waldentwo

With optimism bias people tend to overestimate the good things that will happen to them and underestimate the bad. They will be optimistic about themselves and the people they surround themselves with, like friends and family—while also being more pessimistic about the world in general. The author, Tali Sharot argues that people who are optimistic about themselves set themselves up to be successful and gives them confidence. Optimistic people are happier and interpret things differently – they see their success is something because of them, and failures due to bad luck or something that does not have to do with them. Anticipation also makes people happy and gives them something to look forward to—getting it right away is not as gratifying as the suspenseful wait that builds excitement. It also acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, making you try harder to achieve your goals. The author thinks optimism can be beneficial while remaining realistic about risk. We just must better understan...

Chapter 18 goes into detail about how propaganda was used and how it connects to psychology. In the beginning of scientific psychology, it was then possible for educated people to use certain findings of this new science. They used it to influence the minds and feelings of others by methods not usually recognized as persuasive. This can be well intended but can also be harmful—it can even go as far to go against someone’s freedom of choice, as the author says. He goes on to even say that the people persuaded can become “mindless creatures” who just go along with what anyone says, like a sheep following the herd. Apparently, this type of psychology or “abuse” of it started in the early 90's, “The Age of Propaganda”. It was not just political topics either, propaganda was any kind of communication with a point of view to sway someone’s opinion and have them think it is their own. The use of psychological knowledge to persuade covertly is quite common in advertising, and people ...

In chapter 11 it is discussed how behaviorist theory sees personality as learned responses to stimuli—while other theories see them as qualities of the person that determine behavior, behaviorists dismiss it as “mysticism”. From the 1950's and onward they further developed the social learning theory, and the main idea was that human personality and behavior are shaped based off of rewarded actions, the individuals expectations based on what they have observed and that certain ways of behaving will result in rewards or consequences. It sees experiences and external influences as main influences and determinants of personality and behavior. Social learning theory and locus-of-control research resulted in interesting developments in personality theory and clinical psychology—there was a growing recognition that conscious attitudes and ideas are a good portion of the person’s traits and actions. George Kelly called them “personal constructs”: sets of ideas about their own abiliti...

For chapter 14, “The Perception Psychologists”, I’m going to focus on the concept of seeing movement. In the book it argues that vision without perception of movement is “valueless”, almost as if saying you may as well be blind. Perception of our own movement guides us in making our way through our environment—perception of objects coming towards us enables us to escape harm. Along with the perception of our hands and our bodies in general gives us information to control with whether its balancing or reaching out for an object to grab. A case example in the book was a patient who experienced this loss of movement vision—her brain scans along with other tests showed that she suffered damage to a part of the cerebral cortex outside the primary visual receiving area that is known to be essential to awareness of movement. When she would pour liquid into a cup it would appear frozen, as well as not knowing when to stop pouring since she could not see the rising of the liquid in th...

The main purpose of chapter 18 is, similar to the title, to explain the ways in which psychology is used and misused among individuals. A large portion of this chapter discusses how some people take information found from the beginnings of or from incomplete studies and exaggerate the results for their financial or other personal gain. The chapter discusses how psychology when applied ethically, with good intentions is supposed to better human interactions and quality of life. However, the information given in the lectures and chapter show that it is often used as a strategy to increase marketing or advertising for companies.  They will claim with loosely based evidence that their product will solve some sort of general problem that most of the population faces in order to take advantage of this insecurity to make a profit. In this chapter Hunt also elaborates on the areas in our society in which it is applied to better the performance of careers. Teachers utilize learni...

Chapter 11's purpose was to explain how early psychologists deconstructed and analyzed individual's personalities. This came about after soldiers came back from war and higher ups wanted to ensure they were mentally capable of working. In order to measure someone's personalities there were a variety of methods invented to do so. Many of these are self-report surveys which may be unreliable in honesty when reporting. Woodworth had a personality data sheet. Then Herman Rorschach came up with an inkblot test in which one was supposedly projecting what they felt when describing what they saw in the ink. Evaluators would interpret their answers. After this Murray and Morgan used a similar principle but instead of inkblots used pictures and had individuals tell them the story of the picture, like what happened before the scene, during and after.  The problem with these tests is that they are very subjective. While there were structured tests that became more repl...

