Category: Uncategorized

Katie Perry

12/11/19

Extra Credit Blog Post

 

Conforming to New Peers 

In the Lecture 23, social influence, we learned of the concept of Conformity. Conformity is described as changing your own behavior to match others’ behavior, even if it is subconsciously. I am from a small country town in western Pennsylvania, and I feel as if most of my friends I have made since coming to Penn State have been from the Philly area. They all use the same slang terms and just the manner they speak in. Many of my Philadelphia friends’ voices and the way the say words with the letter A in it are all the same, just because the area they are from. Since this summer when I began college, friends and family from home have been telling me of changes in my tone, new slang I have started saying that leads back to me taking after my new friend’s ways of speaking. These changes happened subtly and subconsciously to me; I did not even realize the changes in the way I talked until someone pointed it out from my hometown. This happened through the Chameleon Effect, which is when the behavior changed comes from unconsciously mimicking other’s expressions, postures, and tones, which describes my situation exactly. The chameleon effect is also known to help feelings of empathy. Without realizing, I began to change my actions to relate to my peers more and I just picked up their actions and slangs. Learning about this topic in our lecture I immediately was able to find a relation to it and making this connection to my real life began to help me realize how common Conformity is.  

 

In class currently we are talking about Attraction. Particularly, we discussed how proximity lends itself extensively to attraction. However, in our world today proximity is equated with a menacing term known as the friendzone. The friendzone is when an individual has romantic feelings for a friend that are unreturned, leading to a mismatch in expectations for the relationship.

So how can this paradox exist, that the closer you get to someone the further into the “friendzone” you go? I believe if we delve into the psychological concept of the mere exposure effect, we can understand why this phenomenon is the case. In layman’s terms, the mere exposure effect posits that the more you hear or see something, the more you like it. Pyschologist Robert Zajonc conducted an experiment where he showed subject multiple images (some more than once) and asked them about how pleasant the images were. The result demonstrated that if the subject had seen the image many times, they reported that they liked it more.

In terms of the mere exposure effect and the friendzone, here is my hypothesis. In some cases, the more you are around someone, your attraction romantically converts into familiarity platonically.

 

Cognitive therapy involves the individual working collaboratively with the therapist to develop skills for testing and modifying beliefs, identifying distorted thinking, relating to others in different ways, and changing behaviors. Cognitive therapy is a type of therapy where the therapist will try to force the patient to adapt their thinking into a more positive way. Negative and unrealistic thoughts can cause patients distress and result in problems. When a person suffers with psychological distress, the way in which they interpret situations becomes skewed, which in turn has a negative impact on the actions they take. Many people suffering from depression often are extremely hard on themselves, and blame everything that goes wrong on themself. Therapists apply cognitive therapy when they see their patients view most events with a negative perspective, and personally decrease their self esteem. In our class, we mentioned  Aaron Beck, and how he trained his depressed patients to daily record positive events. After Beck had his patients record the positive events, he would ask the patients to list how they contributed to the positive action. This helps train the patient’s brain to think positively towards their own self.

After hearing Dr. Wede talk about cognitive therapy, and what it entails, I realized that it was the technique my therapist used to help treat me. Junior and senior year of highschool I was depressed, and thought very negatively towards myself and basically hated myself. When I began seeing a therapist for help, she diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, and began learning my behaviors to help treat me. About a month or two into my treatment, my therapist asked me to keep a journal, whether it be on my phone, or in a book for every time throughout the day where I was happy or something good happened to me. Then in our sessions, she would ask me to speculate why I was happy, and how I contributed to the action that caused me to feel happy. She also asked me what I was doing during those happy times, and encouraged me to increase those activities that made me happy. A specific example I remember telling my therapist was when I was driving with my three friends, singing our favorite song as loud as we could. I remember feeling so happy and grateful in that moment, and when my therapist asked me to identify how I contributed to the moment I said how I have a nice personality so I was able to acquire good friends that are similar to me and care for me. Through this therapy I was able to recover, and think positively towards myself without damaging my self esteem. 

 

Works Cited

“What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: CBT Info Los Angeles.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, cogbtherapy.com/about-cbt.

Mcleod, Saul. “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy | CBT | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-therapy.html.

Social psychology is something that has always fascinated me, how our actions and behaviors are influenced by other individuals. How everything we do is either mirrored from others or influenced by them. Everything we do and things we have learned as a child are actions that we learned from others, either from lessons or by simply observing other people doing so and imitating them. Social psychology is even more complex, because our actions are determined by the presence of others, let them be real or implied. The presence of people can influence our behavior, thoughts, or feelings.

I remember when I was first learning how to drive. My dad taught me and it was the most stressful situation. Whenever I would do something wrong he would call me out on it raising his voice, not to be mean or anything, but because it was involuntary. I guess this influenced my in how I drive when there are other people in the car with me. When I drive by myself, listening to my own music and having no one to call me out when I do something wrong, I usually drive really well, there is no pressure for me to be good, so it just comes naturally to me. I barely make any mistakes and nothing significant happens. But whenever I drive with people I get kind of nervous and, unintentionally, end up doing something wrong. I either take a wrong turn or miss a stop sign. It is very frustrating to me because I know I am a good driver, but the presence of other tends to influence how I drive. Driving would be considered a social impairment for me, since it is a difficult task that worsens my performance when I am around others, even though I am good at when there is no one around.

Another example of social psychology is the Chameleon Effect. One that proves that behavior is contagious. It is when people mimic other’s expressions, postures, and voice tones. Me and my roommate wanted to see if this was accurate, so whenever I would Facetime my boyfriend, she would say “Hola,” to see if he would change the way he says hi into “Hola” as well. The first time we tried this he still said the usual “hi,” not changing that way she says it to “Hola.” The second time I called him and my roommate said it he also said “Hola,” but he did it jokingly, not really conforming to it. We tried it a few more times after this and we realized that after the third time he finally conformed to it and he now says “Hola” every time, not even thinking about, but just conforming to whenever she says it. This proves that we indeed follow the behavior of others to conform with the situation and context we are in. It is a conformity, in which we change our behavior to match other’s behavior.

Behavior is very complex but also really simple. We seek approval from others and conforming to what others do is a way by which people feel accepted in a group or an environment. The context in which we act and behave can also influence us, especially if we think we are being watched. The presence of other individual can definitely influence our behavior because behavior itself is contagious.

A phobia can be described as a persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that disrupts behavior. Having phobias is very common and it is categorized as a type of anxiety disorder. When someone has a phobia they will do whatever means necessary in order to avoid that object or situation from ever presenting itself in their life again whether it is a fear of spiders, planes, or even just any social situation. If someone were to be presented with their phobia they would show signs of immediate panic and ultimately a great deal of distress.

As weird as it may sound, I have had a phobia of The Simpsons ever since I was 10 years old. I had a traumatic experience when I went to Universal in Florida with my family. My brother thought it would be funny to push me onto the Simpsons ride alone and that experience really just traumatized me. Ever since that day at Universal I experience intense distress if I see The Simpsons on my T.V or if I see a stuffed animal of any of the Simpsons characters. My phobia used to be a lot worse when I was younger; I would cry if I saw any of the characters anywhere and I would hyperventilate. Now, while I still do not like The Simpsons, I am not as distressed by their presence. 

My mom used to have a serious phobia of airplanes which prevented her from being able to fly. She would feel extreme panic and distress as soon as the plane began to take off and it really limited her. She eventually learned how to handle herself when flying, but the phobia was serious. She was fine with other transportation such as cars and trains, but when it came to flying she was just too panicked. While most people can acknowledge that their phobias stem from irrational fears, it is hard for them to control their panic. 

In the 1900’s, neurologist Sigmund Freud developed what is known as psychoanalysis, emphasizing the relationship between unconscious conflict and past traumatic events. Freud believed that a person’s experiences as a child greatly influence the type of personality traits and psychological problems they will face later in life. Fear is among the most frequent types of emotions originating from experiences one faces in the past, often expressed as certain phobias later in life. To this day, I suffer from Arachnophobia, more commonly known as the fear of heights. In order to fully understand the reasoning behind this ongoing fear, I will give an explanation of the sympathetic nervous system and the role it plays. 

 

In the presence of fear, our bodies tend to respond with what is commonly known as “fight-or-flight” response. This response to stress associated with specific psychological actions within the brain’s sympathetic nervous system, which is driven through a series of interconnected neurons. It is located within the spinal cord, allowing the rest of the body to function according to the situation at hand, whether it be a fight or flight reaction. The sympathetic nervous system is what stimulates neurons to react in response to fear.  

 

This reaction through the release of the body’s sympathetic neurons relates to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis as it emphasizes unconscious conflict and past events. When I was younger, my mom and I went on a trip to Yosemite, during which we hiked up Half Dome. Once we reached the top, a young girl walked toward an area with bushes surrounding one side. Little did she know there was a slit down the side of the cliff that could only be seen from the opposite side of the bushes. The girl was no more than 2 feet away from falling through the rock before my mom saw from the other side and ran as fast as she could to hold the girl back; she was successful. In this situation, my mom’s sympathetic nervous system entered the “flight” mode, releasing a rush of neurons and adrenaline in order to save the girl’s life.  After witnessing this near-death experience first-hand, I have never been able to face open heights, as that early childhood experience influenced my psychological development of a phobia.

