Blog 10

            My expectations for PSYC 304 and the outcomes that were achieved are essentially the same.  I was challenged sufficiently in trying to master the course material.  On top of this, I also feel as though selecting to pursue a career as a therapist is the right decision for me.  Above all else, I want to put the information that I have learned and will learn in my academic pursuits to good use and help others.  I still find that it is important that I become even more familiar with the concepts and theories that were covered in PSYC 304.  So while I feel that I have learned much, I don’t feel as though I have mastered the material. 

            In so far as how well I feel I have achieved the course objectives, I would say that I have done a decent job. Using the procedures by which social psychologists test hypotheses about the behaviors of individuals and of groups will always be important because research is always growing in each facet or section of the field of psychology and keeping up with that is essential to providing the best care that I can.  I still believe the processes through which people perceive and attempt to understand others would not only be of use in helping future client. However, there is no doubt it has been very helpful to me.  It has been very valuable in navigating relationships at work and more importantly, it has helped with having a better understanding of how best to interact with those in my personal life that I have a close relationship with.  I find that this has led me to being more understanding when it comes to dealing with everyone.  This also ties into being able to explain how attitudes are formed and changed, and how they are related to behavior.

            Regarding my attitude about the field of Social Psychology, I still find that it is an incredibly important piece of the whole pie, so to speak.  I think that if more people understood some of the causes of prejudice, for example, maybe we could collectively work towards bettering society for everyone.  Another piece that would tie into this would be finding a way to have others understand the importance of prosocial behavior.  Understanding that the more good that is done just for the sake of doing the right thing would also lead to a better society for everyone.  I suppose that the idea that doing good feels good is something that more people should know about.

            Regarding what I would do differently if I took the class again, I would definitely find a way to allocate more time to studying.  I have found myself needing more time to do that in order to retain what I have read due to outside factors.  Additionally, I would probably take this course over a normal semester, not a condensed summer semester.  I found that trying to get everything completed on time was challenging while taking another course, working full-time, and planning for the arrival of my first child with my wife. 

            I think this also relates to how I have grown academically over the span of PSYC 304 because I have realized my limitations with what I am able to achieve between multiple courses and other commitments.  I have learned that I can’t use a day off, for example, to complete all of the work for a class.  I have found that the best strategy for me is spreading out everything over the course of the entire week, even if that means just doing a part of an assignment in the evening after work.

            Lastly, this also carries over into my personal life.  I have always been pretty bad about procrastinating and that has left me with many evenings in which I have just been stuck in front of my laptop trying to get homework completed before a deadline.  Again, I have found that just doing a part of something instead of saving it for later makes life a lot easier.  The best example of this would be trying to juggle housework to better help my wife while she is in the home stretch with her pregnancy.  What I have done is make sure that when I come home in the evening after work, I just do something that we both would have normally saved for the weekend or whenever we had a day off.  Doing this has really helped keep the flow of things moving smoothly in my house. 

Blog 9:

            More than anything, the most important thing that I have learned in this course is how important my relationship with my wife is to me.  This is quite obvious as just about all of my assignments relate to her or us in some capacity.  The things that really highlight this are the assignment takeaways for assignments two, four, and five.

            For assignment takeaway two we constructed a self-portrait based on several photographs of ourselves.  Looking back at the assignment now, I realize how much of my self-concept and identity as a whole is reflective of the relationship I have with my wife.  This wasn’t always the case.  I would now describe myself as a devoted husband and father to be, and I think that has a great deal to do with how introspective a lot of the assignments were for this course.  As was the case with assignment two, I thought quite a bit about how the photographs I took were the best reflection of me, and while doing so, this really pointed out that the version of me that I have become over the past several years in one in which my self-construal is in fact that of husband and father.

            In the case of assignment four, we were to take a styles of love questionnaire.  In this assignment, I learned that my Eros, Storge, and Agape categories were higher than the average for males.  I would say that this would be the case because I have been with my wife for almost a decade now, but it ties into chapter seven from the text because I really feel that my relationship is an example of consummate love.  Sternberg’s triangular model of love consists of intimacy, passion, and commitment/decision and my relationship has each of these characteristics.  Admittedly, we have to work on each piece of this at times, but at this given moment in time I would make the case for this to be how my marriage is.

