Post #4

"At any given moment, the brain has 14 billion neurons firing at a speed of 450 miles per hour. We don’t have control over most of them. When we get a chill... goose bumps. When we get excited... adrenaline. The body naturally follows it’s impulses, which I think is part of what makes it so hard for us to control ours. Of course, sometimes we have impulses we would rather not control, that we later wish we had." -Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) on Grey's Anatomy


An example was given in the section about firing neurons, comparing the action to the firing of a gun in the sense of it being 'all or nothing.' This example continued to stick with me, primarily because I can relate. Deer opener is coming up in a little more than a month and I of course can think of nothing else. Because in the same way, the example is true. Last year I was posted up on the side of a field, and two white tails came streaming across me from a snowmobile trail which was below me. I locked on and shot, but i had forgotten to take off my safety and so nothing happened. yes, it most definitely was embarrassing, but it was an all or nothing situation just ass the book had said. One thing, however, the textbook does not mention is what is something to stop the firing of the neurons. 

Finding out about what stops neurons, was next for me and so I googled it (of course) and the first thing to come up was drugs. Imagine that. The type of drug, the website appsychology.com is actually referring to, are antagonists drugs which bind onto receptor sites on a neuron and keep it from firing. This wasn't much help either, and so I found an example of an antagonist drug, which was propranolol. Propranolol acts as a beta blocker and is used to treat tremors, high blood pressure, angina, and other heart conditions. 

Aside from that, according to Dartmouth college drugs again are used to stop seizures. Seizures are a result of rapidly firing neurons, and with certain drugs they are able to stop and prevent the retrigger. There are risks however, to using drugs to stop seizures because a person may not respond to the drug quickly enough, more severe damage may be done, or neurons deep in the hippocampus may continue to fire. 

The idea of seizures is so prevalent in my own life as it is in just about everyone's. A neighbor of mine has a dog, who takes seizure medicine. And one day she had tried to explain to me what it does in terms of preventing future seizures but I became utterly confused. Just by reading the one section within the book of how the neurons are always firing, as a gun would, gives me much more knowledge into understanding more of the human brain and its uncontrollable impulses. 

Post #3

“Judging is preventing us from understanding a new truth. Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding.” -Steve Maraboli

Heuristics are mental shortcuts, or rules of thumb that can help streamline thinking and make sense of the world. In its simplest forms, a heuristic approach to things is separating nuts and bolts, but it can also reach the most extensive of problem solving or making precarious judgments of a person. 

Heuristics to me are a way to problem solve or a way of thinking about a problem. One example of such is a maze. Most people will try to solve it forward and then get stuck, and so the most obvious and fulfilling decision is to work the problem in reverse, or backwards. This idea of figuring out a way to think or problem solve, reminds me of my dog when he was younger. When we first got him, we put up a half door to our laundry room to keep him out of the rest of the house while we were at work or school, sort of like a huge kennel. After a few months he learned how to open the door and escape so he could roam the house. My dog was able to use his heuristics, in order to roam the house and sleep on the couch. Though his intentions were wrong, his way of thinking proved astonishing. 

The book gives the examples of meeting someone for the first time and making an instantaneous judgement of them by their interests, looks and mannerism. And most of the time these perceptions run true, but it is also possible to be wrong. The shortcut in judging someone is through a representative heuristic, we judge the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype. In reality, we make the same judgments of people everyday, when we first start a new class, in a job interview, people passing on the street, and countless other instances. I know, most specifically I use the representative heuristic most when I am looking at what someone is wearing. I can judge whether they are a hipster, a little preppy, smart, wealthy, poor, confident, athletic, among many other characteristics just by what they are wearing. And by judging what someone is wearing, tells me whether or not I want to be associated with this person.

Heuristics simply the world for us and allow our judgments to take over. In some parts, this can be both good and bad. As long as they do not dictate who we are as a person or how we perceive others to be, life should be much more understandable. 

Post #2

"Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” -Wayne W. Dyer


Through the reading of chapter 1, one thing that consistently resided with me and seemed to keep popping up for me outside of the book, was the topic on naive realism and our perception of things. The book clearly defines naive realism as the belief that we see the world precisely as it is. And then it goes on to give this cutesy little picture of how the angle you look at a table from can make it look more rectangular or square. Psychology is supposed to teach how to question this idea of naive realism and also look inwardly into how we talk to people and how our beliefs influence our perceptions. 

