--Original published at Anneka's Blog

Of the thousands of songs that have debuted in the world, many of them are love songs. These songs are jammed to while blasted from the car radio or danced to at weddings. Some of these songs, however, are not what they seem. Although from the outlook they appear to sing about “love,” they actually refer to something more dark and negative. One example of a song is “The One I Love” by R.E.M.

The one repeated lyric “this one goes out to the one I love,” gives the impression that this was written as a dedication to the singer’s love. If you look at the lyrics further in the song, you get a different impression. The following lyric, “this one goes out to the one I’ve left behind” indicates the singer has separated from this person. Now one can view this as a leaving one behind for a short while such as long-distance relationships, trips, or military. It can also be interpreted as the end of a relationship. The next lyric is what juxtaposes the categorization of this song as a “love” song: “A simple prop to occupy my time.” The singer is referring to their partner as a “prop,” an inanimate object. The person had no importance in this person’s life and was only there for entertainment. This “prop” could be a one night stand or a summer fling. The singer could also be a player. The lyric later in the song, “another prop has occupied my time,” further justifies the inaccurate attribution of this song. The singer has found a new partner, again a “prop,” and currently thinks the same about this person as the previous relationships. It can also be thought as the singer taunting a previous lover as they now have a new relationship, but there is still a negative attitude towards this new person.

There are many songs out that actually imply something entirely different than the concrete lyrics. Many popular songs had innuendos. The lesson of the day: make sure you analyze the lyrics of the song prior to having it played on your wedding day.

Lyrics: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rem/theoneilove.html

--Original published at Rachel's Blog

For this week’s post, I decided to choose option 2, which was to take a test to see how good you are at reading emotions.  According to the online test I am around the average for reading expressions because my score was 12/20.  After taking the test, I thought I would have done a little better because I do not think I’m the worst at reading expressions, but I am certainly not the best either.

Overall, I thought that this test was a credible test because I felt like it did a good job of testing if people truly knew which emotion was expressed by the correct facial expression.  When taking the test I felt like some emotions were easier to spot than others.  This was because some of the facial expressions were hard to tell apart and for most questions I was down to two answers, but would get the two mixed up.  Some of the emotions I was able to spot rather quickly was shame, pain, surprise, sadness, amusement, and pride.  This was because some of these are common facial expressions that people see daily, where as some of the expressions people do not see all the time.  Some emotions that were hard to tell apart and that I mixed the two up were sadness and anger, shame with embarrassment, and sadness with compassion.  Some of these were tricky to define; for example, the picture that was given for the emotion disgust did not look like a face that I would consider disgust, so some of the emotions were confusing.  Also, I noticed that it was hard to judge and tell the different smiles apart.  One thing that I did like about the test was that after you answered the question, it gave a detailed summary and it gave a connection.

This information could be used in my daily life because now I know what emotions to look for and hopefully now I will be able to tell emotions better.  Also, being able to read emotions could help signal if something is wrong with a friend or family member and then that could tell you that maybe you need to give them space or try to help them in some sort of way.

--Original published at Max'sPHY105blog

For this first impression post, I choose to comment on Dan Gilbert’s TED talk about happiness. Dan Gilbert’s talk was primarily about synthetic happiness, which Dan defines as happiness as a result of not getting what we want. I thought Dan’s speech was very informative. His ideas were backed up by outcomes of his experiments. What he was primarily saying was that happiness does not correspond to every good thing that happens in life. He began by asking a question what will make people feel happier later in life, wining the lottery or becoming paraplegic. In the short term, people are happier when they win the lottery and not happy when they become paraplegic, but in the long term, they both have the same amount of happiness. This leads me to believe that emotion is like a two way power bar with a positive side and a negative side. Every time something occurs in life that makes a person happy, his bar will move up toward the positive side of the bar, but as time passes, it will gradually go back down to where it was before. If something happens in life that makes a person feel sad, his bar will move down toward the negative side of the bar, but as time passes, it will gradually go back up to where it was before. I find this message to be very reliable, as I feel this all the time. There are things in life that bring me joy, but they only last so long. Eventually, I will be feeling the same way I did before. In this same way, I am able to get over things in life that do not make me happy.

