Act Of Kindness

In my family we do a christmas giving every year. It is a big secret and nobody is supposed to know, so shhhhhh. Since it is for an assignment I think I can tell. We take between ten or fifteen family's who are not going to be able to have much of a christmas. We get a tree and then presents for them. We get the ages of the parents and of the children in their family and go christmas shopping for them. This past week I was shopping for a six year old. I thought that she would like dolls and little princess dress up things. I want her to have a good christmas and lots of presents to open. Our family will continue to do this till christmas. Then we wrap all the present and drop them off at their houses. After christmas we start shopping again for next years group of families. I have never gotten a thank you, but I feel I don't need one when I feel good inside anyway.

This class

I enjoyed this class. There were things I did like a lot. Everyday I would come in here and learn something new. It was never a boring class. We were always doing something different. This kept the class interesting. The homework wasn't bad, and the quizzes weren't either. The homework was mostly fun, like go animate. So overall I liked this class.

The worst thing is this class was the our school's security issues. I didn't like how I wasn't able to open up some of the videos at school. I also didn't like the way my computer didn't want to open my blog account. But that's technology for you.

I used psychology actually a lot during this class. I kind of over analyzed things sometimes. Like I would think about how my friend was figuring out a problem in the brain. Or I would constantly find out what a person's bubble is. It was all fun and I would usually tell them afterwards. I have learned a lot in this class.

Not My Type

Attribution is the theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition. The process of attribution is someone behaves in a way and we judge them on that situation. The fundamental attribution error is overestimating the influence of personality and underestimating the influence of situations. Like Hitler everyone thought he was so smart and trusting and was leading their country to victory, but in actuality, he was mass murdering millions of people.

Stereotypes are a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people. Illusory correlations is the perception of a relationship where none exists. If you see a picture of the twin towers, you think about Muslims and terrorist, this is illusory correlation and stereotypes. If you see a picture of a farm, you think of cows and farming. These are all examples of the relationship. You generalize a picture with a stereotype.

North Dakota Null

F 1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.

F 2. If I go into the street, I’m apt to be bitten by a horse.

F 3. Some people never look at me.

F 4. Spinach makes me feel alone.

T 5. My sex life is A-okay.

T 6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.

F 7. I like to kill mosquitoes.

F 8. Cousins are not to be trusted.

F 9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.

F 10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.

F 11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.

F 12. I cannot read or write.

F 13. I am bored by thoughts of death.

F 14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.

F 15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker

F 16. I am never startled by a fish.

T 17. My mother’s uncle was a good man.

T 18. I don’t like it when somebody is rotten.

T 19. People who break the law are wise guys.

F 20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.

T 21. I think beavers work too hard.

F 22. I use shoe polish to excess.

T 23. God is love.

F 24. I like mannish children.

F 25. I have always been disturbed by the sight of Lincoln’s ears.

F 26. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools

T 27. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.

T 28. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.

T 29. I believe I smell as good as most people.

T 30. Frantic screams make me nervous.

F 31. It’s hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice.

T 32. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.

T 33. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.

F 34. As a child I was deprived of licorice.

F 35. I would never shake hands with a gardener.

F 36. My eyes are always cold.

I really have no idea what this test is for. At first, I thought it was for like our feelings for certain things, then it threw me off with weird questions. In the middle the I thought it was more towards prejudice, but that also threw me off with another set of random question. In the end, I was just so confused they asked all the most random questions in the world. I am not sure this test even had a point, unless it was to confuse the participant, because that is what it did.

Prejudice Worksheet

1.____Ranchers ____are jolly

2.___Texas people__drive Cadillacs

3.___Brunnettes___have more fun

4.___Grandmas_____are thrifty

5.____Men____are great lovers

6.____Drunks______cause civil disorders

7.____Guys____are great “fighters”

8.___Men__are poor drivers

9._____Asians_____all look alike

10.__Women__are absent minded

11.___Witches___are shrewd and crafty

12.___Children___make good wives

13.___Druggies__live off other people

14.___Tasmanian Devils___have hot tempers

15.___Puppies___are easygoing and friendly

Fallout Shelter

34 year old male architect who is alleged to be a homosexual

28 year old male physicist will only enter if he can bring his gun

20 year old male black militant

23 year old female graduate student who speaks publicly on the virtues of chastity

30 year old female M.D. who is an outspoken bigot

a high school student

Big Five

Openness to Experience/Intellect-70% You are relatively open to new ideas.

