eP: Blog 10 (Course Outcome)

For my first blog post, I noted my course expectations and I predicted how I will do for this class. I mentioned how I expected social psychology will prove to be beneficial to learn for my degree in Communications since it’s a study of human behavior. That belief hasn’t changed, and it greatly pleased me while I was engaging in this course that I was right in my expectations. Much of the material and general information I’ve learned in this class helped me correlate between human behavior with human communication. I deeply enjoyed getting to deepen my knowledge on certain communication topics thanks to certain social psychology topics that helped broaden them.

I believe the above picture captures the visual of my academic growth pretty well. For this course, I’ve done a relatively good job at keeping track of my assignments, maintaining my organization, and making sure I’ve achieved nothing but excellent grades for my assignments. This process remains the same for many of my other courses I’ve taken this semester, and it relieves me to see that the pattern hasn’t strayed away from its usual consistency. Admittedly, I was nervous at first to move through this course since there was a lot of material all at once. I needed to keep track of it all in order to make sure I don’t get lost and have all of the necessary materials that are required for my assignments and studies.

Fortunately, it’s all worked out for me in the end, and I can only hope that by the end of this semester, I have a relatively good grade. My expectations for this course were well-met, and as I hoped, I would do well while engaging in additional topics that would add to my understanding of human communication that I could maybe utilize in the future. None of the materials really stood out to me as something I would wish to do “differently” — if I were to take the class again, I would only wish to continue expanding on the topics by touching upon newer materials or information. Perhaps I’d like to do additional assignment that was similar to the “Pay It Forward” framework where I had to utilize my daily routine and life as a means of studying human behavior. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this course, and one useful skill I wish to continue into my professional career is maintaining my behavior of providing those around me without holding an expectation of getting anything in return.

eP: Blog 9 (Collective Understanding)

I’ve learned many new things in this course that I feel were relative to my desired career field in terms of human communication and behaviors. Social psychology and studying communication has always felt they intertwine with one another, and it’s one of the reasons why I decided to chose this class. The top three concepts that I thoroughly enjoyed learning was the concept of self-efficacy, ethical media, and the credibility of advertisements. These concepts all happened to tie with certain lessons and concepts I’ve learned throughout my courses pertaining to my Communications and Marketing degree. It was nice getting to study these relative concepts even further in a separate course.

Self-efficacy felt closely related to the concept of being aware of your own self. This topic altogether is familiar when it comes to human communication, where communication towards oneself is more common than a person may think. Everyday, intentional or unintentional, people are communicating with themselves with their own thoughts and feelings circulating into their mindset. It’s a key part of how you hold onto your own values and morals in your daily life. Unconsciously, you are consistently holding onto these values and morals to your being by communicating with yourself over and over again to establish a firm position.

Ethical media is also a big part in my studies towards Communications, along with Marketing. When it comes to Communications, certain forms of media can be a big part of what motivates people to engage with pop culture that’s most commonly prevalent online. Online media itself is a big part of today’s general media, specifically social media, and it can be a big influence on a person’s development of human behavior, communication skills, and development of their morals or self-values. Unethical media can generate negative communication habits, and stimulate immoral implications when exposed to it. This is why its extremely important for producers of general media to keep in mind of how their content can effect viewers, especially those at a very young, impressionable age.

Advertisements and their credibility is more tied with Marketing, but also in the field of communications revolving around online media. Media can be easily manipulated by their producers in order to gain a certain, desired effect or reaction from their target audience, and that requires an understanding of psychology and human behavior in itself. With that in mind, since media can be manipulated, it’s best to understand which advertisement is credible in terms of genuine content and ethicality. Naturally, you shouldn’t trust advertisements that aren’t factual and immoral. That’s why it’s important to follow up on advertisements to understand if it’s credible.

Overall, studying social psychology helped me understand some concepts of human behavior even further while getting to explore a part of those concepts that expands past the borders of communication. This experience serves as a reminder that many subjects intertwine with one another, and communication and psychology go hand in hand when it comes to understanding human behavior and motivations.

eP: Blog 8 (Sexual Conflict)

Relationships between a man and a woman, specifically the heteronormative, has always been established as a key concept of present culture until the acceptance of open sexuality and freedom of gender expression would slowly increase over time. Nonetheless, some of the components revolving around the sexual conflict between men and women are still present today; it’s become such a norm in popular culture to the point there are often jokes revolving around it and brought up in casual conversations. For instance, there’s the joke of how fathers are less obligated to stay in relationships, so they’re often expected to run away or break off an established, newly parental relationship with their child. Even when they do stay, fathers are more likely to be praised rather than the women, even when they are doing the very bare minimum. This joke is established and motivated possibly by the fact that there are fewer single fathers and more single mothers.

