i am very social and agreeable because i think i am! i love to meet new people and talk with others! i really don't like fighting so more often than not i like to agree with the person or people i am around and avoid confrontation. However, the thing that surprised me most was that i scored some what low on the area of closed or open mindedness. I know myself pretty good and i know that i like to go out and try new things, meet new people, however, my results showed me that i rarely like to try new things because i like to be down to earth. So that really surprised me there.
After reading through my results it's a little more clear to me why i love currently being a C.N.A. I am a very social person and really easy to get along with so it makes it easy for me to communicate with the residents and make them feel at home. I always find it interesting to talk to them and hear the interesting stories that they have to tell from "back in the day". So clearly with the results that i scored highly in it makes sence that i enjoy a job where i am around people and communicating with others.
When it comes to social groups i think everyones personality plays their part. Obviously i am loud, outgoing, and social so i am friends with people that share the same interests. I'm not in a group of people that tend to stay at home on a friday night and read books. Not saying there is anything wrong with that, but i like to go out and meet new people, experience new things, and push my limits along the way. I just enjoy experiencing life. My friends tend to do the same. They are just as crazy, if not crazier than i really am and when you have a group of friends like that we all get along reallly good and have a fun time. My mom always said that people can tell alot about you just from the people you hang out with. I see that very clearly now!

Clive Wearing

Watching this movie was very interesting. Clive has a memory of the 10 second tom from the movie 50 first dates. He believes that every two minutes or so he has been away or fell asleep.

Clive lost his basic memory and only remembers things that occur rutinely or evryday such as getting up and getting dressed for the day and so on. He keeps a diary close by and writes his thoughts that he feels are important to him. At one point in the day he will write i am awake for the first time and underline first time because he believes that he wakes several times a day because he can not remember when he actually did. It is kind of sad in a way that his can not remember his wife. He knows he loves her and is very excited to see her everytime she visits, but the only reason he recognizes her as his wife and not any other woman is the fact that he has it written down in his diary. She tries to remind him who she is and sometimes he finds himself angry and frustrated. Who wouldnt when you can barely remember those that are truly close to you? however, clive can still direct and make beautiful music. As his wife noted it is much like riding a bike to him, once you learn you just cant forget. I thought that was very cool!

i could not imagine being in the possition he is in, or trying to live out that lifestyle, but he makes it work. It's very cool that his wife still loves him and supports him because it must be so frustrating for her, not to meantion heart breaking to see him in that state. i dont know if i could do what they do. Then again, people always do crazy things when their in love.

Chapter 8

The memory chapter really stood out to me. I considered myself to have really good memory, that is until we did that experiment in class. I found myself struggling big time. As the test went on it became harder for me to remember. It came to me that memory, much like personality, is what defines us as who we are. We store certain memories in our bank by how much they affected us or touched us. By taking down those things, we become who we are. A child who suffers abuse may remember that struggle as a child and as an individual, has a hard time connecting to others in a relationship. Someone may struggle with the death of a loved one and later on becomes unattached to those near to them for fear of hurt. By the memories those two individuals had it affected them later on in their life. That is why memory is so important to us because it has a greater effect on us than we are to realize.

The memory has different levels as far as long term and short term. after that activity i realized i was very good at the short term! as you are younger your memory is stronger than those who age because your memory begins to weaken with time. However, older people are still very good at select long term memory subjects compared to short term ones such as paying the bills, losing their keys, or where they put the paper. I think im a throw up in between because i find myself forgetting alot of those things quite often. i can only imagine what its going to be like for me when i really do get old!

I really liked the concept of forgetfullness in this chapter. I always find myself questioning myself why i forget things that i was told to remember jsut earlier that day, but yet we still forget. The memories fade after storage known as the forgetting curve. sometimes the past interferes with what we recently learned. Or something recently learned interferes with something learned in the past. These were called proactive interference and retroactive interdference. Both working in opposite ways explaining why we often go blank minded from time to time!

