waldentwo

  Think about when you open your phone or device – is the first thing you open up social media? Do you find yourself doom scrolling on TikTok or Instagram reels after telling yourself you are only checking your email or calendar? These habits are learned through habituation and sensitization. Constantly scrolling through videos and posts for long periods of time is the sense of habituation, eventually being unable to notice how much time has passed by or not noticing that advertisements have been popping up between each post. Sensitization can be exemplified by reacting quickly to a notification from our social media. The urgency to see who posted or who liked and commented on your post becomes a stimulus our brain quickly responds to.  In this article published by Cureus, it is highlighted that excessive social media usage is linked to negative effects in teenagers’ and young adults’ well-being. Because this generation mostly grew up being exposed to social media, the integri...

  Oprah Winfrey’s “you get a car, you get a car… everybody gets a car” giveaway continues to be quoted as a meme over twenty years later. One wishes our needs could be fulfilled as easy as it was for Oprah to give out these cars! Clark Hull’s drive reduction theory explains the importance of satisfying our body’s physiological needs, but what about our other needs? Incentive motivators are what we need to feel enjoyment and satisfaction outside of out physiological needs, “a form of sensory stimulation that you find highly reinforcing” (p. 277-278). Can incentive motivators help reduce college student burnout?  As a college student, I know I constantly struggled with balancing my life outside of school in order to make deadlines and maintain good grades to have a good GPA by the time I graduate. Between commuting close to an hour, full course load, part time jobs, and home life, my stress and burnout were at an all time high. I often forgot to make time for myself, but somethi...

Imagine being a five-year-old little girl moving to a new country but thinking you are there for vacation? My mom told me the story of a little five-year-old me at 3am after the first week of being in America – still jet lagged due to the 12 hour time difference – and asking my parents “how long is our vacation here?” As a first-generation immigrant child, it came with many struggles growing up. Having grown up in South Jersey, I was not exposed to many Filipinos, but rather grew up with a more White-dominant culture. Radical behaviorism, as explained by Burrhus Frederic Skinner, is external influences that play into one’s behavior. Thankfully, I spoke English in addition to speaking our Bisaya dialect, so language was never an issue, but cultural identity was something that I struggled with then and continue to struggle with today. My parents never forced my Filipino culture over American (or what we called westernized) culture and vice versa, but it created this internal battle of fe...

       Most people think that punishment is the best and most effective way to stop bad behavior in dogs in most aspects, but psychology suggests the opposite. Operant conditioning shows us that behaviors followed by rewards are more likely to occur again, while punishment of that behavior could only suppress it briefly. Many professional dog trainers rely on strictly positive reinforcement to train dogs, doing things like rewarding dogs with treats, rewards, playtime or other things dogs enjoy when they perform in the way they would like to train them in.. This method has been shown to improve and strengthen learning skills as well as improve the relationship between pets and their owners.         What’s so fascinating is that this same logic and fundamental can be applied to humans. Employees, students and even patients in healthcare settings usually respond better to things like encouragement and rewards instead of criticism. While punishm...

  Anthropologists and psychologists can both fundamentally agree that observational learning is fundamental in early adolescent years for both humans and animals alike. A baby watches their parent cook something, and is curious enough to perform percussion on their cooking ware. Or, for animals, a kitten will watch its mother groom herself, and subsequently copies her.  Observational learning can also save lives. For example, many people who have obtained a CPR license can often attest to how hands on and observational the learning process is. You are not simply sitting through power point slides on human anatomy. Everything that you are expected to be trained to do is demonstrated, and particularly in first aid intervention, you are also tested on your ability to perform the observed behavior. Additionally, in a more endearing example, dogs that are trained to be rescuers and guides may potentially perform better with observational learning. Although animal experimentation of...

                                     College students are often no stranger to a local dive bar, a party, or a friend’s twenty-first birthday party, and the drinking culture often associated with university students arguably spans decades. Even in some cases it is to some students' shock, that they may discover that their parents are better at beer pong than they are. This is not to say that this is the universal experience, naturally there are many students who do not partake in alcohol consumption, and they can reap the benefits of a healthier liver and spare themselves an embarrassing story or two.  But for the students who do, however, the current education that they receive on alcohol safety consumption may not be enough. A rather taboo, yet concerning issue that arises for some students, is the prospect of drinking in a social versus solitary environment. In a pers...