Emotion

--Original published at NataliesCollegeBlog

Before taking this test, I thought that I was someone that was very good at reading other people’s emotions. I felt that I was someone that could pick up on how someone was feeling and felt confident in this ability. After taking this quiz I realized how I might not be as good as I thought. I received a 14/20 on the test and struggled with understanding distinctions between certain faces. A lot of the expressions that demonstrated sadness were the ones I got wrong and these are the ones I felt like I could read on people the most. It was shocking for me to realize I did not know the difference between sadness and being embarrassed either. The easiest emotion that I was able to read was emotions that showed happiness and excitement. The hardest emotion to pick up on were the emotions that demonstrated sad or angry people. This makes sense after understanding how hard it is sometimes to notice when other people are upset when you are feeling happy.

After taking the quiz I feel like the test is credible in the simpler emotions such as being happy or sad; however, some of the emotions such as embarrassment, love, and shyness all have many different facial expressions rather than one specific face, like how the quiz showed. Now that I have a better understanding of what emotions I lack at noticing, I plan to use this information to acknowledge how people are feeling more than usual. Some people are also good at hiding emotions by covering them up with other emotions too. For example, there are some people that will laugh and act like everything is normal after something embarrassing happens. This can make picking up on how someone feels to be confusing too. So if I can not pick up on how someone is feeling, I feel like it would not hurt to pull that person aside and make sure they are okay by just asking them too.

Reading Facial Expressions

--Original published at Victoria's Psych Blog

I took the online test and I was shocked by my results. Before the test, I thought I was decent at telling how people are feeling nonverbally. During the test, looking at the pictures, I had a really hard time knowing what the emotions are. I only got a 9/20 on the test. It said at the end that I scored below average and I should keep practicing. At first, I was a little hurt because I thought I was pretty good at reading people’s facial expressions. After a few minutes, I was thinking about the circumstances of the test. I think I am good at reading people’s emotions when I see them on a regular basis. If it is someone I interact with on a daily basis, I will have an easier time reading their facial expressions. I also think that the test is not hundred percent credible because the pictures were forced and posed. There is no way that high quality pictures taken for every single emotion that weren’t forced. But the test is still kind of credible. It is good for a general knowledge of reading facial expressions. I personally struggled with the emotions of happiness, flirting, love and similar more happy emotions. I found that those emotions looked very similar in the pictures. But, I also think that I might have a harder time differentiating them because I am typically around people that are more serious or sad looking. Since I do not have as much exposure to more fun looking people, it could affect how well I can read facial expressions. I know I will get a lot more exposure to facial reading the more I take psychology classes and learn about clinical psychology.

Emotional Intelligence

--Original published at Jill Distler's Psychology Blog

Before taking this short and kind of fun test by the Greater Good, I thought I was pretty great, if not amazing at reading emotions of people, but my results showed otherwise. I got a 60 percent, which shows room for improvement, but apparently my score is pretty average. I think this test can be credible because of its affiliation with the University of California Berkley. I found that I was the worst at recognizing the faces that were embarrassed and the ones that were showing emotions directed towards love/ flirtatiousness. So, saying that I am amazing at reading the emotions of people is a pretty incorrect statement about myself, but I am actually alright with admitting that because this kind of skill doesn’t really set a person apart from another in a professional setting. It does help to understand if a first date is going well, or if an interviewer is interested in you for a position you had applied for. Thinking about it more deeply, I am now realizing how the people I tend to spend a lot of time with actually express their emotions through their faces. My boyfriend always has a small smile when he tries to act as if he is mad, even when he isn’t. My best friend Hannah always crinkles the left side of her face when she is confused, and I know that I have a “resting bitch face” when I am just relaxed and/or indifferent about any particular situation. The human face is comprised of many muscles and has many functions due to the structures housed on this specific location of the body, such as: the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Emotion

--Original published at Jess Principe's Blog

by: Jess Principe

The score of my facial expression recognition quiz was a 15/20. I feel this score correlates well with what I thought it would be because I feel I can read emotions better than most people just from being the type of person who cares how others are doing. I try to pick up on things such as body language or behavior that seems out of place from how my family and friends typically act because I love and care about them. Sometimes facial expressions are confusing and don’t appear to be what you think the face represents. For example, flirtatious can look like happiness and shame can look like embarrassment. Reading facial expressions can directly correlate with communication because when people don’t reveal their feelings through words, facial expression can create a different image to help better understand how a person is feeling.

