BLOG 10

I reread my very first blog post. In that post, I discussed wanting to learn about how and why people form the attitudes that they do and how I can apply it to the business world. I feel like I did get to learn about how our brains work when we form initial judgements and why. That was one of the course objectives, so I am glad that I feel like I learned that. I also went back and reread the course objectives from the syllabus and rereading that really made me realize how much I learned from what this course was supposed to teach me. I did not realize how much this course would talk about why people love the way they do, how they love the way they do, and more on that topic. That was one of the most interesting things for me to learn about myself. My attitude about Social Psychology did not really change much from the beginning. I think it taught me almost exactly what I was hoping for it to and more. If I were to take this class again, I think I would really try to dive in a little deeper on the topics that interested me the most, such as relationships and heuristics. I think that one way I have grown academically is being able to adapt to completing different types of assignments, which sounds silly, but I haven’t had so many different types of assignments in any of my classes, they are usually the same thing over and over. One of the things I discussed in my first blog post was how much I hoped to learn things that I can use in my professional life. I think the biggest help is being able to identify prejudice and discrimination and know how I can avoid that.

BLOG 9

One of the biggest, new things that I learned in Social Psychology is the different styles of love. I also learned about emotional intelligence, which I vaguely knew about before but really comprehended during this course. A third lesson I learned during this course was how advertisements influence is really a psychological matter. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn those different things because they are all lessons that I can and have applied in my life directly. It is really interesting to me when I learn something and I can think of a very specific moment in my life where I can apply it, such as when I was working on the styles of love module and it taught me how I consider family when I think of relationships and I very clearly could think of a time that I have done that exact thing.
In the very first assignment and assignment takeaway of the semester we had to discuss heuristics and in a blog post we had to discuss advertisements and credibility. While they are two different things, they are related because they involve how we let different things influence our thoughts without consciously knowing it.
Lastly, in this course we discussed conformity and how we let others influence us. This is one of the biggest things that I remember learning in my very first psychology class. Zimbardo’s prison experiment was one of my favorite topics and so getting to learn about it again in this class was exciting for me. One new thing that I learned from this class regarding Zimbardo’s experiment was that Zimbardo did consider people can show “heroism” and that was something that I never really thought of before when I would think of conformity. I liked that this class goes more in depth with that and speaks of even Nelson Mandela.

BLOG 8

I recently read an article about the difference between men and women when it comes to mating and how these differences can cause “sexual conflicts.” I completely agree with what the article discussed. The first thing that stood out to me was how David Buss stated that men like to “pair widely” and women like to “pair wisely.” I don’t have anything against people having sex with others, I think it is completely up to the individual, but it does seem to be that way, that men don’t really think as consciously as women do when it comes to their sexual partners. I also agree that there are different stages of sexual conflict and I think that the three stages that David Buss mentioned were pretty spot on. They include different reasons why people try to have a sexual relationship as well as the problems that may arise.
I think men and women are very different from one another psychologically. I also think that it can be very difficult to try to think about how someone might think or feel about something, when it isn’t yourself. And because of those two things, it can be very easy for a man to upset a woman, and a woman to upset a man. I think that men often get upset with women when the women tries to nurture the man like a mother would. I also think that men can get upset when they feel less dominant or powerful compared to their female partner. On the flip side, I think women can get upset with men when the man doesn’t express his feelings the way the woman wants him to or when the man just simply does not understand what the woman is trying to say and doesn’t try to understand because the man might think the woman is too “complex.”
Men and women were essentially made to balance each other out I think, but with that comes a lot of compromise in many different aspects, with sexuality being one of them. Mating is a natural, human need and with it comes a lot of conflicts that need to be able to be resolved to have a functioning relationship.

BLOG 7

I watched a video where Linda J. Ferguson, a spiritual speaker, discusses regulating your emotions. Emotional Intelligence is how well you can understand what you are feeling, control what you are feeling, and also tell others what you are feeling. Self- Regulation is the ability for someone not allow themselves to act overly emotional. It is being able to consciously control your emotions and being able to deal with them. There is a direct relationship between emotional intelligence and self-regulation. I think that people’s emotional intelligence will be higher if they are able to practice self- regulation. If someone is able to identify what they are feeling and control it, they are practicing self-regulation, and therefore, they probably are emotionally intelligent. Emotional Intelligence means to me being aware of what emotion we are feeling. It also means to me being able to control how you are feeling so you don’t act out in spite of your emotions. I think I could improve my Emotional Intelligence by taking more time to process how something made me feel before reacting. I can do this by taking a deep and counting to a certain number, or by taking a minute to ground myself. Both of those actions are things that Linda Ferguson discussed in her video. I think sometimes when I get upset at something someone said to me I react too quickly and I need to start to improve that.