Many people experience some level of anxiety in their day to day lives. Some may experience more than others, however, anxiety is an emotion that everyone deals with. Generally speaking, anxiety can be defined as a feeling of excessive fear or nervousness of current and or future events. We can describe the physical symptoms as tense and apprehensive, and furthermore persistent and at times uncontrollable.

Firstly, I would like to mention that although I do experience a lot of anxiety and nervousness, I do not like to define myself and my personality under these premises. Unfortunately many people end up focusing a lot of their mental space and energy on anxiety and many people let it fester on their minds 24/7.  In my experience with anxiety, most of the cause occurs right before a task that I need to complete. A common event that induces anxiety for students is obviously exams, projects, or assignments. For me, these do induce the strong level of unease and jitteriness tha anxiety produces. The worst level of anxiety that I ever experienced was when I went on my first ever date. For the entire day I felt anxious and extremely nervous and as the time approached closer to the time I was supposed to meet her, my body started to shiver like how our bodies shiver when it’s cold outside. My friends definitely noticed whenever I handed them stuff and it was very difficult to be calm. Fortunately though, the anxiety did go away during the date and at that moment I was calm again. Luckily I have been working on fixing this by talking to people more often, calling people more often (I would get very nervous whenever I needed to call someone), and being more expressive of my thoughts.

I would say these experiences of mine strongly reflect the material we covered about anxiety because my anxiety always occurs in anticipation of an event that I plan to do like on my first date, as mentioned in the powerpoint as well, my shivering and fearfulness was persistent and very uncontrollable as it happened all throughout the day up until the date itself. I would definitely define this state of mind as extremely excessive when comparing to how other people would have reacted and anticipated their first date, or any future event for that matter. Anxiety is definitely a nuisance and it hinders everyone’s interactions with the environment around them.

 

Ivan Pavlov was physiological doctor and an academic in field as well.  He became famous from a certain experiment in which the idea of classical conditioning was developed.  Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate stimuli, Pavlov was able to demonstrate this using a dog, a bell, and food. Before starting the experiment, Pavlov noticed that the food caused the dog to salivate.  He labeled the food as the unconditioned stimulus and the salivation as the unconditioned response. The reason for labels is to display that all the stimulus and the response are not manipulated by Pavlov. He would then condition the dog by ringing a bell when serving the dog food over a period of time.  The bell is labeled the neutral stimulus because the stimulus doesn’t serve any purpose besides being stimulus. Eventually the bell becomes conditioned stimulus because every time the dog hears a bell it assumes it is going to be fed. This results in the dog salivating everytime it hears the bell, which is conditioned response.  This was revolutionary for the time because it shows subconscious learning that can be examined.

My last year in highschool I took a psychology course and my teacher had us participate in a similar experiment to show just how real classical conditioning is.  The unconditioned stimulus in the experiment was exercise and unconditioned response was an increase in heart rate. We then incorporated the neutral stimulus, a bell, to signal the commencement of the exercise.  The exercise was only jumping jacks for thirty seconds but there was still a noticeable jump in heart rate. After ten trials of repetitively doing jumping jacks, we measure the student’s heart rate after simply ringing the bell.  As expected, her heart rate had increased almost as much as it had during the exercise. Similar to Pavlov’s experiment, the bell was the conditioned stimulus because it resulted in the conditioned response, the increase in heart rate.  Subconsciously her bodied recognized that it should increase heart rate because the bell means there is going to be physical activity. Although it doesn’t seem like she actually learned anything, her brain learned that it needs to increase heart rate in order to adapt to the current environment.

Encoding Failure is a term that refers to the brain’s occasional failure to create a memory link. According to the University of Cambridge, there exist 7 types of memory failure but here’s 2:

Repressive Erasure: This is when something is purposely erased. It was most commonly seen in the efforts of totalitarian regimes to “erase” the memory of people or things deemed ‘enemies of the state’. This was done by destroying artifacts, omitting references in writing, and forbidding any kind of information transmission on the banned thing. More subtly today, a group called the Futurists in Italy wanted to remove almost all of the museums in Italy. They wanted this because they felt like it was embodying a cult of the past that obfuscated appreciation for the present. To aestheticize the past meant opposing aestheticization of the everyday — airplanes, cars, technological advancements.

Prescriptive Forgetting: This type of forgetting is used when it is in “the best interest of all parties”. The Ancient Greeks utilized this when they were coming off of a civil war; they made it forbidden to remember all the crimes and wrongdoing perpetrated during the civil strife

Personal Application:

As a Christian, the idea of “forgetting” is a very common motif. In the Bible, it says the God forgets our sins that and that we in turn are supposed to forget the sins of others. In terms of what I mentioned earlier, this most directly correlates with “prescriptive forgetting”. The forgetting of sins is most salutary to both parties because there is no burden to be carried by the transgressor. I think Prescriptive Forgetting is very hard though because as humans we tend to hold grduges, but I think over the long term it’s so benefical.