Author Archives: jessprincipe

Chapter 1-Research Methods

--Original published at Jess Principe's Blog

I selected the Mythbuster’s video “Are Women Better at Reading Emotions than Men?” The Mythbuster crew conducted their experiment by having their cast show different emotions while their pictures were taken, however, only their eyes were viewable. The question the crew imposed was “Can women read emotions more accurately and faster than men can?” The results showed women scored an overall average of 10.6, while the men scored an overall average of 9.6. Their results represent a difference in between the two groups, but not by a large margin. The crew claims their results are believable because women have a larger language and emotional memory center in their brains than men.

The method of taking photos of just the eyes of the people selected in their experiment, does make it harder to identify the emotion being shown without the observer being able to see the person’s body language. However, this method fails to account for people who do not show emotions through facial expressions. In addition, the crew members made their emotions very dramatic, which doesn’t allow the test to see if women can still pick up on emotions stronger than men if the eyes of the person in the images were not them attempting to show their emotions so strongly. An improvement to this method could be to do various images of the emotions like images of the entire person or their whole face only to show body language and the expression of their mouths which can also reveal emotions. The photos could be taken in a more natural setting instead of right in front of a camera because this could make it harder to identify the emotion, which would make the test harder to see if their is a stronger difference in the test scores between the men and women after that alteration to the experiment.

Another factor to consider was time. The Mythbuster’s crew said that women scored faster than the men, however they did not officially time them people taking the test, they only scored. An improvement to this method could be to time how long it takes the person observing the pictures to answer what emotion they believe the picture shows, and then take that data into accountability as well when comparing the men vs. the women.

Lastly, the pictures of the emotions sometimes were confusing to the test takers to determine what emotion the person in the image could have been attempting to reveal. For example, the “confused” emotion picture was sometimes misinterpreted for being the emotion “sexy”. An improvement to this method could be to give the people taking the test a sheet with the listed emotion options for them to choose from. This could make it easier and more accurate to track how the men and women answer what emotion they felt the picture represented.

Introductory Blog Post

--Original published at Jess Principe's Blog

By: Jess Principe

My name is Jess Principe and I am a First Year occupational therapy major at Elizabethtown College. I am also a member of Women’s Lacrosse team and Undergraduate Fellows Program as well. My hometown is Newark, Delaware and I went to a small high school named The Tatnall School. I loved every minute being at Tatnall, but I am very excited to finally be taking my first psychology class. Throughout high school, I picked other science courses that related to my future major, such as AP Biology, for example, but never had the opportunity to take a psychology course until now.

I chose this course not only because it was a requirement for my major, but also because I have an interest in the course, and am considering minoring in psychology. I have very little background in psychology, except for some knowledge of common mental illnesses discussed in previous science courses I have taken. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “psychology” is mental illnesses discussed the most in society, such as depression and anxiety. In addition, I think of the brain and how it controls literally everything a person does internally and externally to correlate to a person’s actions in life.

The first topic I am most interested in is the “Cognitive Development”, because it could relate to material we have discussed or will be discussing in my occupational therapy courses, particularly in pediatric occupational therapy courses. The second topic is “Why do We Forget?” because I have never learned about memory before and have an interest in what parts of the brain that affects, and if it directly correlates to diseases such as Alzheimers and Dementia. Lastly, “Mood Disorder and Anxiety” I am very interested to learn more about this topic because I want to see what causes anxiety, how it can worsen or improve throughout a person’s life, and what is happening on a neurological level when someone has anxiety.

The topics I am least interested in is “The Scientific Method” because is was discussed a lot in Biology 111 and in my high school science courses. The second topic is “What is ‘Addiction’?” because I had to take a drug and alcohol week-long course in high school every year and have gathered a lot of information on that topic already as well. The last topic I am least excited for is “Power of Experiments” simply because I think the other topics we will cover are extremely interesting and that topic does not seem as unique or exciting as the others, but I have no doubts that I will still learn new information from the topic either way.

By the end of the course, I would like to know what is happening on a neurological level that causes people to develop stress, anxiety, and depression, because as much as these three health topics are comonly discussed in society, I believe there is a lot of information I do not know about them, and I am looking forward to learning more!