Dan also talked about how free choice causes people to not be satisfied. He talked about an experiment he performed, in which he asked people to take two pictures and asked them to give one of them up. For some people he gave the option to, after a specified amount of time, reclaim the picture they had previously given up and give up the one they decided to keep. For others, he told them that they will never see the picture they give up again. After measuring how satisfied the people were after a few weeks, he found that people who were not given the option to switch pictures were very satisfied while the people who were given the option to switch their picture were not satisfied. This experiment proves Dan’s idea to be credible. It shows that free choice diminishes happiness. After thinking about this, I find this finding to be reasonable. I find that when I am just given something without any choice, I am often happy about it and try to continue enjoying it, but when I am given a choice between more than one thing, I might be satisfied with what I choose the moment I choose it, but later, as I get used to owning what I choose and I might become neutral about it and become dissatisfied with the decision I made.

These two facts about happiness, are vary useful. If I were to apply them to my life, I might prefer to simply get what I get instead of choosing. It now make sense to me why the saying, “Get what you get,” applies to people in their everyday lives. Happiness is not the result from free choice, but simply the result of what happens to people beyond their determination. This is a valuable idea that everyone should apply to their daily lives.

--Original published at Jessie's PSY105 Blog

For this first impression post I chose Option #1. For this, I watched a TED talk given by Dan Gilbert. He talked about synthetic happiness. This is the idea of convincing yourself that you are happy after things do not go your way or do not turn out the way that you had planned. He mentioned the misconception that people often have about this. Typically people look at synthetic happiness as ‘inferior’ to the actual happiness that occurs as a result of getting what you want. However, Gilbert proved that this is not in fact the case through experiments that involved measuring people’s happiness, over time, dependent on whether they did or not get what they wanted in the first place. The data supported the idea that synthetic happiness is equivocal to ‘natural’ happiness. That, despite the idea that synthetic happiness is not as fulfilling, people are in fact just as happy as if things had turned out the way they had initially wanted to them. He credited this to people, essentially, making the most of situations that they are ‘stuck’ in.

I believe that this speaker is credible. He has an extensive background in psychology and is a psychologist at Harvard who has conducted his own research and has published writings. I found the message of his TED talk to be very reasonable. I agree that people who’s lives do not go as planned are more than capable of being just as happy as anyone else. I also agree with what he said about the misconceptions of happiness. How synthetic happiness is often seen as ‘less than’ the happiness that occurs when everything goes exactly according to plan. I disagree with this notion. I feel that making the best of a situation can lead to happiness that can be just as fulfilling. Some ways in which synthetic happiness can be more so incorporated into my life would be by appreciated what I have. Keeping myself from imagining ‘what could have been’ if I made a different decision or if things had simply worked out differently. Understanding that everything happens for a reason, and making the most of that, is crucial for making the most of synthetic happiness

--Original published at KatiesPerspectives

According to the online test, I am “naturally well-attunes to others’ emotions,” because I was able to get 17 out of 20 questions correct. Although I scored well above average, there is still room for growth and with practice, I feel confident that I can attain that eventually. I feel like my performance on this test reflects myself really well as I have always been very naturally attuned to other people’s emotions and I am confident in my abilities to “read people.” Although I did do well on this test, I honestly thought I would do much better than I did.

I thought this test was a good baseline for quickly assuming what people could be feeling. One hing I would change about this test is that I think there should be more options for emotion words that one could be feeling rather than just 4 basic but similar ones. I think having more word options available for the participant to choose from would really test the abilities of the participant to closely analyze what the picture was representing. Some of the emotions were more difficult to name while others were easier. Some of the more difficult emotions to tell apart were love and compassion, anger and pain, and embarrassment and sadness. Many of the characteristics that one person might show with these emotions are similar to each other so it made the finite differences a little more important to notice between each picture. In comparison to each other, many of these emotions contrast and were more easy to differentiate. For example, it was very easy to tell anger and happiness apart from each other because they look very different from each other.

I would be able to use this kind of information in my daily life by practicing reading people and talking about emotions that I assume someone is feeling. This could also be helpful in my daily life one day because I am on track to becoming a music therapist. Being a current student music therapist, it is going to become really important to learn how to read people as I’m going to be running session starting this time next year. Having the skill to read people’s emotions will be greatly helpful in strengthening any type of therapeutic relationship I have with any client. Having the instinct to act on these preconceived notions could be a helpful way to create a sound basis for future sharing in therapy sessions as well.