Chapter 7

I found the part of observational learning very interesting because i believe everyone does it! We all want to be like someone weather its an athlete, rockstar, or someone smart. We take in what we see an apply it to our life. You constantly see little boys wrestling around like they see on t.v. or girls trying to dress up pretty like the ones they read about. Sometimes it has its negative effects such as with girls trying to model. They may suffer eating disorders because of what they see and are trying to become. so in all that i found that part of the chapter to be extra interesting because i can relay it to just about everyone.
I know for a fact i have been exposed to classical conditioning. I have been swimming since i was very little and being underwater if your coach has something to say he cant just stop you. Whenever he wants your attention he will whistle one loud whistle. He whistles when he wants you to start a set, get your attention, or go faster. Either way the whistle is my signal. The one time i was in the mall of america with my sister and we got seperated from my parents and so my dad whistled, instantly both my sisters head and mine turned to look for the whistle and we found my dad. Trained on that sound i know i am a victim of classical conditioning!

Chaper 6

In this chapter i really found it interesting how we convert energy and light into actual things! Its not that we take in an object, we take in the light surrounding it, the hue that color is, the brightness, the intensity, everything! All of it working together to simply form what we see everyday. I believe alot of us take that simple work of art for granted everyday that our eyes function properly to send the signals to the brain to paint a picture in our head. It really is magnificant.
It was also really cool to find how all of our senses work together to do their job. The one that stood out to me most was taste. Taste only has the 5 components but without the other senses such as smell for example we wouldnt be able to distinguish those tastes. The sensory interaction playing its part. Now i understand why my parents told me to hold my nose if i had to eat something i didnt like! you really have no sense of taste without the smell that goes with it. Just another example of how our system was perfectly created to work with itself to perform all the everyday tasks that we over look. Very interesting stuff!

Chapter 6 - Illusion Blog

For this assignment i practiced on the following tutorials: Motion Induced Blindness
Snake Illusion Ad Lib
Motion After Effect
Eye Jitter
The Enigma
Pyramid Illusion
Contrast Constancy
and Hering Illusion

Through out all of these i really enjoyed the motion after effect and hering illusion one the best! I learned through all of this that your eyes can never stand still. Even though they are focusing on one object they may flutter or twitch after they get fatigued from looking at the same thing for so long. In doing this it creates illusions and we begin to see things that arent really even there.
It really surprised me in the motion after effect the way the frozen picture looked after staring at the lines for so long. You stared at these black and white moving squares and then suddenly a still picture appeared and your eyes made it seem as if that picture were moving and expanding right in front of you. It was really crazy! It definately made me think to myself that things are really not as they may appear. After doing the Hering Illusion i really look at things differently. The red lines on all the graphic looked as if they were crooked, then when you put the mouse over the graphic it disappeared to show the red lines really were straight the entire time. After seeing that it made me want to look at everything entirely different because i know now that not everything is as it appears. You need to look deeper into it that what you see first glance!

Developing

This chapter really set into me after going through it completely. Talking about the life and how we develope was pretty interesting. However, it just sunk into me after reading that that i am no longer a child...we as seniors will now be entering the real world and will be soon making a life of our own and becoming less dependant on our family. Before i was always so excited to get out of this town, go to college, and just be living on my own. Then, when i really began to sit down and think about it it really struck me that maybe that isn't what i want after all. Although i may talk big and mighty i know it is not going to be an easy journey. maybe life at home with the parents (as strict as they may be) isn't so bad afterall!

Extra Credit

When i was doing my interview for the extra credit i actually found myself enjoying it. I visited a member at the local nursing home and asked if she would mind talking to me about what it was like back in the day. Turns out she had a lot to say and we shared a few things in common here and there which was pretty cool. She was a victim of the great depression, but in the long run turned her life around and really did well. It was pretty cool to hear how she made it through all of that because kids these days are spoiled rotten and wouldnt have lasted or endured anything like what they had to. At a young age she ran away with the boy she met at the farmers market who stole her heart and from there she settled down, made amends with her family, and then created her own! Her son is active in the air force so it was really exciting to listen to her tell me about that. Overall i think it was just a good experience and i really enjoyed talking with her!

Developing through the life span

This chapter was a lot of review from what we already knew about how we are brought into and out of the life cycle, but it also presented some new and interesting ideas and theories i had never heard of before. The one that most intrigued me were the 3 different types of parenting. I think as students we can all catagorize what type we think our parents are in and it's interesting to know there are different types. I'm sure we as kids either just labled them as cool parents or strict parents. Although it may seem like mine are overly strict i think i could classify mine under the authoritative class.