Sexual conflicts between a man and a woman are often considered humorous in popular culture, but they are very much real, and less humorous in direct context. For instance, men and women have been established to have a particular ‘identity’ when it comes to sexual interests. Men are often considered to be less likely to engage in a relationship for an emotional connection, and are more interested in engaging in sexual intercourse with a woman; this desire is so motivated to the point men would even resort to lying or deceiving a woman by pretending to express the same, emotional connection or feigning similar interests that women share. Women are considered to immediately look for a partner to engage in an exclusive relationship with possibility of marriage in the future, however, that image has slightly shifted to where women are now pursuing relationships either for that emotional connection or for monetary means. Overall, these images are very negative, but sadly not uncommon in the present dating culture.

The above photo is a representation of typical stereotypes of men and women when it comes to sexual context or sexual conflicts tied to their stereotypical, gender image. It’s displaying men as people who want to show-off their sexuality in terms of ‘body count’ and dominant masculinity in hopes of gaining attention from others, specifically women, for sexual gain. With women, they are considered as very emotional people who cares a lot about their physical appearance, like their make-up and establishing a specific beauty standard, and are capable of home management in terms of being a partner whose more likely to be obligated towards parental duties. Much of the sexual conflict revolving around men and women are tied with basic, gender stereotypes that’s been so deeply ingrained in popular culture, and while it’s fortunate that many of these stereotypes are breaking, it won’t be uncommon to witness these in action.

eP: Blog 7 (Self-Regulation and Emotional Intelligence)

Having some form of control and awareness over your emotions is definitely essential as a part of mature development. It’s important for a person to understand and acknowledge their emotions not just as a way to better understand themselves, but also understand certain self-boundaries and restraints that should be conducted when necessary. It’s another form of self-critiquing where a person could also be engaging in some habit of self-communicating, which helps better establish what a person may need to work on in terms of self-development or restraints. It’s a very complex framework that involves a lot of self-awareness and acknowledgement.

To me, emotional intelligence means understanding my emotions, being able to acknowledge what I’ve done wrong, what I could work on better as a person, and how well controlled my emotions are in certain scenarios. It’s definitely something I’ve struggled with while growing up, as I imagine it was difficult for many people at a young age. I didn’t really dive into topics that revolved around mental stability, emotional intelligence, or anything similar until I was just starting high school. High school for me was a time period where I had a lot of development come to me as a person including understanding my own emotions better, taking some time to reflect certain points of criticism onto my academic performance, and growing as a person altogether. I think the reason why I never really conducted myself into developing my emotional intelligence was because I didn’t surround myself in an environment that really ‘allowed’ me to do so since I grew up in a household that didn’t particularly believe in mental habits or the ‘control of emotions’; my Vietnamese household were very straightforward when it came to their emotions, and tended to be rather harsh at times where any emotional obstacles I may have endured were just considered “you’re not trying hard enough if you’re feeling so stressed or down”, so I put more of my efforts in simply striving for the ‘perfect image’ as a collected student rather than taking time for myself to understand myself as a person, mentally, and not really being aware of it.

This is the emotional intelligence quiz I took; all the questions were relatively simple and easy to answer, but a few of them had to involve me step back a little bit to dig into my previous experiences revolving around the scenarios that were inquired about in this quiz. For instance, I’m aware that the present me has a high emotional intelligence, but it’s not without some flaws. These flaws include me still often feeling really self-conscious and avoiding risks, which hinder me from trying out new, big things that could be essential to my development. I still would like to work on receiving negative feedback more since I tend to already be really harsh on myself already, there are some days where when I’m not in the best of places, I don’t receive criticism or negative feedback really well. I definitely still need to work on grounding myself in terms of confidence since I tend to have second-thoughts about multiple things or second-guess myself in my decision-making habits.

eP: Blog 6 (Ethics of Ads)

