Blog 10

At the beginning of the semester, one of my expectations was to be able to understand why different societies around the country and world operate and interact the way that they do, leading into an additional expectation to be able to differentiate between societies just by being given the different aspects of those societies. Although I didn’t achieve this expectation, I gained a deeper understanding in how I present myself when in the presence of different groups of people. I also gained more knowledge about the stereotypes against women, prejudice and discrimination, advertisements in the media, and sexual preference amongst males and females. In regards to the course adjectives, I feel as if I have achieved most of, if not all, the course objectives, especially the objective that states I would be able to make connections between courses and other outside experiences.

Throughout the semester, my attitudes about social psychology have changed drastically. Prior to taking this course, I used to think of myself in a very specific light; however, in learning more about myself and my emotional intelligence, I realized that there are more layers to my personality than I initially thought. Additionally, I’ve learned that Social Psychology embodies more than people interacting with one another; instead, Social Psychology also embodies the effects of attitudes and behaviors on social interaction.

Over the last few months, I feel like I’ve grown as a college student for the sole reason that I had to be more diligent when it came to completing my assignments and understanding the concepts from the course. These last couple of months have forced me to be more hands-on with my learning in a sense that I had to make sure I was keeping up with the material due to the lack of weekly meetings; however, if I were to take the class again, I would focus on completing my items to archive on a weekly basis. Throughout the course of this class, I found myself falling behind on my items to archive because there were no specific due dates. Despite this setback, one skill that I’ve gained from this class that I can utilize in the future is the ability to reflect on all of the essays that I’ve written since the beginning of this class. In these last few months, I’ve had to reread and look over all of my assignments and reflect on them in a very meticulous way, which is something I’ve never had to do before. In writing blogs and assignments that build off of one another, I’ve strengthened my skill in forming connections between concepts that are both similar to and different from one another. By gaining this skill, I know I will have an easier time connecting different themes and ideas to one another if given the task to do so.

Pictured above is a visual of growth mindset vs fixed mindset. I chose this photo as a visual representation of how I’ve grown throughout this course because growth mindset is something that I had to learn when navigating the class. At the beginning of this course, I was very fixated on the concepts I thought I knew, and it was hard for me to find motivation to excel in this class; however, as the semester continued, I learned how to use constructive criticism in order to make work better.

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Blog 9

With only a couple more weeks left in this course, I feel like I’ve learned more about myself and my social environment in just a few months than I ever have in the last couple of years. With that being said, the ideas of heuristics, exploitation of women in advertisement, and self-regulation are the top three concepts from this course that have resonated with me the most. As illustrated in Assignment Takeaway 1 of my e-Portfolio, heuristics has helped me in being more conscious about the decisions I make everyday. For example, status quo heuristics describes making a decision between old and new products. Prior to learning about this, I used to pick older products over newer ones because they were around longer; however, I broke this tendency after learning about status quo heuristics. In addition to heuristics, exploitation of women in advertisement is another topic that can be illustrated in Blog 6 of my e-Portfolio. In learning about how women are hyper-sexualized and objectified in hundreds of advertisements worldwide, I made it a goal of mine to callout this type of negative behavior whenever I see it happening, whether it be in person or through social media posts. In doing this, I hope to help young women, such as my younger cousins and sister, understand that they have complete control over their bodies and lives and that they have a voice in depicting how they and other women should be seen. Lastly, the concept of self-regulation is a topic that has resonated with me this semester. As I addressed in Blog 7 of my e-Portfolio, emotional intelligence (EQ) influences how well an individual can regulate his or her behavior in response to different events. Before taking several emotional intelligence tests, I used to think that I could handle my emotions well, but according to my EQ results, I still have a long way to go. I learned that I need to practice relating to people more, and I also need to practice breathing techniques to prevent myself from acting in an instinctive-manner.

In working on my e-Portfolio, I’ve learned that some concepts in the blogs I’ve written can be applied to the concepts in my assignment takeaways. For example, the idea of music and relationships having connection from Blog 3 can be applied to the one of the styles of love from Assignment Takeaway 4. In Assignment Takeaway 4, I described the style of Storge as being the idea that love that is deeply rooted in friendship. In Blog 3, I used the relationship between my girlfriend and I as an example of how I have a deep musical bond with someone. This musical bond directly relates to how my girlfriend and I were attracted to one another as friends before anything else. Because we had the same tastes in pop music and ballads, we became friends very quickly. This type of platonic love developed into a relationship once we realized that we valued the same ideals of stimulation, security, and love. This entire process is an example of the style of Storge, the idea that love is founded on friendship.