            With assignment five, we were to recount five random acts of kindness that we performed throughout the course of a week.  Again, I found that the acts completed during this assignment, at least those that were of greatest significance, were done for the benefit of my wife and her family.  It may have just been situational, as there was a death in the family, but I found myself relating the content and lesson of the assignment to the relationship that I have with my wife.  She was grieving, and the best thing I could do was to help.  Based on the material learned in the prosocial behavior model, some of this would have been through empathetic feelings and some could have been biological reasons attributed to mirror neurons.  This could also have been contributed to the kin selection theory as well, since my wife and I are expecting our first child, I would have been more inclined assist because our child shares their genes with me, so helping their mother is in the interest of passing those genes along to the next generation.    

            So, taking the information gathered from those assignments and assignment takeaways, this collection best relates to the third blog for the course.  We were to come up with the soundtrack to our lives or choose songs that were representative of people that were influential to us.  While I have always thought of my grandparents as being the most formative on my development overall, I have learned through the information from this course that my wife really has been the most transformational on me as an adult.  The song I chose for representing here was about just how lucky one is to have met that person, and I really, truly am.  It has really been emphasized through content learned in PSYC 304.

            But that’s not all.  In relation to another course I have taken in my time at ODU, I find that PSYC 304 has paired pretty well with PSYC 408, which is theories of personality.  Not only have there been numerous studies by many of the theorists studied in PSYC 408 used as references in the textbook for our course, but I find that the whole of the Biological/Evolutionary theories being closely related to what we have studied.  Specifically, the idea that Social Psychology is predicated on the idea of observing how humans interact in any given scenario or set of circumstances in which they find themselves with the idea being that there is an attempt to explain how and why we do what we do.  The theoretical frameworks of Buss, Skinner, and Bandura attempt to do this because they all in some way, shape, or form are attempting to explain how we fit into our environments, whether in be in the case of Skinner where we are the product of our environment or, like with Bandura, in which triadic reciprocal causation seeks to explain this through the interactions of our behavior, personal factors, and environmental factors.  Overall, learning about how we came start to formulate how these behaviors are developed along with the ins and outs of how they develop has been very beneficial. 

Blog 8:

            After reading the article by DeWall, I can say that I am not surprised by the content.  I know that David Buss is an evolutionary psychologist, and his early writing was based on dominance and mating.  He proposed that dominance and high status was attractive to women because it includes things that they find attractive. 

            That being stated, it makes sense that in the course of the mating process, men and women both do things that upset one another.  I know from previous experiences that one of the biggest things men do that upset women is not actually listening when they are talking to you.  More specifically, listening without actually caring about what is being said.  I have been guilty of this in the past.  In so far as the things mentioned in the article that men do instinctively that may upset women, looking at other women is the first thing that comes to mind.  Since men are more inclined to be driven towards quantity over quality, this is something that would anger anyone’s current partner or mate. 

            On the other side of that example, something women do that upset men is talk too much.  Again, this is something that I have experience with.  I have dated some women that seem to talk just to hear themselves talk at times.  Maybe this is why I have been accused of not actually listening in the past.  Perhaps we should all be aware of what it is that we do that makes the opposite sex upset, and work towards doing less of this. 

Blog: 7

            Self-Regulation and Emotional Intelligence are directly related to one another.  I don’t believe that you can possess one without possessing the other.  Self-regulation is basically what it says it is, being the ability for one to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and emotions.  Emotional intelligence, at least in the context of the video we watched, is the ability for one to know and possess the awareness about how they feel in a given moment.

            To me, emotional intelligence is broader reaching than what I took away from the video. It is not only the ability to be aware of you own emotions, but to also be aware of others and help them regulate themselves.  I would say that this is being empathic, to a degree. 

            I actively display this by listening to people.  There is something to that quote that circulates on the internet every so often about how we have two ears and only one mouth.  I find that listening to others without the intention of only responding really helps to see where they may be emotionally.  Some people really just need someone to talk to and may not know how to do that in a constructive manner. 

Blog 6:

            Prior to watching the Ted Talk, I really hadn’t given much thought to the idea that ads distort, stereotype, and dehumanize women and manipulate people to buy their products.  The exception to this is the idea of using sex appeal to entice people to buy things.  That has been obvious for as long as it has been pointed out in the media or by others that had noticed it.

            The Ted Talk really pointed out things I had not noticed before.  The most specific of these is the idea of displaying women in a manner that is abusive and dehumanizing.  I really had not noticed this until it was pointed out.  The other disturbing piece that was illustrated was the sexualization of young girls.  That I have noticed, and I don’t understand why it is a thing that needs to happen at all.  People really should be fighting to stop this. 

            The five ads that I found all came from a website for The Gentleman’s Journal.  It was for an article titled “The 10 most sexist adverts ever”.  The five I selected definitely represent the title of the article.  The first four sexualize women in an unacceptable manner and two of them imply that sexual assault is occurring.  This was something that was pointed out in the Ted Talk.  The last ad is one from Del Monte that implies that women are weaker than men.  Again, this is something that was pointed out in the video because women are stereotyped as being the weaker sex. 

Blog 5:

            The first picture represents the idea that there is a perceived credibility to the advertisement.  Ignore the fact that smoking is without a doubt one of the worse things you can do for your health.  We know that now because of all of the information that came out in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  The advertisement I selected seems as though it is from the 1950’s or 1960’s at latest.  Perhaps at the time there was concern as to whether or not smoking was harmful.  The use of a doctor and several others that are assumed to be doctors as well, adds to the expertise and trustworthiness of the advertisement.  The common person would be led to believe that if the cigarette brand advertised is trusted by doctors, then it most certainly has to be good enough for them.  My assumption is that there was likely information leaking from tobacco companies in which the truth about how harmful smoking was to your health started to spread, and these advertisements were issued in an effort to control the narrative.

            The second picture is that of a Mint Mobile advertisement.  I, along with what I assume is most others, have been inundated with commercials for the company in recent months.  All of them have Ryan Reynolds in them.  The biggest thing going for this company is that they carry Ryan Reynolds endorsement.  However, this contributes to the perceived lack of credibility because Reynolds owns the company.  Regardless of the fact that he makes it obvious and this is part of the marketing pitch, he has a vested interest in seeing this company succeed, so it is only natural that he would endorse his product.

            The third and last picture is that of Victoria’s Secret models advertising lingerie.  The idea here is that sex sells.  Men want women that look like this and women want to look like this in order to attract men.  This kind of advertising is incredibly effective on most people.  Sex definitely sells.  It would not necessarily make me inclined to shop there, but if my wife mentioned wanting something along the lines of what Victoria’s Secret sells, that would like cause me to recall this advertisement and that would be where we would probably shop.   

Blog 4:

I went into this test feeling like I was adequately prepared.  However, my grade doesn’t necessarily reflect that.  I spent the course of several days going back over the course material in preparation for this test, but I don’t feel that I was as successful as I could have been.  I have never really needed to study and take notes to do well.  It has been a blessing up until recently, as I have now found that I need to study and take notes in order to better commit the information to memory.  This is likely because I am an adult trying to juggle many things now.  I think because I have never really needed to rely on notes and studying before, I do a poor job of trying to take notes and study.  So for the future, I know that I need to find a way to take better notes.  Study guides, like the one for this test, also help but overall, I really feel that my note taking is what needs the most improvement. 

Blog 3:

I absolutely agree with the information presented in the article “Soul Meets Body”.  Those that I have found myself closest with throughout my life have had a similar taste in music.  I usually find that we often go back and forth showing each other new and exciting bands and albums.  This continues to be true for those that have been in my life the longest.  Overall, I feel that we all do share the same values and ideals too.  The best example of this is my wife.  When we met, the first thing we really bonded over was music.  Mainly, I shared with her a lot of music I loved.  As it turned out, she really liked all of it.  We share this bond and hold a lot of the same values and opinions on how we think things should be.  I suppose this is one of the reasons we got married. 