Consciousness-69% You are relatively well-organized and reliable.

Extraversion-96% You are extremely outgoing, social, and energetic.

Agreeableness-87% You are good-natured, courteous, and supportive.

Neuroticism-1% You probably remain calm, even in tense situations.

1. I think the test was pretty accurate. I agreed with all of my scores except the openness score. I think I am a lot more open to new experiences then the score I got. I am a very curious person, but my score wasn’t all that bad. Overall, it was right.

2. I was surprised to see my score so high on the agreeableness. I see myself as pretty understanding, but I do tend to disagree with people a little bit more than the score I got. Maybe I’m to harsh on myself who knows!

3. I think my extraversion score was very true. I am very social and outgoing. This has led me to pursue a career in zoology. I would ultimately like to work in a zoo, where I would have to talk to people and tell them about animals. My neuroticism score would also make it easy to work with animals and people because I am very calm.

4. I think that my traits have guided me into a very social, talkative group that is very outgoing. This group made me a social person, but I still am very calm. Some of my friends are calm, I am closer with them then the drama causers.

Personality

I think Carl Rogers theories kind of make the most sense to me. if you surround yourself with good people, you will probably be a better person because of it. But if you surround yourself with bad people then you will most likely get into trouble. I think some of your personality may come from this, but some you are born with, or create from your home life or environment.

I know I have used the reaction formation defense mechanism. One time when I was young we were jumping off this little cliff and i was scared. But when it finally became my turn, I set my fear aside and it was replaced by bravery. So, I jumped off. Now-a-days though, I jump off huge cliffs and some old bridges, crazy as it seems, I think I'm just being a kid. I am not scared anymore. Another defense mechanism I have used displacement. When a big test is coming up, I often get irritable to my friends if they are talking while I'm trying to study. Little things can set me off, just because I have a big test. But after I make it up to them by bringing pizza and hanging out with them.

The movie that I enjoyed the most was probably Psychology:The Human Experience. There was a part that modeled an over all look at how a persons personality is based on. It is remembered by the model OCEAN. The O is for openness, the C is for conscientsciousness, the E is for extraversion, the A is for agreeableness, and the N is for nuerocism. This is how they can base all peoples personality. But the rest is genetics or environments. That is what decides the rest of our personality.

Thinking and Language

Without language we could not be the sophsiticated race that we are today. Thinking also has brought us far, but without one we can not survive. I learned in this chapter that I have insight, a sudden and often realization of the solution of a problem. I have done this numerous times. I will be trying to figure out the solution to a problem go to bed, then wake up in the morning and it would be like someone just turned a switch. I would know how to solve the problem and it would feel like it was starring me in the face the whole time.
Second, the rule of overconfidence, the tendency to be more confident than correct. I really thought this was more of a personality trait than a function in your brain. It is funny that it is a function because now boys have an excuse to so overconfident (just kidding boys ;) ) Anyway being overconfident can be bad and tend to have not so great consequences.Sometimes in the relationships overconfidence is a quality to have.
Thirdly, I learned that is important for babies to babble when they are young. This will eventually lead to the one-word stage. This is when babies start to recognize syllable with the meaning like mama and papa. It is interesting how babies learn from our example too. They just mimic us and eventually learn the meaning. It is fascinating.

Pschism My Head Is Spinning

My train of thought was to light the candle with the end of the match. I didn't think to much about it just did it.
Participants turned the shape in their minds and each degree they had to turn it took them a constant amount of time per degree. So the larger the degree the increased the reaction time.
I think the pattern fits me. I had a longer reaction time for each degree I turned the shape in my head.
Yes the two looked very similar. My reaction time looked the same as the other graph. So, my reaction time increased as the degree increased. Yes, it showed a decrease as the degree went back down.

Memory

If we did not have a memory the world would be very chaotic. We would have no idea about anything. We couldn't hold jobs or have relationships because once something would happen wouldn't remember it. If we tried to learn something we would forget why we were there in the first place. It would probably end with people dying early because we wouldn't remember to eat, bathe, or drink.
Clive Waring knows nothing, but whatever was happening before his accident. H has no idea of time or the date. He knows nothing about what is happening in the world. He would have no idea what is going in his life. He has no part in the world around. To anyone, but his wife, he is no one.
I don't see anything different about my memory, I just understand it a bit more. I now understand how when someone says something, I say what, and as they are about to repeat themselves I am already repeating what they said. Which I do all the time.
Flashbulb memories. They are important because they can recall an important event to us. We can recall exactly where we were at that point in time. It is sometimes bad but sometimes good. Like it could help find the killer to a murder and so on and so forth.

Learning

I found the section on observational learning was very interesting. Especially the antisocial effects of observational learning. It said that men who beat their wives probably had a wife-battering father. I find this somewhat confusing. I think that if you had to go through that as a child that you wouldn't want to ever put anyone through that, but then do the same thing. I think it is logical though because of observational learning; just weird though.

This chapter shed a lot of light on how we raise our children. I babysit children and I know their parents, but I can tell how they discipline their kids and how they kids learn. My nephew is very active and has learned a lot by observation, but when he throws a tantrum he knows that he has to go to his room and wait until he can be nice again. We use reinforcement on him too. When he screams he sits in his room, but when he goes to the bathroom he gets a toy. This has helped him learn how to use the bathroom. now he goes all by himself. When he eats all his supper he can get dessert. These are a few examples of reinforcement.

Classical Conditioning Questions

Classical Conditioning- A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.

-Ivan Pavlov

-The kids are playing, they smell dinner, mom says dinner is ready. The kids go wash their hands.

Operant Conditioning- A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.

-B. F. Skinner

-When a parent says "Get ready for bed" then lets their child get out of it reinforces arguing and whining.

Reinforcement- Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

-B. F. Skinner

- To make a child use the toilet, you can give them a treat for each time he uses the toilet.

Observational Learning- Learning by observing others.

-Giacomo Rizzolatti

-When you yell at your child, your child might yell at you during an arguement.

Sensation And Perception

This chapter, by far, confused me the most. It messed up all my thoughts on perception and how our brains work with our senses. I learned that we only analyze three sets of different colors, red-green, yellow-blue, and black-white. In the retina and the thalamus, some neurons are turned "on" by red but turned "off" by green. I never knew that there was so many parts to the ear either. I mean, I know about the eardrum and the canal, but there is so much more. I also didn't know that there was actual bone in the ear. There are three varieties of ESP: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition. All of these interests me because it is a claim to extra senses. Precognition I think is just a guess, if even that. You can get lucky on predicting some things. Like the Packer-Viking today, I could say that the Packers are going to win and I would have a 50 percent chance of being right. So, it is really just a guess. the other two may be plausible. Sometimes I have had a bad feeling about something and later learn a family member died, which would kind of be like clairvoyance. I don't know much about telepathy. I have never experience it before.

Illusions

1. Hering Illusion
-The optical illusion behind the lines would distort the lines and make them look crooked or curved. Then when you remove the illusion the lines were straight.
-I was surprised to discover that the lines were all straight.
-I don't know how my perception works now. It is very weird what this activity proved.
-I could not see straight lines sign or something to that nature is there's a type of illusion behind it.

2. Mueller-Lyer Illusion
-There is an arrow with a pointed out end and a pointed in end. There is a arrow in the middle and you have to find the middle of the 2 arrows.
-I was surprised to find that the arrow points confused me into thinking that they were evenly apart.
-I couldn't even find the middle of a line.
-When drawing a line in geometry maybe.

