“I wanna be like you, eat all my food and grow as tall as you are”

I was listening to one of my favorite country music songs by Rodney Atkins called “Watching you”. In this song his little boy wants to grow up to be like his father. He does everything that his dad does. In the song Rodney portrays a scene of him slamming the breaks in the car to avoid running a stoplight, the little boy in the back seat mutters a “four letter word that started with s”.  He wears the same camo pants and cowboy boots that his father has.  He prays just like he has seen his father done numerous times. The little boy watches his father through observational learning.  He learns his actions, how to react to certain situations and how to be a man when he grows up. Observational learning is so important for young children as they grow up. It shows them how their family expects them to act.  I’ve learned a lot through observational learning. I have learned what is okay and not okay according to my parent’s values and the way that they act. This song also portrays certain expectancy values in which the little boy will have while growing up. It pushes him to form a relationship with God, to be like his father to make good decisions and to how to treat women.  Expectancy values are important to growing children, to motive them and to push them in the right direction. But its also important that expectancy values aren’t too strict.  If a child feels they have too much pressure on them it could be detrimental to their future.

Judgment goals vs Development goals

Why is she so fat? Why aren’t I as pretty as her? You know?! I’m prettier and skinnier than her and she is going into a field that makes no money, he’s an idiot and he is probably now dating a slut! I’ve heard these judgments all day long and I feel so bad that I haven’t said anything to try and pick people up. Playing on a girl’s softball team we know pretty much everything about each others lives. A girl on the team is experiencing a breakup where the boy left her for another girl at his college. Instead of trying to talk to her (now ex) boyfriend she sits there completely bashing this girl that he knows nothing about. Calling her all kinds of names and judging her, but she knows nothing about her. Maybe she is a nice girl, who just got caught in the wrong situation at the wrong time. Girls compare each other to other girls all the time. Instead of so many judgmental goals I think people should focus on developmental goals. If girls wanted to compare themselves to others, they should make a change to improve themselves in the process. If I were to call a girl skinny, then I should be trying to improve myself by working out or trying to get into better shape. If a girl were smarter than you, try to improve yourself by reading more books or to challenge your mind and expand your horizons more.  Think about how improved the world would be if judgment wasn’t the key focus, but developing yourself into a better person was.

What could have been..

After looking at culture and how receptive someone can be to culture I asked myself the question... I wonder at what point in someones life do they pick up the most culture? Thinking, I realized when you are young and start to learn about the culture around you that is when it will shape you the most. It made me think of a funny story that my parents used to tell me when I got older. Although I grew up in a traditional english speaking home, both of my parents worked and I had a babysitter that was traditionally Spanish. When I was younger I spent a lot of time with my babysitter, so naturally I began speaking Spanish. My mother noticed this quickly and wanted to put a stop to it as fast as she could because she didn't want me having Spanish as my primary language. She nicely asked my babysitter to stop speaking Spanish around me, that way I could learn English. My babysitter thought it was cool and important that I had the ability to learn Spanish and English at such a young age and continued to speak Spanish to me a little. I would go to parks with other babysitters that were hispanic, who's children were primarily speaking Spanish. I could respond in full sentences in Spanish but struggled with English. My parents would come home late, so I'd only have a little bit of actual English influence in my life. Later, after my mother and father both noticed more Spanish in my life my babysitter unfortunately got fired. But, looking back on it I can see why my parents were so concerned about me being so immersed in a Spanish culture. I had to learn my own culture before learning another.

Terror Management Theory

I've been thinking a lot about the Terror Management theory. I never thought to look at life as an imminent death. The things we do in life are just side distractions until we are dead. As I was laying in my room talking to a room full of my best friends I brought up the topic of what they think is the purpose of their lives. What do they do in their day to day activities that make life fulfilled. It really got everyone thinking about what they want out of life before they die. Our friend Katie went on saying how she wants to have a big family with a great husband, make lots of money and build off of her accomplishments after she graduates college. It's weird that the break down of the theory is like religion, or the rewards one can receive or how much money they can make. I never thought that doing well and filling my life with what I think of as just steps can actually distract you from your imminent death. I think its important to fill your life with these distractions to make our life full and worth living. I don't think many people actually think about life or certain rewards, starting a family or religion as just ways to distract you from what is going to eventually happen.