The purpose of this chapter was to go over the psychology of the different senses, sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Our senses are triggered by the brain. When it comes to eyesight, there are many steps for us to see an image. To us, it seems like it just happens right away. There are many steps with all of our senses that the brain goes through. Think of all the steps it takes to have a conversation. Again, to us, it just seems like it happens but there is so much behind it. Elements of though Purpose: the purpose of this chapter was to discuss how psychology plays a role in how our senses work. Point of View: the point of view varies because everyone has a different way of perceiving the stimuli Question: a key question is how does psychology work with our senses?

This Explains Everything is a book that in my eyes, I can see being an info junkies dream book. Written by John Brockman, known as the creator of the world’s smartest website, the Edge.org, this book covers a little bit of everything ranging from complicated scientific theories to little known facts and curiosities that you may encounter in your daily life. Brockman did this by reaching out to countless experts of their respective field asking them to write a brief description about a specific topic that they would be knowledgeable on. He then compiled all of the answers of these questions into one book which covers topics ranging from astrophysics, psychology, philosophy and religion. Thus, the book lives up to its namesake of explaining everything, as there feels to be no topic that was left unturned. One particular chapter I found very interesting was titled “Epigenetics-The Missing Link” by Helen Fisher. At a very basic level, epigenetics is the biological version of exp...

Within Chapter 14 the main purpose was to try to explain how we take in and process the external stimulus around us. The book and lecture discusses how we take information in through our 5 senses but then gets into how it is processed from there. It is explained through two approaches, the neural and cognitive approach. The neural approach focuses on how we take information and turn it into an image or what we see in our minds. While the cognitive approach is more concerned with the processes we go through in our brains in order to identify large and small changes within stimulus as well as how the approaches work together. A key concept  within this chapter has to do with recognition of objects. There are many steps in which our brain has to go through to say that yes a thing with four legs and a flat surface on top to recognizing it as a table. Without this concept we would not have common words to communicate with each other and would be describing things in excess.  A la...

Alexa Madoff Psychology: History & Systems Professor Mark Berg Testosterone Rex Book Report Post Testosterone Rex is a novel written by Cordelia Fine. Cordelia Fine is a psychologist who questions sex hormones and the male and female brains. Throughout the novel, she provides evidence that the inequality of sexes in society stems from an ancestral past and different natures. Cordelia Fine uses her research to take on the myths of sex, science, and society that may be misinterpreted or assumed by individuals. This paper will go over a few chapters in this novel that shows Cordelia Fine's perspective through her own evidence that a more equal society is based on both sexes' full human potential.  In chapter 1, the topic of biological sex and sexual selection is discussed. A British biologist Angus Bateman carried out a series of experiments with fruit flies. Bateman's research with fruit flies was inspired by Darwin's theory of sexual selection, ...

Chapter 11 History & Systems Chapter 11's focuses are the ways of measuring personality.  Personality was studied during the WW1 era to test soldiers' aptitude for serving.  One of the first used was the Woodworth Personal datasheet.  This test was a series of yes or no questions, however, it made the mistake of assuming that answers could be accepted at face value.  The second type of test used was projective tests, also known as the inkblot test.  In this test, the subject would look at a series of inkblots and tell the examiner what they saw.  There also was a thematic apperception test used which was similar to the inkblot test, but used more structure images, and asked the participants to create a story of the events leading up to the image, and the events following it.  The chapter also explains how personality traits are usually internally based and very specific to each individual, and that they exist dimensionally on a spectrum that ran...

Carly Ruppert Psychology: History & Systems Professor Berg  4/30/2020 Enlightenment Now Introduction:           Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker discussed various topics of public fears or opinions regarding the condition of the world. Pinker urges readers to acknowledge the facts that are often ignored in result of the overwhelming pessimism that is presented in today’s news, which suggest that life and the world as a whole are actually a lot more well off than we may belief. By discussing topics such as life, health, terrorism, and so on, Pinker introduces figures and data sets that show how the world has progressed over the last few decades in an attempt to battle the negativity that is accepted  by society today.  Chapter 5: Life           In this chapter, Pinker discusses the astonishing progress that has taken place within life expectancy. When you compare life expectancy in the 18 th  c...

This chapter is all about personality and how it relates to psychology. The different ways that personality was studied was with test. These were created during World War 1 to see if solider were fit for duty. There is the Woodworth personal data sheet which are yes or no question. The ink blot test is when a picture is show with an ink blot splatter and you say the first think you think it looks like. Thematic apperception test was similar. People were shown a picture and then they had to create a story based on the picture. More structured test were created in the early 1940’s. The test analysis use clusters of test items to measure the traits. Learned helplessness is something that was focused on in the slides. This is a belief that one is incapable of accomplishing tasks and has little or no control of the environment. An example of this would be when a child doesn’t do well on math test and assignments, they begin to feel like nothing will help their math skills. Elements of th...

The   purpose  of Chapter 18 was to discuss those who have used psychology in a non-scientific way for some other type of gain or to improve the lives of others, even though in most situations this was not the case. The author introduced different fields within psychology that have been used in an attempt to better the lives of humans or improve their success rates in certain aspects of life. The different branches that were discussed were health psychology, educational psychology, human engineering, environmental psychology, and performance psychology. The chapter also presented information on how psychology is used in advertising and propaganda, where people realized that it was possible to use psychology to influence the minds and feelings of others in ways that wouldn’t be invertly recognized and persuasive techniques. The author provided  information  on both the positive and negative reasoning on how these techniques are used. The positive reasoning that ...

Samantha Rodriguez History & Systems Professor Berg 04/21/20 Testosterone Rex Introduction: Throughout this novel, author Cordelia Fine debunks many myths about the differences between males and females that people have interpreted as evolutionary facts about sex. She has broken down the meaning of sex, the difference/lack of difference between the biological makeup of each sex, and the social construct created about sex. She gives great examples to help depict the way society has socially constructed the difference between a male and a female to be more distinct than it actually is. Cordelia uses analogies, scientific research, and other resources to help debunk myths, highlight the problems within society about the value/view of sex, and support her theories on the non-existent difference between males and females. Testosterone Rex calls to question how society defines sex and forces people to question how they define sex. This book also helps people to understand ...

The   purpose  of Chapter 11 was to discuss different theories and beliefs of the personality psychologists on how human personality is formed and how it can be analyzed and/or measured. The early contributions to this branch of psychology were from psychoanalysts. For example, Freud believed that adult personality was the outcome of the ego’s effort to control instinctual drives by channeling them into acceptable forms of behavior. Because traits are not visible objects or technically specific actions, researchers found it difficult to measure personality. This chapter provided certain  information  on different ways personality was measured, including with personal documents, interviews, ratings by observers, and questionnaires. Questionnaires are the most common tool in measuring personality that is still used today. A famous questionnaire is known as the Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory (MMPI) which was developed in the 1930’s by Starke Hathaway a...

The  purpose  of Chapter 14 was to discuss the different senses, which would be vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Most philosophers and psychologists considered perception as a fundamentally psychological function as the minds link to external reality. They also believed that everything we know comes from what our senses present to us. The eyes and sight were commonly compared to a camera, but because of the eyes constant jiggling back and forth without producing a blurred image, this metaphor isn’t as fitting. Edwin Boring described what he called the “first mystery of vision,” which asks why we have two eyes yet do not see in double vision. This chapter also provided many optical illusions to show how our vision and our brain can sometimes perceive things incorrectly or in a weird way. An example of an optical illusion that was used would be the image of the woman that was created by Edwin Boring, where it could either appear as a young woman or and old hag, and som...

            Max Werthimer is known as a Gestalt visionary and Wolfgang Kolhler was the spokesperson for Gestalt psychology who traveled to the Unites states to promote it. There is not an exact translation of Gestalt but a close one would be configuration, holistic and pattern. It incorporates a broad field of ideas. It is basically the psychology of thinking. Werthimer main focal point was the difference between productive thinking, and reproductive thinking. It really focused on perspectives. The perspectives of the scientific method reflect their acceptance of field physics as a model for physics. The perspectives of the mind and brain reject reductionist and linear models of the brain. The influence Gestalt psychology had was great. It created approaches to other topics and was put into textbooks and mainstream psychology. Kurt Lewin used Gestalt concepts to study individual and social behavior. He wanted to see how people int...