It’s not uncommon to witness strange advertisements every now and then, especially ones that revolve around putting women in an almost objectifying manner all for the sake of marketing and sales. The marketing world will cross many boundaries to grasp the most attention, and utilizing women, even often men and children, as a dehumanizing prop is sadly common. These unethical marketing tools can often include using sexist quotes, explicit or graphic content, and sexualization; in addition, now with the use of photoshop, marketers, advertisements, and agencies revolving around beauty standards will continue to edit their models to fit an almost impossible beauty standard. This sort of act marks down as dehumanizing the models, and objectifying them in a way that indicates their physical appearance and natural beauty as still unqualified. The video expresses the differential gender representation through portraying examples of certain ads she used to make her points including the ads that revolve around women being photoshopped to portray unrealistic beauty standards, sexualization of women and even children, utilizing graphic or sexual content, and the differences between the way men are typically portrayed compared to women in the media.

The above photo is a typical example of a model being photoshopped to fit with the physical preferences of the advertiser or agency. On the left, a viewer will see the model’s real physical qualities before they’re digitally altered through photoshop. Her skin appears to have a more paler glow while her freckles appear to have been wiped off completely. This is an example of setting unrealistic beauty standards that’s common in beauty industries, and being digitally altered is a method that indicates a sense dehumanization.

This ad is a prime example of sexism that was common in ads in the 1900’s where the gender norms of women being the submissive or weaker gender while commonly playing roles as the obedient housewife and mother. It also played onto the former gender representation of women that were commonly portrayed back then where women being portrayed in the media were always following after their husbands or boyfriends as their pretty little wives or girlfriends, and were meant to be obedient to them. The quote plays onto the indication that women weren’t very smart to the point they couldn’t even open up most bottles until the advertised product came into play.

This ad is an example of how children are commonly being sexualized into a role or image that doesn’t fit their age. Little girls like the ones in this ad are often put into scanty poses or wearing clothes that are normally for young adult women in media to make a profit or sales. It’s objectifying children to meet with a certain older, practically pedophilloic eye.

Men are also photoshopped in magazines, and this one is a common example of how men are typically represented in magazines to fit a certain fit, buff agenda. Men in media are often expected to have a nice, toned body with well-fit abs to correlate with how men should be strong as a stereotype. The issue with photoshop revolving around men is similar with women, where both genders undergo this digital alteration to fit with a certain beauty criteria that’s hard to meet in the industry.

This ad ties in with the concept of sexism while also bordering on the usage of explicit or sexual content to promote a certain product or advertise. In this case, the watch is the one being advertised, yet ironically enough, it can be assumed that most of the attention won’t fall onto the watch as it’s not the first thing an audience member will notice which is the typical strategy that marketers should use in promotion towards a product. Instead, the first thing that’ll be noted is the almost sexual imagery of a woman being submissive under the hand of a presumed dominant man. Not only is this an unnecessary method towards promoting a watch, it’s also a display of sexism and sexual innuendo.

eP: Blog 5 (Advertisements)

When it comes to advertisements, persuasion is key in the base of its framework and overall marketed structure. Marketing and advertisements revolve all around the art of persuasion, and there are multiple different forms of marketing strategies that include drawing in attention, motivating people to take part of the advertised product, and appeal to the targeted audience or consumers either emotionally or visually. One common mistake marketers and advertisements alike make is trying to stray away from the line of bias. It’s important that organizations or companies who are marketing or advertising their products keep in mind that they need to be portrayed as professional and ‘neutral’ about their products while also making sure they don’t sound biased.

Credible:

This Credible advertisement is a typical example of utilizing celebrity endorsement as a marketing strategy to advertise a specific product; in this case, the Aveeno body wash moisturizer. Many advertising agencies use celebrity endorsements to increase the rate of sales or attention towards a certain line of product since the influence of celebrities are typically big, and can greatly motivate fans of that certain celebrity to take a look at the products that are being advertised. In Jennifer Aniston’s case, her fans may be more likely to buy the advertised Aveeno product simply because of her influence and that they are appealed by her presence; therefore, establishing a line of credibility and trust towards Jennifer which would then be portrayed on the Aveeno advertisement. In addition, Jennifer Aniston is a celebrity commonly seen on Aveeno’s advertisement, which establishes her position similar to that of a partner to Aveeno’s to execute a sense of expertise and knowledge of the Aveeno products.