Are society's views changing on sex?

Picture this, an attractive male/female walks up to you on campus and asks to have casual sex even though you have never met or seen this person before. Would you do it?
Evolutionarily speaking, it is more common for men to have more sexual partners than females. Men are taught to plant their seed, to reproduce as many times to keep their family name alive. Women on the other hand look to settle down and have a sense or security and protection with a sexual partner. Women like to have financial stability and protection as they start their families.
As we discussed ideas and situations about this topic I was pondering about the amount of men that I knew who would actually have casual sex like that. And I could only think of a few. But, then I was thinking about the amount of females I knew who would have casual sex like that and it was lot more than the amount of men. So I came up with a possible hypothesis about this situation. Younger extroverted women are more likely to engage in causal sex than those who are more introverted and conservative. Extroverted women act on impulse not really thinking of possible consequences along the way. Also, possibly due to new societal norms, women find it perhaps okay to sleep around with men before taking 'the plunge' and settling down to be a mother and wife for the rest of their lives.
And almost the same goes for men, the more extroverted the male the more likely they are to have casual sex. Introverted men may be too shy to actually speak up and say they want casual sex.
I'm eager to see how both men and women's views of sex may change due to societal norms. Perhaps we may go back in time where casual sex was not frowned upon before marriage.

Why is Eugenics even a thing?

As we talked about Eugenics in class, and it got my mind thinking. I heard a multitude of whispered opinions while we continued on our lesson and even after class. So I decided to bring it up to a couple of my friends and to my parents. I asked my mother if she had the option to abort a child who was going to have down syndrome would she? She said absolutely not. I asked my roommate, who had the same reply. Then I realized both of the people I asked have a strong religious background, so I asked one of my other friends whom practices no religion and she said yes. When I asked her why she explained to me that if modern technology gave the option of having a perfectly healthy baby she would take it. Why put yourself through the burden of living the rest of your life to help someone live theirs even if they can't communicate with you or walk. You are living your life through that person. I found it ironic as I was looking over the powerpoint where there is a picture that states "Some people are a burden to the rest" as propaganda for this issue.
It's taken me a long time to grasp that concept and to understand where she was coming from. I do NOT believe that it is okay nor ethical to practice Eugenics. I believe that God made each person on this planet for a reason and that each person has a purpose here on earth. Looking at modern day medicine where you have pregnancy screenings that give you a baby genome and chromosomes parents have plenty of time to make plans and set up a system that will work for their family.
Eugenics is a very controversial issue and a fine line between ethical medical practicing or not. I will be interested to see what happens to this issue in the future. Some how it will have to be deemed ethical or not when it comes to a real situation in the Supreme Court.

Who is he? Who is she?

I am in love with crime investigation shows. Today, while laying around my dorm room and eating dinner I watched one of my favorites, called NCIS. They were interviewing a potential suspect. I recognized how they judge people to see if they could fit the criteria of a 'killer'.  The officers were judging a male, in which they described as "dark, tall and potentially dangerous because of his affiliation with the Taliban." When they were hunting down this potential suspect, there was many men who fit his description and one of the officers was saying how difficult it was going to be to spot him. After they found him, he was tackled to the ground. They took no time in getting to know him or even checking if he was the man they were looking for. They took him for his reputation of being dangerous, and assumed that he was up to no good (which he wasn't).

We take people at face value all the time. But, why is that okay? Why isn't  priority for people to get to know one another and just base their assumptions off of reputations?

