In a recently reviewed research paper, I read about the cognitive bias known as the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic is the brain’s tendency to believe a particular event is more likely if it can easily access a memory of it. For instance, after watching a flipped coin land on tails five consecutive times, one might believe that on the sixth toss it is more likely to land on tails. In reality, however, the odds still remain equal. But since your brain has recently witnessed the event of the coin landing on tails, it makes an incorrect assumption. Furthermore, mental bias influences our judgement to more easily recall flashy, dramatic events. For instance, people often overestimate the frequency of plane crashes. In actuality, it is a generally uncommon occurrence. But, due to the intensity and significance of each crash, people can vividly recall incidents of plane crashes and therefore assume they are a major cause of death.
I was extremely interested by this topic. Humans tend to believe that they memory is so infallible, when it is actually extremely susceptible to be wrongly influenced. Understanding these biases, moreover, allows people to make less biased judgments. They are able to stop and think about if their belief is accurate or if it is simply being swayed by cognitive biases. An especially interesting point made in the paper involved the subject of court testimonies. If memory is so fallible, why are court testimonies so highly regarded in trails? The consequences of these testimonies could very well have involved sending completely innocent individuals to jail! In the future, I would like to know more about the availability heuristic affects perception of others. Do people recall more memorable individuals better? How does this affect the lives of individuals who may not be as flashy? The availability heuristic is an widely interesting topic with the potential to prompt additional studies.
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Music is a universal language present in the lives of many— myself included. Whether its at work, school, parties, the gym, or in the comfort of our homes, music follows us wherever we go. But music serves as much more than just a source of entertainment. A research paper I read recently discussed the effect of music on memory. I was fascinated by how significant a role music plays in our lives.
The use of songs to aid students in remembering material seen in the education of young children is something I have learned about and experienced in my own life. What I didn’t know was the the specific connection between musical compositions, emotions, and the memory mechanisms in our brain. I was equally as interested in the remedial uses of music seen in experiments on patients with impaired cognitive function. Results showed that listening to music improves the memory of the individuals. The various ways in which music benefit people raise many questions for further psychological study. I wonder whether certain genres of music could be more helpful than others in helping retain information. It would also be interesting to find out if there is a way to help people with certain learning disabilities or disorders like Alzheimer's through the use of music. The possibilities of research on this topic are endless. There is so much more studying the area to be done, and as I read from the paper, research has only begun. ![]() From simple “word of mouth” to chatting instantaneously with people across the world, communication has evolved to fit with the drastic changes of the modern era. However, today’s main forms of communication—texting and online chatting apps—are limited in the emotions they can express. In a research paper I read, I learned more about just how effective (or ineffective) modern forms of technological communication can be. Emotions are an unconscious process that motivate people to action. Emotional stimulus is sent through the amygdala, after which it can travel on one of two pathways: 1. Fast Track. Controlled by the limbic system, this includes emotional reaction and impulses. 2. Slow Track. Controlled by the frontal lobes of the brain, this includes logical thinking and long-lasting emotions (such as grudges). These two tracts are necessary for behavioral responses. Within these two tracts, emotions are expressed through the five basic expressions of communication: 1. Words 2. Touch 3. Facial expression 4. Body language 5. Sound (such as tone of voice) All five are needed to fully communicate a person’s emotions and the meaning of their words. In fact, it is interesting to note that only ten percent of communication is derived through words; therefore, texting, using solely words, does not communicate ninety percent of what is communicated. Hidden meanings, such as sarcasm, can be misinterpreted. Even words are shortened using “net lingo”, such as “LOL” (laugh out loud). The emotions themselves are boxed up into emoticon symbols, such as :-), which depicts the emotion of happiness. This method of communication is not only limiting, but also can be misinterpreted as the brain is not able to identify any sound, touch, facial expressions or body language it would usually use as cues for emotional interpretation. Also, abbreviations and emojis can downplay the emotions themselves. From personal experience, I once overheard someone saying that she found it funny when her mom sent angry emoji faces, even though she knew her mom was trying to show that she was very upset. The use of emoji faces can be very useful; however, they can also minimize their meaning as they are used frequently and result in making communication impersonal. Snapchat and Instagram, with video and pictures, can include three of the five basic expressions of communication: words, facial expression and sound. However, there is still a disconnect, and many people report that many adolescents have, “alter-egos” online. When a person is online, since they are not physically confronting the person face-to-face, it is easier to be blunt, rude, or even bully others. Still, there are many benefits to these inventions: the ability to communicate quickly over long distances, to save conversations and even to include other mediums of expression, such as art and music. So while it is not wise to depend on technology solely for communication, technology has many advantages. With new inventions and updates, society may find itself one day with technology that can encompass communication fully. Until then, I personally would like to learn more about how emotions are communicated, and evaluate how well apps like Skype and FaceTime communicate emotion. I read about a research paper about animal language, and I will briefly introduce the topic. This research paper focuses on the language of human and animals. Although animals do not have an extensive system in their brains to communicate like humans, they have their own ways of communicating and interacting with each other.