            The soundtrack that is representative of those that are the most influential in my life is somewhat diverse.  The song that represents my wife is “Smile” by Sixx:AM.  This song is really pretty and sweet.  We didn’t have normal wedding, so there was no first dance.  If there had been, this would’ve been the song.  As for my brother, “TNT” by AC/DC.  I have fond memories of him singing this song throughout various points in my life, and he makes it really silly every time.  The song that represents my parents would be “Surrender” by Cheap Trick.  It’s not because this song is a super accurate representation of them, but my biggest take away from it is that there were just two people that fell in love and had lives before they were “Mom” and “Dad”.  That is basically what that song is about.  “Christmas Time Is Here” by Vince Guaraldi Trio represents my grandparents.  Christmas was always special when I was little, and they always had the Charlie Brown Christmas playing whenever it was on.  I always think of them when I hear that song.  The song that represents my best friend is “Laid to Rest” by Lamb of God.  This was the band that we bonded over when we met.  We have actually been to see them live several times together.  The last song on my soundtrack is “The Day I Tried To Live” by Soundgarden.  It’s kind of my outlook here as of late.  It’s about not being so reclusive, but that has basically been how I have been lately.  It’s not by choice though.  I have genuinely had a lot on my plate, so I have just kind of kept myself and really haven’t had much of an opportunity to get together with anyone due to other obligations. 

My Soundtrack:

My Wife – “Smile” by Sixx:AM

My Brother – “TNT” by AC/DC

My Parents – “Surrender” by Cheap Trick

My Grandparents – “Christmas Time Is Here” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

My Best Friend – “Laid to Rest” by Lamb of God

My Life Outlook – “The Day I Tried To Live” by Soundgarden

Blog 2:

I believe that I am decent student.  I have always done really well in school, but I have a tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to finish assignments.  This used to be a problem for me because I used to procrastinate badly.  In my first few years of college, I would stay up late the night before an assignment was due rushing to get things finished.  I was always able to do so, but it was very stressful at times.  Not to mention quite taxing as I did not sleep as much as I should have. 

            Overall, I am extremely confident in myself as a student.  The biggest things that would help with my ability to and be even more successful would be having more time to study.  I am the typical adult that has gone back to school.  I work a full-time job, I’m married, and I have many other commitments and responsibilities.  I’m not one for making excuses, but I do feel that if I had more time in the week in which to study and put towards schoolwork, I would retain information better. 

            My results for the General Self Efficacy Scale were a 39 out of 40, or 3.9.  I always accomplish what I set out to and I am always able to find a way to achieve my goals when it comes to school.  That said, I do find it stressful to achieve the things that I do because I often have to accomplish much in a short amount of time. 

Blog 1:

            I feel that the course objectives will be really beneficial to me in the future.  Since my goal is to become a therapist, all of it is relevant in some way.  The procedures by which social psychologists test hypotheses about the behaviors of individuals and of groups will be important because that research will help shape the manner in which I would go about helping a client deal issues they may be having.  The processes through which people perceive and attempt to understand others would not only be of use in helping future clients, but also be very helpful to me.  It would help me better understand how to cater to each individual as best I could.  Being able to explain how attitudes are formed and changed, and how they are related to behavior would help me help clients look at how they think and work to help them change those thoughts and behaviors for the better. 

            As for my expectations of this course, I fully expect to be challenged in several ways.  The first of these is ensuring that I have chosen the right path I wish to pursue in the field of psychology.  I think that learning more about how people behave and form opinions and attitudes will help with reaffirming my decision.  Secondly, I know learning about the subject matter will challenge me to think more deeply in my daily life about how I interact with people and form opinions.  I readily welcome that kind of personal growth.  Lastly, the other way in which I expect to be challenged is by learning better time management skills.  There is a lot more writing in this course than what I have gotten accustomed to since selecting my major.  I have always underestimated the amount of I need to take care of assignments and often feel rushed.  I think the best course of action in order to stay on top of things is to work on things a little each day.  This will ensure that I do not procrastinate and wait until the last minute to take care of my assignments. 

Representative Visual Image Idea:

            I selected this image because I feel that it was a really good representation of the availability heuristic.  My wife is terrified of sharks, and she falls victim to this kind of thinking whenever we go to the beach.  If there has been any reported shark attacks or sightings, she goes into panic mode.  However, she seldom takes into account that there a plenty of more probable ways in which she is at a higher risk of danger.