Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" "Are we learning from the past or are we simply repeating our mistakes?" So that is what we are going to do with this week's topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) there are some good news source links at the bottom of the following page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning about the history of psychology. Write an informative response to the article. How you go about it is largely up to you, however it must read as though a college student half way through a semester of class wrote it. Correctly use the terms and concepts we have been reading about in your response.
When you are done, copy and paste the URL at the bottom so we can go and see the sources you used.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
I chose to write a response to the article, “Inside the Brains of People over 80 with Exceptional Memory”. I chose this article because it has everything to so with psychology, specifically cognitive psychology. This article focuses on the aging of ones brain around ages 60-80. I specifically chose this article because it fits in with chapter fifteen, which included information about the research on the cognitive processes. We have not discussed much on cognitive psychology throughout the course however; chapter fifteen was filled with information dating back to around the early 1900’s about the discoveries and research of cognitive processes. I thought this article helped show how far our research and discoveries have come since the 1900’s, now that it’s the 21st century.
Unlike most research that focuses on memory loss diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's disease, this article discuss the research conducted on finding individuals over the age of 80 with memory capacity to that of a 50-60 year old individual. A neuroscientist Emily Rogalski seek volunteers age 80 and up to participate in a study that would help revel how good their minds really were. The volunteers went through a barrage of memory test. Participants had to memorize a list of random words and recall the words some time later. Or they listened to stories and were later tested on the many small details in them.
Rogalski findings indicated that some of the elderly participants had outstanding memories; they did as well as if not better than people in their 50s. She did add in however out of the individuals that participated; only about 1 in 10 had exceptional memories. She called this group of individuals "superagers." Once she discovered the group she called the superagers, she immediately requested to have MRI scans completed.
She analyzed the cortex, which is critical for thinking and memory. “The cortex is comprised of dense layers of nerve cells, and its thickness indicates the health of the brain.” Her example for Alzheimer’s, was that the cortex begins to get thinner and shrinks. What she found in the superagers surprisingly amazed her because there cortex looked more like a 50- 60 year old. Rogalski stated, “There was no significant thinning or shrinkage of the cortex in the superagers, compared to people 20 or 30 years younger.” She reviewed the MRI scans once again finding more fascinating facts. "Then we found something even more surprising, which was even harder to believe," she says. "In an area called the anterior cingulate of the brain, it was actually thicker in the superagers than it was in the 50-year-olds." The anterior cingulate is a small brain region important for attention and memory. There are not real explanations as to why these individuals have such exceptional memories. Perhaps they’ve always had much healthier, bigger, smarter minds. But one thing is facts, these indivduals labeled as superagers, have a decline in memory at a much slower rate than that of a 60- 70 year old.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/15/176921691/inside-the-brains-of-people-over-80-with-exceptional-memory
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/boston-marathon-explosion-san-francisco_n_3087665.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/la-runners-boston-marathon_n_3087538.html
I chose to write about the Boston Marathon bombing because I think that you can see some psychology in it. Take out the bombing all together and I bet you could ask any runner there and they would describe a type of peak experience. I know that when I was in a sport there were times when I know I experienced a peak experience. It is just hard to believe that for some of these people it was a great accomplishment and they were probably on top of the world when all of a sudden a bomb goes off.
I chose two articles which are a lot alike just about two different interviews of runners that were crossing the finish line or who had crossed right before the bombs went off. You know that these people had been training for this event for a long time and they had to of been exhausted when they crossed the finish line just to have to see a crowd of people running away also. I also think that you can see where this event will lead a lot of these people.
When I was reading this it made me think about behavioral psychology because I think that if I was one of these runners I would have a hard time competing at another one of these races again without feeling the anxiety as you got close to the finish line. I think that this is going to cause a lot of people to need therapy to help them not be scared of their surroundings anymore. The aurora shooting caused more deaths then this bomb, but yet I think this one will impact our country a lot more because it wasn’t just some guy who lost it, but it was either a domestic or foreign terrorist attack. It makes me think about the aurora shooting because I think a lot of those people that survived that attack will have a hard time returning to a movie theater.
This whole thing can be a psychological study because the people that did this can have be looked at in a psychological way to figure out why they did this and what they were thinking when they did it. I think that psychology can be used in the media in how they portray this story to us and what they do and don’t want us to know. Media and other advertising things can really impact how we look at situations and right now the media is really milking this bombing to try to bring our country together.
The news story I'm chosing to write about is the Ricin incident that happend last week with the President. This article struck my interest because someone trying to poison the President is a huge deal, and I don't think many reaized it even happened because it was around the same time the Boston bombing took place as well.
Last week in Washington D.C. officials noticed a granular substance on mail that was to be delivered to the President. After being tested it came back positive for Ricin, which is a toxin that is derived from castor beans. After more investigation they discovered that the letters came from a Mr. Paul Kevin Curtis from Mississipps. Curtis was arrested and held until today, Tuesday April 23rd. He was released and his hearing was cancled. The reason for is release isn't disclosed yet, but they are saying that he has to ties to the letter with the toxin enclosed. His attorney is saying that they are sure someone close to him took is personal information and sent the toxic letters to our President.
I think this article ties into psychology and what we have been talking about because it deals with Behavior issues, as well as identity issues. The person who stole Mr. Curtis' identity obviously has some serious behavior issues. Most adults know that it's wrong to steal someone's personal information and impersonate them, let alone send a toxic letter to our nation's President! Whoever did this has some serious behavior and mental health issues, and they need to be tended to as soon as he is in custody.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/23/us/ricin-suspect-released/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
For this week’s topical blog I decided to take a deeper look into the current treatment of the mentally ill. Last week I did more research on Dorothea Dix and her work with prison reforms and fair treatment of prisoners so I thought it would be fitting to try and find an article that could relate. What I found was an article from about a year ago from the Canadian Psychiatric Association titled “Has Our Mental Health System Gone Mad?”
In this article the author explains how we regressively treat the mentally ill. Within the article they mention Dix’s prison cry out to the prisons in 1841 and how in response to this society began building psychiatric hospitals across North America and within forty years “the population of mentally ill prisoners in U.S. jails dropped to only 0.7% of prison populations.” This lead to the new institutions becoming overcrowded, shortly after however we began developing effective medications that depopulated the institutions and enabled these ill people to live happily within the community with support from many different services. Soon after the de-hospitalization however, the number of mentally ill involved in the criminal system began to increase, and the number of hospital beds allotted to mentally ill patients decreased from 339 to 29 out of 100,000 in the U.S from 1954 to 1994, and from 4 per 1,000 to 1 per 1,000 in Canada. The author believes that this happened because hospitals were supposed to give their money from their mental health sector to the community to support those who were discharged but they did not. Consequently more of these mentally ill patients, who were not receiving the proper services, were running the streets and becoming a part of the criminal system. In addition to this, it became more difficult for doctors to hospitalize patients who needed it/keep patients longer because of the pressure to save money.
All in all psychiatrists in Canada are not happy about all of this and like Dorothea Dix they are demanding change and reform: they call for holding government accountable for appropriate psychiatric resources in hospitals and in the community, reconsider separate funding for the mentally ill, provide appropriate and sufficient non-forensic, non-correctional mental health treatment to prevent criminalization of the mentally ill. This article give us a more in depth look at what occurred after Dix’s reform, and we also see the importance of psychiatric counseling and other psychologically related services that have been used in therapy to treat those with mental illnesses.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marvin-ross/mental-illness-crime_b_1311314.html
I found an article on the NPR website about how mice used in medical research at NYU died during Superstorm Sandy. This caught my attention because we have read numerous studies in our book about animal research and the amazing discoveries it has led to. As I read this story, I began thinking about all the research that would be lost and/or delayed because of the damage by Superstorm Sandy. A lot of these mice were genetically engineered to have traits or medical conditions that humans have, and it will take a lot of time and money to replicate these mice.
I also thought about how the laboratories at NYU were in the basement, which is why the mice drowned. It reminded me of what Dr. Maclin said about how psychologists used to only have offices in the basement of buildings and how they had to fight to get more space and to have room to do research. A similar situation happened at the University of Texas in 2001. Since then the building that houses the laboratories have been redesigned so that the animals are stored on the upper floors and the research labs are in the basement.
The last thing I thought about when I was reading this article was how the researchers must feel to have lost their subjects, and how I would feel if I was in their position. I believe that the researchers bonded with these animals. They relied on them for their work, but also spend many hours studying their behavior and trying to cure them. I think I would feel a loss for the research that was destroyed when the mice died, but I think I would also feel the loss from knowing that these animals I cared for died for no reason. Animal research is vital in both the medical and psychological communities, and it is a shame that information that could help people was lost.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/25/178808079/a-tale-of-mice-and-medical-research-wiped-out-by-a-superstorm
This week I chose to write about something that I found on the BBC site. It's a world service broadcasting episode detailing the work of Dr. Joseph Wolpe; specifically his work with phobias and his use of systematic desensitization.
The broadcast scared me right off the bat as they discussed the fear of spiders and how the phobia effects the lives of millions of people each year, being one of the most popular. I was immediately intrigued with this broadcast, hoping they would go into great detail how a person could use systematic desensitization to work. The episode soon went into talking about the amazing scientist Joseph Wolpe, the pioneer for such technique. They explained that during this time, in the psychological field of science, psychoanalysis was the primary use of therapy and the creation of a new technique was seen as unacceptable. However, Wolpe did it anyway, creating a breakthrough for behaviorism. Wolpe was credited with more fully introduction cognitive behavioral therapy and inventing a way that clients could almost immediate feel themselves being cured. This also allowed for therapist to have a more advanced control on how their clients are healing themselves through the process of systematic desensitization.
Systematic desensitization was soon found to be extremely popular in phobia therapy. It also had an amazing rate of success, seeing 80 to 90% of phobia cures during Wolpe's career. The sessions were also relatively short. Wolpe only scheduled his clients for two hour sessions and most clients were cured within twelve weeks or less. Before the therapy could begin the therapist needed to go through a behavior analysis. A behavior analysis allowed the therapist to have a complete understanding of their patients phobia, by learning about the persons phobia, the context in which it becomes more apparent, it's origin, impacts on life, and really any details they have about their personal phobia. Once this process was complete, they could begin systematic desensitization. This consisted of three steps. The first step was to take the client through a series of muscle relaxation methods. This gave the client the ability to calm themselves down and more fully understand their own relaxation. Step two consisted of a list, usually made of ten items, that the client would create. This list would start with a situation in which the client would fear but not be too extreme, and would continue to a situation in which the client would find extremely challenging to handle. This is where the episode introduced Ms. Elaine Caiger. Ms. Caiger had a major fear of spiders and was going through systematic desensitization. She had dealt with this phobia all of her life and had finally had enough of it when she was nearly in a horrific car accident after seeing a spider outside her car window. While Ms. Caiger was asked to make her list, the Dr. gave her an example of a list saying that people with claustrophobia would create a list that began with something as minimal as driving through tunnel and would eventually get all the way to a situation in which they were stuck in a mining tunnel cave-in. The last step in systematic desensitization combines the first two steps by asking the client to now go through the experiences on their list, imagining them one at a time, starting from the bottom. The clients now have the ability to calm themselves down when their situations make them anxieties.
My reaction to this broadcast was great. I thought the broadcast really allowed me to more fully understand that systematic desensitization is something relatively new, when compared to the early and rathe outrageous ideas of Dr. Freud. I think that sometimes when we are taking a history class we enter it into our already created schema associated with history and assume that everything we are learning happened one hundred years ago. After hearing the broadcast, I really think this technique is interesting and would love to get the opportunity to sit in on a session associated with it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v3xmd
I decided to write about how psychology can be related to health, to be more specific how psychology can be beneficial in the way of losing weight and gaining a healthier lifestyle. I chose this topic because I’m currently on that ‘get healthy the right way’ lifestyle change and until I made myself sit down and face my demons of my own weight gain I didn’t really care what I ate or how I felt.
The article I chose is looking at the correlation between foods choices, given that the food that is available has the amount of brisk walking it would take to burn of the calories consumed. An example being it would take a woman two hours of brisk walking to burn off one double cheeseburger from McDonalds. I don’t know about you, but when have you ever pulled up to McDonalds and ordered just one Mcdouble. I personally think this is a great form of motivation to help people make better food choices. Some might argue that this method isn’t any different than having the nutritional/calorie count on the products, but you don’t see calories. We don’t know what a calorie looks like; I can’t associate a time frame or aversive consequence with eating ‘300 calories’. I have no idea what it takes to burn off a calorie, to me those are just numbers that involve a lot of math and by the time I figured out the answer I could have eaten that snickers bar.
If you think about it it’s really just about conditioning your brain, it’s easy to say you’re going to run or go workout and not worry about what you eat during the day because you’ll ‘make it up later’, but most of us never make up for the things we eat; so before we even eat them why shouldn’t we have to physically read what activity we would have to partake in for that one food item. I tend to associate this new method with shopping. It’s so easy to charge up a credit card telling yourself you will pay it all off in full later (500 dollars later), and then when the time comes you don’t have the money so you just pay of the minimum amount; we as humans tend to over eat or eat the wrong things because we don’t see the activities it would take to burn it off. What the system of labeling how much activity one would have to do to burn of a certain food really just makes people more aware, it gives your brain a visual of what your body would have to do, then you start questioning yourself if you’re really going to walk 2 hours later and if it’s going to take 2 hours to walk something off should you be putting it in your body anyways.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/23/178632857/when-cheeseburger-walking-will-we-eat-less
I also read another article about weightless drugs, I’m not going to go into detail about the article because my concern is more along the lines of why is it legal to put these chemicals into our bodies, when we have no idea what they are doing. I personally really want to know if processed foods, refined foods, etc. have an impact on our mental and psychological well-being along with these ‘miracle drugs’. Our world we live in has become a time of ‘I want it yesterday’ and everyone’s running around being too busy to breath. People would rather be on 20 different health medications then eat natural foods in their natural state. The ingredients in some of the foods we eat are nowhere to be seen on a food pyramid; unless you want to count the paper and ink it’s printed with as a food category. These “ingredients’ have got to be playing a role in the chemical balance of our brains and our overall wellness. I mean we have laws against marijuana use, but yet it’s okay to put the same material that’s used in yoga matts, in different food products. I know this blog has turned into more of an opinion, but as someone who has eliminated processed foods from my diet, and I mean all; if it’s not grown from the ground or took its last breath before someone chopped of its head, I won’t eat it, and let me tell you it’s been the hardest thing I have had to do in my entire life. At times I thought I was going to lose my mind, I had screaming matches with myself, I broke out in cold sweats, I couldn’t sleep, it literally felt like I was a meth addict in rehab; so how can this not mean something to my health, if my body and mind had such a terrible time when I stopped eating these processed foods, what in the hell would those foods have done to me over a lifespan. My last point being, how hasn’t psychology gotten more involved with eating issues, and I’m not talking about binge eating, bulimia, anorexia, I’m talking about the items that are legally allowed to be put into or sprayed onto our food and the effects it could have on us psychologically.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/18/177791285/recalls-of-dietary-supplements-highlight-mystery-ingredients
I watched a video on Huffington Post. The video followed an article about a lab of primates closing down in New England. This was an interesting video that has a number of different concepts that we have learned in previous chapters. The video talked about cognitive skill in chimpanzees. This is not the first time a study like this has been done. The study consisted of getting chimps to do puzzle type tests. They would have sticks and would need to move things with them outside of the cage. Another thing they would do is disconnect the sticks to get the nuts out that were inside. The chimps were not always offered the nuts. Sometimes they would not be rewarded from their completion of the tasks. Although they were not always rewarded they continued to do the tasks. They compared this to how humans do crossword puzzles for mental stimulation and not to receive and specific rewards.
This video fits in to what we have been learning in class for a number of different reasons. First the video shows latent learning which we have learned in more than one chapter. Latent learning is a process of learning a task without being rewarded for the actions. This is important to understand because some times it is believed that we only learn with reinforcements.
Tolman has done a lot of research with latent learning. He used the process of making mazes and having rats run through the maze. In his studies he found that the rats would learn the maze even if they were not being rewarded. The reward however gave the rats a reason to complete the maze at a faster rate of time. He found that the rats that had not received rewards would run the maze much faster after receiving the rewards. He also found that the rats used what he called a cognitive map to learn how to run the maze. They would learn the maze and create a mental image of the maze so they would be able to run it.
I found this video to be very interesting and tie into what we have been learning in class. I have enjoyed learning about the animal experiments and more specifically the latent learning studies. I was glad to see that they are still doing studies to test latent learning.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/new-england-primate-research-center-harvard_n_3148056.html?utm_hp_ref=@education123
The article that I read was called, "What we can learn from fatal mistakes in surgery." It really interested me because it made me think of previously done operations, such as a lobotomy, and how we learned from them. This article talks about a woman who went in for a routine nasal air passage surgery and ended up dying from complications from the surgery. It is really sad when things like this happen, especially if it was a sort of freak accident.
I thought it was interesting how the article talked about the reaction of her husband. It is naturally to want to find someone to put the blame on in this situation. People may think that it will ease the pain if they know who made the mistake. Most of the time, however, that is not the case. In this instance he chose not to sue or try to get anyone on the operating team fired. Instead, he chose to take his time to investigate why it happened. This really is the more productive response. Instead of trying to put the blame on someone, we should investigate and figure out what happened so that no one else has to die from the same fate.
