Assignment 4 was about our response to a Love questionnaire. We were asked a variety of questions asking about how we would like to love and be loved. There were 6 categories that classified what type of lover we are and looking for. One thing I learned was, just how good my relationship is with my girlfriend. After looking back and reading my response, I am kind of shocked with what I said; almost like I feel those things but dang was I on my groove that day. Of course, what I said is still valid, but I learned just how good I have it because I have my woman right by my side through battle. Relating to the chapter, between me and my girlfriend, our need for affiliation has always been great. Basic to our psychological well-being, being together helps us onload all of the burdens that we carry. Our lives are not necessarily perfect, a lot of rough patches that have occurred throughout our lives. However, we have always had each other to go to for help. We have a tendency to resort to each other for safety and that is what I expressed throughout this chapter. The material is very relevant in my life today as every morning I wake up and say good morning to the woman I love. She has a place in my life everyday and based off of completing this assignment, I hope I got the message across that she is the one.

I chose this picture because I want to deliver the message that my girlfriend is my partner and crime. We love our lives and are so excited to keep going making new adventures. We are affiliated with each other; you cannot say one of our names without saying the others. That is how close we are, we have been playing the love game for almost our entire lives and could not be happier with the results. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

ATA3:

To start, assignment 3 was to watch a video of Mr. Richard’s go on a racist rant to an audience member during one of his stand ups. He got very angry and unleashed a lot of harmful words towards this audience member. What I learned is racial slurs cannot exist without racial/prejudice intent. The video clearly demonstrates that by screaming these harmful words, Mr. Richards was trying to inflict as much pain as possible to this audience member because he was interrupting him during his skit. Once Mr. Richard’s saw this person was black, he unleashed all of the hatred that he has gathered overtime towards this man’s race and let him have it. That is also something else that I learned is that racism is something that develops overtime. Mr. Richard’s was raised in a time where African American’s did not have has much freedom than they have today. Therefore, Mr. Richard’s was raised prejudice towards black people because they were not involved in everyday life as they are today. It was a growing flame for him which is why he said what he said on that stage.

I cannot say that I have personal relevance to this assignment that I can relate to. However, I will say that I work and live with African American’s every day. We have the utmost respect for each other, and we treat each other the way we would like to be treated ourselves. I look them in the eye when I talk to them as they do to me. I grew up in a town that was half white and half black, so I was raised to love every single person regardless of race or gender. I am also an Italian American so just as I respect my traditions and culture, I respect other’s traditions and cultures.

I chose this image because I believe that we do not have to let Mr. Richard’s tirade dictate how we feel towards African Americans. As the time continues to move on, we can move on from racism, and treat every person like a human being. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

ATA2:

Assignment two was an assignment, for me, that was really a look upon the past. It was an awesome feeling to see how far I have come and everyone’s life I have been involved in. The assignment’s design was to gather 6-12 photos of myself that I believe reflects who I am. I learned that a persons self-concept truly aligns with who they are as a person. Everything that falls under that person, what they say, do, think, feel is all part of their self-concept. For me, I feel like you can learn so much from a person’s self-concept. Everyone’s self-concept is unique in their own way and as a human, it is our duty to see the beauty in other people. I know that’s not always necessarily possible, and you can easily choose to just ignore the other person, but what does that say about your self-concept? We can learn so much from one another we just have to be willing to decide to pursue our best selves first. Once we can do that, we see the beauty in others, and it builds us to becoming our best selves. After all, it is happiness and love that humans adore most.            

Furthermore, after completing this assignment I learned what my self-concept really means to other people. At work I talked to my coworkers, just normal conversations and I observed how my presence influenced what we were talking about. How other people interpreted my self-concept and how it influenced their self-concept? There was nothing to it, we were all just ourselves and did not let anyone or anything interfere with our conversations. Not ego, not judgment, not anger. We just talked like normal human beings. It was this week that I gathered the evidence that it is common human nature to look at a person for what he brings to the table every day. What I mean is, a person builds their self-concept every day, with their actions, words and by being themselves. If you continue to be yourself and not be a fake individual, not only do you see the beauty in others, but others see the beauty in yourself.

This is a picture of me and my girlfriend visiting New York for the first time. We were taking on a ‘guided tour’ courtesy of my brother and his girlfriend. This is my self-concept of who I am. I am a person who values family and the time spent with them. Time means the world to me because whenever I am with my family, which is not a lot, I adore every second with them. They build me up stronger as a person. In addition, I am adventurous. I am willing to try new things such as this trip to New York. I am all for experience and learning along the way. This picture reflects me at peak happiness, I have a big part of what is meaningful to me in this photo. Family, adventure, experience, and most of all love and happiness.

ATA1:

Assignment one was about heuristics in social cognition such as: representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic, anchoring and adjustment heuristic, and status quo. All demonstrate how us as human interpret different situations and people. We tend to rely on experience and information we gathered from that experience to draw conclusions. It is those conclusions that may be right or wrong, but we tend to believe they are right because of our prior knowledge that we rely on. What I learned from the assignment is how much we tend to rely on memories of past experiences to come up with answers. While describing and giving examples of all of these heuristics I could not believe how much I used them in everyday life. Ever since completing this assignment I been calling myself out or other people with what heuristic they are using because it happens so often. I love how there are so many psychological aspects that occur throughout our days. Applying this to something else that we learned can go back to chapter one when we talked about deception. Researchers would withhold information from subjects in an experiment, deception, to fulfill the most genuine behavior of the subjects. All of this is because had these subjects known what the topic is, they would have already developed ideas on what the solution can be or their own personal twist to the data. This proves how humans use these heuristics in everyday life because we already have an idea, or experience we can fall back to, to dictate what our solution or answer is going to be.

This assignment was personally relevant me to because I am constantly working with different people from all over the world. Therefore, I hear many viewpoints on different topics or whatever it is that we are talking about at the time. I never realized that these heuristics appear on an everyday basis. We all have this overview on how and why things are the way they are, but we are from all over, so we mix in our experiences to find the solution to our tasks. What we do is work on aircraft, and there are so many things that we have to do to get things right. There are also so many things we can do to get things wrong. Therefore, based on every one’s background and experience, we make decisions on what is the best way to complete our daily tasks. We use these heuristics everyday and many people do not realize because they do not know what they are, and I do so that is what makes it fun.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-hacks-status-quo-bias-observe-change-sridhar-srigiriraju

I believe this picture is perfect to represent my personal takeaway from the assignment. The reason is because we get so satisfied and complacent with just getting by and doing the right thing (status quo). We must destroy status quo and break the rules. What I mean is, be innovative, follow your burning desire and passions and do not stop until you achieve them. We only got one shot at this game called life so go out there and follow your heart.