Author Archives: simranlikhari

Divorce: good or bad?

Divorce today to many is a tragic situation; families and children are split up and generally the word divorce comes with negative connotations. There are many articles out there that say that divorce has a bad effect on children, but there are just as many articles out there that say the exact opposite. To me, the media has always portrayed divorce as a awful thing. When I started researching over both sides of the topic, I was surprised to find the amount of articles saying that divorce has positive impacts on children.

An article written by Lauren Hansen called “9 negative effects divorce reportedly has on children,” talks about 9 different ways that children are affected with divorce. The 9 effects are: increased smoking habits, ritalin use, poor math and social skills, increased chance of sickness, increased chance of dropping out of school, more likely to commit a crime, higher risk of a stroke, greater chance of getting a divorce and lastly a possible early death. This evidence is definitely possible and can happen but now a days there are so many divorces that these effects, since they are on the extreme side of things, might not be as likely anymore. Children now a days are surrounded more and more with divorces, unfortunately in our society today it is almost a norm. Though these effects are all possible, how much it may affect each different child are all going to be different.

Another article called “Divorce and Kids: 5 ways divorce benefits kids,” written by Dr. Shoshana talks about different ways that divorce can be good for children. The first reason they talk about is, when a child see that each individual parent is happier this in turn will make the child happer. If the parents are always fighting that might lead to the child being unhappy as well. Secondly, when the tension in the house is gone that will make the environment less crazy and the kids will be able to function better. Third, kids need to know that every parent needs a supporting partner so the fact that the parent is showing them that they need a good partner is good. Fourth, having a shared custody the kids would be able to experience both sides of the parents without them fighting. Lastly, since the parents are not together anymore there is potential for the kids to witness happiness for the parent either being on their own or finding a new partner to be with.

All in all, these are the ways that kids can both benefit and not benefit from a divorce. In today’s society the norm for a divorce is that it is always such a bad thing but in reality it doesn’t really  have to be that way at all, there are many things that kids see that end up being a positive thing and end up being worth while in the end.

Work cited:

http://theweek.com/articles/466107/9-negative-effects-divorce-reportedly-children

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/divorce-and-kids-5-ways-d_n_1519485.html

 

 


Reality vs Media

Schizophrenia defined by our psychology textbook is “a mental disorder characterized by disorganized thoughts, lack of contact with reality, and sometimes auditory hallucinations.” ( Comer and Gould G-11). The video that I was to watch for this prompt, explained to me that this is how a day in life would be of a person with schizophrenia. The video also warned me that if I felt uncomfortable to stop the video since it some of the material shown could be traumatizing. From here I started the video…

In this simulator representation of schizophrenia, it the beginning it looked as if the person was living in the home by themselves and they were having a fairly good day. The second that the schizophrenic part started, the video got darker and the voices in the persons head got very negative. I was surprised that the voices in the persons head were all negative, there was not a single good thing that any of those voices said and I feel that the voices are a big part in why this person was not able to do a lot of his daily activities that could have possibly made him feel better. Some of the things that I noticed was the person wanted to take his medication but the voices said not to, he wanted to drink some of the coffee but his disease made him think that the coffee was bubbling and was poison, he wanted to eat pizza but the voices made the pizza bubble and the voices also made him think that the pizza was poison.

Schizophrenia in the media is portrayed as this really crazy disease where people are not able to lead a normal life where they can not do daily activities and their every moment is affected. Generally in the media, the person acts in a crazy manner and is usually taken care by someone because they cannot take care of themselves. Yes, this is true that some cases of schizophrenia are more severe than others but there are many people out there that lead very normal lives even when they have this disease. In reality, the voices that the simulator showed are very true and do happen in real life but I’m sure that that they are not so many all at the same time. I also watched other videos on youtube of people with schizophrenia, I noticed that they go through phases why they hallucinate. For example, there was a boy who for sometime saw animals, then for sometime didn’t see anything, then went back to seeing animals and large numbers and letters.

I think that all in all, schizophrenia is a very tough disorder and it definitely affects the person with the disease and the the people around them. The media does over dramatize the daily life of a person having schizophrenia versus how they are in real life.

Work Cited:

Comer, R. J., & Gould, E. (2013). Psychology around us (Second ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

 


What would I do?

The video from the ABC news program “What would you do,” definitely caught my attention as being a discriminatory video. The social experiment placed 3 different people in the same situation of stealing the bike. The three people were the average American man, a Mexican man and an American woman; all three people received very different reactions from the public when they saw what these 3 people were doing. The American people definitely got less of a reaction than the Mexican man and the American woman got the least of the reactions than both of the men, the woman was actually offered help even when she made it clear that she was up to no good and that she indeed was stealing the bike.

In this case, the right thing to do no matter who the person was would be to call the police and notify them that someone is stealing a bike. I think that I would have seen that this was happening and would want to help but I would be too scared to call the police or talk to the person that is trying to steal the bike, I’d be scared because I know that person is dangerous and that he/she knows how to do bad things and I didn’t want to get caught in it.


Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance theory is when there is inconsistent thoughts and beliefs in one’s head, if there is an uneven balance something has to change to eliminate the dissonance. For example in the video, the people that were given 20 dollars to lie and say that the test was not boring had enough compensation with the money they got so they did not need to change to eliminate any dissonance. On the other hand, the people that were only given 1 dollar to lie and say that the test was not boring felt that they were not given enough money and thus they did have to change something to eliminate the dissonance. What they ended up changing was how they perceived the test, they made themselves believe that it really was not all that boring so the dollar that they received did not seem so bad after all.