This also brings up another question, why do we as people automatically assume people of a particular group act a certain way? After September 11, we classify people from the Middle East as all being bad or part of the Taliban. Which is completely untrue and unreasonable. Society groups people into what they want to see. If someone acts a certain way, they must be associated with a negative force. If society took the time to understand who people are, then our world would be a different place. 

TAT..What do your words really mean?

After learning about different types of personality testing in our class,  I've become eager to see what professionals have to say about me. So, today I took a TAT which stands for Thematic Appreciation Test. This type of test is used to see how people reveal themselves through writing after looking and describing a picture for ten minutes. The words are then analyzed and produces a personality assessment. 

Here is the picture that is commonly used in TAT. 

After taking my test, it gave me feedback on the analysis of my words. It stated that the most common themes that are emphasizes the nature of the experiment or scientific discovery, friendship between the two women and status difference of the two women. I found it funny how I fit into the most common group as I wrote about a scientific discovery.
While analyzing the words they look at 8 different categories. The need for achievement, need for affiliation, need for power, self-references, positive emotion words, negative emotion words, and the use of big words. After looking at each of those categories, you can put them all together and look at the bigger picture.

I think that this test can be useful but also has it faults. Each of the categories that are analyzed are subject to change on how your emotions are that day. If I was in a bad mood perhaps I'd write a short story saying that after years of hard work there experiment had no results. It would change my personality assessment. Or if i typed big words (more than 6 letters) throughout the whole story but I used them all wrong, or had no idea what they actually meant. This test does have it's positives but it may have more faults.

Interested in taking a Thematic Assessment Test? Here is the link that I used...
http://www.utpsyc.org

IAT test: Association between Male and Female with Science or Liberal Arts

Yesterday in my Personality Psychology class, I had the pleasure of taking my first IAT test which was trying to see if there was an association between Male and Female with Science and Liberal Arts. It asked whether I believed Science or Liberal Arts was more Male or Female dominated.

My results concluded that I had no association between Male and Female with Science or Liberal Arts. The test was trying to distinguish the 'automatic association between Male and Science.'
I believe that I have no association between a male or female dominated field because I have grown up in a generation of women and men both doing whatever they want for a career. The boundary line saying what we can and cannot do is slowly breaking down. There's no such thing as 'no you can't work in this field because you are a women or a man', which may have been the case 30 years ago. I am lucky that I have the opportunity to do what I love, and not be limited due to my gender.

Below, is the complied data of everyone that has taken this test, which was generated after I completed the test. It's interesting to read this table that majority of the people still have a moderate or stronger association of Male with Science ad Female with Liberal Arts.  There was a drastic change in percentages when the association between Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts changed to Male with Liberal Arts and Female with Science.  I wonder if generations to come if these percentages will keep changing to the point where it is equal to be a male in science in liberal arts and females in science and liberal arts. Gender shouldn't define what field you can work in.



(Harvard IAT testing, 2014).


Interested in taking an IAT test? Here is the link that I used.. Enjoy!

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

How can you tell me what I'm not?

Typical S Data collection..
Today I took one of the quizzes that pop up on my Facebook timeline all the time. The quiz was titled
"What kind of country are you?". Growing up with southern values, and being raised on a farm I was curious on what it had to say. As I was clicking and answering questions anywhere between what kinda music I listen to, what my favorite TV show was and what my alcohol preference was. I thought these were interesting questions to ask in order to find out how 'country' one could be. After my answers were calculated, the word 'Hillbilly' popped up on my screen. At first I laughed because I obviously knew that I had a little crazy hillbilly side to me.. but then it got me thinking. I'm more than just a hillbilly. I am very respectable, classy and polite who does that word define me as a total person? Of course I enjoy to have fun and let loose but I'm more than that. I wonder if other people take those quizzes if they feel the same way about my results as I do. Or maybe some people love their results. This quiz definitely has me thinking about S data collection results and how people interpret them.