Chapter 15 First Impression Post

--Original published at Rachelsblog

There are four types of psychotherapies used for mental illness patients: psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic. I personally like the cognitive therapy approach the best. The cognitive therapy involves therapy that teaches people new ways of thinking. It believes that thinking directly correlates to our feelings. I agree with this and I think that therapy would work best. Changing your mindset and outlook on the things one fears or the things that add to ones mental illness can lead to feeling better. Seeing things at different view points and at different angles can help one change their thinking on negative things so they do not have negative feelings.

The next type that I would choose would be behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy involves learning principles to eliminate unwanted behaviors. I like this one because it helps to decrease unwanted behaviors and it does not dive deep into inner causes, instead it focuses primarily on behaviors. Although, I feel as if behaviors are hard to change and this may take a little while to do.

The third one I would choose is psychodynamic therapy. This involves looking at ones symptoms and helping them come to terms with them. It looks for common threads among their problems and within their relationships. This includes childhood experiences too. I believe that childhood experiences really do impact a person as they are growing up because it is a trauma that they learned young and do not want to experience it again, although the trauma of it sticks with them throughout adulthood. I also like this one because it brings the patient more in touch with their feelings and insight about themselves and their symptoms.

The last one I would choose would be humanistic therapy. This involves therapists expecting people’s problems to diminish as they get in touch with their feelings. I do not think a person’s problems ever fully diminish because they could come back again. They can fade temporarily but it will always be with them. Getting in touch with ones feelings is a complicated thing to do and I do not think all their problems will diminish just by coming in touch with their feelings. Although, I do believe that is one step to resolving the issue, but this method needs to be paired with other therapies if it wants to be fully successful, I believe.

Spotlight Blog 3: Peer Pressure

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Peer pressure is something that is not easily avoidable and is usually present in every social situation. Peer pressure is the influence from members of one’s social group. Everyone is guilty of falling into peer pressure, especially college students, parents, and athletes. Although, peer pressure is hard to avoid, there are tips on how to help it.

College students are one of the biggest population of people who fall to peer pressure. They are entering a world with no adults telling them what to do or to watch their every move. They are on their own making their own decisions. An article on College Life gives a ton of tips. One tip to college students on avoiding peer pressure is knowing when to say no. Saying no can be hard but it is important to know when you have to draw the line and say it. Building self-confidence is something that can lead you to being able to saying no easier. Another tip is to follow your heart but to take your brain with. This means, do what your heart wants you to do, but use your brain to make sure it is a smart thing to do. In the textbook it mentions “attitude affects actions”, which basically explains how people react based on their attitude to the situation and not thinking of the consequences of their actions. If it is what you want and is smart, then do it. If it is what you want but is not smart, don’t do it. Another tip is make sure you do something because you feel it is right, not because someone is telling you to. A lot of college kids look to go out and drink on the weekends and this is not right, but in college that can be the atmosphere that kids tend to get sucked into due to peer pressure. College kids also conform to the normative social influence of college, which is not always the right thing to do. Although, if a kid goes out to a party and everyone is drinking, they may feel pressured into doing it because it is the social norm at the given moment and they don’t want to be looked at as different. Knowing right from wrong is a big key to avoiding peer pressure. I think all of these tips are very helpful and I tend to use them in my daily life since I am also a college student.

Another population of people that face peer pressure are parents and their kids. Parents are more of the group who have to teach their kids how to avoid peer pressure. It is important for a parent to teach their kid young to avoid peer pressure so when they get older they can do it more easily. In an article on The National, there are a lot of ways parents can teach their kids how to avoid peer pressure. One tip is to promote positive friendships and to meet their friends and really get to know them. If your child has friends you do not know, you do not know what they are doing or if they are good friends for your child to be hanging out with. Another one is to have an open relationship with your child, so that way when they are being peer pressured, they can come to their parents without hesitation and know that they will be helped. Parents are also told to teach their kids how to say no and mean it so when they get asked something that they don’t want, they can be confident in saying no. It is also very important to teach your child that they are responsible for their actions, and while doing something wrong in the moment while falling to peer pressure may seem “cool” or “fun” to their friends, the consequences will not be. I think all of these tips are very helpful to parents to help teach their child to avoid peer pressure and I think it would be very effective.

