Blog Post #4

For this blog post, I read the article “What? Me Biased?” The article was written about a year ago before the 2008 Presidential Elections. Researchers used an implicit association test (IAT) to measure whether people regarded one candidate to be more “foreign” or “American” than others. When the participants where primed to think of either race, age, or gender they would think differently of a candidate as opposed to just responding naturally. (For example if they were focusing on age they might subconsciously see John McCain as less American than Barack Obama).

What surprised me most in the article was that most people in the study, regardless of race or ethnicity, view Americans as white. The example in the article of Lucy Liu v. Kate Winslet makes sense. If you didn’t follow pop culture too closely or know anything about either women you would probably assume Winslet was American and Liu was Chinese, but the truth is that Winslet is British and Liu is Asian-American. And when it was between Barack Obama and John McCain both were view as equally American when the participants were told to consider political parties and age, but when it came to skin color Barack was perceived as less American.

I think this study was very interesting because a lot of people who say they believe in equality might be subconsciously biased towards. I couldn’t think of a lot of ways that this research is relevant to my life, and I also don’t think I can agree with the research. After taking an IAT test about religion, I feel like the testing method really says nothing about my subconscious beliefs. The results of my religion IAT showed that I don’t favor any particular region or disfavor them. I perceive them all equally, with exception of Islam. Apparently I view Islam more negatively, which is not true at all. The test tells you to press a certain key for good words (superb, wonderful, good, great, etc.) and another key for bad words (terrible, awful, horrible, etc.). Then it tells you to keep pressing the same key for good words and for words that relate to a certain religion, and mark everything else the same as you would for bad words. The reason why I perceived Islam more negatively is because I pushed the key too hard and ended up marking my answer wrong. Of course, I could be an exception to this rule, but I’m still pretty skeptical about the accuracy of this kind of research.

Blog Post #3

I did the “Time to Think?” and “Seeing More Than Your Eye Does” activities. The first activity measured the amount of time it takes for you to see a black square on the screen and click a button. In this activity, I learned that it takes a few hundred milliseconds to see the square and click the button, no matter how prepared you are. In the second activity I had to close one eye and focus on a black cross on the screen. When I did that, a black dot on the other side of the screen “disappeared” because of a blind spot in my vision. I learned that the brain tends to fill-in and make up information it doesn’t see which is why when the black dot disappeared it seemed like that area was just blank. When there was a line going through the dot part of the line would disappear, but not all of it. I thought that was kind of surprising, I didn’t realize that our brains did all of that. It’s crazy to think that a small portion of what I see is made up by my brain. Perhaps everything really isn’t as it seems?
In this unit I learned about all of the different parts of the brain structure. I knew that different parts of the brain controlled different things, but now I know when I’m having a hard time remembering something I can blame the hippocampus. I also learned that our handedness can affect the organization of our brains. For example, some left-handed people will use the right hemisphere of their brain to process speech while many other left and right handed people use the left hemisphere. I never really thought that handedness had that big of an effect on the mind. I also thought this was particularly interesting because I can write pretty well with both hands (either way my handwriting looks like chicken-scratch). It makes me wonder which hemisphere of the brain I use to process certain information.

I thought the video, “The Man With Two Brains” was really interesting! It’s really cool that a person with a split brain could draw to distinct shapes at the same time, but a person with a “normal” brain couldn’t. I also though it was pretty intriguing that he could draw the telephone after seeing it flash on the screen but he couldn’t say what it was until after he drew it. It’s also amazing that he can literally do two things at once, sometimes I wish I could do that, but I think I’ll keep my brain whole for awhile.

Blog Post #2 - Related to "Critically Thinking" Chapter

Research is important for many reasons. In psychology, basic research is necessary to provide general information. Applied research expands on basic research – instead of focusing on general knowledge, information is gathered on specific topics or areas of study within psychology. The research gathered allows psychologists, or scientists in general, to learn more about a problem so they can form hypotheses, conduct experiments, and form new conclusions from the resulting data.