The facial expressions quiz is mostly credible but does have some flaws. For example, most people’s facial expressions are not as strong as the ones presented in the photos. Also, one of the emotions listed was “love” which isn’t very clear of what that alludes to- is the person in love with another person or do they love something they see? Another example is the difference between shame and embarrassment are very similar both in meaning and the facial expression and the quiz makes it hard to understand which is which. The biggest take away though with the credibility of the quiz is that it makes it obvious that some facial expressions are harder to distinguish than others, however, in real life most people show mild versions of the facial expression images shown or a combination of emotions can exist for one facial expression. For example, if someone has a big smile on their face and eyes are wide, they could be happy, excited, surprised, or proud. Likewise, if someones face looks solum, they could be sad, angry, ashamed, or embarrassed, and it would be hard to distinguish.

Emotion

--Original published at Emily's college blog

In this ted talk, Dan Gilbert discussed how people synthesis their own happiness and displayed data to show why synthesis happiness is real. What I found interesting was that no matter what hard situations the people in the first example were in, they still found ways to be happy. I think this is very uncommon in today’s young society due to social media. People go on social media and think they are living a boring and uneventful life because they are seeing other people brag about their life in an extraordinary way. Sadly, this can be the cause of depression in many teens, especially girls, making synthesizing happiness even harder.

Gilbert seemed like a credible and trustworthy speaker. His data from past experiments did an accurate job of revealing how people synthesis their own happiness, even if they do not know they are. I also find his message to be reasonable, favorable advice. Life will not always be perfect, so synthesizing happiness could make a lot more people satisfied with their life.

I can incorporate more synthetic happiness into my life if I stop overthinking, comparing myself to others, and become more grateful for everything I have. Almost every day I find myself overthinking or being indecisive about many decisions that I have to make. During his Ted Talk, it made me realize that just like the students in his study, I overthink a right or wrong choice because I let it drag out and cause me stress. Just like the students, when I have to make fast decisions, I am happier with the outcome because I did not have to spend so much time deciding which one I would like more.

Chapter 10 First Impression Prompts – Emotion

Here are the prompts for this chapter. Please use the tag “Emotion.”

Option 1:

We all want to enjoy life and seek ways to make ourselves happy. Indeed, we spend much of our lives chasing the goal of happiness. But how good are we at actually finding it? Dan Gilbert discusses the ways in which we sabotage our own happiness in his TED talk. Watch the video, share your reactions, comment on the speaker’s credibility, discuss how reasonable you find its message to be, and discuss ways in which you can incorporate more synthetic happiness into your life.

Option 2:

A large portion of communication is non-verbal, including a lot of clues about people’s emotional states. Effective communication involves being able to read others’ emotions and take them into consideration. People express a lot of emotions through their faces. How well do are you able to read these emotional expressions? Take this test to find out. Discuss whether or not your score reflects how well you thought you would do, how credible you find the test, which emotions were the easiest and hardest to tell apart, and how you could use this information in your daily life.

Option 3:

Many works of art inspire a variety of emotions in people, often quite different from what the artist intended. Music in particular tends to hold very strong emotional resonance with people, but that doesn’t mean people are receiving what the artist is sending. A classic example is the song Every Breath You Take by the Police (lyrics available here). This song came out in 1983 and was instantly a hit. Many people called it a classic love ballad and it was played repeatedly at weddings, but what they didn’t realize is the band wrote the song about a fanatical stalker. What was meant to be a haunting song about the lengths stalkers go was instead immortalized as a beautiful expression of devotion. For your post I want you to think about a song you are familiar with that on the surface seems to be above love, but when you look closer at it maybe isn’t such a great example of healthy relationships. Post a link to the lyrics and music video (or some other way for us to hear the song), and explain what is problematic with the messages in the song.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Sleep

--Original published at Allison's Psych Blog

As of right now, my sleeping habits are completely all over the place. Some nights I will stay up until 2 or 3 am, and then have to get up at normal time for my classes the next day. Other nights, I can fall asleep as early as 11:30 pm. It all really depends on how much work I have to do, what my friends and I had done that night, and my level of tiredness during the day and into the night. Personally I do not believe this is very healthy for me, seeing as I am always tired due to these habits. As for a normal college student, I believe that at least 6 hours of sleep would be beneficial. Six hours allows for four sleep cycles to occur, which seems to be enough variance between deep sleep and REM sleep for a person to go through in one night. If they could sleep longer, then good for them! But at least 6 hours seems to be a good option for college students. To improve my sleep habits personally, I am not really sure what I can do. My day to day life is so different here, especially with my friends, so it would be hard for me to set a schedule every night to get to sleep at the same time.