3. Spoke Illusion
-There are spokes and a color wheel from white to dark gray. The color wheel is turning while the spokes stay put.
-On my first look, I thought that the spokes were going counter clockwise and the color was going clockwise. But on closer inspection, I saw that the spokes stayed put!
-Well I was happy to get one right, but I think color can affect the way we see things.
-Maybe lights could make us dizzy.

4. Stepping Feet Illusion
-There are vertical lines and then to horizontal blocks going through the lines.
-It looked as though the blocks were stepping onto the horizontal lines but when the horizontal lines are removed they are going the same speed.
-I felt this was another weird optical illusion. The lines made it looked like the were stepping.
-This could effect a speeding test.

5. Sine Illusion
-There i s a sine wave with vertical black bars. All the bars are the same size.
-When I saw it I thought that they were not all the same, but they were.
-I found that the size was misjudged because of the curves in the sine wave.
-This could be used in any of the tests of vision.

6. Hidden Bird
-There is a bird that flies around behind a bunch of lines. When you stop the bird, it disappears.
-I found this to be true, when you stop the bird it disappears.
-I think this illusion could be like the clouds.
-Used for toddlers vision tests.

7. Pyramid Illusion
-When there are many squares, an oblique light cross, like a large ‘X’, appears. This cross does not really exist.
-I thought the X existed, but it does not.
-I now think that our vision has different ways to percieve everything.
-In eye tests.

Developing Through The Lifespan

I have always been interested in child's psychology. I find the things they say and do just fascinating. So one thing I found very interesting was the fact that as a child, we learn by assimilation and then accommodation. Our whole thought process when we are young is basically a guess and check. The second thing I learned was the whole page about autism. Autism, a disorder marked by communication deficiencies and repetitive behaviors, goes after more boys than girls. The fact that Autism makes the person unable to communicate with others, in our world, almost impossible to interact with humans. Not being able to get a thought across through words is just a hard life. The third thing I learned is Erickson's stages of psychology. I found them interesting because of the issues in each stage. I think they fit pretty well. This whole chapter was very interesting on the human brain through the lifespan. There is a little cartoon on page 223 that is called "Too Much Coffee Man". I think it definetly explains our life in like 15 words.

Nature, Nurture, And Human Diversity

I learned that fraternal twins are not completely the same, they develop from two separate eggs. They can look the same though, but not usually.

I learned that separated identical twins growing up in different environments can still psychologically be identical. The two Jims had the same names and same traits right down to the name of their dogs. That is just weird.

I learned that heritability of certain traits can be in siblings, like Venus and Serena Williams. They are both very could at tennis, but, on the other hand, having to very athletic parents doesn't mean that their child will be athletic.

In the video Natural Selection/Evolutionary Psychology I found it interesting that some of our genes have been passed down from our ancestors in the caveman era. The survival instincts are deeply imbedded into our brains, it won't come out until we are in survival mode. I just thought that it was very interesting that some certain genes could be passed that far along.

In the other video, I thought their findings were somewhat true about what we are looking for in the opposite sex. Men are looking more for a home maker and women are looking more for a provider. In our day and age though, it is getting less common because our gender equality. Still, I think that, like the survival skills, it is in our brain to think this way.

Heritability

My mother and I are good cooks. I think this is more hereditary because her mother was a good cook too. We do not have the same political views, however. She is more democratic and I am more of a conservative republican. I think that is environmental because this is how I personally feel.

I think genetics have to do with some of my traits, but I think that my environment has shaped me as a person more. I was baptized Lutheran, but I do not go to that church. I go to a Christian church with my grandmother on my dad's side. The environment has helped me be more social and outgoing as a person.

The exercises helped me realize that heritability has to do with all your traits and ones that you might have thought were your own.

Twin Studies

The twin studies can help prove the concept of nature nurture. In certain studies, twins who grew up in different homes showed similarities in life choices. This proves that genes can influence personality.

If one twin is more nurtured by the parents than the other twin, then the more nurtured twin could grow up with more confidence than the one that didn't get as much nurturing; even though they both have the same genes, their personalities can differ because of the nurturing of the parents.

If parents are more nurturing to one child than another, they can the one while hurting the other. The first child could be more outgoing and social, the second child could be more shy and quiet; all because of how the parent nurtures the child.

