Artifact 3:

For my third Top Artifact, I’ve chosen Module 11’s artifact assignment “Are People Who Help Happier?” revolving around the study and analysis that goes into the acts of helping others to correlate with happiness or otherwise.  I deeply enjoyed doing this assignment since the topic taps into a characteristic of myself: wanting to help others.  To correlate the behavior with the emotional trait of happiness was a very interesting connection I wanted to fully conduct myself.  In addition, getting to do this assignment while analyzing this behavior in others that I know was also interesting to work with.  Naturally, there were a few obstacles when it came to this assignment; it’s hard to say whether or not the people I know are happy only based on my general knowledge of them, so it took me some time to make a generalization of their happiness.

From what I’ve already gathered on their behavior, most of the people I knew, specifically six of them, are pretty self-less people.  I believe in the idea that I should surround myself with people who are similar to me in order to maintain a positive, mental environment, so it pleased me to see that was evident in the amount of people I know.  Six of the people in the unselfish group were each considered to be relatively happy while the other four were a bit of a mix.  Half of the selfish group were happy while the other half weren’t.  When finalizing the data and gathering the tally, I came towards a pretty straightforward result that pointed out unselfish people were the ones who are most likely happy.  This correlated with the end result and idea that selfish people typically aren’t the happiest.

The above quote is a representation of what I believe correlates with the relationship between the selfishness and unhappiness towards the idea that gratitude is what stimulates or inspires selflessness.  This was best presented through the “Paying It Forward” assignment where I did acts of small kindness to people that I don’t know, and analyze the emotions that come with the behavior from myself and those around me.  I came to the conclusion that a lot of the good deeds I did for those people ended up with a lot of satisfaction that came from the gratitude that people offered to me afterwards, and it felt really good doing it.  I was already the type of person to do good deeds for others without rewards, and I think that already tells me how selfish people who aren’t genuinely kind to others or expect something after doing a good deed aren’t typically happy since they don’t believe in the idea of gratitude from others being enough for them. 

Artifact 2: 

For my second Top Artifact, I’ve chosen Module 7’s artifact assignment revolving around the topics “Behavior and Attitude.”  This assignment was pretty straightforward where I had to conduct a survey that involved a type of self-analysis and deep look into how my behaviors correlate with my attitudes towards a particular subject.  As I looked over my work on this artifact assignment, I’ve concluded that there are some inconsistencies between certain factors of my behavior and attitudes.  For instance, I highly agreed on recycling being extremely beneficial for the environment, but when recollecting my recycling habits over time, I’m aware that I don’t really recycle often or participate in environmental stewardship that much.  In addition, I’m aware that exercising and maintaining an excellent physical health would definitely help your body, but I don’t exercise all that much.

These inconsistencies made me learn how much I don’t physically enact or behave in a way that can portray my attitude towards those subjects.  It reminds me how there are people who are similar in my case where they will agree to a certain opinion and share their own thoughts and attitudes towards the subject, but sometimes they don’t really enact on it either due to a lack of motivation or finding no need to do so.  It’s a bit frustrating to know that I don’t express my attitudes through my behavior often since actions speak louder than words.  Nonetheless, this only reminds me that I should start behaving out of my attitudes to stay devoted to those beliefs.

The above picture is meant to correlate with my previous statement about how I believe attitudes and behaviors correlate with one another in order to make them both genuine to myself.  If I’m not enacting on a particular attitude, then I don’t believe it’s truly genuine, and it can be frustrating.  As the quote states, “it’s a two way street.” where there has to be a correlation between them in order to make them a genuine relationship between one another. 

Artifact 1: Attraction

For my first Top Artifact, I decided to go with Module 3’s artifact assignment regarding the frameworks of attraction.  I’m a lover when it comes to topics regarding romance, attraction, and what motivates human beings to look for love or intimacy in another, and I’ve actually dove into this topic before for a paper I wrote about how people have a different concept of love, and that will be evident in the way they communicate or behave with another.  I actually enjoyed gathering a few people for this artifact; getting to understand how everyone has a unique stance between “similarities attract” and “opposites attract”, and which one they may lean more towards was an interesting experience that I wouldn’t mind diving into again.  This activity and learning experience has definitely expanded my knowledge about human thought processes towards the frameworks of attraction, and getting to know how people see ‘love’ or ‘attraction’ in their point of views; I actually learned that a lot of people leaned more on “similarities attract” more than opposites attract.  A lot of people consider that meeting someone who shares similar personality traits and values grow familiar with one another quickly, and there’s less awkward tension between people during interactions, which is a common struggle when it comes getting to know each other better.

Nonetheless, I’m aware that not everyone has the same idea considering the results of the interviews were a mix between similarities attract and opposites attract.  This gives me an idea surrounding the way these point of views may correlate with human communication.  Those who consider similarities attract more may be more open towards interactions with gaining a positive first impression over an individual who has a similar likelihood and values to their own.  Those who consider opposites attract more may feel more inclined to interact with those that are out of their usual ‘social bubble’ or social circle. 

Fisher, A. (2014) The Unconscious Reasons Opposites Attract. Well Doing. https://welldoing.org/article/the-unconscious-reasons-opposites-attract

The above picture correlates with the reasoning behind opposites attracting to one another, which also ties with another article by The Gottman Institute, Do Opposites Attract or Similarities, where the article focuses on the positives towards differences and how opposites clash. These articles helped me understand that some people may not completely side with just one of these point of views about attraction. It’s a bit of a mix between both where similarities help create good first impressions, but also differences between individuals help expand a relationship in order to allow them to grow. In addition, differences also may help individuals in the relationship look through their significant other’s eyes and help understand them more. (The Gottman Institute, 2021)

References:

The Gottman Institute. (2021) Do Opposites Attract or Similarities? The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/blog/do-opposites-attract-or-similarities/