Sleep – First Impression Post

--Original published at Kaity Takes on Psychology

Like many college students, my sleep schedule is completely chaotic. Between accidental naps lasting over five hours, staying up until four in the morning, and sleeping in until three in the afternoon – it is evident my circadian rhythms are totally off. My social life, hobbies, and schoolwork tend to come first, and my need for sleep is usually substituted with caffeine, sugar, and my ADHD. My biggest concern with losing sleep is how late I end up sleeping in. In fact, I do not even hear my alarm go off in the mornings most of the time.

I am beyond fortunate to have a schedule that only includes a 9:30 once a week. Generally I get the chance to sleep in until 10 AM, so I tend to stay up later to compensate for the time I lost in the morning to sleep. However, I understand this method is not favorable for me, as my body expects me to sleep in all the time and stay up late every night. My goal is to implement some type of activity to do every morning so I can rise sooner and go to bed earlier.

While some folks may consider my sleeping habits to be atrocious, I just accept that my mind will only be tired when it wants to be. Recently I have been taking melatonin pills prior to going to bed in hopes I will fall asleep. Likewise, I go to the gym daily in an attempt to make myself more tired. I hope I can maintain this habit, and further improve it by overcoming my addiction to nicotine, which causes my heart rate to increase. Through making healthier choices, such as eating better, exercising regularly, and finding my way to bed before 2 AM, I believe I can improve my sleep habits.

Sleep

--Original published at Voltage Blog

Sleep is one of the most important actions that every human needs. My current sleep behavior is rather poor. I currently have a very fluctuating sleep schedule where I get over nine hours one night and then the next night I will get four to six hours of sleep. I also like to watch some episodes on Netflix or some videos on Youtube before I fall asleep. I think this is rather unhealthy because it is throwing off my internal body clock and disrupting my sleep cycles every night. Fixing both of these problems would be rather simple and could drastically improve my overall health.

First, I could adjust my sleep schedule. I can do this by changing the time at which I go to sleep to around the same time every night instead of vastly different times. This will help put my body into a reasonable sleep schedule and hopefully regain my internal body clock instead of relying on an alarm to wake me up and possibly disrupting my sleep cycle. Secondly, using a screen before sleeping is only tricking my brain into staying awake, instead of letting it know that it is time to sleep. Instead, I should just have my eyes closed in a dark room with no screens on in my view. This will help tell my brain that it is time to sleep. Lastly, avoiding caffeine after dinner would also help. By consuming sugary or caffeinated products, I am only encouraging my body to stay awake longer instead of falling asleep. Avoiding these substances would be in my best interest to having healthier sleep habits.

Chapter 3 First Impression- Sleep

--Original published at Ben's PSY105 Blog

Students often struggle to find time to do everything they need to do in a day, and they usually sacrifice sleep in order to get everything else done. For me, I found that happening frequently in the fall semester. Thankfully, I currently have a schedule that allows me to get a fair amount of sleep much more regularly than I had been. I currently take amitriptyline for my chronic headaches, and one of the side effects is drowsiness. As the medication is often commonly used for insomnia, I often find myself sleeping more when I take it than when I don’t take it. Having classes at 8:00 every morning last semester, I could rarely take my medication at night as it would cause me to sleep through class. The consequences of this, however, were even worse for me. I woke up almost daily with headaches that would keep me from functioning normally. My grades suffered as a consequence of my schedule not allowing me to get the required amount of sleep. My choices became either stay up to get the work done and suffer from the headaches, or take my meds to get sleep and end up missing class.

This semester, thankfully, I have a much more favorable schedule for my health. My earliest class starts at 12:30, so I get to sleep in every day. I often find that I end up sleeping too much now. On any given night, the chances are high that I go to bed before 11:00, and I rarely get up before 10:00 the next morning. I average about ten and a half hours of sleep every night. I should probably start sleeping less and to do that I should work on getting up earlier in the morning. Since I just recently increased the dosage of my medication, however, I probably will end up sleeping even more than I do now, at least for a couple weeks until my body adjusts.

My biggest issue with getting to sleep is that I can not simply close my eyes and fall asleep ever. I need something going on, whether it be music, a podcast, or sounds from a movie or tv show. I also spend way too much time on my phone when I lay in bed. I get a lot of sleep now, but if I want to get better sleep instead of just more, I need to work on those things.