Month: December 2019

Cognitive Dissonance is the discomfort that arises when one’s thoughts and behaviors do not correspond. For example, if a person supports conservation and the environment yet drives a car which is fuel-inefficient, they will experience cognitive dissonance. To reduce this cognitive dissonance, they will convince themselves that the car is actually not bad for the environment or buy a new one.

Cognitive dissonance is reduced to justify one’s current situation, especially if that particular situation is one that they already committed to. I personally experienced cognitive dissonance during my first few months at college. Specifically, I wondered constantly if college was worth it and whether my major was something I was interested in. But, I began to justify more and more my choice to attend Penn State and choose the major that I did the more time I spent here. This was because it was easier to rationalize that I made the right choice rather than start all over and switch majors or transfer. And, as a result, I became happier and more comfortable in college because I had a positive attitude towards it. If I didn’t commit so much to college, I probably would have not adopted this new mindset.

A similar example is my experience in fraternity life. I personally believe that the time I put into pledging my fraternity makes me value it much more. It is far easier to appreciate the fraternity rather than think that the pledging process was a waste of time.

Cognitive dissonance is an interesting subject. There were many times in my life where my attitudes changed to match my current behavior. However, cognitive dissonance can also be reduced by changing one’s behavior. For example, instead of justifying my choice to stay in my major or stay at Penn State, I could have switched my major or transferred. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I would have done this. Interestingly, there is a chance that if I did change my major or transfer I would regret my decision. Then, I would adopt a new attitude to justify my decision. Thus, the cycle would continue.

The topic I decided to choose for this assignment is the topic of the chameleon effect. The chameleon effect can be described as when a group of people who are together for an extended period of time start mocking one another’s expressions, postures and voice tones. The reasoning behind these actions within a group are for the reasons of empathy and for the group to feel more attached to one another. This can be related to the example that Professor Wede used in class about how if you start using the phrase, “Chow”, instead of hello, you will start to realize more people around will use that phrase more often.

The personal experience I have had with the chameleon effect was directly related to me once I joined a fraternity and Penn State. Before joining the fraternity, I was used to using Jersey language, where I am from, and never noticed any other slang from different areas or people. After join the fraternity, I was surround by over 130 plus brothers that would use the same slang and body language. I quickly became accustomed this new slang and body language without even noticing. It began to hit me that these two attributes of me changed when I went back to my family at home where they immediately noticed a difference.

My personal experience with the chameleon affect can be directed related with what we learned in class in many different ways. First off, the reasoning for my change in new slang and body language was because without knowing, I wanted to fit more into the group and become more empathetic towards everyone. Secondly, what was taught in class how groups of the same kind start to act like each other made more sense after realizing that everyone around me around me was picking up the same lingo just for the reason to become closer.

In class, we talked about the different types of therapies one could use. Psychotherapy and biomedical therapies are used on patients either by themselves or together. The difference is that psychotherapy is between a trained therapist and a patient while biomedical therapy uses drugs or other procedures that act on ones nervous system. Therapists use many different methods with patient depending on what what they are there for. For example, exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is when the patient is exposed to the things they fear and avoid.

In my case, I used both psychotherapy and biomedical therapy at the same time. During my psychotherapy, I specifically remember my therapist telling me I should do something I would normal get anxiety about. When he said this to me, I was absolutely terrified. I thought why on earth is he telling me to do something that gives me so much anxiety? After awhile of that, I started being less anxious doing the things I originally couldn’t even do. I believe the mixture of exposure therapy and biomedical therapy got me to the place I am in. Clients do tend to overestimate improvement and effectiveness of either therapy, but even if thats what I did, I’m okay with that because I am in a good mental state now.

Ever had teammates or partners in a group project that would slack off so much that you had to pull all of the team’s weight? This relates to the psychological concept of social loafing where people tend to slack off or work less hard in group setting when they feel as though their team will do most or all of the work for them. As more people are in a group, the effort put in of each member usually decreases. If other people in the group or on the team seem as though they have great ability or can do most of the work themselves or with another person in the group, then the other person or people in the group will rely heavily on their contribution and worry less about their own. People also tend to perform social loafing in order to not be the person that is the victim of it and do all the work themselves while the others do not do as much to help.

Social loafing occurs often in my life as it does in many other people’s lives. This is because it is common to work in groups for either school, work, or even sports. One area I can especially relate to this concept is working in group projects for school. I would often get assigned groups in school in which my other partners either weren’t hardworking students, or just did not feel like putting in enough effort. This was very aggravating as I would get no help when working on the project even though that is the point of group work in the first place. There was one time where I had a project and the other people in my group were not even willing to meet up to work on the project together which was an extreme case of social loafing. This is why individual work encourages people to work harder than group work because if they don’t put in effort then the project won’t get done, whereas in a group they can rely on others to do the work most of the time.

https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/socialpsychology/n538.xml