Top Artifacts

Artifact 5

The three items I felt most indicated aggression were: “a juvenile gang attacks members of another gang”, “a man viciously kicks a cat”, and “a tennis player smashes his racket after missing a volley”. On the first point, I think that violent actions to a thing regardless of whether it is alive or not counts as aggression. I don’t believe that an action taken by accident is aggressive, knocking something over by mistake is not aggressive, but kicking a trashcan would be. The amount of damage done to the intended victim is of no consequence, only that the action intended to cause harm is carried out. I think self defense and instinctual behavior are actually one in the same in this case, when something is attacked, fight or flight kicks in. Job responsibility is also no excuse for aggressive acts, as in the case of something like an MMA fighter; it’s their job to beat people up, that doesn’t make it less aggressive. Humans are just animals so two wolves fighting for dominance is no different than humans doing the same. Inaction or action that someone may not notice are still aggressive in my book, passive aggression still has aggression in the name and intentionally causing physical or emotional pain by choice is aggression.

Why I Chose This:

I chose this activity, and the visual representation because I think it showcases that no matter how advanced we become as humans, we still have instincts left over from our past. Aggression between animals and aggression between humans isn’t that different in terms of why we do it, competition takes many forms but it all comes down to food, mates, or social status. Fighters are aggressive for money, money leads to higher social order, more desirable mates, etc etc. Wolves fight for dominance of a pack which leads to more food, more desirable mates, etc etc. Even something like kicking a trashcan is aggression, it’s just socially acceptable aggression. It’s frowned upon for us to just assault people we’re frustrated with, but we still feel the need to get our feelings out so we project those feelings onto something we can assault: a trashcan or a wall, sometimes a pillow if we’re smart.

Artifact 4

The first thing to say about these personal ads is that they were censored for content as most personal ads for women seeking men were sex workers looking for clients. That said, the top 3 most desirable traits women looked for in men were maturity, being drug free, being “experienced” (this was not expounded on in the ad), and being black. I believe that two of these four, being mature and drug free, speak to a degree of social consciousness. In our society, using drugs and being immature are often linked outside of medically required drugs. To this point, women seeking men who would be seen as mature would have that social status reflect on them. Men, on the other hand were looking for women who were beautiful, mature, and drug friendly. I don’t think all three of these can be explained by any one theory. I think that the maturity could be evolutionary, an older woman could be a better caregiver. Beauty most likely is explained socially where the woman can be seen as a status symbol to other men.

Why I Chose This:

Honestly, I could have guessed what the man seeking woman ads would contain before I even went to the website, having lived as a man for almost twenty-seven years I’ve got my pulse on the average man’s desires. The most interesting thing about looking at the woman seeking man personals was seeing the large spread of desirable traits they were looking for. Men were looking for mostly physical traits (ethnicity, weight, appearance) whereas women were all over the place with a fair number of emotional traits as well as physical. I liked this activity because it shows that we need to look at things through a mixture of an evolutionary perspective as well as a social one.

Artifact 3

Most of the things surveyed that I agreed with were things that I do, but I do have a disconnect on the issues of recycling and homelessness. I think a lot of the time we don’t even recognize our own cognitive dissonance until it’s pointed out, but after we’re shown it, we try and change our behaviors or attitudes to balance them because every time we engage in that behavior in the future, we’ll be cognizant of the disconnect. One of my disconnects was recycling; I understand it to be beneficial to the health of the environment, but I don’t actively do it. To reconcile these differences in the past, I tried to cut down on things like plastic bottles or disposable plates/silverware. Where I live, we don’t have any real infrastructure to recycle which makes it hard to actually do it, so I took the steps that I could easily implement on my own.

Why I Chose This:

I remember reading a study last year at some point that said that for some people, presenting them evidence contrary to a belief they hold would actually further validate their (incorrect) beliefs. I feel like the idea of cognitive dissonance is very similar to the idea of doublethink, a concept in the novel 1984 where you hold two conflicting views simultaneously. Things like this, the refusal to adapt to new evidence about a given topic are important to study in my opinion because they can give us insight into how we can try and appeal to these people and get them to change their beliefs.

Artifact 2

It’s interesting that nobody said that they were surprised at all with hearing either option. Everyone surveyed had an answer for the question they got and they were all reasonable answers that make a lot of sense. I think a lot of this is because we hear both of these from a young age. The saying that birds of a feather flock together as well as opposites attract are all what I would call conventional knowledge even though in this instance they’re diametrically opposed. I feel that there’s probably a little wisdom in both of these statements, but neither is 100% true so we can pick and choose reasons that either one would be found true by research.

Why I Chose This:

Confirmation bias has always been interesting to me. I chose couples for this activity (mostly because all my friends are in serious relationships) and it was cool that both the couples that were similar and very different answered that they were not surprised to hear what researchers had found. It was almost like fortune tellers or horoscopes in that the statements are broad enough that you can find little nuggets of truth where the (opposite) statements can both be thought of as correct.

Artifact 1

The pair with the biggest tally in the survey was people who were unselfish and happy, followed by those who were selfish and unhappy. This lines up fairly well with the assumption given in the instructions that most happy people would fall in the unselfish cell. In fact, the unselfish happy people were double those who were selfish and happy. I actually think that while we attribute unhappiness to selfish people, they probably tend to be happier on an individual level than those who are unselfish. I think this because selfish people look out for their own needs before those of others. People who put themselves first are unlikely to lack any material thing that may be available at the time that could provide happiness.

Why I Chose This:

I chose this artifact because I enjoyed aspects of the class that made me think about people I know and evaluate how I feel about them on a deeper level than just friend or acquaintance. Activities that make us examine our feelings and how we got to that point are some of my favorites and before this, I never would have really thought about whether I thought a person was happy or unhappy before. I think a lot of us think about whether a person is happy or unhappy in the moment but we don’t always pull that view outwards and look at them over time.