This article also reminds us that we are not perfect. We may want to think that we know everything, but in reality we do not. Something went wrong in this operation that caused the death of another human. It is most important to take the time to figure out what went wrong. Placing the blame will not solve anything. While reading this article I was reminded of how we took the mistake of doing lobotomies and learned from it. Yeah, we are all going to make mistakes sometimes, but it is important that you understand that and be ready to have a productive response. I admire her husband for not playing the blame game. His main desire was to find out what went wrong so that it did not have to happen again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21829540
I chose to write this week's topical blog over an article that I found, through Huffington Post's website, in Time Magazine. The article was titled "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" and it was written by John McWhorter; published today.
I chose to use this particular article because it pertains to our age group, I thought, moreso than some of the other artices I browsed through(also, I am sick of all the Boston coverage). Contrary to most articles that examine the effects that texting has on "young people's" minds, this article states that texting is helping our grammatical compusition and is causing no harm to our intelligence. According to this article, writing dates back to only 5,5000 years ago while speaking dates all the way back to 80,000 years ago. When writing was first invented, short sentences were used, because we (humans) wrote in the way that we speak. This can be found in the Old Testament. It wasn't until later that more drawn out, prestigous forms of writing were used, such as the old English novels. This was used as a symbol of hierarchy. Now that (most people) no matter their social class, are literate, this is no longer needed. Texting has actually become its own grammar. The article uses "LOL" as an example. Lol does not literally mean laughing out loud, rather it is used to convey an attitude in a text message. The article compares it to using the past tense to convey that something that was done earlier. Also, the article points out that texting is meant to be read only once and that no one is trying to use proper grammar in their text. Ever further, texting is actually an advanced way of talking with our fingers.
While, and after reading this article, a few concepts that we have discussed in class came to mind. For starters, the concept of evolution. The human species is always evolving. Thanks to technology, we are evolving faster and texting is a great example of this. Texting has universalized communication, along with making it faster and more efficient. Texting shows that humans are still capable of learning new concepts, and learning them quickly.
In addition to that, I thought of the education video we watched as a snow day assignment, where Indian children taught themselves science, in the english language, with only the help of a computer in the wall. In sort of the same way, generation X, has taught ourselves a new mode of communication and a more modern language.
Lastly, chapter 8 talks about the mental testing movement and how early psychologists first used it to apply the new psychology to the real world. It would be interesting to do MRI tests, or something similar to it, to see what parts of the brain are activated while engaging in a texting conversation. Perhaps then, this could shed lights on the intellectual effects texting may or may not have on us humans.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/
I chose to write about a video I found on the BBC website. The video is titles, “Indian police treated child victim ‘like a criminal’. I chose this video because there are two aspects that I noticed right away that related to psychology: first the trauma of the child’s assault and the mindset of the society.
This video is about a four year old child who was sexually assaulted by a man in her community. She is a victim but is being treated as a criminal. The police interrogated this child for hours on end asking her to tell them exactly what happened. The assault alone has great potential to cause trauma for the child not to mention being asked to relive it in detail for hours with three intimidating police officers without her parents. The family is struggling to get the cooperation of the police.
The second aspect is the overall assault crimes in India. There are cases reported every 18 hours. College students were interview to debate the increasing assault crimes. One student makes the point that even if officers and the laws change the attitude have to change. The mindset that had been accustom to India for centuries id slowing changing but it is not being enforced.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22305067
The person that I decided to do my topical blog on this Thursday was an obvious selection in Carl Rodgers. I like how the book gave the whole story on his life from his work to his actual life. I like doing my topical blogs on the person behind the theory because of the extra detail you get to find out about the person. The research on Carl Rodgers was not as hard to find as the last person I did, Sigmound Freud. I found some good sources tha gave me some information that I would not find otherwise from the book.
The first site that I found talked mainly about Carl Rodgers and his research in psychology. Mainly in his research in client-centered psychology. I liked reading about this in the book because it was something that we use in psychology today. The topics are becoming more relevant as we read on through the book. The client centered therapy is somwthing that Carl Rodgers developed to become more personal with his clients. He used the word client because he thought that patient was not personal enough. Carl used three methods in order to implement his client centered therapy. The consistency of all of the methods was to treat the client as if nothing was wrong with them. The patient was some what of a friend to the therapist and would not be judged because of the condition that he/she was in. I thought that this was interesting to read about when I read about it for the first time, but this article gave me a whole new meaning of the client centered therapy.
The Second article that I came across in my research was a cool one that talked about all of the things that Carl Rodgers did in the field of psychology. THe article included youtube videos that I watched as well. The gave a first hand look as to who Carl Rodgers was a person. This is the type of information that I look for when I do these topical blogs because I feel as if I relate more to the person when I get to see them speech. Not only that they speech, but that they are speeching about their particular theory of discovery that they founded. Turns out that Carl discovered a lot more than the clietn centered therapy. His contributions to psychology were far greater than what the book had talked about. I do not like when the book does this because I feel that it leaves out who the person was. When you leave out a persons life, you leave out valuable information about them that me as a student would like to read about all in the same book. It just happened by chance that we do these topical blogs in class that lead me to more information on Carl Rodgers. If it weere not for my research than I would have not known about what Carl Rodgeres was all about. Some other things that Carl talked about was the develop meant of the self. The main points that Carl Rodgers had to talk about were self image, self worth, and Ideal self. These aspect were basically how we percieve ourselves as humans. In order to become better people than we have to have a positive outlook on all of these areas. I found this srticle to be very interesting in my understanding of psychology, as well as the famous Carl Rodgers.
