Miguel here like most students, is having trouble with his schoolwork. He finds it hard to concentrate on his work. He is tired and cannot sleep and during the day, and gets mad easily in the day and lets that out on his roommates. Also, he blames himself for making a small mistake and doubts himself in accomplishing anything.

There are many ways to interpret his behaviors depending on what school of thought one chooses.

Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud believed that life was a constant competition among unconscious forces trying to reach conscious forces. He would say that childhood experiences set the stage for later psychology functions. Freud would think that Miguel had something in his childhood that held him back from correctly learning how to study or something discouraged him from getting the highest grades possible. In terms of focus, Freud believed there were certain milestones needed to achieve for emotional adjustment. So possibly, Miguel never fixed his bad habit of concentration in the window of time he should have. In terms of Miguel’s anger issues with others and himself, it might be an imbalance of tensions and push and pull from internal desires to do better between his conscious and subconscious psyche, all which should govern all his behavior in the Freudian school of thought.

Behaviorism Theory: Pavlov believed that every stimuli gives way to response, response gives way to a consequence, and the future responds to stimuli. So, for Miguel, there must have been a stimuli. The stimuli could’ve been a distracting home environment and he might have been held down to high standards by his parents, which made him feel like he has to do everything right. However, he doesn’t think he can; which could have been a result of a bad grade or two. After getting certain amount of not-so-good grades, Miguel might have been conditioned to believe that he cannot do any better and that he is incapable. The bad grades could then be, in a way, negative reinforcements, in Skinner’s words. It increased the likelihood of him avoiding the undesired outcome by not studying.

Humanistic Psychology: Perhaps in Miguel’s case, he did not believe in himself and did not find his strength based and focused on how he grew. Maybe Miguel did not see that he had freedom to grow and improve and this caused all this self doubt and self hatred.

Cognitive Psychology: Cognitive psychologists would study how the inner workings of Miguel’s brain affect him. The way he processes info might be different from others and affect him in concentrating. Also, maybe the way he thinks and processes information as he develops has affected him in such a way to stress him out and not allow him to get enough sleep at night because of all those firing of neurons going on in his head.

Biologic Perspective: This branch focuses on behavioral genetics as well as evolutionary psychology. So for Miguel, his the way society is organized must have affected his behavior in such a way for him to blame himself and get mad at others easily without much thought.

Cultural Psychology: Focuses on how mental processes and behaviors differ in different cultures but some are universal and some are in fact specific. This doesn’t really apply I think too much. All I can think of is how perhaps in such asian cultures, schools are super competitive and as such, most students will only think about school and will not allow failure to be the result and will keep on working instead of just giving up and thinking that you cannot do it.

While watching the Mythbusters short clip on, “Is It Dangerous to Drive in Heels?”, I found a few things to be quite problematic with the setup of the experiment and how it was conducted.  There were one or two positive things, such as the different types of shoes provided, but everything else regarding where and how they drove only one type of car was a different experiment all together!  How they measured their experiment, which was by stopwatch, wasn’t accurate in telling how safely someone could drive in a more realistic setting.  The variable that they kept controlled was the type of car used, which would have been fine if it were a car that was used for everyday commuting and not for racing.  Their driving course was put together in a way where there were enough quick turns and stops, but it wouldn’t prepare a woman going into work in early morning traffic while trying to maneuver around other drivers, or even considered driver experience, or the time of day.  Even though more than one pair of shoes were used in the experiment, I found it a bit disappointing that they didn’t include more types of heel sizes and fashions.  There are definitely all types of high heels that have higher platform bottoms and thinner, spikier heels than the shoes used in the example.  All in all, I wasn’t necessarily blown away by the research methods they used, and so I think they could have done more to make this experiment extensive and lengthy.

When conducting a study on preference I think a key factor crucial to the experiment is deception without harm.  As Holly mentioned in her Research Methods blog post, it was obvious to us, the audience, that the wigs the women wore were fake hair. To the men this could have altered their natural preference detector. In any experiment the participants are to be aware that an experiment is being conducted but they should also be blind to what they are tested on. Considering a fairly ethical/safe experiment such as the one the MythBusters conducted, it would be absolutely harmless and rewarding to deceive the participants to collect valid data.

Another strong point that Holly made was how different the women’s behavior was. Each woman behaved in a different way which could have appealed to each guy differently. I think that if the experiment was controlled a bit more, then it could have been a strong experiment.

Lastly, the final point that Holly made was how randomization played a major role in the experiment. Holly stated, “Getting more men in– allowed for a bigger sample which allows for more empirical data, heightening the chance that their results are good”. Though a larger number of participants isn’t as important as the random picking of the participants, I agree that the randomization of the experiment heightened the chance of precise results.

