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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

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an individual learns to associate stimuli. For example, if someone sees lightning, they expect thunder. Therefore, whenever they see lightning, they wince because they are anticipating thunder. Meanwhile, phobias are a persistent or irrational fear of an object or situation that disrupts behavior. Both phobias and classical conditioning relate to my white coat syndrome. White coat syndrome is the phenomenon where people experience a higher than normal blood pressure in clinical settings, mostly due to anxiety. In my case, I become very anxious whenever I get a physical.

My white coat syndrome relates to classical conditioning because I associate the stimuli of the doctor’s office with anxiety. I think this is because whenever I visit the doctor’s I know that I am going to be uncomfortable and may have to get a shot. My unconditioned stimulus was getting a shot, and my unconditioned response was to become fearful. Since I associate the doctor’s office with shots, the doctor’s office can be classified as my conditioned stimulus. And finally, my conditioned response is anxiety towards the conditioned stimulus which is the doctor’s office.

Knowing that my white coat syndrome is linked to classical conditioning is very relieving because it assures me that my anxiety is associated only with this particular setting. I generally do not become too anxious when I stand near a cliff or speak in public. This is because I never had negative experiences with the two. Therefore, I do not have a fearful reaction to the stimuli of heights or public speaking.

My white coat syndrome can also be related to phobias because my anxiety is irrational and disrupts my behavior. There is no reason that I should be afraid of the doctor’s because it is safe, and my anxiety causes me to become too nervous. Although my white coat syndrome can be classified as a phobia, it is a very mild one. While most phobias are persistent, I managed to calm myself down and lower my blood pressure to a normal level. My behavior may be disrupted by my nervousness, but I can still communicate with my doctor and perform the tasks necessary to complete my physical. If I was not able to calm myself down and had a complete panic attack, then I would classify my phobia as severe.

Extinction is the process in classical conditioning in which a conditioned response is gradually reduced because the unconditioned stimuli no longer follows the conditioned stimuli. In order for my white coat syndrome to end, I need to no longer associate the doctor’s office, my conditioned stimuli, with shots and uncomfortable situations, my unconditioned stimulus. Fortunately, the next time I get a physical I will most likely not need a shot. As a result, there will no longer be an unconditioned stimulus and my conditioned response of anxiety will be less.

 

One topic that we covered in class is sensory adaptation. Sensory adaptation is when someone experiences a stimulus and your sensitivity to this stimulus decreases over time usually to the point of you no longer even noticing it at all. In class he related it to putting on a bandaid and sometime later you can no longer feel it. This reminds me of when I got braces and all of the things that lead up to them and the things that come after them. When it was first decided that I needed braces I had to get what is called an expander. Its basically this metal bridge-like object that connects to your two back teeth and slowly pushes them apart spacing out your teeth. And once I had it everyday or every other day I had to turn it with a key which would expand it further. I remember it being extremely uncomfortable and sometimes painful at the beginning of the day and not hurting at all by lunch time. Similarly, when I first got my braces they felt really weird and awkward having all this extra metal in my mouth, but a few weeks later I wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. Lastly, there’s the retainer and just like the the other two steps (and the couple that I skipped), the retainer is very uncomfortable when you first put it in, especially if you stop wearing it for some time, but once you wear it for some time it does not bother you at all. This is a perfect example of sensory adaptation. Thee are all things that you cannot help but notice at first and then over time you may forget that they are there at all. This is also like selective attention. Your brain assesses that these stimuli do not require any focus and neglects them in favor of more important stimuli.

I accidentally published this to the wrong site on my account initially.

Classical conditioning is where you learn to associate stimuli. This is something that happens to me all the time but one specific example is that I used to listen to a specific playlist every time I played a certain videogame. After about a week or so every time I played that game I would think of those songs and any time I heard any of those songs I would think of that game. There are still times now that I will hear a song and it will trigger memories of things I used to do when I heard it. This is a perfect example of classical conditioning. My brain associated the two stimuli and now whenever I encounter one I think of the other.

A phobia is an irrational fear of an object. In class, we often talked about people’s fears and how they adjust their life in order to avoid that thing. We also talked about exposure therapy and ways people can overcome the fear in order to continue on with a normal life. Exposure therapy allows a person to come in contact with the object they are afraid of in a controlled environment for the purpose of the person becoming more accustomed to the fear. 

In my experience, I have an irrational fear of balloons. I used to not be able to think about a balloon without having a panic attack. To this day, I don’t know what caused the fear or when I realized that it appeared. I never formally went to an aversion therapy but I still carry the fear with me to this day. How I overcame some of my fear was by slowing being exposed to the fear through different situations. All four years of high school I was head of the spirit club committee which meant decorating for school events with balloons. As the years went on I became less afraid of them due to the high volume of them I was around all the time. I still jump when people squeeze them and get abnormally anxious yet, I have come to a better relationship and coping mechanisms for it. 

Without realizing it, I did my own version of exposure therapy. I put myself into controlled situations where I knew what was going on and when it got too much I could leave or make someone else handle what I couldn’t. Although I still experience fear, it doesn’t alter my life like it used to. I can function more normally and don’t have to eject myself from places where blown up balloons are or might be.

A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of something. Having a phobia can completely change the way one lives their life. For example, the video shown in class of the lady who had a phobia of spiders. She altered her life to revolve around being protected from spiders. Some may be squeamish when it comes to certain things, like blood for example, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a phobia. Phobias cause people to avoid every day situations or events so they do not come in contact with their phobia. Unlike generalized anxiety, which is anxiety geared towards aspects of life in general, phobias are specific to one thing. There are many different names for different phobias, including claustrophobia (closed spaces), arachnophobia (spiders), and even pogonophobia (beards).

I personally have 2 phobias. Only one greatly affects my life though. I have social phobia and trypophobia. Trypophobia is the fear of clusters of small holes or bumps. For me, I only get anxiety from it when it’s on skin or skin-like materials. Since I never see this in real life, it doesn’t affect my life that much. If I see a picture of it, I get sick to my stomach. On the other hand, my social phobia severely has affected my life. Social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, is the fear of social situations. I have dealt with this for the past 4 years. It has completely changed the way I live my life. Luckily, I got the courage to get help and now don’t experience nearly as much social anxiety as I have in the past. I am now on medication which has allowed me to stop avoiding people, places, and situations. I can say first hand that having a phobia takes a lot of energy out of a person.