The third article that I read lead me to significant information as well. It was not the longest in length, but what it lacked in length, it had information. It talked mainly about what the other articles had to talk about when it came to Carl Rodgers. I got some more inforamtion on his foundings in psychology and than some more information on his life that I did not find in the other articles that I have read thus far. I learned that he was born into a very strict family. A quote that I read talked about how he felt guilty when he had his first sip of soda. This is the information that I like to read about because it gives me a perspective on the life of Carl that i could not find in the book. This is the main reason that I do the topical blogs the way i do because of the extra information that I find ou about the people that I do them on. Carl was one of the more intteresting guys that I did because of his upbringing being so strict. It does make sense that he went into the feild he did because of his upbringing. He went to a good college program and then took the route that every other psychoogists that we talked about took, and that was the graduate route. I look forward to seeing what the next week brings because it is me last week to talk about the men behind the theories.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html
This article was helpful because I got more information about Carl Rodgers theories.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201101/6-amazing-things-carl-rogers-gave-us
This article was helpful because I got to watch Carl Rodgers at work during a youtube video
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/carl-rogers.html
This article was helpful because I got to read more about Carl Rodgers personal life.
The article I choose is "'Zoobiquity': What Humans Can Learn From Animal Illness". This article discusses the connection humans have with animals, especially through health. The term 'zoobiquity' is used to describe the idea of looking to animals and the doctors who care for them to better understand human health. The article discusses the possible ability to use animal health and medications to predict human health and medicine. The article makes the reader believe that this connection could help advance human medicine in new ways. It also hits on fight-or-flight responses corresponding, self-injury comparisons, sexual dysfunction, and other physical and psychological issues.
This article reminded me of all the animal studies we have learned about and how these studies have helped advance the understanding of human brains and other physical and psychological issues. If this article proves to be true and helpful, the human medicine world could improve greatly and animal testing may once again gain popularity. However, this could raise many ethical questions that were not raised in the beginning of animal testing. If this connection is found, there is no doubt doctors and studies would want to test animals with cancer and see how medicines react, to find medicines that could improve human cancer.
I also thought about Phineas Gage and how his study advanced the understanding of the human brain. If this article holds true, there could possibly begin testing of these medicines on humans, raising ethical issues once again. Because cancer is a world wide issue in popularity of finding the cure, many would also be interesting in testing these animal tested medicines on animals.
I found this article most interesting because it seemed to be retracting back to the previous days of animal testing to find human issues. Although these studies are still occurring, they are not as extreme as those in the past.
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/22/177452982/zoobiquity-what-humans-can-learn-from-animal-illness
I went ahead and chose something about the Boston bombing, but it’s sort of a distant relation. I read quite a few articles about the bombing and general news across the world (most seeming to do with traumatic events and killings) so I think I will be talking about horrific events in general and reference the Boston bombing because it is a fresh topic that we are all aware of. There have been lots of bombings in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries that I could reference, but I’m afraid that people wouldn’t have heard of the news or known much about the problems these events are causing.
This article talks about the normal responses to disasters in what I think is an attempt to let people know they are not alone with the emotions that they are feeling. It seems that this is a message or reminder that people are all in this together and is even a positive look on life because it expresses the message of “it gets better”. I wanted to use this article and analyze it in 3 different (assuming I don’t dive too deep into it). I wanted to look at what behaviorist and humanistic psychologists would look at for treatment or coping possibilities to tragic events. I also want to talk about how a positive psychologist might suggest different treatments or methods that I presume will be completely different from the other two.
First I will actually start with the positive psychology part of the analysis of this article because there is a direct reference within a quote from a Family Trauma specialist. The quote reads “People who tend to be able to make positive meaning out of tough situations are going to fare better”. She continues to say that focusing on horror is harder for our bodies and our mind. All of what she is talking about is very similar to the realm of positive psychology, where the focus is happiness and subjective well-being. In this situation an individual or a group of people have witnessed a traumatic event and it is having a negative impact on their lives (obviously). A positive psychologist would want those affected to come to terms with what they have witnessed and realize that it will only get better. I’m not exactly sure if this is a general psychology idea or if it is strictly positive psychology, but the idea of hitting rock bottom and telling someone that they can only improve as a way of bringing light to otherwise dark situations.
A more behavioristic approach would tell someone who has been traumatized to obviously be treated by a psychologist trained in the behaviorist way of counseling. My guess is that they would want this possible patient to be involved in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). This would consist of having the patient cognitively change the way that they look at the situation that they have experienced. By changing their internal experience when thinking about an event, this will change the way that they react to stimuli related to the trauma. A CBT therapist would want to change the internal look of a life event to change the overall experience and thus help someone out.
The humanistic approach would look more at (PCT) person centered therapy which is focused on the person and not so much the event. One of the things that PCT uses is called talk-therapy where a therapist would walk a patient through the event and really have the patient come to terms with what has happened. This talk therapy can help the person realize that some of the trauma has been created within their head and once they talk it through with a profession, they may feel more comfortable with events that have transpired. It is important that the therapist will create a comfortable, non-judgmental environment as it is a crucial part of talk therapy. The therapist will be there to help the patient through their problems but PCT ultimately wants the person to be able to overcome the problem on their own.
I think that being informed in all of these small tidbits can help the overall outlook of events and you can somewhat self-administer these to yourself if you find yourself in a tight situation. I don’t know enough about the three different approaches that I have talked about to really pick a “favorite” or one that I agree with most, so I would advise looking into all of them if you have the opportunity.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=177892753
The article that I decided to look into further was called “The psychology of logo design”. The reason I chose to do this article was because I found it similar to what we had talked about with visual interpretation in humans and how the mind concentrates on foregrounds and backgrounds and how we do all of these little tricks to help us navigate through life more effectively.
