ATA 5

For this assignment, I had to go out and perform five random acts of kindness. After completing these acts, I had to discuss how it made them feel, how I felt, and how I would incorporate this concept in my everyday life.

The random acts of kindness assignment was one that was fun to complete. When I was doing this assignment, it really reinforced my belief that the little things matter the most to people. Actually, a few of my acts of kindness were specifically inspired by this assignment, and I want to continue to look for ways to brighten people’s day. The act of giving back is a great way to make others feel good; and if others feel good, then they’re more likely to return the favor to someone else. I think given the current state of affairs in society, a little kindness goes a long way. 

In my World Religions class, I learned about Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. In all of these religions, they practice “dana” and I was reminded of this concept when completing this assignment. Dana is the act of giving back to others, especially those who are in financial need or in a rough spot in their life. They believe that it not only benefits the recipient, but creates a better, more pure future life for the person committing the act of kindness.

ATA 3

I felt that this assignment was eye opening. I remember first hearing about what Michael Richards did, but I didn’t completely understand the gravity of his behavior. White people acting the way Richards did towards black people and people of all races, apologizing, then expecting that to solve everything and is a recurrent problem in society. Watching Richards verbally degrade another human being made me furious, and that sort of fury is what can power change. People who act like Richards are the reason the Black Lives Matter movement is alive, fighting, and gaining more support. It may have been something that has happened for years but it is time for it to come to an end, history has to stop repeating itself. 

ATA 2

This assignment gave me the opportunity to look deeper into myself and why I value the things and people that I do. I obviously know that my son and family are big parts of my life, but after this assignment I realized that a big part of how I define myself is by my relationships with those around me. I was interested in my results from the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, and I was actually surprised that I got the result of having a moderate self regulation capacity. Some days I feel like that is not the case, but I think that comes from underestimating my abilities to handle things. In my high school Psychology classes, we used to take quizzes like the Rosenberg one. I think now that I’m older and more serious about psychology, that I took the quiz more seriously and it gave me more accurate results.

The first assignment gave me the chance to think critically about heuristics. Having to think of examples made me realize that I had been using heuristics in my day to day life for years now. The representative heuristic is a concept that I could have used in my Introduction to New Media Technology class. In that class, we learned about how people use social media to create a certain image of themselves. It would have been interesting to take a more psychological approach to the way people develop the internet version of themselves and how it differs from who they are in real life. Social media stars use the representative heuristic to their advantage. In that same course, we learned a lot about how advertising companies use social media to target us. I think that advertising companies love the status quo heuristic because it’s easy to sell products to a person who has brand loyalty.