I also found it interesting when the book talked about stranger anxiety in children. When there is a baby in the room it always seems like everyone wants to hold it and the baby gets passed from person to person. When the baby starts crying everyone assumes its because it is being handled so much when really there is a little psychology in there! The baby sufferes stranger anxiety when it can not put a familiar face or schema to the person holding them and becomes instantly irratable. I found that pretty cool that occurs at such a young age, because even as adults we don't genereally feel comfortable around people we dont know. So i guess it follows you all through life.

The final thing to surprise me was the attachment we make at such a young age. Of course we are going to want to surround ourselves with people we are familiar with and that take care and support us, but that attachment level goes deeper than we think! When it showed the birds flying with the machine because of the familiarity they had with it from before they were born was really a cool thing! It makes you really think. I really enjoyed this chapter even when some of the material was familiar. It caught my attention!

How rewards can back fire!

Reading this article it really intrigued me. It was to determine if people perform better or worse based on an award recieved or not. The article took three different groups and promised one group an expected award, one a surprise award, and one group none at all. Based on the awards they would receive they were told to draw. The study proved that those who were expecting an award drew far less spontaniously and the ones who didn't still just drew simply for fun. This article i thought related to the real world of adults who go to work everyday or so on. Some work harder because they want a bonus. Some already enjoy their jobs and seek no further award. To me that is how it should be becuase clearly according to the results of this article those that werent expecting award continued to put more effort into their projects anyway. I mean i don't swim for the first place medals (even if they are nice!) I swim for the love of the competition. So maybe this article was true, rewards can backfire!

Evolutionary Psychology

After watching the movie on Evolutionary Psychology it really made you think that it all does come from caveman time. It stated that men preferred younger women because they enjoyed being in a relationship with someone that they felt they could dominate. However, women enjoyed being in a relationship with older men because they want someone that is resourceful and can take care of themselves. Although it may not be true in all cases i believe the majority it is. At least i myself tend to find myself falling for the older boys not because i need them to provide for me, but it is a boys maturity level these days. Boys mature much slower than girls do so if they are older it may be equal. I thought the clip made a couple very good points that demonstrated how we have changed a little but the majority of our dating preferences comes from the old age. Sad to say...some things never change!

Nature, Nurture, and Human Diversity

This chapter was very intriguing to say the least. I learned a lot more than i thought i would take in in one chapter so i had to go back a couple times to process all of it. I really enjoyed learning about the twins. When asked about fraternal and identical twins to be honest with you i really had no idea, but didn't really care because a twin is a twin. Now when someone asks i will know what they are talking about. I was also shocked to learn about heredity. I knew heredity was responsible for physical things such as looks, height, and all of that, but i also thought that heredity was responsible for how we act as well. People always say that if their parents are outgoing so might there kid. However, it is untrue. The fact that we are outgoing or shy or any of those characteristics come from our culture and environment we live in and not our parents at all! Shocking! I also really liked learning about our culture norms. What is acceptable in one area of the world may be completely inappropriate in another area. I'm considering testing some of them out because i found it pretty interesting.

This chapter had a lot of things that shocked me. The hereditary part of this chapter completely shocked me. Other things shocked me, but i think i was more surprised only because i had a different opinion on them. I didn't agree with the fact that our society depicts males as more dominant, I personally feel that women have equal power, but i know that is not how society depicts it unfortunately. So maybe it was more or less shocked, but i think just opinionated.

This chapter was really good to read being on our senior year when we are getting ready for higher education and being out on our own we really begin to test everything that our parents have either tried teaching us or have passed down by genetics. The nature/nurture issue was very intriguing!

Implicit Association

When i took my implicit association test i was to determine if i was prejudiced against gays or straights. I took this one because i feel very strongly i have no prejudice about gays, i have several gay friends. However, my test scores surprised me in the sense that i in fact was prejudiced. I feel like that test was inaccurate because i dont understand how putting words to one side or the other can determine if you are prejudiced. Apparently i am though, weather that test is wrong or right i won't know. I just wanted to share how shocked i was to reveal my results.

