ATA4

https://me.me/i/one-day-i-asked-my-brother-what-is-love-17096017

“What is love?” is an often heard and somewhat age-old question.  In fact, if you search Google for “what is love” it returns 51,900,000 results.  Through my own life experience, I have come to understand what I think love is and over time I have come to accept it and have tried not to make much attempt to break it down into reasons or definitions.

This assignment has helped me take a closer look at how or why we love, like, and are attracted to other people.  While reading the text and taking a closer look at some of the information in “love” books on my shelf I have discovered “aha” moments where the information I was coming across seemed obviously true and almost common sense.  When I look back at past relationships I can see similarities in them, both when compared to each other and when compared to myself, and this follows the similarity theories presented by Aristotle as far back as 2000 years ago.  If this is true, then some of the puzzle pieces that make up love have not changed.  This is interesting because if they have not changed much in 2000 years it seems we should know more about how these pieces combine to become love and relationships might be more successful.

Through the love quizzes I am reminded that my current relationship needs work.  I am also reminded that my own style of love is not perfect and could also use some fine tuning.  While the quizzes are not perfect or 100% precise, they are helpful tools to aid a person looking for the answers to that age-old question.

ATA3

Prior to this assignment I had only heard about Michael 

Richard’s and Mel Gibson’s recorded rants, threats, and racial slurs.  I was never interested enough to look them up on the internet and watch them with my own eyes.  I feel there is enough blatant racism in the world today and I did not want to bother looking for more examples.

After watching, I was reminded of what we learned about the representativeness heuristic and how it resembles stereotyping.  When racism is added to stereotyping, we have an outburst like Michael Richards.  By use of the representativeness heuristic he almost immediately labeled that person as someone he could offend by using racial slurs aimed at a particular race. Had he used better judgement and not assumed the people were of that group, perhaps he would not have gone on his racist tangent because he would have had no target.

Mel Gibson’s recordings were harder to listen to.  The pain in his voice was evident, as was the intensity of his anger.  I have seen what custody battles can do to people on both sides and am fully aware that it can lead people to say things that they normally would not find themselves capable of saying.  This does not excuse Mel or anyone else from saying those things.  It is only an observation based on my own experiences.  Where powerful negative emotions are involved, extra care should be taken before having conversations with the people who appear to be the cause of those emotions.

While Michael Richard’s rant could have been explained as him trying to be hurtful towards someone, the remarks Mel buried within his angry diatribe appear to be even more racist because they are not directed at his ex-wife to hurt her feelings.  They come across in the middle of the conversation as an aside or facts that he believes are actually true.

ATA2

Self reflection is not an easy task unless you consider yourself to be without fault.  Although, since I do not find myself lacking in faults, I suppose I don’t really know if those “without fault” have an easy time with self reflection.

With this assignment I chose to limit myself to talking about pictures from Facebook.  If I had chosen hard-copy pictures (who really has those anymore?), I could have written an entire book.  The more interesting part will be looking back at what I wrote later in my college life and seeing if I still agree with those words, descriptions, and feelings.  I tell myself that my thoughts and feelings tend to change with time but at some point I believe they might settle in one direction or another and level out.  Also, describing myself in a positive light depends a lot on how I’m feeling at the moment, similar to how we recall happy moments during happy moods and sad moments during sad moods.

Overall I’ve described myself as being happy and goofy.  These are traits I use in public to hide any unease or anxieties I might be having at the time.  Humor helps to keep me hidden and it also helps to heal my issues.  I may have been in a happy mood while choose those images and descriptions, or perhaps I wanted to be happier so I described myself as such.

I also noticed that I keep more things hidden from my Facebook “friends” that I actually do share with my close friends and family.  At some point, if it becomes especially important, I will need to purge those friends from Facebook that I feel are judging me and limiting my ability to be myself on the internet.

Overall this assignment has taught me to not be afraid of self-reflection and that it is an important tool that can and will be revisited in the future.

https://blog.bestself.co/off-topic/accountability-through-self-reflection/

ATA1

Assignment one touched on heuristics as they relate to social psychology.  I had heard the term “heuristic” while studying philosophy but did not grasp the meaning as well as this course has presented it.  What I have come to understand is heuristics are knowledge shortcuts.  While some shortcuts are safe or helpful, many of the heuristics could be stereotyping which has a negative connotation, at least in my mind.  Racial profiling, racial stereotyping, and making assumptions based on little evidence are all methods of heuristics that should be avoided.

However, there are obviously some ways in which taking shortcuts can help someone come to a decision faster if not all information is available or there is no time for research.  For example, following basic rules of thumb in an emergency will aid an emergency responder to care for someone before their arrival at a hospital.  Upon arrival at the hospital further diagnostic method will be performed to provide care tailored to that person’s specific issue.

Learning about heuristics has taught me that while shortcuts can be viewed as helpful, they can also lead to problems.  It important to remember that in order for heuristics to work they should include basic “rules of thumb” that are accurate enough to not cause problems.

https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/d/dangerous_shortcut.asp