Monthly Archives: February 2017

Mythbusters first impression

Today I watched a Mythbusters video that outlined an experiment about weather or not women get bigger tips if their breast size is larger. The experiment was done by having the same woman work in a coffee shop for three days of the week. In order to control variables, she wore the same outfit for each day that she worked at the coffee shop. Using this method the team was able to test weather or not changing the woman’s breast size had any effect on how much the customers would tip. This method of experimentation had some key strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of this experiment being that the Mythbusters team was able to collect empirical data on unwitting participants, and that the Mythbusters team used the same person and outfit for the coffee shop employee. One weakness I noticed was that the test was on three different days. Having the test on three days could mean that the amount of people subjected to the test could vary, and thus the amount of tips could change based on the number of people rather than the intended variable of breast size. Another weakness was that the various customers could have varying amounts of cash to tip with. For example, a customer intending to tip the woman ,due to her breast size, might not be able to because of a lack of funds. Overall I would say that the experiment had a good amount of effort placed in its design, but with some key oversights.


Case Example According to the Modern Psychological Schools

From the psychodynamic perspective, Miguel exhibits an anal personality, which is why he tends to act like a perfectionist. This may be due to a specific event or milestone which took place during his childhood, specifically his experience with toilet-training and his parents’ extreme emphasis on him succeeding at it (there of course could be a whole different event that caused this behavior or that made the behavior worse). The fights he picks with his roommates are probably a reflection of the grand conflict taking place between his conscious and unconscious mind. The ego is unable to effectively resolve this constant mental conflict and so he picks fights and acts irritable as a mechanism of defense. Overall, it is plausible to say his unconscious mind is quite a dark place due to unresolved issues that took place during his childhood, which is why he has trouble focusing and resolving tasks. He probably has a hard time sleeping because dreams tend to lead to the unconscious mind, which may be too traumatized or negative.

With the behaviorist approach, it is evident there is something in the environment (or multiple things) which serve as a source of influence on Miguel’s behavior. The reason he has trouble focusing on his work could be due to a lack of positive reinforcements in the learning environment from his teachers and family or he could be the target of various distracting stimuli, such as friends. He could have trouble falling asleep due to stress from school or family. This lack of sleep causes him to feel irritable and by fighting with his roommates, he may temporarily feel less irritable. He acts like a perfectionist because cleaning and organizing may also provide a source of temporary stress relief. Finally, he is hard on himself as a result of punishment. For example, not getting an A on an exam may cause his parents to be unhappy with him or it may cause him to feel more stressed out, as he may assume he will not do well in the class.

From the humanistic perspective, Miguel is a perfectionist and is hard on himself because of his innate desire to reach his maximum potential in life. It seems his difficulty sleeping and his lack of focus on school is holding him back from achieving self-actualization (according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Combine this lack of full potential with being tired, and he exhibits irritability. Perhaps his inability to engage in decent sleep and fully respect others is a sign that he is not yet ready to reach full self-actualization.

Based on the cognitive approach, Miguel’s behavior is a result of his mental processes. He appears to process information in a distorted manner. He seems to undergo mental processes which interfere with his perception and promote negativity which causes him the inability to sleep and irritability, causing him to be easily ticked off (picking fights). The mental processes he utilizes to solve problems or get out of situations is probably faulty, which is why he is hard on himself. In addition, the mental processes needed to focus and pay attention are also slacking. He probably has pretty negative thoughts about himself and others and thinks unrealistically about how to get through the day, from human interactions to just getting to go to sleep.

In terms of neuroscience, there could be many explanations for Miguel’s behavior. His lack of focus, irritability, negative attitude, and inability to sleep may be caused by disorders affecting the brain, such as ADD, ADHD, Depression, and Insomnia. In terms of his aggressive behavior in picking fights, that could be an exhibition or combination of his family’s genome and/or effect of hormones (testosterone) and/or male evolutionary characteristic. Genetics likely plays a part in him acting as a perfectionist.

Finally, with cultural psychology in mind, it makes sense to assume that he is a bit of a perfectionist who is hard on himself due to the western culture’s emphasis, and probably his own family emphasis, on self-image. Whenever he loses focus on his work, it appears to make him think less of his self-worth, as self-worth and the ability to stay focused and do well in school are pretty universally associated. His irritability may simply come from his inability to sleep, but his tendency to pick fights probably stems from the universal idea of masculinity and using aggression to resolve (although temporarily) irritability.

 

 

 


Do Beer Goggles Really Exist??

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Do beer goggles really exist?

The team of MythBusters are ready to chug some beers to test out the idea if the people around you become more attractive the more a person drinks… Adam, Jamie and Kari underwent a series of tests to see exactly that. These tests were to rank a set of people when they were sober, buzzed, and drunk. After each time they were given a score telling them whether or not the hypothesis was true.

Thinking about this in the eyes of the scientific method, a four part method: make an observation, develop a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and finally build a theory. The MythBusters, firstly, made an observation that there are more male female interactions when people has some form of alcohol in their system. Secondly, they developed the hypothesis that people around you become more attractive the more someone drinks. Next, the needed to test the hypothesis, they did that by ranking a set of people while they were sober, buzzed, and drunk. The higher the score they received, that meant they saw the set of people more attractive. The lower the score they received, that meant they saw the set of people less attractive. Lastly, building a theory, coming up with a conclusion from all of the tests conducted if the hypothesis was true or not.