Using twin and adoption studies, behavior geneticists can estimate the heritability of a trait.

Consciousness And The Two-Track Mind

I thought the studies on selective attention and selective inattention were very interesting. How we can completely ignore something while we are set on a task I think is very true. When I am trying to do my homework, I almost always try to shutout every other thing in a room. If my mom walked in I probably wouldn't notice.

I also thought the whole segment on sleep was interesting. I know I need to have a more consistent sleep schedule because I am always falling asleep in my classes. I would like to find out more on why we dream about what we dream about. There reasons stated in the book were suffering a trauma, something you were doing right before bed, or some stress.

I was very surprised to find that I unconsciously associated Native Americans with foreign, this was surprising. I know I don’t have a prejudice towards them though. I just thought that this test was more kind of telling us how we were raised. Like I said in the previous blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if the generations after us unconsciously had a prejudice against Arabian races.

Implicit Association Test

I think that this test kind of showed that we might be brought up to see things a certain way. That our unconscious minds can control our unconscious actions; or something of that nature.

In the back of our minds, we might have some kind of preferences with certain races. I think kids growing up these days might have an unconscious prejudice towards people of the Arabian nation.

I was not aware of some of the prejudices in my unconscious mind, although I think it was more me associating races as foreign other than my own.

I really don’t think I am prejudiced against anybody or a certain race. So, in my mind nothing changed, but it did show me how I unconsciously associate some races.

The Brain And Behavior

I played four activities and one I found interesting. The activity was called "Chance." This game proved to me that chance, in some cases, really isn't chance. Schrodinger believed that order was nothing more than statistical regularities. I think that he is right. I mean chance happens because of order. Our visual system is programmed to look at the order instead of the chance. But if you stop and think about it, without chance, there would not be order. I don't think I will be buying any lottery tickets soon, but it was interesting to know.

I watched the man with two brains and thought that the brain really is very complex. When you see something on the left it goes to your right brain, when you see something on the right it goes to the left side of your brain. The ability to speak resides mostly in the left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere can recognize faces. It is all very interesting. I would like to find out more about the inner workings of the brain.

In this chapter, I learned many things. First, I used to think that depression was caused from stress, or other outside forces. It also can be caused by an undersupply of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Second, I thought that the nervous system controlled everything. There are many systems within the nervous system that control the certain functions of the body. Thirdly, I thought that our evolutionary brains had evolved, but in the brainstem has automatic survival functions. This whole chapter was pretty enlightening though.

Prologue Blog

1) I thought psychology was mostly about the mind of a human, why we do what we do. I found out that it stems from a thought all they way to an action. Everything that happens in our body is psychology, in a sense. It has to do with our behavior, how we think, why we act the way we do, and why we have certain dreams.


2) Psychology has everything to do with life. Like I said before; our behavior, how we think, how we act, how we treat other people, and many more, are all a part of psychology. In short, everything we do has to do with psychology.


3) I learned that you can actually do experiments with psychology. You can test behaviors and mental processes and can get results.
I also learned that there is a behavior called hindsight bias. Basically it means I-knew-it-all-along behavior. I didn't know this was an actual behavior.

Hello, my name is Holly Morrison. I go to Flambeau School and am 17 years old.

I feel that I have been influenced by many things; the most recent would have to be a job shadow at the Deyoung Zoo in Wallace, Missouri. There I was able to interactive with all of her animals and it was so much fun. I've been told if I want a job I should go into the medical field, but sadly I would not enjoy working in a hospital at all. Animals are fascinating to me; my dream would be to become a zoologist and have a job. So, this visit really influenced me to just follow my dream, instead of following someone else's.

To better understand the way people think, or behave will get you far in life. I feel that to better understand your fellow man, the better you can communicate, and in almost every job you have to work with people. So the better you understand someone, the more productive and easier it will be to get something done. The quality will be better to. In the end everyone will be happy.

To me psychology is the study of the brain and all of its inner mechanisms. How we think, act, make decisions, all that is in the brain.