This course has also been applicable to other courses that I’ve taken in the past. For example, the idea of self-presentations can be applied to theatre classes that I took at the Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Salem High School. Self-presentation is the act of changing how one acts based on the type of people that he or she is around. In theatre, actors and actresses play a specific role based on the type of play that they’re performing. These performers also have to take into account the type of audience they’re performing for. This is where self-presentation comes into play. For example, actors and actresses are expected to present themselves in a more friendly, child-like manner when performing for elementary schools or younger audiences, whereas if they’re performing for an older crowd, performers are expected to act in more of a mature way.

The visual representation above is a collage of the notes/directions I wrote prior to completing both of the assignments. This collage represents how I made connections between Blog 3 and Assignment Takeaway 4. I went through all of my notes from the e-Portfolio assignments and looked for key concepts that were similar to one another. The highlighted bullet points from the top photo (red-orange) are related to the highlighted bullet point from the bottom photo (blue-green).

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Blog 8

Prior to reading Sexual Conflict: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Mating Battleground, I’d never heard of the term, sexual conflict. In reading this article, I learned that sexual conflict is the idea of a man and a woman having two different preferences about reproduction that essentially impacts if and how often the two have sexual intercourse. After reading this article, I was able to understand that sexual attraction is deeper than hormones and sexual tendencies; for example, one of the reasons why men and women have different preferences in sexual activity is due to the amount of obligatory parental investment a man and woman have. Personally, I find this idea of sexual conflict to be confusing and almost dramatic. The reason I feel this way is because I also believe in a man and woman’s choice in intimate activity, and for many people, the choice of sexual activity is deeply rooted in religion and faith; however, most of the research from this article makes complete sense.

In learning about sexual conflict during the three stages of the mating process, I feel as if it makes sense as to why some men would lead women on and why some women would be more flirtatious when it comes to trying to engage in sexual activity. This leads into the discussion as to ways in which men upset women and vice versa. For example, men upset women with their lack of communication and emotional investment. From personal experiences, I’ve learned that women are more open to talking about problems, whereas men are more hesitant to talk about their feelings and emotions. For many women, this hesitation upsets them. Another example of how men upset women is when men believe in sexist views, such as encouraging women to cook dinner for their boyfriends/husbands every night. When talking about how women upset men, men find it upsetting when women are indecisive about things as simple as where to eat or as complex as their attitudes towards certain situations. Again, from personal experiences, I’ve learned that oftentimes women can’t make up their minds about what they do or don’t want and how they feel or don’t feel. Their inability to make concrete decisions make men upset and/or irritated. Another example of how women upset men is when women are quick to make assumptions about the slightest inconveniences.

The visual of the meme above is an example of how women upset men. Like I previously stated, men find it upsetting when women are indecisive about things as simple as where to eat. This idea is represented by an edited meme shown above, with scenes from the movie, The Notebook.

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Blog 7

The concept of self-regulation has to do with how an individual controls his or her actions in response to some event or stimuli, while emotional intelligence (EQ) is the idea of oneself being aware and conscious of his or her emotions when experiencing something. When talking about the relationship between the two, it is important to understand that one influences the other. More specifically, your emotional intelligence influences how well you can regulate your behavior in response to different events. For example, if someone has a high EQ, or is very aware of their various emotions, the more likely that person is good at regulating their behaviors and emotions when experiencing events that evoke stress, frustration, or other feelings. This can be applied to the opposite scenario, in which a person with a low EQ, or lacks the ability to understand their emotions, is less likely to self-regulate in an efficient way. People with low EQs are more likely to act on instinct, which could essentially lead to undesired consequences.