One last big group that falls to peer pressure is athletes. Athletes tend to want to go out with their teammates to social events with other teams in their college or at their high school. In an article on Teen Drug Abuse, it has tips on how athletes can avoid peer pressure. One thing that can stop athletes from falling to peer pressure in social settings where there may be drugs or alcohol, they can offer to be the designated driver for those who are consuming the alcohol, that way they do not feel pressured to drink because they are driving. Another tip is to be firm when saying no, or refer to the fact that you are an athlete and have a lot to lose if you were to make a mistake under peer pressure. Being an athlete comes with a lot of responsibilities and they can use their title of “athlete” to confirm their answer of no when being peer pressured. Also, having the whole team say no makes them feel as if they are not the only one saying no, the athlete and their team are sticking together to not fall to peer pressure. I think this would be very effective and would help the athlete out of peer pressured situations.

Works Cited:

Alexandra, Shawn Francine. “Peer Pressure: 9 Ways You Can Avoid as a Student.” College Life, College Life, 28 Dec. 2017, collegelife.nl/peer-pressure/.

Lewis, Rachel. “How Parents Can Spot and Deal with Negative Peer Pressure.” The National, The National, 3 Jan. 2012, http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/family/how-parents-can-spot-and-deal-with-negative-peer-pressure-1.410899.

“6 Tactful Tips for Resisting Peer Pressure To Use Drugs and Alcohol.” NIDA for Teens, teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/6-tactful-tips-resisting-peer-pressure-to-use-drugs-and-alcohol.

Media Production Project

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Researchers,Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg , Constantine Sedikides, and Tim Wildschut asked a very critical and controversial question that psychologists have been exploring: Does weather affect nostalgia? Nostalgia is a feeling of missing the past or a loved one that one receives from many different factors. Researchers wanted to know if weather affected moods and brought back feelings from past experiences. Therefore, multiple experiments were conducted.

Four experiments were done to help answer the question. In the first study, 75 participants were recruited, 51 women 24 men. The participants were assigned to listen to different recordings of weather. The recordings included, thunder, wind, rain, and a control group which was an empty parking lot with no type of bad weather. The recordings were 2-minutes and after listening to them, the participants were then asked to record their feelings of nostalgia. The results showed that after the participants listened to all 4 recordings, they had feelings of nostalgia after hearing the thunder, wind, and rain. The conclusions were generalized to all the participants, which is fair because there was a mix of genders. If just one gender was used and the results were generalized to all of society, this would be false because the other gender was not tested.

In the second study, 133 undergraduates from the University of Southampton were used. 117 women and 16 men were used. The participants were all assigned to keep an online diary for 10 days about how the weather affected their feelings of nostalgia and distress. The results of this show that rain and wind had a higher perceived affection of nostalgia and distress to the participants, thunder was not that big of a factor. Once again, the conclusions were generalized to the correct population because both genders were used, so there was no bias towards one gender compared to another.

In study 3, 323 participants were used. 186 women and 137 men were used. The participants were split into two groups randomly. One group was to listen to either the control or wind recording again. While they listened to the recording they were asked to think of a past experience that brought them feelings of nostalgia. The other group was to listen to the recordings and their task was to count backwards from 350 in intervals of 7. The results showed that those who focused on an event that caused them nostalgia had more nostalgia after listening to the recording compared to prior to listening to them. The other group had less of an affect on their feelings of nostalgia because they were not focused on it. They were too busy trying to count backwards that they could not feel nostalgic and the weather did not affect them because they were not affected by it.

In the last study, 202 participants were used, 100 men and 100 women. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four recordings in study 1 again. As they listened to them, they were asked questions about the recordings and social connectedness was then a factor that was included. The researchers asked what the feelings of nostalgia made them feel connected to, whether it be loved ones, friends, or a past time. Wind was perceived to give the most nostalgic feelings and social connectedness to the participants. Thunder evoked more nostalgia than the rain.

In conclusion, it was confirmed that for most people, at least the participants used, that weather did evoke feelings of nostalgia. All the experiments were related to each other and supported each other. The data supports that weather does affect feelings of nostalgia.

Reflection:

After reading through the pop culture and scholarly research article, I learned that when it comes to reading psychology articles, it is important to pick one that is very detailed and is able to be fully understood. In my summary, I made sure to include as much detail as I could so the reader could see where I answered the five critical questions. The five critical questions are to be addressed because if they aren’t, there could be confusion on what is going on in the experiment. It is important for the article to be detailed, but not too much detail that it confuses the reader. The scholarly article also used big psychological words that were confusing to me as a reader, so in that case, I made sure to not include them or only include them if they were hard to leave out. I had to leave out some parts of the article that were not important, like the charts of data provided. It would have made my article longer than the page limit. The charts also were hard to understand as a reader, and personally, confused me when I was reading it. I am better at reading the data written out than in numerical values in a chart. The article also included an abstract all about nostalgia, which was helpful but a little unnecessary. I included the definition of nostalgia because I thought that was important for readers to understand, but the extra information in the scholarly article, I left out. I feel as if the scholarly article included a lot of helpful data but a little too much at times and I was lost reading it at times. The pop culture article was straight and to the point, but did not answer the five critical questions, which is essential to the article.

I found a middle point of both articles. I left out some of the extra details of the scholarly article that were not needed, but added to the pop culture article by answering all five questions. We critique journalists for leaving some things out, but after typing this, I can see why they do that sometimes. As learned in class, it is important to be able to understand the experiment to the fullest and be able to answer the five critical questions. I included a small summary of the materials used, procedure, and results of the experiment so the reader had enough detail to understand the article but was not overwhelmed and confused.

“Adverse Weather Evokes Nostalgia.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 14 Mar. 2018, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167218756030.

Haddock, Geoff. “Can Bad Weather Make Us Feel Nostalgic?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 7 Sept. 2018, http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/attitude-check/201809/can-bad-weather-make-us-feel-nostalgic-0.

Chapter 13 First Impression Post

--Original published at Rachelsblog

After taking these 4 personality tests, I feel as if they are very accurate to my personality. First off, all of the tests show me to be more of an extravert rather than an introvert. Which is find is very accurate. I tend to find myself liking social situations rather than being alone, although at sometimes, being alone is not always the worst thing. I tend to enjoy being around tons of people, although, I do not like being the center of attention and tend to stick to the outside of the circle. I don’t find it hard to talk or be outgoing in social situations, which makes me an extravert. In contrast, when it comes to feelings and emotions, I tend to keep mine to myself because I find that to be a difficult thing to share. Although, I am always open and the first to help other people with their emotions and feelings and problems they may be having. Another trait I have is taking other people’s problems and placing the blame on myself. If there is an issue with me and a friend, I tend to take the blame before the other person would, even if it is not my fault, because I do not like conflict and always look for a resolution.

A common thread through all the test is that I am a planner. I do not like “going with the flow” when it comes to plans. It tends to stress me out. I tend to be very organized as well. All my binders for school are color coordinated and my notes are written perfectly in an organized way. On top of this, I like being giving directions, step by step directions. Ones that I can follow directly and not have room to make mistakes or decisions on my own. I find myself to be bad at decision making and tend to follow what other people may think is the best for the group because I am not good at making decisions. It stresses me out as well.

I find these personality tests to strongly fit who I am. After taking these tests, I reflected on situations that have happened recently and realized I am this way.

Spotlight Blog 2

--Original published at Rachelsblog

School can cause many people stress due to all the work the kids are given by the teachers. They may not know how to correctly manage their time to get it done. On top of all the work they must do, they have to find time to study for exams and quizzes as well. After learning about memory and assessing my own study habits, I have found myself to be more successful when it comes to studying. I see better results on my exams and quizzes. College and high school/middle school studying vary immensely due to the difficulty of the exams, although, the tips for studying are very common.