After learning that cognitive dissonance is, I do believe that this is both a positive and negative thing that people do to maintain homeostasis in their brain. Positive in the aspect that, if someone was in a situation where something might hurt their feelings then compensation might be the rout to go. Negative in the aspect in that if someone were to get very used to the idea of cognitive dissonance then they might start to be okay with less which is a bad thing.

In my life I experienced cognitive dissonance when one of my friends needed me to talk to her parents and lie to them about something. Though I knew that was bad I somehow did it anyways that there was cognitive dissonance at its finest. Though I knew that lying was bad, I did it anyways.


IAT Tests

The IAT tests were definitely both interesting tests to take, the ones that I took were the self-esteem one and the sexuality. IAT stands for Implicit Association Tests, these tests are there to see what biases a person might have that they are not fully aware of. The process of taking them through a sample of questions and then through the matching/sorting game was a bit confusing at first but then once I got the hang of it I was able to go faster and process the data with better accuracy. For my first result I did not get good enough data to get results because I had not master the sorting game but when I took it again I was able to get results that I needed to complete the IAT Test. For the sexuality test I was able to get results on the first time that I took the test! I wanted to take the sexuality test because I have many friends that are homosexual and I wanted to know what my brain felt about it rather than what I was already thinking. When I received my results I was a bit hesitant to see what they were because I was scared of the unknown and learning something that I did not already know about myself. When I say them, I was not completely surprised but there were some things that I did not know about myself and there were some things that I already knew about myself so those did not come as a surprise.

These tests could be useful for employers to test their potential employees to see if they have any biases that they are unaware of so that when the employees are given the job they can be made aware of what those biases are and can make sure that they keep those biases in check when they are working and dealing with other people.

All in all, I thought that the IAT tests were interesting and unique tests to become aware of things that I already didn’t know of, I would defiantly like to take more of them in the future to become more aware of myself.


Can Poor Sleep Cause Weight Gain?

We have all heard of the infamous “freshman 15” weight gain from the poor eating choices to the binge drinking with friends. Today after countless research we have learned that this weight gain could be from the varying sleep patterns that these students might have.

In the Journal of Behavioral Sleep Medicine a study of 132 freshman students at Brown University kept daily sleep diaries of the times they fell asleep and the times they woke up for about 9 total weeks. At the end of this period, it was found that about half of these 132 students had already gained an average of 6 pounds each; the weight gain could have been caused from their abnormal sleeping patterns.

Researchers were confused what type of sleep these students were getting to cause them to gain this weight. Experts say that students need to be getting an average of 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep per night, but in the study the students were averaging about 7 hours and 15 minutes per night causing them to be sleep deprived. Sleep deprived students were more likely to reach for sweeter foods due to their lack of sleep, they craved sweeter items to keep them awake and happy.

The amount of time students were spending in bed is only half the battle, the other half if the time that students went to sleep and woke up every night and morning. It was seen that the students that consistently slept and woke at the same time every day, were able to have a lesser change in their weight while the students whose sleep schedules changed on average were the ones to gain more weight. Students whose sleep schedules changed on a daily basis were pretty much dealing with symptoms of jet lag, and the more their sleep varied the more their so called “body clocks” were packing on the pounds.

Unfortunately, in this study the students did not monitor what they consumed so it was hard to pinpoint completely if their sleep was truly the reason as to why many of them gained weight. Though, habits that are developed in the first year of college are habits that stick around for a long time and take a long time to break if the habit was bad.

When the study was coming to an end, Brown University found significant gender differences; for example the highest weigh gain on the women’s side was 11 pounds while on the men’s was 18 pounds. Girls were able to keep more steady sleep schedules while boys usually had a harder time keeping consistent sleep schedules.

The reason that this study was so important was to make an emphasis for parents to create good sleeping habits while they live at home. Whatever habits that these students would make at home, hopefully they would be transferred over when the students would attend college.

Original Article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/poor-sleep-may-spur-college-weight-gain/?_r=0

Research Article: https://msrc.fsu.edu/system/files/Holm-Denoma%20et%20al%202008%20The%20freshman%20fifteen%20the%20freshman%20five%20actually-%20predictors%20and%20possible%20explanations.pdf

 

 

 

I feel that is was a lot easier to write the article in much fewer words than the original writer wrote in. When the writer wrote the original entry, there was a lot of quotes that were put in and studies that were also added that I didn’t feel the need to be there as they weren’t about the main subject present, they were more there for fillers. I did though have a hard time understanding some parts of the original text in the wording that the original writer used, it took me a while to figure out how to summarize it and understand what it was talking about. It was pretty easy to distinguish between what needed to stay and what needed to be taken out in the summary that I wrote. It was also easy to word the sentences in a way that was easier for me to read, I found that a lot of the sentences in the original article were very difficult to read so when I went to write my version I changed the way that to words things to a way that might be easier for the reader.


About Me – Simran

Hello class!

  1. I choose to take this class because it is a pre-med requirement along with my interest for psychology.
  2. When I think of the word “psychology” I associate the brain, thoughts, and how the brain works. The suffix ology reminds me of the phrase the study of.
  3. The three topics that look most interesting to me include, memory revival, sleep, and personality theory. I am interested in memory revival because it has always been one of my struggles to memorize things whether it be for a test or just in general. Sleep is something that I could definitely use more of, I want to learn what goes behind sleep and how it works. Every person is different and I’ve always been curious as to why people are different and what make each individual special so I was gravitated towards personality.
  4. Three topics that look the least interesting to me include, Experimental Design, Classical Conditioning, and Operant Conditioning. These topics look the least interesting to me because these topics have already been covered in other courses, the thought of learning them again is a bit dull.
  5. One question that I want to be able to answer by the end of this class is: How does sleep work? I am interested in sleep since I have trouble sleeping and staying asleep.

Best,

Simran Likhari