Now back to the cute little picture of the tables, in my spare time I am slightly obsessed with the website Pinterest. Pinterest is an online pin board where people can search other websites and choose to share, or rather pin, a picture with a link to the page they are looking at. There are millions of people who are members of the site and so there are a variety of different pictures and ideas that appear on my news feed. These images range anywhere from fashion, humor, home or wedding ideas. For example, one of the pictures which has come up many times, was a reel of images in which a persons perception is completely thrown off by looking at something. On the reel, this image of how a person can appear to be floating because of a shadow was given...



Now, this was just one example of a reel of perception pictures. I cannot seem to find the entire reel, but if I do, I will be sure to post it.

Aside from the physical sense of perception, naive realism can cause us to be mistaken about ourselves, others, and beliefs. It can lead us to draw incorrect conclusions about human nature. Such as, myself thinking cold pizza tastes wonderful and anybody who disagrees with me is wrong and has no taste buds.

In opposition to naive realism, religion seems to take a lead. Because naive realism tells us that how we view materialistic things is truth and believing is seeing, God simply cannot exist within these parameters. This ideology I struggle with, primarily because I went to a Catholic elementary school my entire life, and for some psychological idea to tell me it cannot be true, is hard. This is where I believe naive realism is wrong, because 88% of the world's population believes in a higher power, as of a 2005 study. 

Being aware of how naive realism and my perceptions of the world versus other peoples' perception has caused me to take a better focus in how I look at qualities in a person and how they look at each other. Because I believe when it comes to a touchy subject such as religion or politics, our naive realism will take over, preventing us from thinking reasonably. And so my choice in the people I associate myself is determined by those with the least dependency on their naive realism.

Post #1

“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change- this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.” –Bruce Barton

Throughout my education, and more specifically my high school career, I have taken some challenging and some not so challenging courses which have shaped a few habits, being both good and bad. For this class, I plan on implementing the better chosen habits and strategies through trial and error in order to reflect the best possible outcome and success in Psychology 1001.

Before being able to succeed in this class, I must first recognize the bad habits which have accumulated over the years and be able to counter them with good and more helpful options. These bad habits include but are not limited to, perseverance in spite of sleep deprivation, priority organization, and as Ms. Osmundson predicted- procrastination. All three bad habits tie in very well together and result from my poor lack of desire, to put it plainly.

I go through the school day with such high hopes as to the success in my homework I will find when I get home, but when I pull into my driveway and unpack my backpack, all sense of desire and anticipation flees with procrastination filling its place. The perfect plans I had written down, exact to the minutes of how I will complete my homework and studying in the most reasonable allotment of time is thrown into the air. The plans no longer carry relevancy as the hours past slowly until it reaches nine o’ clock and I am forced to position myself on the couch with my delayed homework laid out in front of me in overwhelming shame. And after mulling my way through a few assignments the need for sleep hits me and the bed a mere twenty-three steps away (yes, I counted) beckon to me until I face plant into the pillow. Although I organize and plan it all to a T, the most important and relevant assignments do not get done first, because they typically are the most boring. Without doing these pertinent assignments the night before, I will have to wake up earlier than expected to finish. And so begins the vicious cycle again.

As the new school year begins, I have decided to attempt new strategies and outlooks on my day in hopes to better finish the homework and studying for upcoming tests that is necessary. Instead of planning my night in how to best compete my homework, I will simply make a checklist. Because it is so much more rewarding to cross off an assignment from a checklist rather than to watch the outlined time slowly dwindle with each uncompleted assignment. As for doing the most interesting over the most pertinent assignments, that is made all the easier due in part to my actual class assignments and how I do enjoy each of them equally, except for Psychology- being the utmost exciting of course. The classes I have chosen have few if any assignments due the day after, allowing me to feel more at ease about studying and reading in small increments each night in order to stay in a healthy time frame.

As the school year goes on, plans and expectations are expected to change but that is how life works. In order to gain progress out of hope, change is required no matter the amount of times required to adjust.