Are You a Liar

I recently read the article "Are You a Liar?" and found it very interesting. It claimed that people lie an average of 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone new. Find that shocking? They put it to the test with their own experiment and found the results to match the myth, slightly like mythbusters! It was true indeed. As astounding as it sounds you can never just trust someone. All the people tested lied easily 3 times or more in a 10 minute conversation with someone new. Althought men had the tendancy to lie the most (real shocker there ladies) women lied as well. Men lied about feelings in hopes to be more likeable to the woman they were talking to and women lied more about their feelings to seem more competant to the man they were speaking to. So just when you think you are begining to like someone think again, they just might be lying their way to win your heart. It was a very good article and i suggest anyone who wanted to know more should go check it out!

Conscienceness and the two track mind

In this chapter i really enjoyed learning about the 5 sleep cycles we go through in 90 minutes. I was able to visualize all the stages. The ones where we aren't so asleep to the heavy sleep stage. It was also neat learning that the body had sleep cycles according to light and we regularily mess that up. I know this applies to me a lot because some nights i will turn in early to get good rest for a swim meet and other nights i'm up til the late late hours trying to study for something. After reading the effects that had on the body i know i want to try and find a regular sleep cycle from now on reguardless of what i have to get done.
It really surprised me, even though it may not be quite appropriate, the dreams we have. I was surprised to see that we do not have as many sexual dreams, especially guys. That a guys so called "morning erection" does not come from the type of dream he is having, but from his last REM period of sleep. That really struck me as surprising!
In this chapter it is obvious to say, because i'm sure we are all talking from personal experience, that a good nights sleep does the body wonders. I agree with that much because i know when my body doesn't get the sleep it needs, it starts to shut down and i can not perform the way i can when i have a good nights sleep. However, i disagree with Freud when he talks about the importance of dreams and how they are just revealing our deepest desires and such. If that were so, then Freud is saying my deepest desires at night is to be chased down by a crazy person with the potential of being killed? I think not. And i have had the dream where i am being chased, it is not pleasant and i know for a fact it is not at all what i desire. So where it may be true in some cases he can not claim that it is true for all. Yes, we do need a good nights sleep to perform well, but no, dreams do not express what we deeply desire.

Current Events

This whole week has been extremely crazy for me. Between school, homecoming, swimming, and all the assignments i have to stay on top of i'm really beginning to get run down. Just the stress of college applications, scholarships, and wanting to do my best in everything is tearing me apart. Then come to find to my luck of it all, the day after homecoming when i can attempt to catch up on rest i get extremely sick. That was leading my curiosity to one thing currently, is it possible that being over stressed can cause you to get sick?

After all, when i'm stressed out i don't feel good about myself, i dont have an appetite, and i can barely get sleep. The three of those alone make the possibility of it all seem true, but is it more a mental thing than anything? Do we trick our minds to thinking that being that low on life forces us to get sick or is it that we actually do catch a virus and there for dont feel well? Someone let me know what you think!

The Man With Two Brains

I really enjoyed hearing about the man with two brains. It was very interesting and ignited alot of emotions in me. I felt bad for him, but in the same sense was excited for him that there could be such a thing to overcome and he has been doing exactly just that. I mean it probably would not be so fun that on one side he can process things normally and on the other it takes quite a while. For me i would find that frustrating, but he doesn't seem to be too poorly affected by it.

I really thought it was cool when it came to the part of drawing two different pictures. I tried to do that myself and came out with nothing but a bunch of scribbles on one side and a very poor picture on the other. But, since he can see two seperate things on both sides it was easier for him. I bet he makes quite the good multitasker!

I hope all their experiments done on him come out with even more good news and he can live just like everyone else. It must be exciting to say you dont just have one brain, but two! This was a very enlightening subject to learn!

The Brain and Behavior

This chapter i played the four games The three door, Ambiquous figures, Ant colonies, and Prisoners dilemma. The one i found exceptionally interesting was the Prisoners Dilemma. It asked you to pick between cooperating or competing against another prisoner. You could choose to work together and get 3 coins or possibly compete against him to get 5 coins. Although it is everyones instinct to want to have a one up on the other person and compete i found i won more coins by cooperating. That really made me think that that could apply to everyday life for many cases.

I was in many cases surprised by alot of things in this chapter. I thought there was only one system to control what happened in your body to send messages and what not but here there are multiple that all have a specific function. That was really cool to learn how they all did their own thing, but linked together for one main goal of helping out our body.