First, it has been confirmed that human brains are very complex and have greater capacity than animals to form words and phrases. Studies with the apes have shown that animals could not produce sentences like humans could. However, there are similarities in how both humans and animals develop their language. Some birds and mammals grouped notes into syllables which eventually created words and phrases to make up sentences. This study have shown that animals and humans have similar structure in the language format. Moreover, humans and animals both use facial expressions to convey different messages. Animals can acknowledge the different facial expressions and figure out the different emotional states. Another method of communication animals use is dance. Bees dance to locate the location of their nest sites. Also, they communicate about the direction and location of the food and decide whether it is worth making the journey. I found this topic really interesting, and I learned new aspects to communication in animals. I did not know that animals used all these types of methods to communicate with each other. Although animals do not have a complex brain like humans do, they still have the capacity to express themselves. ![]() Recently, I read a research paper about the causes and effects of personality and how personality can change over time as we age. When I read this paper, I found this information very interesting because sometimes I think I have a few traits of mine that are similar fours year ago when I started high school, but in reality, I have changed in my personality without even realizing it. This can be caused through a few factors in the psychology of personality. First of all, genetics plays in the role of personality. Some of our DNA passed down hereditary can be similar and the biology of our family. However, a situation that counterfeit this is the experiment between children related and raised together and children related but raised separately. This takes into account of the effect of personality in nurture and nature. The results showed that there was a difference of their characteristics such as openness or being introverted with the children raised in two different environments. Not only the environment can change personality, but also our personalities as we age. The most rapid change is through the ages of twenty to forty because that is the age period in our lives in becoming independent. This can also relate to how our emotional stability is increased over time and how to handle a situation by showing a certain personality. From the ages of forty and older, our rate of personality change decline. Another factors of the change in personality is the knowledge that our personality will always move into a positive direction. As we age, we become more mature which makes us more responsible and controllable of our lifestyles and actions. We may sometimes stray from our core personalities of who we are, but we tend to stay the same in remainder of our lives. Change can be also changed through experiences either good or bad such as marriage problems, disturbing life problems, or one's environmental surroundings. When one is affected by this experience, their "trauma" affects their personality. Psychologists can diagnose a specific type of personality through the Big Five model: agreeable, conscientiousness, and extroversion, neuroticism, and openness. Many answers can be found through this diagnosis if we are conscientious to being irritable. In the future, I hope to research different types of personality disorder thousands of people go through and how psychologists can discover this through their continuous research. After a further investigation of memory and topics related to it, I discovered the connection of music to the memory. The persistence of music in our relatively well-known phenomenon. Most people have experienced having the latest pop song or some catchy jingle stuck in their head all day. I am particularly interested in this connection as it involves two of my greatest passions: psychology and music.
As I begin my research, I plan to examine how we remember music and why we remember music so well. One source that will assist me in my research is scholarly article, “Memory for melody and key in childhood.” This article discusses the length of retention people exhibit after exposure to previously unfamiliar memories. It reviews a study that changes variables like age and melody. This article will aid me in answering questions about how we remember melodies of different keys. New questions it has raised include the influence of age in remembering music. Furthermore, I have recently been discovered the psychological marvel of Clive Waring. Waring was once a gifted musician who was diagnosed with anterograde amnesia. Despite his remarkably short memory, he is still able to play the piano with accuracy and precision. Waring’s miraculous case may steer of my research in a more focused direction. Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character. There are different theories about how personality first formed and if it changes over time or stays stable throughout time. You might want to become more outgoing, more organized, or more resistant to criticism. So, can we change our personality? If we can, what are the factors that lead to the change in personality? What are the experiences and situations we must face to change our personality?