Memory encoding has 3 steps. Encoding, storage, and retrieval. In order for short term memory to go to long term memory, it has to go through these 3 processes. Long term memory is arranged semantically , which is by a memory of facts. There are many tips to studying and to encoding memories so you remember them for the test.

On Campus Explorer, a variety of studying tips are given. The first one is to take good notes because it will lead to good grades. This is correct. It is important for the student to take notes in a way that they are retaining the information they are writing and not just writing it down because the teacher told them to. Organization is key. You tend to remember things better if they are organized. Kornell’s method is to rewrite your notes after the lecture because it helps you encode the information better. I find it helpful for me to bold, uppercase, or underline terms that are important. The second tip is to stay organized. The best method for effortful encoding is organization, we remember better when we organize the information as we learn it. The next tip is to stay off phones because it is a distraction. It messes with effortful encoding because our mind is remembering the information on our phones and not focusing on the information you should be studying. The next tip is to not cram. This is distributed practice. Study a little bit over time is good for the memory. It encodes a little bit each time you study instead of having to try and memorize everything at once, which is impossible to do. It exhausts the mind trying to memorize too much at once, and you really do not memorize anything at all. The next tip is find your comfort zone. You tend to study and remember things better when you feel comfortable and not stressed out. The last tip is to take breaks. It is good for encoding to take breaks and remember things in chunks and then go back to studying. I think all of these tips are very good for college students. I think what needed to be taken into account is that studying in your dorm room is not the same as studying at home. You are constantly surrounded by your roommate and other floor mates and it can get loud. Going to the library or a classroom by yourself is very efficient, or studying with a group is effective too.

High school studying is a lot different than studying in college. The exams are not as difficult, although studying is still difficult. Student Tutor gives some helpful tips to high school students. Once again it is important to be engaged in class and to take good notes. If you do not take good notes or be engaged in class, you’ll never full understand or learn the information. It is important for the students to be engaged in the class and to ask questions to help their understanding. The second tip is to keep up with homework. High school students have 7-8 classes a day, unlike college students who have 3-4 but have a day in-between to catch up on work in each class. Their schedules are more spaced out with classes. It is important for high school kids to keep up with their work. Once again, organization is key. A good study habit is to stay organized because it is a great method to encoding. Having a routine is important as well. Although, I do not think it really helps with studying. It is more of a way to help prioritize your time and help you to get your work done. Procrastination is also something high school students should not do. It is not good for encoding memory. You will not retain all the information you need to know the night before the exam. I think it is most important for high school students to pay attention in class and to be engaged because they do not have a lot of time in the day to try and study everything at once, considering they have classes everyday from about 8:00-3:00.

Lastly, it is very important for parents to be willing to help their kids study. It is also important for parents to not put a lot of stress on their kids for their grades, because odds are the kids put enough pressure on themselves to do well. Blog Edmentum gives tips to parents for helping their children how to study. One tip is to create a warm and comforting area for their child to study. It is also important for the parent to keep a planner for the kid to help them with time management. Another tip is to help the child review their notes and to quiz them on the notes. It helps memory encoding when the child is quizzed before hand and when they speak their notes aloud. Teaching your child to ask for help is also important. Memory works best when you completely comprehend everything you are learning. This is called elaboration, when you go beyond the definition and make connections to understand the information better. Parents should be willing to help their kids with this. Parents also must take distractions away. Parents can take the child’s phone, laptop, and/or tv to help them focus on their notes. This is important for memory encoding.

Studying can be a very difficult task. Their are plenty of tips to study successfully and they should be taken seriously. Memory encoding can be a complicated process and it is important for kids to focus when they are studying and to follow all the tips provided. Studying in groups or with parents can be very efficient. Use these study tips to best remember all the information!

Works Cited

https://www.campusexplorer.com/college-advice-tips/2DF9E34D/7-Best-Study-Tips-for-College-Students/

https://student-tutor.com/blog/top-10-high-school-study-tips/

http://blog.edmentum.com/7-tips-parents-help-your-child-develop-effective-study-skills

Chapter 9 Impression Post

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Many people tend to view intelligence as a genetic trait passed along, although that is not the case. There are many other factors to intelligence. One big thing people focus on and feel as if it lowers their self esteem is if they are smart or not, and they tend to base if they are smart enough or not is on their grades. Which is not always the best thing to do.

For myself, I know I am intelligent but I also let my grades affect my self reflection of my intelligence. If I receive a bad grade, I feel as if I am not as smart as I think I am, and vice versa if I receive a good grade. Although, its not always the grades. It also involves the school and teachers and the way they they are teaching the material. There’s plenty of different types of learners, visual, auditory, etc. For myself, I am a visual learner and tend to do better in a class when I have visuals of the information that is being taught. Throughout highschool, I felt as if all my teachers were more teaching towards the auditory learners and I felt as if I was not comprehending the information. Therefore, I felt I was less intelligent than I actually was, but in reality I was just not learning the information in a way that my brain understood it.

When I got to college, I found my teachers to be teaching towards both sides of the learners. My professors provide pictures and visuals in their powerpoints and lectures. My professors also are very open to help me with understanding the information.

Highschool and college are completely different considering the work. At times I feel as if I am not as smart as I actually am, but I realized that that’s not the case. It is just that I need to retain the information in a way that my brain understands it, which has helped me to improve my grades and feel as intelligent as I actually am.

Chapter 3 Sleep

--Original published at Rachelsblog

College students are often sleep deprived because they are up all night studying or at practice if they are an athlete. Balancing homework, athletics, social life, and sleep is difficult for college students. This often leads them to be sleep deprived and making their way through the days on a cup of coffee. I find my sleep schedule to be very messed up and not healthy. Ill be up until 1:00-2:00 every night doing work because throughout the day I have class and practice so I don’t find the time to do my work until 10:00 some nights. After going to bed at such an ungodly hour, I must wake up at 9:00 three days a week and twice a week, luckily I can sleep until 10:30 because of my class schedule. This is still not healthy though.

I think a smart goal for college students is to try to 9-10 hours of sleep every night because they must be fully functioning and wide awake for their hard day ahead of them. Although this is a smart goal, it is not a realistic goal. A realistic goal is about 7 1/2-8. This isn’t the healthiest goal, but it is the most realistic due to all the other stuff college students must balance. It is better than 3-4 hours of sleep a night. Sleep is good for the brain, and it is most important to study right before you fall asleep so your brain can process the information while you sleep. That is why I do my homework and studying before I go to sleep, although I should not be up as late because that is not necessarily good for the brain and memory.

Sleep is very important for our health and our brain. In order to be successful throughout our days we need sleep. Especially college students, because college is more stressful than anything to our bodies and our brain due to the amount of stuff we must balance.

Chapter 3 Sleep

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Spotlight Post 1

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Divorce has become a more common thing in the US over the past couple years, and the biggest debate on this topic is “Does it affect kids negatively or not at all?”. According to psychologytoday.com, their article “The Impact of Divorce on Young Children and Adolescents”, states that it does affect kids. Although, it states that it affects kids differently depending on the age they are when their parents get divorced. It shows that it intensifies a Child’s dependence and accelerates an adolescents independence. The research also shows that in a young child who has divorced parents, they have a harder time trusting as they grow up. They see their parents, who they used to depend on for everything, act in an undependable way, because they are separated. This article also takes a look at the adolescent age of when parents get divorced. The adolescent ones tend to act more aggressively towards the divorce and try to live a separate life from their parents because they feel as their parents have failed to keep the family together.

In the next article I found, emeryondivorce.com, titled “How Divorce Affects Children”, states that kids with divorced parents are affected negatively by it, no matter the age, although it all depends on how the parents handle the divorce. Children are at a higher risk of having psychological and behavioral problems due to their parents divorce. Children tend to be extremely stressed and have trust issues seeing their parents love fail and their families break apart. The article also shows the other side to the argument though. If parents handle the divorce maturely and talk to their kids through the whole process, kids will become resilient to it. The parents who do a good job of managing the divorce, normally have children that will come out of the situation perfectly normal, just like kids who do not have divorced parents. Although some children end up alright, they still may have worries about their future relationships and they may still have some trust issues. They may always have the “ongoing worrying” behavior.

The next article, verywellfamily.com, titled “Psychological Effects of Divorce on Kids” agrees heavily with my first article mentioned in my blog. This article shows that kids are almost always affected negatively by divorce. Kids may not only be stressed out and upset that their parents are divorcing, but study shows that most kids feel as if it their fault and place the blame and stress on themselves. Young kids also struggle with the idea of why they must go back and forth from mom’s house to dad’s house, when at one point it was the same house for both of them, now its two separate. Some kids also act aggressively towards the divorce and favor one parent over the other, which creates an even bigger divisor in the parents. This article also assess the idea that children struggle long term with divorced parents. Their grades may slip, their behaviors will change, their own trust in their marriage slips, and when their parents go to get remarried they will tend to act differently towards the “step-parent”. This study summarizes the idea that children are better in houses of warm and comforting parents who are together, than in homes where the parents are constantly fighting and tensions are always high, which typically then ends up in divorce. This can cause many issues to the child mentally and sometimes physically in the present and the future.

The last article I found is in The Washington Post, titled “Divorce doesn’t always hurt the kids”. This article argues that children are not always affected by divorce. Children may have problems at home that even if the parents remained together, they would still be affected, for example, child abuse. This article also states that all children are different so they cannot be generalized. All children deal with the stress of divorce differently. If a child is really young, like an infant, they may not understand divorce. So when these children grow up, all they know is separated parents, they’ve never experienced their parents together. This article summarizes that parents really are the deciding factor on if their child is affected or not. If the parents do a good job with helping the child through the divorce, then they will hardly be affected and come out okay. If the parents make the child feel as if they are apart of the divorce and are constantly fighting in front of the child, it will affect them negatively.

Being a child with divorced parents, I take the side that it negatively affects the child. My parents divorced when I was 13, and they were constantly fighting in front of me and I felt as if the divorce was my fault for a little while. I watched my friends have full, happy families while mine was broken. Having to have split holidays and not knowing which parent I will spend the holiday with, has taken a toll. I have no other family members with divorced parents so being the only one in my extended family with has also taken a toll and affected me. Having divorced parents has not affected me in school, but has affected my trust issues and fears for my future relationships. Studies have also showed that some children develop a stronger relationship with one parent over the other after the divorce, and I find that that has happened in my life. Divorce takes a toll on each and every child differently, although I would never wish this life upon anyone, it has caused more stress in my life than when before my parents were divorced.

Chapter 3 Impression Post

--Original published at Rachelsblog

Marijuana has taken a switch from being illegal for recreational use in every state to being legalized for medical reasons. I personally do not agree with this switch. I think some people abuse the “medical” aspect of it. Some doctors prescribe medical marijuana to patients who lie about symptoms and medical conditions, simply because they are addicted to the high it gives them. I believe in the science behind actual medications, not marijuana.

I feel as if scientists discovered medicines that would work to cure the person permanently, while as medical marijuana will just be a temporary cure. Growing up with my parents I’ve been taught drugs have no good effect on a person and that they should not be used. Drugs are a temporary escape from pain and stress, but in today’s world we have a wide variety of medicines that can help more than marijuana would.

I personally do not think it should be legal. Patients can lie about their symptoms or simply get a “fake” prescription just so they can abuse the legalization of medical marijuana. I think that this turn is just leading to more bad than it is good. While marijuana may have good effects temporarily and in the moment, but we are ignoring the bad effects it has on a person long term. Doctors simply prescribe normal medicines with a certain dosage so we do not overdose on normal medicines, and with marijuana patients can still get “addicted” to it even if it is “legal”. I think it is safest for all states to keep it illegal for everyones safety.