ATA5

Assignment five prompted us to do five nice things for others. Due to COVID I did more nice things for others than for stranger but did include some strangers when I was able to. I think this assignment really helped illustrate the concept of empathy and the effect helping others has on the mood of the person being helped and the helper. Our text book talks about empathetic joy and altruism. Helping others produces a positive effect for both people and having that positive feeling helps promote helping others (Baron R. A., Branscombe N. R., 2017). Of course, when I helped my family it felt good to help them. I always try to help my family in anyway I can. When I did something nice for strangers, I learned that even the smallest gesture can put a smile on someone’s face. One day, I did something nice for someone else where I did not get to see there face. It still felt good to be nice even if I did not see their reaction. Just being nice produced positive emotions. I think from now on I’ll do more to be nice to others and help spread positive energy.

I chose this image because helping others spreads happiness to those involved.

ATA4

Assignment four consisted of learning about the different styles of love: eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania and agape. I began the assignment by taking the styles of love quiz and then reviewed my results. Overall my two top scores were agape and eros. Eros is a passionate and romantic type of love and agape is a selfless, all giving kind of love. I compared and contrasted my top scores of love styles to my bottom scores and discussed whether or not I agreed with them. Prior to this week I had never really learned about these different types of love. I have taken personality quizzes and other types of quizzes along the same lines but never a love style quiz. I thought it was interesting learning about the different characteristics and statistics of where each gender typically falls in.

In another class, we reviewed dating profiles and compared and contrasted what women look for in a partner versus what men look for. I did note a trend that women look for a partner who is emotionally and financially stable, playing into the role of women looking for a provider. For men I had noted that they looked for women who wanted to have fun and were easy going. Comparing those results to the love style quiz results, I can also see a relationship there specifically with pragma and ludus. Pragma is a very logical and practical approach to love. According to Hendrick C. and Hedrick S. findings woman have a statistically higher match with pragma love style than men. This matched up with the dating profile findings with women and them wanting a partner who could help provide for them and be supportive, almost like checking off that on a list. Ludus is a very fun and casual approach to love. Men were more likely to match up with this style of love over women. When looking over dating profiles for men, I did see a lot of men looking for someone who just wants to have fun rather than looking for something serious right off the bat.

I did find this assignment personally interesting to me because I had never taken the time to really analyze what kind of love style fits me best. At the end of the assignment I did analyze whether or not my current relationship effected my answers in the quiz. I think it does because when I think of a relationship I’m going to automatically think of my current boyfriend and our dynamic. However, I don’t think my results would have been much different if I was not currently in a relationship.

ATA2

Assignment two was centered around the self and self presentation. I chose images that I felt represented me and my experiences. I found the assignment interesting because it made me think about who I am and the experiences that led me to where I’m at today. I’ve learned about self presentation before and how it plays into other peoples perceptions of us. Just like job interviews, self presentation plays a big role in how employers view us and their perception of us.

I chose this image because I feel like it represents a big part of who I am. My family has always been a large influence in my life. My mom is the one who taught me to be adventurous and live life to the fullest. My mom is definitely the one who sparked my love for traveling as well.

ATA1

For assignment one I learned about representative, availability, anchoring and adjustment, and status quo heuristic. I was able to learn about each one and how they are relevant in our everyday life as well as how heuristic can lead us astray when it comes to decision making. I remember in one of my statistics classes I learned how bias plays a role in statistics to manipulate the audience. It is important as a researcher and as an individual to avoid bias so we aren’t misled. I think that idea was very similar to being careful in how heuristic effects our decisions. It is easy to judge based on appearances but we should always do more research in order to avoid biases or prejudice. I found learning about the various types of heuristic very interesting. When discussing availability heuristic I used an example of fearing shark attacks because of movies like Jaws. I used that because my mom is absolutely terrified of going into the ocean because of movies like that and hearing stories on the news. She thinks shark attacks are a regular thing that happens despite me telling her otherwise and she won’t step a foot into the water. It also seems like a fairly common fear since I was able to find a picture of it online!