In the database Can Personality Be Changed?, the article gives an example of two twins who reunited at age 39. Although they lived in completely different environments, they were showing similar characteristics such as the eccentric habit of pushing up her nose and distinctive giggling. They were also known to have similar personalities and ways in how they talked and acted. So are we born with our personality, and can environment not change in how we act or think? However, more and more sources are defending on the fact that personality can change through strong experiences such as traumas, and more questions on the factors that lead to the change are in great debate. This source will allow me to approach different ideas and perspectives psychologists have about the change in perspectives and understand the scientific processes of personalities based on age, experiences, relationships, and the surroundings. I had new questions I wanted to research more after reading this source. Can gender have an influence in the change in personality? Is a specific group of gender more easily influenced by the environment, or do they show similar results? Also, in what degrees can personalities change? Is there a limit to a change in personality, or can one change dramatically and turn into a totally different person? Throughout time, I will incorporate these questions and build on to my research. Dear reader,
This post is the first of a series of posts dedicated to the subject of Judgment. As seen in the earlier post, “And The Verdict Is. . .”, I discussed cognitive biases that affect our judgment, for better or for worse. Learning about how information is processed in the brain is not only enlightening but also integral for making educated and thorough decisions. Over the course of the next posts, I will discuss topics and questions that probe and test the concept of judging, how judgment is formed and its effects. First off, I would like to address the concept of free will. It seems that if the human brain processes information that leads to an action, then humans must not have free will. However, this is not the case. Eddy Nahmias, from The Scientific American, discusses the debate between scientists who believe in free will and scientists who believe free will is an illusion. In his article titled, “Why We Have Free Will”, Nahmias details experiments that glean the surface of the unconscious level of the brain, where thoughts are formed before they are brought into the consciousness of the person. One experiment was by Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco, in the 1980s. Nahmias describes that Libet asked his subjects to flick their wrists whenever they wanted to (this is an excellent example of the cognitive bias called representativeness heuristic: the idea of what randomness should be). With electrodes attached to his subjects, Libet was able to monitor the electrical activity in their brains. One type of electrical signal was “readiness potential”, which occurs in the unconscious part of the brain. The other type of signal communicated the command to flick their wrist in the part of the brain that is consciously aware. Since the readiness potentials occurred about a quarter of a second before the signals that were conscious did, Libet concluded that decisions were made by the unconscious part of the brain, therefore contributing to the idea that free will does not exist. However, Nahmias argues that this could just as well be evidence of free will at work. Also, the action of flicking a wrist is habitual, and does not require much deliberation. Deciding to change a habit and debating on life choices are not habits that can be easily decided and executed, but take more time and effort. The process of those decisions may even take place in a separate part of the brain. Until there is more research about unconscious activity and better technology, potential answers will remain speculative, based off inferences from what technology can reveal at this time. Curious? Hungry for more? Stay tuned for these future possible posts: Split-second decisions and gut instincts Do physical surroundings affect our perception? Distorting memories I am fascinated by the human brain and all its workings. Similarly, I am drawn to this topic in that I wonder how animals think and also wonder if they think the same way as humans. The topic which I will be investigating involves animals and whether they use their own language to communicate among each other like we do. Our cerebral cortexes are the defining characteristic of human beings that make us very smart in comparison to other species. Our vast intelligence allows us to have language, giving us the ability communicate our intelligence to others. This system of communication that humans use incorporates symbols or letters to create meaning. While animals do not normally read or write, they are still able to communicate. The question is to what extent do they develop their language and how do they communicate with each other? Maybe animals are smarter than we think.
The book Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language will be very helpful in research about communication among animals. Tim Friend, a science journalist for USA Today, explains the mysteries of animal language, describing the methods and reasoning behind animal communication. His work suggests that perhaps human and animal communication are not so different. This book will provide a good foundation as it includes the basics of communication theory, genetics, evolution, and the development of scientific thought having to do with animal communication. News Alert: it's 2017, the generation of new technology! As you can see where ever you go: the bus, the park, or even at the mall, you are bound to find people who have their eyes glued to the phone or their iPad. Usually people would be on their phone in not only social media platforms, but texting with various people. Texting is a helpful tool to have especially in the time we live in. Texting helps us keep in contact with people who are near or far, gives us a way to contact people and receive an answer in a matter of seconds, and keeps messages from the past for many years. However, does the text we are sending convey the right emotion we would like to express to that person?
According to this really informative and funny article from Psychology Today, their are five different ways to share thought and feelings in person: words, touch, facial expression, body language, and sounds. This nonverbal communication displays an accurate depiction of what we express to a person: whether we are happy, angry, or upset. But how do we express these ways in 2017 especially of the rise of the computers? Many people, especially in teens, face the situation that we spend more time on our phone than face to face communication. Texting, though it is useful, lacks less than ten percent of our range of emotion than in person. It could take the attribution of arousal in a wrong way. For example, if we want to text something sarcastic, the person in the other line could take it as being angry. So, how can we use technology today to accurately send the right emotion? Technology has definitely improved their ways solving this problem such as the invention of the social media platform of Snapchat and Instagram and emojis. With the use of the front and rear camera they both show facial expression, words, sounds, and sometimes body language. However, it does not reveal the sense of touch. This is perfect example when the hurricanes came this year, technology has help us as a country stay more connected during this tragic time through live videos from Snapchat and Twitter. So come follow me as I explore the big question: can emotions be conveyed through technology? I will have future blog post of how social media respond to this questions and how can we improve the accuracy of our emotions through text. Thanks! |
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