The article that I read went over how people can correlate colors with different emotions that they are feeling. Therefore, it is relevant when business organizations would come up with an advertisement design that they would want to affect people positively. The article goes over multiple colors ranging from red being exciting, youthful, and bold, to green being peaceful, symbolizing growth, and health. The reason I found this interesting is because it is odd how people can take something as simple as a color and relate it to emotions that they feel. I think this is pretty accurate but I would like to have seen more information on how other variables can come into this equation, such as sounds and music, in order to make people feel what the brand designer wants them to feel. One thing that this article made me think about after I read it was how maybe other things in life can be used to affect how people operate in their day to day lives. An example of what I’m talking about would be like “what music being played in a mall could make people buy more things?”. What I think is that it must be more than what our daily plan for that day is, but a combination of variable senses that would make us do certain behaviors over others.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-honigman/psychology-color-design-infographic_b_2516608.html
I chose to review an article about the recent shootings at the Boston Marathon. This has been all over the news the last week and a half, so I thought it was especially pertinent. Moreover, there are a number of psychological consequences of experiencing or watching acts of terror and violence. By looking at these articles from a psychological perspective, we are able to apply psychology to recent events and to gain a new outlook on the news. There's no better place to look at the psychology of a person than to review their personal account of the incident and the way they report their subjective experience.
The article I relating to this topic was on NPR-- about an emergency room doctor working during the Marathon. After receiving a text from her husband informing her that he was going to the marathon, and later seeing dozens of people being rushed to the emergency room, she panicked. She called and texted her husband multiple times, but he didn't respond. She began to worry that perhaps he was one of the injured. When a cellphone in the work Dr. Wen was working in rang, she picked up the patient's phone and saw that they were the texts she had sent to her husband. The patient didn't end up being her husband; her husband had misplaced his phone. However, the experience was a brutal one for Dr. Wen and made her rethink the nature of her job.
This raises a number of questions surrounding the psychology of workers who tend to those who are injured, and especially when the injury is a result of violence. Emergency Room doctors are called to for help in these instances, and they into the job with the expectation that they will not be affected by constant exposure to this violence. Experiencing a incident of violence, especially one resulting from acts of terror, put a person at risk for post traumatic stress disorder. This incident may open our eyes to the kinds of things doctors see and the lack of treatment they receive. Dr. Wen says that she goes home and cries every night-- in this case, she knows she is distraught. But this PTSD may affect more than just those who *know* they are distraught. If we look at Freud's psychodynamic model, a person may be repressing negative memories. However, they suffer just as much as the person who knows there is a problem.
Offering therapy to ER doctors (and other workers who are exposed to violence) may be very beneficial to their psychological well being. Perhaps some doctors or soldiers are afraid to admit that they are distraught because they are put in a position where they are "supposed to be strong." However, if we adopt a humanistic perspective, we may find merit in Roger's unconditional positive regard. If we encourage people to open up about their experiences and show no judgment, perhaps they will more readily admit that they have been psychologically damaged from their experiences. This, in turn, would lead them further toward self-actualization.
Every school of psychology has something different to say about the potential effects Dr. Wen and other doctors may experience after the 2013 Boston Marathon. It's important that we look at these different models to determine their value. When applied, therapy can have real-world effects on the well beings of all people.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/24/178850615/boston-er-doctor-finds-marathon-memories-hard-to-shake
RB
For this week, I have chosen to write about an article I found titled “the Psychology of Color in Logo Design.” I chose this particular topic because when browsing through the site, it sort of caught my eye. As I read through it, I couldn’t help becoming interested in the information it was conveying.
What the article is essentially about is how different colors evoke different responses in people. In a study conducted by Logo Company on how people are affected by color, psychologists found that there is a strong correlation between specific colors and people’s response to them. To be more specific, select colors trigger emotional responses in the brain when interpreted through vision. Psychologists at the Logo Company have thus concluded that color selection can literally either make or break your business. In citing a specific example, the color red stimulates the brain to make you feel hungry. Thus, certain restaurants like Wendy’s, KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut tend to do better than others, because all of them have incorporated red into their logos and designs.
In looking at another example, the colors black, white, silver and gold all stimulate the the emotional feeling of high status in people. Thus, luxury brands like Chanel and Prada incorporate these colors into their logos. I guess I found this article to be interesting because companies can control your behavior simply by implementing certain colors to trigger the desired responses in all of us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-honigman/psychology-color-design-infographic_b_2516608.html
The topic from the news I chose was coffee. I went directly to NPR and saw a few articles about coffee, and had no idea what was really going on about coffee. Therefore I continued to listen to two articles about the new issues regarding coffee’s production. Coffee plays such a large role in our society today, and it is considered to be used by 90% of Americans. It is also one of the largest addictions in our substance category. Over time with the climate change has affected the growth of coffee beans. The article, Exploring Coffee’s Past to Rescue its Future, is based on an interview with a local farmer of coffee beans. He talks about the concern for the growth and security in the presence of it. There are so many genetics involved with coffee that most of us take for granted. The threats to coffee right now are; climate change, leave rust, lack of ground to plant, need for variety and much more. Reserchers are now looking forward to creating a new kind of beans that have genetically been enhanced to survive in spite of these adversities. They also feel as if they are being neglected, we are very concerned with wheat, corn, or other goods. We are not as concerned about coffee, and there is no direct reason behind it. The countries are producing coffee are known to be somewhat more of a poor grouping, and this might be one of the main reason it is neglected. I was not expecting to read about coffee, and relate it back to psychology, but I have learned that it is related to almost everything. Not only does the research aspect relate to this coffee crisis, but the entire process of genetic transformation. They are looking for beans that are the best to produce that can survive in any aspect of adversity. This reminds me back to Darwin and the survival aspect. Also it related to our needs and addictions. Coffee, like stated before, is one of our largest stimulants consumed. After hearing the actual formal report, I read some non-formal articles that contributed to the topic. They were interviewing Jerri Stinefeild about why coffee is a social contributor. Coffee is a huge part of our society that mostly goes unknown, and it is at access to us almost everywhere. It makes me question why? Have we been socially tricked to think we need it, has it changed our behavior that much. You see I could go on and on to relate to psychology, but overall this was a great article to make me think about our behaviors and genetic makeup of coffee.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/26/178865467/exploring-coffees-past-to-rescue-its-future
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/25/health/depression-contagious/index.html?iref=allsearch
I decided to examine the story of how depressive thinking can be contagious. I liked this story because not only have I seen this happen in close living spaces like the dorms on campus, but because it blurs the lines between bio-psychology and social/cognitive psychology.