Not Credible:

This advertisement utilizes a rhetorical question to viewers to ‘guess’ who is the real monster here; while one would normally choose the being on the left who carries the common stereotypes and typical features of a monster, who PETA is really addressing as the monster is the woman on the right wearing fur. PETA’s tagline for this advertisement is “Stop wearing fur”, which is branded to their usual tag lines and intended mission as an organization where they encourage people to follow a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, and refrain from buying products that are made out of the fur and skin of animals. Their purpose altogether is to protect animals from humans, and while their purpose sounds noble on its surface, PETA utilizes a lot of unethical methods when it comes to their advertising and means of ‘encouraging’ viewers. Often PETA draws over ethical lines when utilizing marketing content such as using gruesome, disturbing images of animals being ‘killed’ or ‘skinned’, guilt-tripping people who eat meat, and shaming wearers of fur or leather in some of their advertisements. These methods lessen the ethicality and credibility of their work since they’re rather biased towards the idea that people who eat or use animals in their daily lives are considered ‘immoral’, and therefore must be ‘stopped’ or shifted into a different lifestyle.

Attractive:

An attractive source typically uses a lot of visual appeal as a way to boost credibility, almost similar to the marketing strategy of utilizing celebrity endorsement. Victoria Secret most commonly uses visual appeal, specifically physical attraction, to draw in consumers to buy their products. While their advertisements may most often draw the male gaze, their products are primarily for women, ironically. For this advertisement source, the ‘attraction’ or credibility is very controversial. It’s no secret that Victoria Secret uses primarily skinny, more petite models to advertise their products, already putting a dent on credibility given the increasing acceptance of plus-size models, and this advertisement further paints Victoria Secret in a negative light as they received backlash for being inconsiderate and prejudice towards body size that were ‘larger’ than their standards; this factor made the advertisement ineffective, and painted the advertisement’s intentions as indirect body shaming.

eP: Blog 4 (Exam Review)

When it comes to reviewing material or studying content that’s needed for an exam, the process for me is pretty typical. I sit down at my desk, look over course material and content, and while I’m at it, I gather my notebook and sticky notes to mark down relevant details or information I believe will be useful for the exam. This also includes utilizing the study guide that was provided for us beforehand. I find information that correlates with the information from the study guide, and mark it down either on my notebook, stick notes, or highlight them. Any information I can’t find or really understand, I look it up on google to make note of it, but fortunately, this didn’t really happen often since the information I needed I could find from the content or general knowledge.

I was honestly quite surprised I got a very good grade on this; an A to be exact. I must admit, I did feel a bit stumped on some questions to the point I had to rely on a best educated guess and hope it happened to be the right one. Fortunately, that effort turned out very well for me considering my good grade. Some of the questions that were even asked had some information that I relied more on common sense to me. I believe my general knowledge of human communications correlated with some of the information in the exam as well, which provided as another benefit to my knowledge.

Considering the process of my overall studies and how it impacted my grade for my exam, I believe I will continue to enact the same habits of note-taking and studying as I did with this first exam. In addition, I’m also hoping that while I learn about both social psychology and communication, the knowledge from the respective areas will boost my knowledge for the other subject since I’ve noticed they tend to correlate with one another pretty well. I wanted to represent that through the above pictures, where two heads (one representative of social psychology, the other communitcation) are tied and working together to correlate through a system. So far, the process of preparing for this exam was pretty typical and not out of the ordinary when it comes to my usual routine.

eP: Blog 3 (Song and Souls)

I highly believe the songs make a significant impact on relationships in terms of establishing a connection between people. Everyone has a particular preference in songs whether their preferred genres are classic, rock, or pop music. Music itself feels almost universal; a subject that practically everyone knows about, and may have a particular preference or opinion on it. This topic helps set up conversations and some bonding to occur between a group of people who may share interests in a song, a band or group, and a music genre. Overall, music is what helps build up relationships.

I’ve definitely noticed how some of the people I hang out with, specifically my best friend, have the same taste in music. My best friend, Tia, and I generally have our own shared playlist where we listen to relatively similar songs. A lot of these songs happen to be pop music or from the kpop genre; in addition, our few favorite kpop groups happen to be Blackpink, Red Velvet, BTS, and Stray Kids. Taking into consideration of these similarities, they correlate into how we both share similar basic values and ethics. I believe the reason for this isn’t just because of music, but also because of engaging in similar environments with one another, and spending time together to the point we have a tendency to like similar things; I think the similarities between our music tastes also serve as a bond between me and Tia since our shared taste is what motivates our friendship to build up, and establishes a sort of image between us as people who enjoy sharing our experiences with one another as close friends.