As far as applying things to my everyday life i think i would refer to the game more than i would the book. The book was very factual this chapter, but that game really made me think. The majority of us are greedy and will do all the competing we can to get a leg up, but if you do choose to cooperate it can benefit the both of you rather than just one of you. That was really neat to me when i thought about this world and how everyone is all about themselves.

I really think after that i have a new outlook on it. It really was a wake up to see that instead of being greedy and selfish you should want to cooperate as best as you possibly can. I think i'm going to give it a good try. This chapter had alot of really interesting things to think about, i really enjoyed it.

In this chapter i really enjoyed reading about the amygdala, the part of the brain that triggers aggression. I always wondered what part of the brain it was or what triggered such an emotion and it comes from two tiny bean-sized clusters. I think it would be more interesting to learn why some people have more aggression that others however, something for me to research into. The second thing i really enjoyed was learning the structure of the brain in itself. When you witness something on your left side it goes to your brains right side. That was very interesting. I also really enojyed learning about the brain and how it can manage to fix itself. Say a person is blind or deaf, it allows the unused areas of the brain to adapt or learn other helpful information. For examlple, if someone is blind their other senses really kick in such as touch, smell, and so on. That was very enlightening and empowering.

Thinking Critically

In my eyes research is very important. Every fact that you obtained somewhere or somehow had to come from someones hard work and research. If we were to just throw out facts into the world without having any work done behind it what a mess we would be in. For example, if the cars we drove, the houses we live in, the food we eat did not have any research done behind it we could be living in a very unfit and unsafe society. So therefor it is very important we take it upon us to test the things we use in life and do study on it so everything falls into place later on.
I just recently read an article that i found very fitting for me. It was "How Long To Form A Habit". In swimming every second is very crucial and it can come down to the hundreths of a second for a race. For me this year my goal was trying to gain the habit of not breathing in and out of my turns and i often wondered how long i would have to do it daily until it just came natural. According to the article the old myth of 21 days proves untrue. For certain habits to form it can take nearly 2 months or longer which i found shocking because thats nearly my whole season. However, it was very interesting and useful to come upon that.
This chapter was very interesting. However, most of it was common knowledge or stuff we had learned prior to this class about research and such. I did learn there are numerous ways for Psychologists to perform research and getting an insight on all of those were pretty cool. I liked to learn about all the factors they consider before their research such as gender, culture, and if it is right or wrong to perform tests on animals. Hearing all that takes a role in Psychology was pretty neat. I'm anticipating the next chapter!

Prologue Blog

1.) Ealier on i thought that Psychology was just the knowledge of the human mind and how it linked to our actions and behaviors. After completing chapter one i still feel that is slightly correct, but it goes into much further depth. It begins with something triggered in our minds and follows out to our actions and those actions are then recorded thus creating Psychology.
2.)I'm a firm believer that Psychology has a major effect in our life. In some way, shape, or form, Psychology is always linked to what we are doing and what we are thinking. Since we don't go a day without action or thought we do not go a day without Psychology.
3.)I learned through this chapter that there is alot of depth in Psychology and not just thoughts. Its linked to basically everything we do which i found very neat. Another thing i found interesting was the "hindsight bias". Everyone has probably already dealt with it in their life sometime, but i never knew there was an actual term for it. This chapter is interesting me more and more!

Intro

Hey everyone!

My name is Melissa Avery, Missy for short please. I'm a senior at Flambeau Highschool located in Tony. In January i'll be turning 18 (finally!). As a person i have been shaped by a lot of things. I was born and raised for a short bit in Plainfield, Illinois. Down south it got very crowded where we lived and the people weren't the nicest. At a young age my family moved up here where we had a cabin, but the made it our permanent home. At a young age my dad introduced us to snowmbiling, dirtbiking, and pretty much anything else that takes place outdoors. I love it, but my friends back home think i'm crazy. I guess thats where i became the girl that i am now. Coming from such different towns i think Psychology is an important factor in life because knowing how other people in different regions act could be vital down the line. To know how other people view different issues could make or break you in the future of becoming truly successful. I think psychology is just being able to understand everyones way of thinking and being able to understand why people act the way they do in certain situations. To be able to understand that is to understand a great deal in life!