I liked this news story because it applies to college students in particular. I like being able to relate to this study through my own experiences. The study consisted of 108 incoming freshmen that were randomly assigned roommates at a private institution in the Midwest. What they found was that having a roommate that displayed the symptoms of depression did not cause one to develop depression symptoms themselves. The spreading of depression was caused by rumination of thinking. Basically if one roommate would focus on negative thoughts, the other roommate would follow suit. However, this trend was also true of positive thinking.
Cognitive vulnerability to this transmission of depression is not the same thing as actually having depression. The study found that someone can have a cognitive vulnerability but not demonstrate any physical symptoms of depression. The news story said that this phenomenon "can be thought of similarly as high blood pressure. High blood pressure is a risk for heart disease, but it does not mean the person has heart disease."
The thing I took away from this study is that there is no one right approach to psychology. Every chapter in the book is dedicated to a different approach that rivals other thoughts and practices. Depression has been proven to be biological but this study also proves that there is a social aspect as well. Psychology has developed the way it is today because all of these different areas come together to form the science as a whole. Studying something as complex as the human brain and human behavior cannot be strictly black and white in a certain perspective.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22078983
This article in the BBC News is about some of the great scientists in history and the way that they were viewed as heretics in their own time. In our society we can espouse our ideas and ideologies without too much fear of repercussion. In Galileo’s time heretical ideas were answered with the penalty of torture and death. In fact, Galileo was forced to recant his belief in the Copernican Theory, the heretical idea that the planets revolve around the sun.
The article also told of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who figured out that if physicians would wash their hands when moving between patients and cadavers it could cut down on infections and mortality rates in the hospital. Instead of applauding his ideas, the physicians not only refused to comply, but denigrated him so much that he eventually suffered from anxiety and other obsessive behaviors. His physician “friends” ultimately had him committed to a mental institution where he died not long after admission. In Semmelwies’ case, the stress of going against the norms of the time caused him to lose his liberty and then sent him to an early grave.
Then there was Alfred Wegener who theorized that the continents were drifting apart, and not stationary as was believed at the time. He was ridiculed and discredited by his fellow geologists, who proved unwilling to listen to new theories and ideas. He spent the rest of his life working to prove his theory to be correct, and it was more than a quarter of a century after his death when his theory gained traction due to the irrefutable and mounting evidence.
I found this article interesting because it points out the uphill battle that many scientists face when presenting new theories and ideas. Many times a scientist going against the scientific community can result in that scientist being discredited and ridiculed. In this class, we have learned of many theories and ideas researched and presented as novel information at the time, and some methods were proven and others were eventually disproved or replaced by more modern methods in psychology. The researchers still had to be bold enough to go against the thinking at the time. Some ideas like phrenology seemed great at first, but gradually faded and made way for better methodology. However, any time a new idea is brought to light, the thinker subjects him or herself to the criticisms and scrutiny of his peers and society at large; fortunately there were many who were willing to take the chance and present their ideas anyway.
BR
An article I found on NPR that caught my eye was one titled: Monkeys Also Want To Eat Like The Locals. This article is about how monkeys if they are put in a new environment they want to fit in with the locals and they will eat what the locals are eating.
The study described in the article took a group of monkeys and had two bins of corn they could choose from; blue and red, but one group would be bitter tasting. It took the monkeys three months to learn to “shun” the bitter corn; at this point the scientists removed the corn. When the monkey’s babies were old enough to eat solid foods the scientists brought the two groups of corn back. The interesting part was that the babies ate only what their mothers and other adults ate. This part interested me because usually young monkeys would want to explore and start seeing things on their own without being really dependent on their mothers, and these monkeys took to the same type of corn their mothers ate right away; they didn’t even try the other corn. The younger monkeys were then moved to another group. The interested part about this was that the new group ate the corn that the younger monkeys shunned before, but that didn’t phase them; they started eating what they knew as the shunned corn before, because their new group did. This study’s purpose was to show how strong social learning can be in animals.
In relation to our class I found this to be interesting and could be related to evolution. The monkeys and humans evolve to their surroundings and adapt in order to survive. The monkeys were adapting to their new environments and groups, because they were eating the food the rest of the group was eating and they were surviving. Observant learning is also a factor here, because the monkeys saw what the adults in their groups as well as their mothers were eating and they didn’t even try the other corn they just did what the others were doing. Thorndike’s experiments and his theory about how animals use trial and error to learn can also be applied to this article. The mothers at the beginning of the monkey experiment learned through trial and error when tasting the corn and they realized which was bitter and which was good. This helped to conform their babies and other adult monkeys in the group to go with the better tasting without trying the bitter one ever.
I enjoyed reading this article and applying what we have already learned to it as well. I also think this article was interesting because I think society, especially today, has a lot of social learning apparent. I don’t think a lot of our nation makes decisions for themselves because we go off of other’s experiences or decisions instead of possibly trying them for ourselves. I think our society is big with conforming to the “norm” and that’s what this article was portraying in monkeys as well. Overall I liked this article and I liked that I could relate more intellectually to it from the learnings in class.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/25/179016294/monkeys-also-want-to-eat-like-the-locals
In my search for an interesting topic to write about for this week’s blog I came across an article, short in length yes, that caught my attention. This article was titled “Monkeys Also Want To Eat Like The Locals” and as anyone can guess it was about monkeys. Just like the studies done by Darwin, Kohler, and Pavlov (dogs in his case) all have contributed in one way or the other to the field of behaviorism through the use of animals.
