Chapter Fifteen

Social Psychology is a very broad topic that has many interesting parts to it. What I think is the most fascinating is people's responses to authority. Milgram's experiment is scary to me, I'm sure that none of those people would be labeled murders or sociopaths, and yet there were a good number of them who killed people just because they felt that they felt assured that nothing bad would happen since it was experiment at Yale. I don't have any experience with something of this magnitude myself, and honestly I'm not sure how I would react in that situation. I would like to believe that I would stop, and I do honestly believe that I would. I have never had to deal with an authoritative figure abusing power. It seems like an easy concept to just say no to the person, or too question them, but I know that I usually just obey a teacher, police officer, or anyone else with that type of authority over me, and most people do as well. I don't think that this should change standards though, people should still be held responsible for their actions. I think the key is to teach people to think for themselves more, but I'm not really sure how it should be taught since it is a tough subject and a very fine line. However, there are many incidents such as Watergate, Enron, and the Nazis in World War II where a lot of bad things could have been prevented if people thought for themselves more.

Chapter Fourteen

Therapy is an extremely interesting topic for me. I have been to therapy before, and my mom has a very strong background in therapy so I get a lot of perspectives from her. I think that the most important feature for a therapist to have is neutrality, as well as being able to see things from both sides. It is crucial that they be able to point out flaws and the other side of an issue without making it sound like they are taking the other persons side. I personally wasn't able to get much out of therapy when I went. I had a family issue and was too angry about it as well as close minded to let the therapist help me. I resented my parents for making me go, and thought that the therapist was trying to manipulate me into forgiveness. Since then I believe I have matured, and am actually thinking about going to a therapy every now and then just to talk about every day issues. With my mom it has worked out better because I go to her when I want help, not when others think I need it. A lot of the time it isn't easy to hear what she has to say, or I may disagree but it still gets me to be more open minded. I think that the key to therapy is that the person has to be willing to be helped, and if they are then it can be extremely helpful.

Chapter Thirteen

ADHD is one of the most fascinating mental disorders of this era. Part of this is because there is a lot of controversy as to whether or not this is a real disorder. One line of thinking is that it really is a disorder that has been brought on by the technological era and the ability to do something different every 3 seconds. The other popular opinion is that there really is no disorder, and it is just kids of our generation don't have good attention spans. But, instead of parents teaching their kids patience they want a quick fix, this is usually Ritalin. This is something that I have seen in my everyday life quite a bit. In high school one of my good friends was diagnosed as having ADHD. He got special attention in classes since he couldn't pay attention well enough to get passing grades. I believe this was the right decision, but I also think that they over treated his ADHD. Out of classes he was capable of paying attention to things that interested him, and activities such as video games he had no problem focusing on. They still treated him very heavily with Ritalin though, and I believe it was a mistake. If his parents had focused more on just teaching him to focus, I think it would have really helped him in the long run. My second example is in college. People are able to get prescriptions for Ritalin very easily, and this leads to people who don't need the drug being able to get it. During finals time there are a good number of students who take it without needing to, they just do it because it is the easy way out. In my opinion this is a terrible system, and needs to be fixed because it is leading to the abuse of a drug, as well as a generation of people who will not be able to focus without help.

Chapter Twelve

I found the Big Five Factors about personality to be extremely interesting, and think it would be very interesting. First is Conscientiousness. I am very disorganized, but I am fairly disciplined and very careful. I only feel the need to be organized about a few things such as computer files, cooking, and being on time (an odd combination I know.) For most of my life I have been raised not to give in to the short term instant gratification, so I think this has helped me a lot for being disciplined. As for being careful, I have learned after hurting somebody by accident that I need to keep a close watch on what I say. Next up would be agreeableness. I fall in the middle of being soft hearted and ruthless. It really depends on what the situation is. I have a very soft spot for children and animals, but on the other hand if someone hurts someone I care about I will go to any length to get revenge and make sure it won't happen again. Trusting is a tough one, I trust a close set of people, but beyond that I'm not all that trusting and will look for any types of manipulation or lies. This comes personal matters, but it has affected my personality greatly. Finally is helpfulness, this one I can safely say applies to me. I will go out of my way to be as helpful as possible and and to not argue if at all possible.

The third factor is Neuroticism. I am both very calm and very self-satisfied. This comes from lots of practice because I use to have a terrible temper and I realized I couldn't keep that up. It took a lot of self evaluation but in the long run it has really helped. Security is a trickier question. I would say that I am secure as a whole, but there are certainly things I am insecure about. I believe that this is true with everybody, and insecurity isn't really a good term to label someone as a whole since you can be both secure and insecure in things. The fourth part is openness. I am very practical, and that's usually the first thing that I think of when looking at something that I am thinking about buying. I prefer variety because it simply keeps me more interested in things. I'm also very independent, probably a product of my parents. The final factor is extravision. I go right down the middle on all of these issues. I am sociable with friends, but reserved with strangers. I'm quite fun loving, but as any of my friend can tell you I can be too serious at times. And lastly I am affectionate with the right person, but as a whole I don't think I can be classified that way.

Chapter 8

Automatic and Effortful Processing is a fascinating subject. I know I never really thought about it until now but it's very true. Most of the things throughout the day are done with Automatic Processing. I woke up this morning, worked out, ate a breakfast sandwich, drove to work, went and played golf, and then ate out for dinner. All of these things are easy to remember and I didn't have to pay any attention to them to remember it. The more individual details of these require Effortful Processing though. To remember the exact workout I did I need to think back because it was Effortful Processing. Same goes for how long I cooked my breakfast, what new stuff I learned at work, how I did on each hole of golf, and where the restaurant was located at. This is something I only learned about today, but already plays a major impact on my life. I will look forward to looking at each day like this.

Chapter Seven

Pavlov's experiment is something that has been an interest to me for a long time. It is also something that happens quite frequently in everyday life. The best example would be my old dog, and my cats. Anytime my dog would hear the food bag being opened he would rush into the kitchen. This was useful for getting him in there if he needed to take his medicine or something along those lines. It was also quite annoying when we were just moving the food and then he would run in thinking it was dinner and getting underfoot. My current cats both do it when they hear either dry food being moved, or a can of cat food being opened.

Conditioned stimulus for food is something else that I'm quite familiar. I get food poisoning almost every year, and as such there are a lot of foods I'm incapable of eating. Among those foods are King Crabs, Oysters, and Lobster with butter. Unfortunately, most of the foods I've gotten food poisoning are sea foods, so this has cut down on the amount of sea food I'm now capable of eating

Chapter Six

The most interesting part of this chapter to me was the study of depth perception. It is something that has affected me for my whole life. The first major impact it had on me was playing baseball. I was a good infielder, and I had good instincts and was fast. My coaches early on thought that it would be good to teach me to play the outfield as well in case someone got hurt. In theory this was a good idea, however in practice it failed miserably because of my lack of depth perception. When the ball was hit extremely high into the air I was incapable of telling if I was going to need to run back, forward, or not at all to get to it. This quickly got me out of the outfield.

The next important affect it had on me was driving, and specifically parallel parking. I was never able to get a good sense of how long my car was, and how big parking spaces were. I was forced to improve somewhat because at my high school we only had parallel parking. While I'm still not good at it by any means, I am more capable now. The interesting thing is that this carries over to other aspects of my life. When I play baseball just for fun now I am much better at judging where a ball will fall and getting to it easier.

Chapter Five

Chapter five strikes home for me, because I have a baby cousin who is just about a year and a half now. While I haven't gotten to see him grow up as much as I would like too, I can definitely see some of what this chapter is talking about. When I first saw my cousin he was this tiny little thing that couldn't do anything for himself really. The next time I saw him he was just beginning to crawl around, and he would go to every object and person he could find and just observe them. At this point he was beginning to recognize things. The next time I saw him he was taking wobbly steps and clutching to everything he could; but he definitely recognized things, and he was starting to learn the words for his favorites.

This last time that I have seen him he was running around as fast as his little legs could take him. He was still extremely curious, and would just stare captivated at things that interested him (door knobs, dogs, and smoke alarms being his favorite.) Throughout his short life I have seen many of the evolutions that the book talks about, and it is an even more amazing thing to see in real life.

Chapter Four

For most of my life people have told me that I looked like my mom. I don't find this to be a good or bad thing, but it has been consistent. This is due to genetics, and just the DNA that I've inherited. I know that I have her eyes, her facial features, and a lot of her personality. Because our personalities are so similar we either get along extremely well, or on the rare occasion we argue it will be very intense because we are both extremely stubborn.

I just recently started working for the company that my dad does in an internship, and it has been a bit of a shock for me. When I got there lots of people introduced themselves and asked if I was Calvin's son (my dad.) I assumed at first this was because most of them had worked for or with my dad at some point or another and I had met them a long time ago, or he had told them I was coming. I now work in a different building then him though, and continue to get people asking if I'm his son, or comment that I look a lot like him or act a lot like him. This was very surprising for me because I had never really considered myself to be much like him, and I'm still not sure I am. Obviously though, there is some resemblance since everyone else is able to tell.

Chapter 3

Two things that I found in chapter three that really related to my life were selective attention, and the ability to dual process. Dual processing is something that I use every day. The most recent instance of this would be driving home from work today. I was able to drive back from work while not really paying attention to the road because I know it so well. While I was driving I was able to review what happened at work today. But, when another car pulled out in front of me I was able to snap back to driving almost instantaneously.

Selective attention is something that I use quite a bit while I read. I'll always read with some type of white noise going on, be it the t.v. or music. However, I really don't hear it because I focus in on the book so much. Several of my friends will have to try quite hard to gain my attention if I'm reading the end of a book and really don't want to be interrupted because it is so good.

Chapter 2

The thing that I found most fascinating about chapter two would be the fact that the brain can actually be split into two different parts and it will still function at nearly full performance. This really shocked me, and is something that could lead to incredible surgeries being performed in the future. If somebody takes a really bad concussion to one side of the head, or even multiple concussions that are limited to one side of the head, it may be possible in the future to separate the two hemispheres and either limit the damage or to perform surgery on just one side.

In a more practical part of our lives would be the use of the cerebellum. I've seen many instances of people making excellent use of it in the sports I have played. I have played soccer with people who had such fine dribbling skills that it was incredible they could keep their feet moving at such a fast pace with such precise coordination. I have also seen people so drunk they couldn't walk anymore, an instance of it being impaired.

One particular instance I remember well is walking back from brunch on a Saturday and seeing a car pulled over by three state troopers on 81 by the bridge. We watched several sobriety tests being given to him, and him not being able to walk in a straight line or consistently touch his nose. The impressive part of this story is that it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon.