When I first decided to take Psychology, I thought that it had to do with studying the way the brain works. I knew that it would look at why our brains respond in certain ways to the situations around us. I also thought that it would look at how the way we are raised and what we believe in affect the way we think. Now that I have read chapter 1, I understand that Psychology studies a lot of different areas including clinical studies, counseling, educating, and organizing. I also learned that psychology looks at every human action and decision and applies it to how the mind works.
I definitely learned a lot of new information about Psychology in this chapter. One thing that really stood out to me was that psychological thinking began around 500 B.C. I hadn't realized that the philosophers of the past really, in their own way, were psychologists too. A second fact that I thought was pretty cool was that some psychologists think that the mind is a 'blank slate' at birth, (John Locke, and Aristotle) while others think that certain ideas are inborn. I never really wondered whether my interests were created by what happened to me in life, or if I was born the way I was with certain interests in mind. This helped me see that there are always new elements of Psychology to study.
I think Psychology affects my life because every decision I make, every action I do, and every single thought that goes through my mind is following a studied pattern of psychology. For example, if I think that I would like to stay home from school one day because I have a big test to take, I could use the behavioral perspective of Psychology to point out that my mind is telling me to skip school because I'm afraid of the situation of taking a test. By studying Psychology, we can realize that this situation that seems so normal is really a studied pattern of the mind.
I thought the NPR clip was really interesting. In class last Wednesday we talked about Lydia saying that we are 'slaves to our mind's decisions'. I said that even though we have natural instincts, I still thought that we had control over them and that every decision in life is an option. After watching the NPR clip I realized that a simple decision like choosing between cake and fruit can be affected by learning seven numbers. I still think that most of our decisions in life really are our own, but the video definitely helped me understand that our decisions can be affected by very simple distractions that we often aren't aware of. When I realized that our decisions can be swayed this easily, it made me want to make every decision more carefully.
One question that came to my mind was in the PowerPoint lecture. On the third slide it was mentioned that we need to be rational and logical in perspective, always looking for evidence so that we can find what is true. A question that came to mind though is what exactly is truth? For example, if someone finds evidence of a fossil and says that it is millions of years old, and another person says it is only thousands of years old, could someone use the fossil as evidence to prove a theory of how old the earth is, or does it just add to the theory? Basically, what I mean is how can we decide what is really evidence and what is really truth? Is there really such thing as absolute proof, or is evidence and truth open to our interpretation? If that were true, could we ever really prove anything?
(Oh, and this isn't part of my blog, but a separate question for Professor Kashdan. After we post our own blogs, how soon do you want us to comment on three other blogs? My main reason for asking is because I don't want to post my three comments and then forget to ever go back and read the blogs that were added later.)
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Thank you Dallas. You raise a big question, what is truth? That is a question that philosophers, theologians, scientist have been raising for as long as we have been able to ponder our own world and existence.
ReplyDeleteHere is what I would say to this question, truth or what we call truth is based upon a number of "things". It is based upon what we know at the moment we decide what is truth, it is based upon tradition and accepted knowledge, it is based upon political and social standards, it is based upon our own biases. So when you put all of this together truth is hard to discern.
In science (which is how we will examine the topic of psychology) it is based upon evidence, so we look at some phenomena - for instance are we born primarily as a blank slate, and we start to gather evidence that helps us understand whether this is true or not - and we cull through what the results of the research tells and draw conclusions. It is accurate to say that people can draw varying conclusions, and that research can be flawed, which is why we keep studying and adding the the repository of knowledge to understand what truth is.
We are limited in our understanding of the world, and of ourselves, and we are curious beings so we work to understand, but this is a continual journey.
Once we believed that the sun revolved around the earth, we now know that this is wrong. Once we did not understand the role of bacteria in infection now we do, once we thought the world was flat, now we know it is not, what we understand changes, therefore we we discern as truth changes.
Also I think you comment "After watching the NPR clip I realized that a simple decision like choosing between cake and fruit can be affected by learning seven numbers." and subsequent discussion about how the brain has to manage competing interests was very insightful. Good job.
Oh - post and comment as soon as you people start posting blogs - try and read as much as possible - but go ahead and start commenting right away.
ReplyDeleteI was also suprised that in 500 BC people were thinking psychologically. It just really suprised me that it never became a science until 1879 with Wundt and Titchener. But from 500 BC till then people were pondering the questions of how the mind works and how it is connected to the body.
ReplyDeleteI also was under the impression that psychology dealt with just how the mind works, I however thought it was mostly for just the abnormal mind. I was interested to learn all the different areas psychology really covers too!
ReplyDeleteDallas,
ReplyDeleteDon't skip school. You'll do fine on the test ;) But that was a very good point. Now that we've started the class and began reading the text book, we are noticing more things that have to do with psychology in our lives. Its fun!
Good post.
Samantha Brekken