BLOG 6

I watched a video where Jean Kilbourne discussess how advertisements alter the way women are and how it influences the audience, aka the real women in our society. These advertisements influence how society views women, and how women start to think of themselves. I think that these kinds of advertisements cause and promote a fake idea that there is such a thing as a “perfect woman.” But, that “perfect woman” is not your everyday woman and a lot of work and a lot of alterations go into that advertisement. I have definitely noticed how advertisements distort women and how when they do that they are trying to manipulate people to buy their product. They advertise this beautiful women with perfect skin to convince someone to buy a moisturizer, but that moisturizer isn’t what made that models skin perfect. It was the airbrushing and the photo editing. In this video, Jean Kilbourne brought a lot of attention to understanding gender representation. But this video is not the only thing that Jean Kilbourne did to help advocate for women. She has done a lot. The fact that this video was from so long ago, yet these kinds of advertisements are still so prominent just show how things have not changed, but how things still need to change. The following five advertisements that I have found demonstrate how women are objectified and used to make advertisements more attractive. The first one shows off a women’s body, and basically talks about taking advantage of her. The second one shows a man in between a woman’s legs and is being sexually objectified. The third advertisement is using a women’s body to bring attention to a car body. The fourth advertisement is sexually objectifying someone to look like a young female student, this is something that Jean Kilbourne directly spoke about. The fifth one is another advertisement that Jean Kilbourne discussed, using a thin woman to advertise Virginia Slims, a tobacco product. All of these advertisements are inappropriate and objectify women in the worst way.

BLOG 5

The three pictures above this are three different types of advertisements, with different levels of credibilities. The first picture represents a credible source because it has three facts listed, as well as the source of the ad is genuinely a credible source. It shows expertise and includes statistics. The second picture represents a not credible source because they are using a well-known actress to sell their product. This actress has no expertise behind the product, and the actress was most likely just paid to do this advertisement. The third picture represents an attractive source because it has a pretty woman showing off her pretty hair, which is the sole focus of the advertisement.
I did not find the attractive source that effective because I know that a lot of advertisements are made up to look better than they actually are in real life. However, a lot of people are more likely to find sources credible/influential if it is coming from someone they like and/or find attractive.

BLOG 4

My test one results were very surprising to me, and I was extremely proud of myself for it. I received a 100% on my exam one. This class is my fifth psychology class, at least three of those five have covered some topics very similar, but not as in depth as the topics that we have covered so far and were covered on the first exam. So because of that I expected a really high score out of myself and I was pleased that I received that. Because I have an online version of the textbook through Chegg, they make it extremely easy for me to take notes, so what I like to do is read the objectives of each chapter very throughly as well as the summary at the end of each chapter first before I read through the chapter itself, then I go through and highlight the information I find relevant that goes along with both of those. In addition to that, from the day that the exam review was posted to a few days before I took the exam, I split up the exam review questions so I only had to work on about 8-12 questions per day, then by the day before I took the exam, they were all answered and I just was able to review that as well as the highlights I took from the textbook. I found that that technique along with my knowledge from previous courses worked excellent for me, so hopefully it will work the same for exam two!

BLOG 2

I believe I am a dedicated and hard working student. School has always been very important to me, my grades have always been very important to me, and I feel like I would always try to do my best work. However, my confidence level as a student fell drastically when I started college. I no longer felt like I was the best student I could be, and it was hard for me to convince myself otherwise or how I could change that feeling. I think that surrounding myself with other people who want the best for themselves academically can increase my confidence, as well as finding mentors and professors who only want the best for me academically as well can increase my confidence. Lastly, I think that if I stopped comparing my academic success and work to others, then that would help my confidence level as well. My self-efficacy scores show that I have a relatively high belief in my ability, and I have about average belief that my ability can grow with effort. I think my scores are true, however I wish my belief in my ability score was higher, because I usually don’t think that I CANNOT do something, I usually just think I might have a hard time doing something. And I do have a bit of tough stand point on believing that after so much trying, if you can’t do something, then you just can’t. But that might not be true and I should fight that attitude.

BLOG 1

After reading through the course objectives and the course syllabus, I got really excited for this class. I think everything we will learn in this class will be extremely useful in our adult lives, as well as in our professional life. I know for example, I am going into the business world, and I believe that being able to understand others is a very important part of my future career and understanding how AND why people form certain attitudes about things can really put me at an advantage in the workforce. Therefore, that is exactly what I am hoping to gain from this course, is how and why people develop the attitudes they hold and how I can use this information to form meaningful relationships with people. Because this class holds so much value for me especially, I really want to ensure I am successful. I plan to do this by staying on top of my assignments. I am going to read each chapter first, then go back and take notes. Then I will compare and make inferences between my takeaways from the chapters and the modules on Blackboard.