With every hypothesis, the tests have their own strengths and weaknesses. In this scenario, some strengths I saw included; having an intermediate test between sober and drunk, this gave them a chance to see if attractiveness is a gradual process or a sharp jump. Testing both boys and girls, giving them an idea if this hypothesis is true or false for both genders. Lastly, the tests gave them a general understanding whether or not this hypothesis is true or not. Weaknesses I noticed were, this experiment was not a real world example, meaning every time they went back to rank people there were different people shown. If this were a real world setting, you would see the same people, lets say at a bar and you’d gradually start to see them more attractive. Another would be, there were not enough people to conduct this experiment, the more the people the better the results would’ve been and the results would be more conclusive. Lastly, what if  different types of alcohol affected people in different ways. If this experiment was conducted again with changes I would propose to conduct the experiment in a real life setting, such as in a bar. This will allow the person to see similar faces and see if over time the affects of alcohol made that person more attractive. Another thing I would propose would be to add more people, with more the people in the experiment the outcome would be of a greater sample, so it could be generalized over a population. Not having enough people in an experiment makes the result hard to justify because the data could be highly varied so the average possibly wouldn’t make sense. Lastly, being able to test the experiment with other types of alcohol to see if attractiveness increases or decreases would be interesting because all people are different and not everyone gets affected the same way with beer.

After one long hangover, the MythBusters saw that overall there was a slight increase in attractiveness averaged over the three of them. Sure there were some up’s and down’s in the scores but the general trend was that as more alcohol was consumed the more a person thought everyone else was attractive.

 

 


The Beginning

Just a little background on me…

Hi everyone!

My name is Christina Mao. I’m currently a junior here at Austin College. You might think it’s strange- wow! Why is a third  year student attempting to take this entry level psychology course? Well I’ve tried to take this class in the past and it didn’t quite work out the first time, as my other chemistry and biology heavy classes took and diverted all my attention to energy to them. Now, I am back and here with more experience and knowledge and am eager to take this course and hopefully succeed with great grades. I actually need this class as a pre-req for nursing school, so yes, I am doing this because I HAVE to. But at the same time, I am taking it here because I WANT to. I’ve heard that psychology can provide insight into my own mind and psyche as well as help me to better analyze and understand others; especially in what they don’t mention or say to me.

I took Psychology AP in high school, however, I did not do as well as I would’ve liked on the AP exam because I did not take the course seriously back then. I enjoyed it, but didn’t think of it as that important. Now, I see my mistakes and hope to move forward really trying to actively learn in this class.

When I hear the word ”psychology”, I think of feelings, emotions, tests that access what personality types we are, as well as famous psychologists that made momentous strides in bringing attention to mental illnesses and human behaviors. I think this is a science, just harder to quantify and deem completely true due to the nature of the tests and its subjectivity and ethical concerns at times.

Three topics that interest me the most are effects of sleep (because I want to truly see how it affects us after years of sleeping enough or not enough), effects of drugs and alcohol on the brain (as our society is so tempted to consume these), and dealing with stress (as I deal with this myself almost everyday).

By the end of the class I want to answer the question: “Why are we the way we are? Why are people so hard to read and why do they say and do the things they do?”

I know this mind sound typical of a question to ask but it is quite hard for me to read people and understand their nonverbal cues. I want to get better at this because I feel it will benefit me greatly in the future.


Week 2 First Impression Prompts – Research Methods

Hand writing on a notebook

Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the Tag “Research Methods” on your post. Here are the prompts for this week:

Option 1

For this week’s discussion, I want you to design a research study about a topic you find interesting in psychology. You can choose any topic you would like as long as you relate it to something from our textbook. In your post make sure to do the following:

  • List your research question
  • State your hypothesis (what you think the outcome would be and why)
  • Describe your procedure (what you would have participants do, how you would recruit participants)

Make your research idea something feasible that you could actually do as a student researcher. In other words, assume you have a fairly small budget and a limited amount of time. If you’re a psychology major or minor, you will eventually take Research Methods and have to conduct a research project, so this is great practice to start thinking about what you might want to do.

Option 2

Mythbusters is a popular TV show on the Discovery Channel which tests popular ideas using scientific methods.  Select one of the mini-myths (short clips from the show) below and critique the methods used to test the myth. Remember, critique means list the strengths and the weaknesses. For each weakness, discuss why it is a problem and suggest a solution.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

First Post

Hi my name is Sam Pollard and this is my blog for Psychology 101. I chose to take this class to get the required credit for my statistics class. I have no background to psychology whatsoever and the word honestly clouds my mind with thoughts of tasks and hard work. My three favorite topics from the syllabus are Brain Structure, Memory Retrieval, and Drugs, Alcohol, And The Brain. By the end of this class I hope to know how memories are stored and structured in the brain.


First Post

I chose to take this course so that I can prepare myself for the psychology portion of the MCAT. Besides pretending to be interested in my roommate’s psychology research, I have no background in psychology. When I hear “psychology” I think of Freud and therapists. Out of all of the topics we are going to learn, I would say I’m most excited to study personality theory and what makes each of us an individual. As for what I’m least excited about, I would say I’m not looking forward to learning about the brain structures. I took anatomy last semester and I’m still a little traumatized. The main thing I wanted to get from this course is a deeper look into how our culture/society/world shapes our psyche. I’m also excited to learn how thoughts and behaviors physically manifest themselves in our brain.