While perusing the Psyblog website, the blog titled“18 Ways Attention Goes Wrong” jumped out at me. After reading through it I noticed that several of the items apply or have applied to my life at one point or another. The first one that I noticed was #4 – Pain. The post talks about how chronic pain can pull your attention away from a task and force you to constantly re-focus. Last year I had a headache for nearly two months. The pain was excruciating, and I remembered how hard it was for me to do my homework most nights. Sometimes I would end up re-reading the same passage over and over again without realizing it and without getting the main idea. I also found #7 – Errors of automaticity, and #9 – Ironic processes of control, to be quite interesting. Errors in automaticity occur when we become so set into a routine or behavior. Every morning I have the same routine of washing my face and brushing my teeth, and I know I’ve occasionally had moments where I’ve been distracted by other thoughts and have almost but soap on my toothbrush instead of toothpaste. Errors like these happen to a lot of people. In my final choice, ironic processes of control, I have learned that too much attention can be bad too. There have been times when I have been so focused about something, like shooting an arrow at a target that I’ve actually missed the target entirely.

In this class I have learned about the different perspectives of psychology. It never occurred to me that psychologists would study why we turn red in the face when we get angry (neuroscience). Some of the other perspectives I had heard of in some shape or form and others surprised me. However, they all answer specific questions related to psychology. No single area is more or less important because they all benefit the psychologists and researchers that study behaviors and mental processes. I also learned how misleading charts and graphs can be and that the wording of survey questions can make a difference in the results. Conducting research and representing data can be very tricky and has an impact on how we perceive and interpret information.

Chapter 1 - Thinking Critically with Psychological Science

Before beginning this class, I knew that psychology included the study of the mind and human behaviors. However, the mental picture I envisioned was one of a patient laying on a couch talking about his thoughts and feelings while a doctor wrote scribbled on a pad of paper. Obviously, I knew my vision of a psychologist was stereotypical and somewhat off base but I couldn’t form a better mental picture because I didn’t know enough to form new ideas. Now I’ve realized the psychology is everywhere. It’s not always apparent at the first glance, but if you really think about it becomes blatantly obvious.
Everyday we experience psychology in the way we act and interpret information. What we choose to believe is true, our dreams, and our feelings about our experiences can all be explained and studied in psychology. Every time I accept something new or form an opinion, psychology is playing a role in my life.

Two things I found interesting in this chapter were about correlation and causation and illusionary correlations. Reading about this reminded me of an activity that I participated in for CTSO State Officer Training last summer. The leader of the workshop asked for two volunteers. He told them they were going to be reporters. He was going to ask them to leave the room while he told the rest of the group about a dream he had. Then he would bring the reporters back in one at a time and have them try to figure out what is dream was about. However they could only ask yes or no questions.

Two girls volunteered to be reporters, and once they left the room, the workshop leader explained what we were really going to do. He didn’t actually have a dream to decide – when the reporters asked us questions that ended with letters between A and M in the alphabet we were to collectively respond with a “Yes.” All other questions were to be answered with a no. When the first reporter came back she was obviously shocked when her first guesses about the dream were correct and then even more confused when her guesses were wrong. The workshop leader encouraged her to believe that she was working in the right path and that she had guessed his dream perfectly. When the second reporter came in the first reporter stayed inside the room. When the two had guessed completely different dreams – their confusion only became greater.

Both girls thought they were on the right track because a whole group convinced them that they were right. As each they began eliminating possibilities their dreams became more and more far fetched and even less likely, but in their own minds they thought their ideas were plausible because the rest of the group was so convincing. But when the second reporter asked her questions she noticed the how confused the first reporter was becoming and began to doubt some of the things we were telling her. Eventually she felt like she was beginning to notice a pattern in the data. Even though her guesses were wrong, it does prove that we try to find pattern in random data as illusionary correlation suggests. Both experiments show correlation and causation – when they thought they were right it caused them to believe more and more false fact.

I think it’s very ironic that I’ve witnessed a sort of psychological experience without really realizing it. I think it’s funny, that even after reading about it I know that I have and probably still will “fall” for tricks like that.

Introductory Post :)

Hello! My name is Larissa Speerstra. I am 17 years-old and I am a senior at Gilmanton High School.

One BIG thing that has shaped me as a person was/is the experience of being a state officer for Wisconsin Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). When I was a sophomore I was elected state secretary and last spring I was elected state president. Having to go through the process of campaigning and getting elected helped me gain a lot of confidence in myself that I didn't have when I was younger. I've also learned a lot of useful public speaking, leadership, and team building skills that have helped me in a lot of other areas. Basically, I would be a totally different person if it weren't for my involvement in FBLA.

I believe that studying psychology is important because understanding human behaviors and interactions will be beneficial for my future plans of becoming a marketing manager. Based on what I know, psychology is a social science, and it also deals with one's thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Therefore psychology would probably include studying human behaviors and interactions whether they are conscious or sub-conscious. Psychology can help one understand why they have a strange dream or react certain ways in a situation.