First Impression Post: Marijuana

I am a strong supporter of both medicinal and recreational marijuana, because it’s a natural way to help people get through lots of different things. With alcohol and cigarettes, you’re putting chemicals in your body that only harm you and can harm others. Marijuana doesn’t have any negative effects, and isn’t habit forming, unlike alcohol and nicotine, which are both legal and harmful. I’ve never heard of someone being harmed from some pot, but I’ve heard plenty of stories of it helping anyone from people with epilepsy, to cancer patients, to people with anxiety. Alcohol has caused millions of deaths as well as nicotine. Even my father died from the effects of nicotine at 33, and my grandmother is dying of liver failure due to alcohol; but all of my family in Colorado who smoke pot are actually doing better because of the calming effects of weed. The worst marijuana can do is give you the munchies, and all that’s going to do is give McDonald’s more money. Also, if we made pot legal, we’d have less prisoners, and less drug cartels, because there would be no incentive to bring pot in illegally, and there would be less people doing illegal drugs (since pot is widely used illegally). Plus, this would bring more money into America, because we could grow our own weed, and so other countries wouldn’t be able to profit from it.

Memory- First Impression Post

This week in psychology we are learning about how memory works, and how that can influence learning. So, for this week we were to watch a Ted talk, given by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who specializes in memory, about memory to get a first look into how crazy memory really is. The Ted talk opens up with the story of a man who was wrongfully accused of rape because the memory of the abused girl wasn’t fully there, so since he looked like the assailant in her brain, she had him convicted. This was but wasn’t shocking to me, because I think I remember something correctly when I don’t all of the time, but you would think someone would remember their rapist’s face. Loftus moves on from this by bringing up a range of experiments done with memory, which of course I thought I could beat them, like every human likes to think, but when the results she got were shown, I thought much less of my abilities had I of taken the test. What interested me was that I remembered seeing the car experiment from an episode of “Brain Games” I saw a long time ago, so seeing an actual psychologist confirm what was said shocked me, because I though that show was more fictional. After seeing this Ted talk I’m more interested in how memory works, because maybe I can help lower the amount of false memories I have while studying.

Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness- First Impression Post

This week in psychology we are studying neuroscience, so beforehand I watched a TED Talk, given by Thomas Insel, about mental illness. When we typically think of psychology, we typically just think of the diseases, like schizophrenia, associated with psychology. What we don’t typically think of is how all of psychology is attached to the brain. Many don’t even get as far to think of mental disorders, or as Insel prefers them to be called, brain disorders. Mental illness has been highly stigmatized throughout history, and still is today; this is why few want to research them, because they could go on to “bigger” things like cancer and heart disease. Unless you have a brain disorder, or are very close to someone with one, you don’t usually understand mental illness, and are more accustomed to thinking about other diseases. Being a sufferer of depression and anxiety, I understand how debilitating the diseases can be, and know how true the early onset is. I’ve had symptoms of depression for many years, but I wasn’t diagnosed until a couple of months ago, because no one really knew about depression or anxiety around me, so I didn’t even know I needed help. Insel makes a good point about the umbrella of mental illnesses having connections to the brain, even on scans, because many think it’s all in a person’s view of the world and not biology. Another great thing he did was show the difference between the amount of work we’ve done with heart disease and other major diseases, because even though the other disease are important, we haven’t payed enough attention to mental illness. stop-the-stigma-of-mental-illness-e1381250784828 Even though behaviors and symptoms are important, what causes them are more important, because we could use that to stop the disease or at least calm the symptoms. Personally, Neuroscience is my favorite part of psychology, because I think the brain is the world’s biggest puzzle, and I like to know how things work.

Parenting Styles

This week in psychology we are studying development, which is highly influenced by the parenting style that is used. In my opinion, parents should take a more relaxed stance unless the child starts causing an issue. If you just butt in to everything your child does and try to make them fit your needs, instead of letting them find themselves, then they may very likely grow to resent you. This resentment can lead to rebellion and they may become better at hiding things from you, which can lead to bigger problems then if you were more relaxed from the first place. Of course you can’t just let your kids to whatever, but it’s better not only on you, but on the kids, if you gently guide them in a good direction, then the kids will be allowed to make and learn from small mistakes, instead of hiding massive ones. I was raised in a house with relaxed parents, and I can’t see myself being raised any other way, because had I been with strict parents, parents who make me do what they want, or both, I would not be where I am today. My chill parents let me watch mature shows like “Dr. G: Medical Examiner” and “Untold Stories From the ER” at an early age, which allowed me to realize that I want to be a doctor at 8 years old, which has motivated me to do well ever since. Had I been with “helicopter” parents, I may have never found my passion for medicine, and may have been in an awful place right now. It’s important to teach your kids everything they need to know, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffocate them, it’s all about teaching things at the right time, and allowing kids to learn some things for themselves.

Research Methods- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

The basis of science is of course the scientific method. Since we are studying it in psychology, we were assigned to watch a “Mythbusters” and critique their methods. So, since I am a blonde and have been told my hair color is preferred by many, I was curious and picked that one. Overall, I am not surprised that there was no preference in the hair colors, since everyone has their own preference and many care more about other things than hair color. Even though the test came out how I thought it would, there were still a few issues. The first of them being how obvious the wigs were, which could have led to suspicion from the guys about them, and could have lowered the ladies’ likability if they are noticed. The other issue is that the women looked and acted fairly different so the men could’ve had a preference for something other than the hair that could boost numbers. Otherwise, the experiment was set up well, one of the better ideas being the speed dating thing with the equal numbers of hair colors and then having them all switch was a good touch. Also, getting more men in also was well planned because it allowed for a bigger sample, which allows for more empirical data, heightening the chance that their results are good.

Introduction

Hi my name is Holly Humphries and this is my psychology blog. First and foremost it’s important to know that I have Major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety, both of which I’m being treated for, so I may approach a lot of things from my perspective and I have some prior knowledge of general psychology. I decided to take this course because I’m planning on majoring in Neuropsychology, so this is the first step in achieving that. I want to major in Neuropsychology because I want to be either a neurosurgeon or a trauma surgeon and do research; also, since I deal with a few problems myself and many people in my family do as well, I’m interested to really know what’s going on. Besides my own situation, I’ve also dealt with psychology being an EMT, because sometimes we get psychiatric calls, where we have to be especially sensitive, and where you learn the most about people. When I think of psychology I think of sitting in a therapists office, and of course the basic person on the long couch telling someone their problems. The three topics I’m most interested in are anxiety & mood disorders, sleep, and brain structures because of course I have anxiety; I’m kind of an insomniac at times or I sleep a lot, so sleep is interesting to me; and I love the brain so I’m interested in learning more about it. The three I’m not excited to learn about are the scientific method, research methods, and conditioning, because I learned about all of them in high school, and I remember really hating conditioning. Finally, the question I want answered by this course is if there is a possibility that diet could help ease depression/anxiety.