In this article Andrew Whiten performed a field study on four groups of vervet monkeys in the wild of South Africa. The study consisted of giving two types of colored corn (red and blue) to the monkeys, one bitter the other not. After three months these monkeys learned to not eat the bitter corn. When presented with the corn again months down the road, to the offspring of the first group, they ate the same color of corn as their parents even though neither one of the colors were bitter. This can be related to that of Darwin’s early approach of survival by evolution. For any species (monkeys in this case) only those that are best suited to survive will do so. If those characteristics for survival (which food to eat) are passed down to offspring, that generation will be better off suited for survival. To Whiten he referred to this behavior as the “mom effect” but didn’t find it to be unexpected, and close to the words of Darwin an evolutionary benefit. On a little side note, say if the monkeys in the study were to be of an endangered breed, Darwin would assume those with the adaptive variation would be selected naturally during a time of struggle for existence.
Another thing we can take from this article is that of Pavlov. In the process of using four different groups of monkeys to collect data we are shown a process that is sure to be replicated. We know this for a failure to do so would mean additional research to figure out the contradiction and the article would not have been published otherwise. With that said it also brings about another research topic that is well known by Pavlov, classical conditioning. In presenting the UCS (food) the monkeys had to have a UCR (non bitter corn). To condition the monkeys a CS (color) must be introduced, so when the corn was represented the next time there would be a CR even though both colored corn were the same in taste.
Having this study performed in South Africa in the natural environment of the monkeys also makes it a better study then most. Taking the study out of a lab setting, Whiten was able to view the entire field and rearrange the elements of the problem into a new configuration, something Kohler called insight. It was only possible due to the gestalt theory of being able to view ones surroundings and taking in the sensory phenomena and organizing them into a meaningful whole figure. Only after these two are in play that Whiten could have been able to obtain the data that he did.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/25/179016294/monkeys-also-want-to-eat-like-the-locals
It didn’t take me long to find an article that related to the history of psychology. The article that I found is called Big Sibling’s Big Influence: Some Behaviors Run In The Family by Alix Spiegel. It is about a study done by a developmental psycholgist on siblings and how older siblings affect the behaviors and actions of younger siblings. In the past scientist thought that parents were the biggest influences on their children but after this study it turns out that siblings have more of an affect.
The developmental psychologist who did this study started off working as an OBGYN until she noticed a parttern in her patients. If a teen had a baby and had a younger sibling that sibling was five times more likely to get pregnant than if the older sister didn’t get pregnant. She stopped her work as an OBGYN and started a study on this pattern she noticed. Psychologist in the past thought that parents influence kids the most but this study proves that wrong. Younger siblings are even more influenced when the family is in a lower socioeconomic status because then the parents aren’t around as much so the younger siblings look to the older siblings for guidance. This article relates to the learning of the history of psychology very well. It shows how studies today affect the history that we thought we knew. It shows how not matter what we discovered it can be challenged.
Source:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/29/179266284/Big-Siblings-Big-Influence-Some-Behaviors-Run-In-The-Family
The article I chose to write about is called, Lab chimps successfully treated with anti-depressants, from BBC News science and environment. It was discovered hundreds of former lab chimps are suffering from depression and researchers suggest they might have to receive anti-depressants. 300 chimps are going to be retired from medical research, some having been confined as lab animals up to 20 years. A study has shown that anti-depressants can successfully treat these chimps. The study was brought to attention by behavioral biologist Dr. Godelieve Kranedonk in Boston at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In The Netherlands, Kranedonk is associated with AAP a rescue center for animals that have been used for scientific research. The AAP is an eternal sanctuary for animals. Dr. Kranedonk discovered once the chimps arrive, they do not know how to react and often show abnormal behavior by not knowing how to adjust to their new environment.
Most if not all the chimps have been infected with Hepatitis C from medical experiments. Some suffer from anxiety and constantly screams others were so nervous they lost weight from vomiting and re-eating it. Dr. Kranedonk consulted with Martin Bruene, who is a professor of human psychiatric disorders form the University of Bochum in Germany. He suggested trying anti-depressants on some of the worse cases. The selected chimps were given a form of anti-depressant called SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). The chimp’s behavior began to improve and eventually they were able to embrace their new found freedom. Hopefully this is a short-term solution and the chimps will not always have to rely on anti-depressants or worse become addicted to them. Historically we should have learned that experimentation can cause stress and trauma to animals. It is sad to think that because of experimentation many chimps will have to be medicated in order to feel happy again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21299657
My article is about the psychology of social media. There is no doubt that social media sites are changing and creating many social problems. Although they can be very beneficial, sometimes that is not the case. The article talks about how it is important that we accept the age of social media and try to shape it into being more beneficial. It does seem very apparent that this issue is not going to go away. Many kids can be bullied through these sites. Parents need to play an active role in talking to there kids about social media.
Studies in Chicago show that social media can effect interpersonal and social relationships. Because kids can use social media to solve social problems, it may hinder them from ever having to deal with these situations face to face. When that occurs, they probably experience some form of anxiety. We must continue to teach our children the value of face to face social interactions. We must inform them how tones can effect how you take a phrase, social media almost completely takes away this aspect. You may take something someone said the wrong way and overreact.
Social media can also effect business. It can be beneficial when done through the correct sites. However, you can easily go on facebook or twitter and bash someone's company, even if they did nothing wrong to you. People may see one or two of these comments and not use that company. On other sides, it is supervised by a third party. This is the best route. Also, companies on facebook could just delete the bad comments.
Overall, this article reminds us that these problems will not go away. People love social media and will continue to use it. It is important that parents, or more preferably schools, teach how social aspects can be misread or used. We need to address the problem right away because a child is overly effected by it. Businesses and people should be aware of response bias when reading reviews. They should also pay attention to who runs the site.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-nealonwoods/the-psychology-of-social-_b_3065229.html