First Impression #7

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

When talking about straying away from addiction, I think it would be best to take the abstinence model. The fact of the matter is, in the other model the people are still using the drugs. Sure, it stops the spreading of disease more, but I think it would be more beneficial to try to get people off the drugs in general. In terms of health, toward the general population maybe the clean needle model will help a lot, but I don’t think it is helping at all in terms of taking people off drugs. I’m thinking the main purpose presented in this prompt is to get people off drugs. In the last sentence ending the prompt, it asks how you would treat this toward a family member. Specifically, it says which model would you suggest to a loved one who is fighting addiction. I personally, think in just about every scenario I would recommend the abstinence model. I think it’s better for people to be off drugs, getting clean, making a better life for themselves. I don’t believe giving out clean needles and endorsing the thought of doing drugs will help with that at all. So, maybe it takes going to those AA-type meetings, maybe it takes an intervention or two to get those wheels in the right direction, but it’s doing something. I think the other way just gives the wrong impression and doesn’t necessarily make anyone clean in terms of drug-free, just clean in the way of not spreading disease.

Spotlight 1

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

In the United States, about half of the marriages end via divorce. A divorce is reported to happen around 2,400 times a day just in the U.S. Every divorce has resulting affects on other people involved or around the marriage. So, divorces will certainly affect the children of the marriage. For instance, in the same place I found the statistic above I found one saying if your parents are happily married, you are less likely to get a divorce. Also, half of all American children will witness the divorce of their parents. Will that divorce have a long-lasting affect on the kids in a largely negative way or not?

The most common assumption of divorce is that it destroys children in unparalleled ways. It’s said that it sets a terrible example for how kids should love, and it leaves damage to them to believe their parents don’t love them. It’s also been brought along that children have physiological damage to their health. A cross-sectional study (a study across different age groups) of divorced and intact families was brought to attention. They used over 450 kids out of these select types of families from ages 2 – 18 years of age. They showed that children of separated families are twice as likely to develop problems with their stomachs, private parts, skin, and brains. The cause is supposed to be caused by the stress of the divorce. Researchers said not even the divorce is the problem, the problem is how the parents handle the divorce. Another article said there are 2 reasons why a divorce can harm children. 1 reason is because there is said to be fewer resources for the kids. Generally, there is less income coming in, and less of a support system because there may be less contact with one parent. Most single parents tend to become more authoritarian (they will make rules and expect you to obey to the fullest) or permissive (they tend to make few demands/punishments and are more laid back). The other reason is that kids view the divorce differently than the parents. Kids often become confused and feel like the separation is almost their fault. Especially if the parents seem to get along after the split, a kid may think that parents couldn’t handle the child together causing the divorce. Usually this type of confusion will result in the kids falling into a depressive state.

There’s many places that totally disagree with that last paragraph. They’d say divorce doesn’t have as bad of an effect as the other side says. The one article that told of the health problems of divorced kids also gave an example of why divorce doesn’t totally harm a kid. In this small rebuttal, it said the stress of divorce doesn’t show any change in breathing, heart, or muscular issues. There was no increased risk for allergies, hearing, or sight problems. Other articles say a bad divorce teaches kids; it teaches them what not to do when they are older. They said there are classes that parents can take to show them how to handle their kids through a divorce. This is coming from another article that says a good divorce is better than a bad marriage for kids. They say it’s the fighting between parents that’s bad, not the separation of the parents. 2 argument free homes, is better than one filled with violence and bickering. The divorce and agreement of 2 parents separating, help children learn the matter of compromise. In 2002, a psychologist from the University of Virginia found that many children who recently go through a divorce experience only short term negative effects. They develop anxiety, anger, and disbelief and a majority of those children get rid of those symptoms between the 1^st two years. Divorce generally doesn’t have a long-term effect on children.

Me personally, I agree with the latter of the two arguments that I displayed. I think divorces do hurt children, especially the fighting within, but it’s how you deal with them that leaves the impact. One of my best friends growing up had to deal with the divorce of his parents, and of course that made him sad. I think he often felt lonely, even though he still had both of his parents, his 4 siblings, and all of his friends. His dad owned 5 McDonald’s franchises, so he often would cope with his pain by eating it away, this resulted in a significant weight gain. Fast forward, he turned into a normal guy for the most part, he lost a lot of weight gained by aforementioned eating. He was on the high school tennis team, had a lot of friends, and is currently attending Drexel University. I think at times he still feels lonely, like it seems as if he would disconnect from our friend group for certain periods of time. I think he is just an emotional guy though, whether that’s a direct result of his parents’ divorce, I’m not sure. I just know for the most part he turned out well even though he had to deal with his parents’ divorce.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/kids-divorce-risk-health-issues-study-article-1.3192778

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21474430/ns/health-childrens_health/t/divorce-doesnt-have-destroy-kids/#.Wo4OMqjwa00

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/brette-sember/why-a-good-divorce-is-better-than-a-bad-marriage-for-kids_b_6925236.html

https://ifstudies.org/blog/when-and-why-divorce-hurts-kids

Studying

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

I believe my study habits are decent at times. Usually, I do wait until a day or two before the test to start studying, but I feel like that keeps the info fresh in my mind. I do like to study hard for a good hour or so, then take a nice 15 minute break. I will repeat that usually the night before a test spanning from the hours of 4:00 PM until I feel comfortable with the material. I think it’s an efficient way to study for me, because I think it stimulates my brain in intervals. With that being said, I also would consider myself a procrastinator. I feel like I almost have to study like this, though. When I try to study for a test a week prior, I don’t feel pressured or motivated to study, and don’t take it seriously. I tend to just blow it off. Another thing I struggle with is when I take breaks in between studying, I’m very inconsistent. At times, my break will be 10-15 minutes like I want them to be, then other times my breaks will be 30-45 minutes. Overall, in terms of my ability to retain information, I’m about average.