Lisa Brown is a member of the Austin College staff, and is also a well-respected social psychologist she has accumulated quite a bit of research on the topic of racial bias along with social discrimination. Lisa questions the outlandish idea that we are currently living in the “post racial America” which is claimed to be evident in the presidency of Barack Obama, yet incidents of increase violence against unarmed black people continue to rise. Lisa insists Obama is a special kind of black man and a rarity of sorts even as a president he is the only commander and chief to have two degrees from ivy league institutions. Lisa insists that many people do not lack ability but are lacking determination she goes on to enlighten the audience that we all have the ability to accept one another but due to the difficulty of assimilating with one another, individuals choose to let that ability remain weak. Dr. Brown insists that once we increase our determination for social justice and acceptance of all walks of life we will reach true equality. Based on statistics Dr. Brown has found in her research she begs the question who in the United States justice system gets the benefit of the doubt?

Lisa has discovered through her research the less culturally influenced an individual looks or the lighter their skin is the less likely they are to receive harsher punishments and racial prejudice. Lisa’s claim shocked me because it leads me to believe that white America the over-all bully in this dilemma is okay with an ethnic person as long as they dilute their heritage to a certain extent and become accustom to so called “American life.” Dr. Brown suggests that white America is the bully and the number one cause for this social injustice taking place in our criminal justice system and streets do to the founding of our country in which white men and women took the lands from native Americans enforced black slavery and lead racial division and discrimination from day one so now that we have equality for every color in the job market, when an individual of color begins to take a white persons job, this leads a white person becoming frustrated and enraged insisting this is not the “American way” thus instilling even more hatred for other cultures in their heart and as the resulting cause you see the election of Donald Trump a man considered a bigot by most liberals and people who love to feed into whatever the left media tells them. Lisa Brown’s target audience are the bigots, the individuals fearful of learning new ways of life, individuals ignorant to acceptance, also to the socially intelligent. Lisa is attempting to awaken the ignorant. Lisa is trying to empower the socially intelligent individuals who have come accustom to acceptance and have found a love for new walks of life different from the ways they have been taught, she is attempting to get them to fight harder to bring about the extinction of ignorance.

I learned that because I am a college student I am less likely to experience harsh punishments in the court system unlike an individual my age who is a “Towny” because I am assumed to be a benefit to society and intelligent, whereas the “Towny” is assumed to be a waste of life and dumb. This idea sickens me and I fear there is no real fix to the social injustices that take place every day in America and across the world. This event relates to psychology because Dr. Brown is discussing what causes the thinking patterns and behaviors of individuals and groups that lead to racial stigma and injustice, much like Behaviorist would observe behavior or a psychoanalytic researcher would insist racial divide is learned from childhood experience. If I were to be in charge of the follow up event I would have Dr. Brown recall some of her original thoughts and more information from research she has been involved with. Then I would have actors portray a series of events where injustice and racial discrimination would play out before the audience. Following the examples I would have Dr. Brown ask the crowd what they see is the issue in the skits and how to attack the different issues. Next I would have Dr. Brown give an explanation as to why the small skits are so powerful for change, and how to combat the ways of thinking seen in the skit. Over-all I consider Dr.Brown to be an incredible individual whom embodies the perfect combination of beauty, awareness, determination, and intelligence. Austin College is blessed to have her on staff and I am blessed to learn from her.

Do beer goggles really exist?

The question of if beer googles used to show teens and future drivers the affects of alcohol truly do not exist. There is no accurate way to show how alcohol affects somebodys coordination skills. Just using a set of goggles to blur and distort somebody’s vision is not a way to accurately show disorientation. Although the use of the goggles to scare little kids out of drinking and driving might be useful it is not an accurate way to portray alcohols affects.

Do beer goggles really exist?

The question of if beer googles used to show teens and future drivers the affects of alcohol truly do not exist. There is no accurate way to show how alcohol affects somebodys coordination skills. Just using a set of goggles to blur and distort somebody’s vision is not a way to accurately show disorientation. Although the use of the goggles to scare little kids out of drinking and driving might be useful it is not an accurate way to portray alcohols affects.

Do beer goggles really exist?

The question of if beer googles used to show teens and future drivers the affects of alcohol truly do not exist. There is no accurate way to show how alcohol affects somebodys coordination skills. Just using a set of goggles to blur and distort somebody’s vision is not a way to accurately show disorientation. Although the use of the goggles to scare little kids out of drinking and driving might be useful it is not an accurate way to portray alcohols affects.

Do beer goggles really exist?

The question of if beer googles used to show teens and future drivers the affects of alcohol truly do not exist. There is no accurate way to show how alcohol affects somebodys coordination skills. Just using a set of goggles to blur and distort somebody’s vision is not a way to accurately show disorientation. Although the use of the goggles to scare little kids out of drinking and driving might be useful it is not an accurate way to portray alcohols affects.

Do beer goggles really exist?

The question of if beer googles used to show teens and future drivers the affects of alcohol truly do not exist. There is no accurate way to show how alcohol affects somebodys coordination skills. Just using a set of goggles to blur and distort somebody’s vision is not a way to accurately show disorientation. Although the use of the goggles to scare little kids out of drinking and driving might be useful it is not an accurate way to portray alcohols affects.