Personally, I believe that EQ is a good indicator on how well people can socialize with their peers and colleagues. Likewise, I also think it is a good indicator for how efficient people tend to be. In other words, I think emotional intelligence is helpful in giving people a basis of how and why they react to certain situations the way they do and how they can improve themselves in order to be more empathetic towards other people. For example, I took two different variations of emotional intelligence tests, and I received two very different results. Both tests reflected how I’m able to identify common emotions in myself and other people: however, I also learned that I have room for a lot of improvement, such as trying to relate to other people more. Additionally, I was able to gain an understanding in how I can control my emotions so I don’t react in an instinctive manner, which is something that I tend to do very frequently. An example of how I can improve these aspects is by using breathing techniques described in the video, Self Regulation and Emotional Intelligence, by Linda Ferguson.

Illustrated above is a collage of two of my results from two different emotional intelligence tests. I wanted to use both of my results to showcase how emotional intelligence isn’t tested based on specific themes and topics, rather, it’s a combination of multiple aspects. As I previously stated, both of these test results also showcase how I still have room for improvement in increasing my EQ.

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Blog 6

Prior to listening to the TedTalk, The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women by Jean Kilbourne, I never realized the abundance of advertisements that focus on stereotyping and dehumanizing women. When Kilbourne began to show examples of explicit advertisements, I found myself startled by how revealing the photographs were. Not only this, but I found myself cringing every time an advertisement had phrases that related to sexual behavior. After this video, I began to think about this topic a little bit more. In doing this, I noticed that the majority of these types of ads were prominent in magazines. Even though I don’t read magazines anymore, I can recall seeing various advertisements of little girls between the ages ten and twelve wearing minimal clothing in teen catalogs from when I was a little girl. When I was younger, I used to read all types of teenage magazines, such as Tiger Beat, but I never thought about how these ads were impacting my mental and physical health. However, looking back at it now, I can vividly remember how insecure I felt about my body and appearance simply because I didn’t look like the girls I was exposed to in those magazines.

After listening to Jean Kilbourne speak about the dangers of normalizing these types of views on women and young girls, I began to question whether or not companies still presented their products in these ways. After researching these types of advertisements, I found myself to be extremely exhausted and disappointed with everything I had found. I learned that even though males have their fair share in derogatory advertisements, there is far more ads that dehumanize women, and because of this, there are more dangers that women face, such as sexual and physical assault.

In the collage of ads pictured below, it is evident that women are still sexualized and treated as objects in order to sell various products, whether it be food, clothing, or perfumes/cologne. In the photo labeled A, a teenage girl is shown wearing nothing but extremely short shorts while her breasts are covered with her hair. Advertisement A is meant to advertise American Apparel’s shorts and tennis shoes; however, the photo is actually sexualizing the teenage girl. Another example of a sexualized advertisement is illustrated in visual B, in which Hardy’s is attempting to market milkshakes that they sell. Advertisement C, by Nature Valley, is an additional example of an ad that dehumanizes women by advocating for skinny, unrealistic body shapes. The last two photos, D and E, are two ads that normalize predatory behavior from men towards women, including themes such as sexual assault and pedophilia.

The amount of attention these advertisements receive is exceedingly scary in a sense that girls and young women of all ages are exposed to sexist and stereotypical views about themselves. Like Kilbourne described, this type of attention is extremely harmful to the mental and physical health of females. While this type of advertising is still prominent today, I also feel like women, collectively, have gotten better at speaking up for themselves and other women when exposed to this type of media. In knowing this, I feel at ease about the direction in which companies are heading in regards to advertising their products; however, there is still work to be done.

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Blog 5

Photo From: https://www.dirt.com/moguls/power-players/nicole-nightly-house-sunset-strip-17026/

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Blog 4

After reviewing my Exam 1 results, I realized that all of the answers that I answered incorrectly were due to misunderstanding the examples in the question. I find myself to be a very diligent student; however, taking exams makes me extremely anxious. This anxiety negatively influences how well I perform on various tests, which unsurprisingly happened as I took Exam 1.

In preparation for the exam, I went over the review sheet about a week before the test date. In doing this, I felt extremely confident with the material, which essentially led to me not going back over the review sheet closer to the exam. A couple days before the test, I went over terms and concept definitions in my notes, not paying any attention to examples. This ultimately hurt me during the exam.

