current event #3

Okay, so in the chapter they talked about how after age 3and a half, a person loses their conscious memories of experiences from before that age. They say this in mainly due to the fact that the major areas of our brain weren't developed at the time. I think that either the age estimate is wrong, or i am just a unique individual. I say this because i can remember a lot of things from when i was little. I can remember my mom changing my diaper, and i can even kinda remember my mom rocking me in a chair. I somewhat remember sleeping in my crib sometimes and seeing the toys dangle above me from that thing. I didn't know what they were at the time, but it didn't scare me at least. I don't know what my deal is however that i can remember that, but i was wondering if anyone else has memories before the age of 3 and a half?

How to Make People Believe in Telepathy

In this experiment they talked about how likely and easily people are to be convinced of telepathy. They did the experiment by putting two people in different sound-proof rooms, and asking one of them to "send" and image of a card they were looking at. One group, the control, was not allowed to see their partner before the experiment, and the variable was allowed to. The variable group was far more confident going into the room as a result, and felt they were more likely to succeed in the telepathy test. The results showed however that telepathy is nonexistant, and is no more successful as chance.

I thought this experiment was totally ridiculous. I do experience odd occurences where i'll be thinking of a person and they call me, but i believe that to be just chance and nothing more. Other people suggest that between lovers, if they think about eachother enough and strong enough the other person will be able to feel there feelings. I think that this too is a shaky theory. I believe the researchers gave a valiant effort, but were saddened to discovery that they wasted their time.

chapter 4 tom nichols

This chapter had a lot of information present, and i found that it was quite complex. I didn't really agree with some things that the book stated, but thats most likely due to my beliefs as a person.
I learned in this chapter that heritability accounts for more than just genetics. Whenever i had heard that term before i had thought it meant about inherited traits from genetics such as brown hair and parts of intelligence. Before the book said that the enviroment the individual grows up in accounts for the development of that intelligence trait, ability to speak well, shyness, outspokeness etc., i thought that the person was given most of those things to begin with. Truly i was wrong. If you were to put a child in a room for 12 years and test his intteligince with his identical twin who has the same traits as him but has been in the real world for those years, the child in the room would not be as intelligent as the other. This is true because of the different enviroment the other child who was not in the room. He was able to learn whereas the other child was not.
Though i know the scientists and psychologists are smart, I disagree with darwins theory of evolution. I learned that many scientists believe that the world came from a "big bang", and that we developed from the most superior cell at the time, hence "survival of the fittest." This is a completely ridiculous theory to think that all the complex life around us developed from cells that appeared out of nothing. It simply isn't pheasable. I am an adamant christian, and i do believe certain creature have evolved, to an extent. It makes sense that bacteria evolve to bypass new medicines. Penicillin, which at one time killed many forms of bacteria, isn't as effective as it once was due to the fact bacteria evolved to bypass it.
Lastly, i learned that people who i thought to be arrogant, blockheaded, or narcacistic may be individualists. the book then asked if we thought we were an individualist who went after their own personal goals, or a collectivist who pursues the goals of a group. I believe i am a collectivist, but to some extent an individualist. Everyone has some things that they wish to accomplish, though being a selfless person sounds nobel, and it indeed is, i don't think anyone besides Jesus is/was a true selfless person.
What really perked my intrest was talking about social mores or norms. This is what society expects you do to. Americas norms are far different from other countries, and i learned that it would be very interesting do go against some of these.

Current event #2

So in this chapter we talked about heritability. Heritability is who your are based on your genes you inherit and the enviroment you grow up in. So my brother has a trait where he asks the same question over and over but with different wording everytime. He doesn't do it to annoy me or anyone else, he just does it. What is odd, is that my grandma is the same way. So i thought that maybe it was connected in a way to how he acts (my mother does it minorly too). I thought this was very interesting in the fact that we are talking about it today in class most likely. I don't know if its true or if its just something a psychologist thought he discovered, but i don't think its a genetic thing unless its a disease or something close to it.

Chapter 3---Tom nichols

One thing that i learned was of dual processing of our minds. Dual processing is the principle that infromation is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks. Meaning, we actually know more than we know. Most of our usual thinking, feeling, and acting happen ourside of our conscious awareness. The bookd gave us an example of a woman who was blinded and was still able to place an encelope in a narrow mail-space without seeing it. This shows that our minds can see things our eyes cannot. Its effects me because i never thought how much our mind keeps track of. It knows when a curn is coming even when we are busy talking on the phone, and makes sure we wont run into anything most of the time.

The pare on hypnosis really is a part that i found really surprising, I never knew that hypnosis could alleviat pain, has therapeutic benefits, and can force people to do just about anything, depending on how hyponotized they are. Last year, my school hired a hypnotist, a rather good one, to come to our school . It was really funny to see my friends up there basically looking half asleep or whatever. I learned from that there were different degrees of hypnosis, and that it varies on the person and the command of the hypnotist how hypnotized an individual is.

It also surprised me to learn of how importan sleep actually was. I never know that there were four different stages of sleep, and that if you are interrupted to much, or cant sleep deep enough you will developed sleep disorders such as sleep apnea. It made me change my views on how much sleep i should get, and i am excited to see what our sleep/dream activity will hold.

I agree with the books view on addictive substances. This can be supported because I have an uncle who likes the drink too much. As time went on, he neede more alcohol to feed his addiction to get to the happy place. When he finally decided to quit, I watched him go through the hard difficult phases of withdrawal. Everything form headaches to being angry for no reason. Thankfully, he never was violent because I like him very much. Something I disagree about is how the book thinks some addictions are influenced by biological traits or hereditary. I strongly disagree with that because I don't think there is a gene that makes you an alcoholic or a drug addicit. It is mostly about bad experiences the person has had that they want to forget about, and what encironment they frew up in that makes them more likely to be and addict. Peer pressure is also a way choldren become addicts early on.

Its important for children to have proper environments to grow up in. It is also direly important that they are all well informed of the consequences in engaging in these said activities. Its really sad to see how many people do drugs, and why people love alcohol so much.

Are you a liar psychblog

I did this psyblog article because it interested me alot, and i wanted to read the story too because i commented on somebody's and the article was interesting. In this article, they tested the statistic that people lie three times withing the first ten minutes of meeting someone. They took 121 people and tested them by seeing how many times they would lie within a ten minutes conversation with a new person. The shocking thing is that 60% of the people claimed to have lied, and 40% claimed they hadn't. Proving that the statistic was correct indeed.

I didn't fully agree with it, but at the same time i did. People lie all the time, whether it can be helped or not. Its human nature to lie, its called sin. No matter how hard we try, you will eventually tell a lie. Even if it is a little lie like saying im great when you really aren't feeling great. It may be for the right intentions and it may not be, but nonetheless the statistic was proven to be feasible.

Personal blog for week 3

So psychology, the most important thing that is going on in my life is the rather strange dreams i have been having. It fits in with our new chapter pretty well I would say. One dream i had me and my brother were forced to join a gang fight in front of Best Buy. We then ran away and made a last stand at my friend andy borchardt's house, which we won. Another, i was floating in the clouds with a friend and we were angels to people. Yea, i know its wierd, but its what im dreaming. I also had a dream where i was playing god and made my own planet. I had a dream also that i was batmann and superman and wearing football pads at the same time, it was pretty sweet i thought. The point is, is that i don't think about theses things when i go to bed at all. Nothing previously happened that would have caused me to dream those things, and i want to know what my classmates think. (you can call me crazy if you want)