This is not how I studied for the first psych test. I didn’t have any studying materials with me that weekend because I went home after the meet the Saturday before the test. When I came back, the Superbowl was on so I had to watch my Patriots. Then, shortly after the game I had to sit in disbelief, because the result of that game just should not have happened. Then I started studying pretty late in the night. I seemed to be getting a decent amount of things correct on the practice test. I probably studied 2 or 3 hours that night, then went to bed because I had class at 9:30 the next morning. Then the next day I studied from probably 12:30 to 1:57 before class, writing down ways to distinguish the difference between psychologists. Next time, I am definitely starting earlier, I am planning on studying after I finish the spotlight. I need a 90 on the next test.

Violent Games

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

I for one grew up in a household that usually did not allow me to play these games. I only really played sports games for the most part, but sometimes with my dad’s approval I would get a wrestling game. I was never a violent child, in fact I would only act violent if I felt threatened. Also, my roommate loves the shooting games, he’ll play them all day long. I have never once envisioned him going out and actually killing people. Just because him and I weren’t negatively affected doesn’t mean other kids aren’t. I like to think most people take their anger out with video games, not store up rage via video games.

Personally, I don’t think violent video games should be banished. They probably can’t even be banished, that would be a pretty hard task considering most of the best selling games are violent. I think instead of banning these games, parents have to take a more active approach in their child’s video game lives. For instance, my dad would always play games with me when I was younger. A parent could use this to monitor how their child reacts to games. With better parental supervision, I think kids will be less likely to turn violent from playing games.

Bonus

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

Psychodynamically, the unconscious part of his brain wants to succeed. He wants everything to be perfect, and that has shaped his behavior over his life span. Most likely he has been repressing his feelings lately, but now he is just letting it loose on his roommates.

Behaviorally, he has learned to be a perfectionist over the past, and that’s now part of his behavior. Perfectionism is generally triggered by the constant success of some one. Once he started doing well, he became accustomed to it.

Humanistically, perfectionism can be viewed as a strength of Miguel’s. At the same time viewing it this way, what ever his roommates did to make him pick a fight, they wrong for doing it.

Cognitively, he has been irritable and depressed, but that stems from the negativity of the world. Or you could say that it comes from the negativity from his roommates.

Biologically, he could have possibly gotten some of his traits from his genetics. Something like perfectionism is learned and developed. Or even anger issues could quite possibly have been passed on.

Culturally, his life has been formed around being successful and perfect. That’s how his life has been shaped around that culture, that could have possibly been developed by a parent or someone close.

Beer Goggles

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

For my first impression, I will be talking about the beer goggles experiment that was tested on MythBusters. Before I start, I would like to state the fact that I do believe that as people get more intoxicated they also find others more attractive. The same way that as people are more intoxicated it seems they are less likely to use critical thinking.

I felt as if this experiment was conducted well with few weaknesses. First, they didn’t seem to conduct the experiment on many people. I feel like if you are going to conduct an experiment such as this one, you will need more participants. To go along with that, I felt the time limit for choosing should have been longer (if there even needs to be one at all) so that you weren’t rushed to choose. Also, the variety and number of people that they were rating should also go up, so that the experiment is conducted with a biopsychosocial approach. This way you view it on different levels of analysis. I thought that a full body view of the people should also be included. With a lot more people involved, you get more of a variety when it comes to culture, and how some cultures view others. I’d say give the participants at least 50 people to rate each round, then make note of some of the people that they gave scores between 2-6. Then, some of those pictures get thrown back into the mix. Then conduct the experiment as they had from that point on, while paying more attention to those people that they rated multiple times.

I thought the experiment was overall fundamentally sound. In terms of psychology, it didn’t really seem to violate or meet my standards of how I thought it should go. To be fair, I feel as though it would be extremely hard to cover this experiment in terms of psychology with what we have learned so far. The amount of rounds that they conducted (sober, buzzed and drunk) seemed to be perfect. Other than the weaknesses, I think it was a thoroughly conducted experiment.

First

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

Hey my name is Curt, I have a basketball game tomorrow, I’m a point guard got shoe game. I’m a sophomore engineering major, I’m kinda hot. I didn’t know what to write so I started it like I started my tinder profile.

I chose this class because I need it to satisfy core, and I was thinking about a psychology minor, but I’m not sure anymore.

No background in psych.

It’s hard to explain, but I guess to cover what I think of as psychology is how a persons brain works.

Power of experiments, Stereotypes & Discrimination, and how to make memories all seem like pretty cool to me because they are just things I want to learn. Moral development, group dynamics, and how to choose a therapist aren’t interesting at all to me.

How many different types of jobs can you get with knowing psychology?