As I went through the questions I answered incorrectly, I took the time to reread the question and the answer I chose for it. After going over these questions and answers, I went back to my notes and the textbook to look at the concepts I misunderstood. Upon doing this, I realized that a lot of the answers I got wrong were actually explicitly outlined in the textbook. These are stupid mistakes to me because I could’ve gotten the answers right if I had just taken the time to look over the examples that followed the concepts. To make myself more comfortable with the terms I missed, I rewrote more notes about the answers I got wrong and their correct counterparts. During this whole process, I made a note to pay more attention to examples of specific terms and concepts when reading the textbook. Hopefully, in doing this, I’ll be more successful when taking future tests.

This is a visual of the notes that I took while going over my Exam 1 results. As I stated earlier and in the actual notes themselves, these notes represent the concepts that I missed on the exam.

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Blog 3

After gaining a deeper understanding of the connection between music and relationships, I found myself a bit surprised with the fact that music has a bigger influence on values and ideals rather than personality traits. Like the article, Soul Meets Body suggests, people who have similar tastes in music have similar core values in aspects such as conservatism and self-enhancement. Before learning about this connection, I always thought my friends and I were similar just because we listened to the same music. I was under the impression that we were all outgoing and sociable people who were attracted to one another just because we all liked One Direction in the eighth grade, but this isn’t necessarily true. Though I wouldn’t have known it then, I know now that my connections with friends through One Direction and other musical artists were deeper than the music itself: it was the values behind the music that gave my relationships meaning. The relationship between my girlfriend and I can be used as a more prevalent example of how I have a deep musical bond with someone. Prior to becoming partners, we were attracted to one another because we had the same taste in pop music and ballads, and because of these tastes, we realized we valued the same ideals of stimulation, security, and love.

If I were to have a soundtrack of my life, it would include the following songs for the following reasons:

1. “I Lived” by One Republic (This song is the “trademark” song for Salem High School Leadership Workshop, which is a weekend-long leadership program that my former high school provides to encourage leadership and unity throughout the community. This song represents all of the teachers and students who influenced me to be the type of student leader and person I am today.)

2. “True Love” by P!nk (This song symbolizes the type of playful love that my girlfriend and I share for each other.)

3. “Dynamite” by BTS (This relatively new song represents the relationship I have with my family, especially my sister and father. Though there’s no specific meaning, whenever this song comes on, I can always find my sister and dad dancing in the kitchen, waiting for me to join them.)

4. “Your Name” by Bella Bugarin (This is a song I wrote for myself a couple of months ago, and it talks about friends that I currently have and have lost. It’s extremely representative of me and how my friends have impacted my life. One of the lyrics actually says, “…I finally found my way, and I wrote this song to say you made me who I am today.”)

5. “This is Me” from the Greatest Showman Soundtrack (I’ve struggled a lot with being comfortable in my own skin. The second I heard this song, I knew it would be something that I would listen to for forever. This song represents my journey to self-love.)

6. “Supermarket Flowers” by Ed Sheeran (This wouldn’t have been a song on my life soundtrack if someone were to have asked me a year ago, but I’ve recently lost my great-grandmother and two uncles within the past couple of months due to COVID and natural causes. Loss is something that I’ve never been able to deal with properly; however, listening to this song always reminds me that a life has been lived if there was love in it.)

This is a photo taken from SHSLW in 2019, my senior year. This is a photo of the staff for this program (I’m in the blue headband). I chose to make this photo the main image for this blog because I firmly believe that leadership workshop changed my life for the better, and the teachers and friends I’ve made at SHSLW will always have a huge place in my heart.

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Blog 2

For the longest time, I used to think that I was the most hard-working and diligent student, and all throughout high school, my grades would reflect these traits. After graduating high school, I thought college would be a breeze; however, upon starting my courses at ODU, I’ve discovered more about my learning and studying habits in a few short months than I ever did throughout my entire grade-school career. 

As a university student, I still believe that I’m extremely hard-working and diligent, but I mean this in the most genuine way. Before graduating high school, my assignments were very short and simple. Even though I had very challenging projects, papers, and assignments to write, I almost always found them to be extremely easy or unchallenging. Now that I’m at a university, I find myself tackling similar tasks; however, the intensity of these assignments have skyrocketed, but not in the sense that the information is harder to understand. I find myself being challenged simply because the information is presented to me in a different way. I used to think that I was hard-working and diligent when sitting in a classroom with only 30 other students and a teacher “spoon-feeding” us directions and tips on how to succeed for one assignment, but now, sitting in lecture halls with well-over 200 students or taking classes that don’t even require meeting times and lectures, I feel a different sense of hard work and diligence as I guide myself to success for various courses without teachers picking me up when I fall.

