ATA 5

For this assignment, I referred to an article that explained research made on emotions in Italy. It was a semi-structure, open ended questionnaire that studied on students in Italy, Spain, and Cuba. For six months, 150 students in Italy, along with the outlet countries, to rank the most common emotions. I not only got to learn things based on the findings of the study, but also get an understanding based on a real example. What I learned about Italy is that it is an occidental and individualist culture which makes them focused on themselves and their fulfillment. There were findings that a high frequency amount of negative emotions were shown for Italy. Most commonly anxiety and fear. This lead to their focus on components of money, career, and positive events, with less on relationships, culture, and knowledge. These negative emotions help drive Italians to focus more on goal achievement and less failure.
The teachings from the chapter and research reflected in another class of mine, Industrial/Organization Psychology. All my learnings of what influences culture and how emotions are conditioned is important knowledge in I/O Psychology. Understanding the antecedents of emotions is key in maintaining a good work environment and provide better managerial care for employees. To run a successful organization, it’s important to know what influences people’s emotions in an organization setting and being able to understand them.
My personal relevance to this assignment is that I need to have good knowledge about the influence of emotions and it’s differences In culture. It is important in order to properly play out my role as a therapist in the future.

ATA 4

For this assignment, I compared gender roles in advertising in North America and South Korea. South Korea have Confucian values which means they support normal gender roles. The common gender roles are that the man works and woman takes care of the rest. Women have become tired of the expected gender roles which led to the rise of feminism. After a lot of disagreement in sexism over the years has caused North America to have more of a focus on equality. Now and days, there are nowhere near as many sexist advertisements as there used to be in the past decades. Due to the value of equality, gender roles aren’t very prominent in North America. Many advertisements include showing both sexes portraying the same things. In make-up advertisements you can now see the male gender being included. Based on the advertisements I found, both cultures reflect the same issues and ways genders are portrayed. Besides the information I learned above, all of this taught me that even with some differences, gender roles in advertising is very similar among cultures, just some cultures may value something a lot stronger than another.
My own personal experience of gender roles would be when I was a high school cheerleader. Cheerleading is usually seen as a puny, feminine sport. Usually there are stereotypes that follow. I’ve known many males who are cheerleaders and by including them they bring a lot to the team. I was glad to see when a fellow teammate of mine, who was a boy, joined the team and the gender roles were pushed to the side. He received a lot of support from the school and it was nice to see people not look down on it, though many still do. This assignment was relevant to me because I was able to see these views from both culture’s perspectives and it opened my eyes to how the world is always changing.

ATA 3

For assignment 3, I chose a blog written by Jordan Cregger, who studies abroad in London, England. Jordan’s blog was very unique with the way he portrayed his experience. His writing was very descriptive with emotion and poetic. His experiencing enlightened me by how meaningful experiencing a new culture and atmosphere can be so rewarding. I was able to learn that your experience is really shaped by perception. It was how every little experience had some sort of meaning to him even it was just looking at a beautiful sunset, and listening to the live music. They all seem like such simple things you wouldn’t really get excited over when visiting somewhere. But he allowed the things around him to shape his experience and embraced the culture that surrounded him. Most importantly, there was a good lesson learned towards the end of his trip that I can very much agree with. He was so sad to end his experience but realized he could experience anywhere, especially in his own country around him. I feel that is a great outlook to takeaway from his story. Overall, I can apply his experience to an earlier topic, “The Contents of Culture.” The are all the things that make up a culture. Art, architecture, accents, and history were just a few of the things he mentioned that related to that topic. 
This assignment was personally relevant to me because like Jordan, who used his perception of everything to create his experience, I too, reply on my perception for my experiences. I love seeking the beauty in the little things around me. I love to take in the whole moment and focus on the things that lead me to happiness. I feel when I use all my senses to focus on what I can enjoy, I get more from the experience and am less likely to have a bad experience.

I chose this image because it fits perfectly with the way I choose to perceive things. How I allow myself to see things influences what the experience will be like for me personally.

ATA 2

1. My focus on this assignment was the self-help concept valued among Americans. When I first tried to think of some cultural values in America, I realized that I never had considered them before. One of the values that stuck out to me was the self-help concept, which is the belief that people should receive credit based of their work and accomplishments. I firmly agree with this concept because anyone who puts in actual time and effort, then they deserve all the credit. Americans are prideful in their accomplishments and motivates us to work for achievement. On the contrary, other cultures don’t usually think like this. They believe in giving credit to someone with or without the work don’t to receive it. It was eye opening for me to learn that more cultures think this way compared to Americans. 
   This concept can be applied to almost anything like achieving a certain lifestyle, completing an assignment, creating something, or receiving an award. As for myself, I use this when completing schoolwork to earn my degree. This will be an accomplishment for me knowing the work I am putting in to receive it. The day that I can look back on the earlier stages of my life and see that I am financially stable and working a job that I am passionate about proves that everything I did lead me to here. That is worth receiving credit for. It’s value among American people creates a mutual respect that is important.