Chapter 16 Not My Type

Attribution:
The process of attribution is where we simple attribute one's behavior to internal dispostion 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 best friend is being crabby not because she is like that all the time, but because something is or has happened in her personal life to cause her to be this way. She may have had a fight with someone close, had a bad day, car wreck, a death in the family, or any of the above to cause her to be that way. The fundamental attribution error is the overestimation of the influence of personality, and understanding their influence on situations.

Stereotyping:
Steroetypes are when we generalize a belief or action about a certain group of people. For example, blondes are dumb, rednecks like snowmobiling, southerners like nascar, or all which a group is assciated. Illusory correlations are when people tend to overestimate a link between two variables and the correlation is small or none existant. Examples of this are the team won the game because they prayed beforehand, wearing his lucky shoes made him jump faster, all things where there is an associated link between an event. This is how stereotypes are made.

Chapter 13

I found it interesting in the fact that babies always suck on their thumbs. The kids that grow up know that it is not in the style to do so, so they smoke instead because it still gives that oral response that smoking gives. that was extremely interesting.
Inkblots were also very interesting to me. when showing people the same image of an inkblot, their personality will decide what they will see in an inkblot. For example, If the person is a serial killer they may see a victim, weapon, or something to of that nature. Also how people describe images or pictures projects their inner feelings. They may not notice, but people all have a different way of showing their personality.
We all go through the who are we stage. Some people will not admit this. Whether it is sports or what will you study in school. All these things are choices that our personality could have an effect on. When you ask yourself, "Who am I" a lot of things come to mind. When we did the 20 who am i questions, it reminded me of a good example of showing ourselves who we think we are. I really liked this chapter because it helped us understand how one finds oneself

Think Yourself Healthy by Appreciating the Exercise You Already Do

So, this psyblog dealt with how a person could lose weight by thinking they were doing sufficient amounts of excercise already. In an experiment hotel attendants were told that the excercise they did for their jobs was sufficient for a large amount of their daily excercise. Without the people doing any extra workouts or eating more, the people were monitored for four weeks. At the end of this period, the people, on average, lost two pounds. The experiment then said it dealt a lot with mind over matter.

I totally believe that this is true. I am a firm believer in mind over matter. If you think something is true, or believe something will happen, it will generally happen. This experiment proved that point. Your mind has more control over people's bodies than everybody thinks, and it is amazing what your mind can do to your body by just believing something.

Current event chapter 9

I was thinking very intently today about why a act the way i do. Most people say i am a very nice, amiable person who loves life. My explanation is that it is because of the environment i was raised in. My family is a very happy family, even my extened relations. I grew up with little conflict, and therefore appreciate the little things in life, and treat people well. The book says many things about how people's personalities are formed, but i think what i said above is the correct answer?

Tom Nichols Chapter 9 blog

I found it extremely interesting how they showed how animals can be trained to develope vocabularies, whether audible or signed. Its really interesting to think that dolphins and chimps can understand what you say sometimes.
I thought when the book talked about framing, it stated it very nicely. When you get complimented or rewarded when doing something, it is more likeable, and the person is likely to do it again. It was an iteresting topic and i thought immediately about how you get stickers on your helmet in football for doing something phenominal.
Insight and instinct were very interesting to learn about as well. It really made sense of why some people are just smarter than others. Smart people have better instinct and can remember/store information better to be brougt up instantly easier. They also seem to have more flashes of insight, or inspirational thinking moments

Memory is very important to who we are as human beings. Who would we be if we were like Clive Waring, we couldn't remember anything 20 secs in the past? We would practically be non-existent because we wouldnt remember how to do anyting at all. Everything from reproducing to eating would eventually fail to be remembered, and we would cease to exist as people. It would be a humanless world if we were all like Clive

I see my memories differently, but not too much differently. it surprisede me to read how much our memories fabricate memories to fill in gaps in stories. I realized before this that our minds did it, but not to such an extent as this. I still truse my memories, but now its just a matter of do i tell them to people or not. I dont tell stories to people if i know that something if not right very often, and that will just reinforce my thinking.

The conceptof memory repression was interesting. i knew about how people in traumatizing events sometimes repress the memory and don't remember it, but i never realized that it actually isn't lost. Most of the time the memory is always there, the person just chooses not to remember it. Sometimes even, trying to forget something leads to creating persistant and vivid replays of it, such as veterans. God Bless Them.

Tom Nichols Chapter 7

I found the part about sexual arousal very interesting. It honestly stunned me to read some of these things. The part about being aroused by onion breath was very interesting, the man sounded very unintelligent to me. Besides that fact, it was cool to see how much this relates to my life. Something that you haven't eaten or whatever for a long time can be instantly remembered by the scent of something similar to it.

An example of conditioning that has happened to me is operant conditioning, i think. I am pretty good at sports, and with constant repetion i get the feeling sometime i can "do things with my eyes closed." Like with golf, i have golfed so many times, i can tee off without looking at the ball once. It just becomes ingrained in my mind, almost second nature.