This change in learning has helped me help myself. I’m no longer leaning on a teacher to guide me throughout my entire academic career. Since starting college, I’ve found myself setting separate time aside to study material I’m not comfortable with. In the middle of the day, I find myself planning ahead for specific exams, assignments, and projects, which is something I wouldn’t have done back in high school. Simple changes like these have not only increased my confidence levels as a student, but they’ve increased my confidence levels as a regular individual. I find myself to be more independent when working throughout the day. When I’m at school, I feel confident in the topics that I discuss with my peers and teachers. I can see these improvements with my 31/40 GSE score. This score reflects my willingness and ambition to keep working through my frustration and my flexibility to overcome unforeseen problems; however, there are still aspects that I could improve on to increase my confidence and self-efficiency. A couple of areas that I need improvement in are my abilities to cope and responses to criticism and denial. These areas of improvement are the reasons why my GSE score is not higher than a 31. For the most part, I turn away whenever my ideas are shut down or I face difficulties that are severe, ultimately impacting how well I can jump back up from setbacks. Though I’m still in the process of trying to figure out how to overcome these setbacks, I’ve realized that in order to increase my confidence levels, I need to stray away from my “perfectionist” tendencies and give myself credit where credit is due.

This is a photo of actual notes that I’ve taken in my Physiological Psychology course, and I chose to use this title because I am a real student who is trying to learn how to let go of my “perfectionist” tendencies in order to become an even better student. My lack of coping abilities derives from how long it takes me to physically write notes. Very frequently, I find myself spending more time than I need to on assignments simply because I’m trying to “perfect” the layout of the information. There are times when I will throw away an entire page just because I don’t like how it’s set up. This ultimately leads to stress and poor coping abilities; however, it’s something I’m trying to work on and overcome.

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Blog 1

After reading through the Social Psychology course objectives, I have made several connections between concepts in this course and how I can apply what I learn to my social life and future career. One of the objectives states that after taking this course, I will be able to understand how attitudes are formed and changed and how these changes can influence my behavior to certain groups of people. Another objective also emphasizes factors that influence my liking for other people and essentially leads to forming close relationships. Both of these objectives can help me grasp why I have lost the friends I used to have and currently have the ones that I do. Not only this, but these two objectives can help me to make better, more genuine connections with my peers, family, friends, and colleagues in the future. The last objective that I find most useful is the one that discusses the origins and effects of prejudice and discrimination. This specific objective can aid me in my future career as either a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant. If I have a foundation in prejudice, its origin, and its effects, then I am less likely to have a discriminative attitude towards the variety of patients I will tend to in the future.

My expectations for this course are nothing short of simple hopes. I expect to be able to understand why different societies around the country, and world, operate and interact the way that they do. This leads to my expectation to be able to differentiate between societies just by being given the different aspects of those societies. However, in order to achieve this type of success in the course, I will add precise strategies to my learning process. For example, I will implement a strategy for studying in which I use diagrams, illustrations, and charts to represent the information that I’m learning. These pictures and visuals will also have brief captions that describe its concepts in a way that is not only easy to retain, but simple enough to remember.

All-in-all, I’m hoping to gain a more general understanding of Social Psychology and how it influences my personality, my decisions, and more importantly, the other branches of Psychology. In achieving all of this, I hope to use what I learn in this course to help me become a better version of myself.

I chose this to make this meme about the Status Quo Heuristic because it is one of the concepts from Chapter 2 that I related to the most. In short, the Status Quo Heuristic describes when a person makes a decision about a product based on how easy it is to retrieve memories about that product.

When I was growing up, my mom always bought me the St. Ives Acne Control face wash, so that was the product I always used, up until just recently.
Whenever I would go to the store, I would always see the CeraVe facial cleanser on a separate shelf, one in which contained several hygienic products that I had never heard of or read reviews about. Because I had never used the CeraVe facial cleanser or had known of anyone else who used it, I always chose to buy the St. Ives Acne Control instead because it was a product I was comfortable and familiar with. This scenario is depicted in the meme above.