When associating music with certain key people in my life, I tend to think about my mother and Tia a lot whenever I come across a song that exudes the aesthetic or emotion that I think ties between me and to either my mother or Tia. Some songs I associate with my best friend include Instupendo by Comfort Chain, Can I Call You Tonight? by Dayglow, and Russian Roulette by Red Velvet; these songs are generally soft, sets a casual atmosphere between us, and is often played as background music whenever we spend time together. Some songs I think of when I think of my mother is Are You Satisfied by Marina and The Diamonds, Flowers by In Love With a Ghost, and Heart Like Yours by Williamette Stone; these songs are a bit more on the ‘sadder’ side of my playlists that reflect my emotions and feelings towards my mother. My mother and I have our up and down moments where we may argue and feel tense around another, but I will never stop looking at her as a mother since I knew that she always did her best to take care of me, even though she wasn’t perfect. Listening to these listed songs makes me think about how I wished my mother did a better job as raising me emotionally, and sometimes I would think about how our relationships may be different if she had been a bit more open with me as a person as well.

This picture represents how music is tied between me and my best friend, and I also wanted to include how the website this picture comes from gives a list of several songs that Tia and I listen to on our shared playlist. Indeed, as the title suggest, these songs are great when it comes to representing friendship, and Tia and I bond together whenever we listen to music like this. I honestly can’t imagine what our friendship would be like without music, much less a whole world without it.

eP: Blog 2 (Self-Efficacy)

I think I’m a very knowledgeable student who utilizes as much of her resources as possible to pass and learn from her classes, and so far, my grades provide evidence to those efforts. I’ve maintained an academic image of only receiving As and Bs throughout my education, and I’ve done a relatively good job at keeping this record up by maintaining focus on my studies, doing my schoolwork in a timely manner, and pushing through certain obstacles that may come my way. It’s been somewhat difficult, especially since I don’t particularly go to anyone or reach out to others for help, which is something I wish I could work on more. I’m aware that I’m allowed to ask for help if needed, but often I get nervous and scared doing so. I’m unsure if it’s either out or pride or the general fear that if I can’t do something on my own, I’ll feel useless or bad about my academic performance.

Overall, I could definitely work more on my confidence by trying to remind myself that I can utilize the maximum amount of my resources, reach out to others for help if necessary, and put in more effort in trying not to overthink so much. I can handle a lot of the obstacles that come my way, but I shouldn’t overcome them by sacrificing so much energy by overthinking. Hopefully, when I start learning how to be more confident in these regards, my academic performance may get better, and I’ll finally be able to achieve straight As for once. I’m already quite pleased with my academic performance so far, but striving for more is often better.

eP: Blog 1 (Course Expectations)

• Describe your expectations for the course. What are you hoping to gain? What strategies do you intend to implement to ensure your success in this course?

My expectations for this course is relatively grasping an understanding on human behavioral concepts and tying them with human communication to grasp a better understanding why they think, act, and choose to behave the way that they do. I believe communication, psychology, and sociology are collectively similar together. I chose this class in hopes to further my knowledge in psychology and human behavior for the sake of my degree, and I hope I can make use of this knowledge for my future career revolving around Public Relations. I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior in general, and I wanted to get into Communications to both be involved with people while also being at sort of a ‘front seat’ to experience their behaviors, understanding certain communication theories, and maybe while I’m at it, I get to explore the world and see how human behaviors are influenced in certain countries and cultures.

Certain strategies I intend on using to increase the likelihood of succeeding in this course is simply utilizing simple organization, time management, and trust in my own abilities. So far, I’ve been relatively successful in all of my previous classes where I’ve received primarily A or B grades, and I’m hoping I keep this process up. I’ll be implementing the same strategies, the ones I’ve presented earlier on, as I’ve done for all of those other classes. I think it will work out relatively well in the end for this class, especially since this class is one I’m looking forward to learning in revolving around a topic that genuinely intrigues me.

I chose this above picture because I thought it was a relatively simple, but collective photo that gives people an understanding of what revolves around human behavior. Human behavior is unique and different for everyone as it’s affected by both internal and external factors that could mold and shape an individual’s behavior and thought process. As portrayed in this picture, human behavior spans out towards all sorts of behavioral types and factors that could effect it such as childhood events or trauma, anxiety, personal experiences impacting an individual simply because they are either a man or a woman, emotions, and personal environments.