Top 5 Artifacts
Artifact 5: Self Construal and Emotion
Reflection: With a partner, I had to determine which gender came to mind when I looked at each occupation. It was fairly hard to complete this task because although I know jobs are not gender based it was hard to not associate jobs with a specific gender. When comparing my partner’s and my responses’ we had similar answers. (See picture below) We usually recognize gender roles in terms of socially acceptable behaviors such as masculinity or femininity, but they also exist in the workforce. Some jobs are socially acceptable for men like blue-collar jobs while others are socially acceptable for women like a makeup artist. Overall, jobs are gender neutral but when it comes to societal gender roles it seems as though they are not. This artifact is my favorite because I love engaging in controversial topics.
Artifact 4: Body Language
Reflection: For this module, I had to find a picture that represents my culture. My race is African American and I have American culture. Although I was born in America, my ancestors are from Africa and for the assignment, I chose to focus on my ethnic background. I chose an elephant as a representation of my culture because I associate elephants with Africa. In this module, I learned that culture and diversity are unique to each individual and there are many factors that could make up one’s cultural background. Culture is a combination of factors like race, gender, ethnicity, language, nationality, and religion.
Artifact 3: Identity
Reflection: I personally really enjoyed this artifact because it focuses on personality. For this artifact, I had to discuss whether I believe personality is consistent or inconsistent based upon influences of context. I believe that my personality is really consistent because there are not many times where my behaviors did not match my personality traits. As I mentioned in the item to archive, I am a very patient and laid-back individual, and working at customer service people challenge my character all the time, but I do not let them. There have been times where customers have threatened me or cursed at me, but their actions did not bring me out of my character which is why I believe my personality is consistent.
Artifact 2: Culture
Reflection: This artifact is from module 12 where we discussed communication, culture, and language. For this artifact, I watched a YouTube video on how body language may shape who we are as a person. I personally enjoyed this artifact for a couple of reasons. First, I enjoyed this article because It emphasized how nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is important because it expresses our true feelings. If a person occupies a lot of space, they may feel confident whereas if they occupy less space, they may lack confidence. Another reason why I enjoyed this artifact is because I learned that I could change how I feel by becoming more aware of my body language. Whenever I feel nervous instead of crossing my arms and pacing back and forth, I should stand in a confident posture and occupy space; this will increase my confidence levels and also boost testosterone levels.
Artifact 1: Gender Roles
Reflection: This module focused on color and emotion. For this artifact, I had to put different colors into different categories and associate an emotion with a color. For the first part of the artifact, I put all the dark colors together, the medium tone colors together, and the bright colors together. For the second part of the artifact, I associated dark colors with negative emotions and bright colors with positive emotions. I always thought that the association between colors and emotions was universal but after completing this module I learned that there are some cross-cultural differences. For example, Americans associated red with envy while Russia does not. I found this information really interesting.