--Original published at Sidney's college blogs

For this week’s first impression post, I chose to write about the non-verbal cues that people give to indicate their emotions. I tend to be a very understanding and sympathetic person, so reading people’s facial expressions comes pretty easy to me. However, this test has shown me otherwise. I scored an 11 out of 20 on this emotion test. Personally, I found that this test was ridiculous and overly dramatic. The few that I got correct were facial expressions that are commonly displayed as being happy, sad, and other various simple expressions. Some of these facial expressions were absurd, like one of the faces they used to depict pain. The face was completely scrunched up and I remember saying to myself, “Who would ever make this face?” This test would have been better if the pictures were of people when they were genuinely feeling these emotions. It was plain to see that they were forced facial expressions. It is hard to understand what someone is feeling or thinking when they are forcing a facial expression that they were told to act out. For example, there was a picture of a woman who was very clearly forcing a smile. I marked that it would be “politeness” due to the fake smile ad lack of excitement in the face. The correct answer was “happy.” I found that the pictures were very misleading and confusing at times. The content that described why each face was which emotion was sometimes contradicted by the picture that they used. Although the information below the pictures seemed to be very factual and correct, I do not think that this is an accurate test at all. I think that I am much better at judging someone’s emotions in a real-life context. You can see their body language and read the way their face changes through the time you are with them.

--Original published at Manda's College Blog

I decided to write about option three because I thought this would be fun to write about as well as see the other students picks of music. I instantly thought of the band Foster The People “Pumped up Kicks”. This song came out several years ago and I remember how me and my friends just got so hooked to this song. It sounds like such a chill out song and yet even a song to dance to, we’d sing the lyrics without a real thought to what it means. I think like most people we respond to the sound of the song, and if you like the sound you don’t really care what the lyrics are. A friend told me that this song is actually messed up. I looked up the lyrics and it’s definitely not what I was picturing in my head when I listened to the song. It’s about a kid who is losing his mind, getting his dads gun out of the closet planning revenge against his peers.

“Yeah found a six-shooter gun, in his dad’s closet hidden in a box of fun things. I don’t even know what, but he’s coming for you, yeah he’s coming for you.”

“Pumped Up Kicks” which the other kids in this song are wearing: it’s actually a old basketball shoe that was popular in the late 80s-90s. The sneaker had a pump shaped like a basketball on the tongue, and the idea was that if you needed a little extra lift, you could just give it a few pumps. The chorus is the shooter telling the kids to watch out and that he’s coming for them.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, out run my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet

My opinion of this song did change a bit. I was honestly more impressed with the band creating a song that isn’t just about sex or preteen love. The song is quite realistic and doesn’t need to speak of any violence or swear words to get the point across. Though it’s a very catchy song and it’s hard to get the meaning unless you read the lyrics or listen closely, it could also be a song that will be overlooked or even someone who is easily influenced would want to reenact this song. It may be far to assume, but these days nothing is surprising anymore.

--Original published at JanellesCollegeBlog

For this first impression post, I decided to do the third option and search for a song that most people believe is a good love song but actually has a different meaning that would indicate a negative relationship. The song that I found was “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers. Most people would think that this is a love song because the refrain of the song states that the singer and who he is talking about belong together. The singer refers to the other person as his “sweetheart” all throughout the whole song. This may seem good, but is misleading because the song is actually about jealousy and trying to get the other person to leave her relationship to be with the main singer. For example, the singer states in the second verse, “I don’t think you’re right for him.” He is trying to get the other person to realize that her relationship is not right and that she would be better with him. Also, he then goes on to describe a situation in which they should run off together. This is a negative side of relationships and is not love because he is encouraging her to get out of her current relationship. Also in the first verse, the singer talks about being really lonely and how his life is currently in a depressing and lonely state. In taking these words with the context of everything else that he is saying, it is unhealthy because he is trying to break up two people just because he is lonely and wants to be with the other person. He should be focusing on how to be happy on his own and stop feeling lonely before trying to get back into a relationship. The main point of this song deals with jealousy not love.

Lyrics:

https://genius.com/The-lumineers-ho-hey-lyrics

Music video: