ATA5

Assignment five was about about performing five good deeds for people we know and talking about their reactions to said deeds and how we felt after performing them. The deeds I chose to perform were: giving a cookie to a random customer who was having a bad day, delivering food to curbside customers, calling my grandparents who live in another state, helping my elderly neighbor with technological issues and visiting my Nannie who lives a little ways away from me. It was very refreshing to see all these people’s happy faces or hear excitement in their voice whenever the deed was performed. I always like to do things for others and it makes me feel good to be able to spread some positive vibes, especially during this scary time we are living in. When asked whether I thought it should be a requirement to perform at least one good deed a day I definitely agree that this should become mandatory. I believe that by doing one good thing for another, especially if you do not know them, it would spread positivity and would cause them to want to return the favor for another person. I feel like it would make the world a better place if we were more willing to spread a little joy to someone who just needs a little light in their life.

I chose this image of two individuals joining hands to show a sign of strength when we are united. When we are willing to reach out to help one another it shows compassion which is what I think we as the US need, especially right now amidst all the selfishness I have been seeing in people. I know that we have always been selfish as humans, but ever since this COVID-19 stuff has happened I see it now more than ever. Especially, in the grocery stores and people going out in groups and going on vacations when people are DYING.

ATA3

Assignment three’s main theme revolves around prejudice. For this assignment we were to watch Michael Richards’ viral video of him throwing racist remarks at an African American man at one of his comedy shows. In this video you can see him get mad because this man interrupted him so he started to blast the man with really inappropriate racial slurs and jokes. He started calling the man the ‘n-word’ and a lot of other uncalled for things. Some people claimed maybe he just had a bad temper and that he was not really racist, however I believe he had to have some sort of prejudice against African Americans to have acted the way he did. This assignment relates to me personally because at times I will catch myself having a prejudice about someone or something even though it may not be true, but rather because I have heard something negative about them. Even though some people may never admit it we all have prejudices about people we just may never act on it. The reason I chose this image is because I believe it shows prejudice well. To me this African American woman is removing the “mask” of what she thinks she has to be in able to be accepted by society. We all have to admit that white Americans are most of the time seen as the “superior” race and the minority races are always getting the most prejudice against them.

ATA2

Assignment two was about how we are represented in this world. I chose six photos of myself that I thought represented me best and then explained how they represented me and if it was an accurate representation. All of the photos I chose accurately represented me as I want to be known as someone who: makes time for family, fulfills my role as a big sister, has a sense of humor, is a fun friend, is a creative artist and cares about furthering my education. We also had to talk about how self-control and self-presentation played a role in how we are represented. This assignment reminded me of when I was growing up and how I would always hear everyone say, “how would you want people to see you?” This really makes you think about everything you do because people are always watching you so you better make sure that it is something that leaves a good impression or something you can be proud of. This assignment personally applies to me because I want people to see me as someone who is dependable, smart and positive. It really made me think deeply about how people looking in from the outside may view me and when choosing these six photos I truly hope they do perceive me in that light. The photo I chose is kind of haunting. To me this photo represents someone seeing themselves one way in the mirror, but if you actually look at the person’s face you can see that they are nothing like what is represented in the mirror. I think this goes very well with this assignment because we should really reflect upon ourselves and try to look at ourselves from the outside. What would we really see?

ATA1

Assignment one was all about the four types of heuristics that we use to make quick decisions. They include: Representativeness, Availability, Anchoring & Adjustment and Status Quo. Using heuristics can be useful at times, but they can also lead to prejudice and bias. I can relate heuristics back to my cognitive psychology class. Heuristics involves experiences we have personally had or have heard of happening. Our brain automatically files these away for later use when we need to make a quick decision about something. Heuristics definitely applies to me personally as I know that sometimes I am quick to judge people by their behavior or who they are hanging out with. I prefer old products over new if they have better reviews. If I have heard of a bad instance that occurred somewhere I will never go there even if this was rare and happened many years ago. I chose this silly meme about the availability heuristic because the odds of a serial killer being in our house is extremely low and happens very rarely, however our automatic thought is that there is one in our house because of the scary movie.