Category Archives: Perceptual Organization

My First Memory?

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My First Memory

 

From our current understanding of memory suggests that we do not recall anything before we are four years old. It continues that if we do recall something it may not be that you actually experienced it but that because people have told it to you, you then create and fill in the details with your mind as if you really remember it happening.

 

This was explained more in detail with the experiment we went over, during a lecture where they did an experiment where they tried to create a memory just through talking about the one made up event mixed with multiple other real memories. This is a very interesting and somewhat powerful thing that psychologists have found out.

 

My first memory is of the 1996 World Series where the third basemen for the New York Yankees catches a foul ball and then celebrates as if they had won the World Series. The only reason I believe this is truly a memory and not just something told to me by my parents, is that my parents never talked to me about this because it was not a big deal in their mind.

 

The one problem is that I have no recollection of where I was during the event; I don’t even know if I actually watched it or if I saw it a couple years after and encoded it as if I had seen it live.  If I think really hard I can vaguely remember sitting on the couch and watching it on my fathers lap.

 

The problem I have now with this memory is that it is impossible for me to have this vivid of a memory because you are not supposed to remember anything before you are around 4 and I was only about 14 months at the time. So the only valid explanation is that I am just recreating it with my mind as the people in the studies did.

 

Sociocultural Perspective

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In psychology, sociocultural perspective studies groups, social roles, and rules of social actions and relationships. Its the idea of how much does a large group, culture norm, or values and expectations effect an individual. It studies a person’s behavior and whether it changes when in an individual environment or in a large group. Living in a particular culture, being alone, being with certain friends, or different social norms and environment can influence one’s behavior.

As a freshman at Penn State, being around all these people you didn’t know and weren’t familiar with was intimidating yet exciting. It was like a fresh start, but for some people it easily was a way to change one’s personality to fit in with certain crowds. One of the girls on my floor I became friends with casually by just seeing each other on the floor. We would go to lunch together and even go out on the weekends together. My friend who I  had just met not a couple of weeks ago seemed very nice and a great person. One day we met other people and decided to have lunch with them. Throughout the lunch I noticed my friend’s personality completely change. She was agreeing with these girls on liking things from which I know she has told me she never liked. For example, football which is why she didn’t get season  tickets, but she told these girls she loves football and is going to go to every single day. My friend seemed really sweet when around me but her voice got really caddy around these girls and jumping in with them on making rude comments towards everything and anything. My friend said she hated sororities and never planned on rushing or anything, but when around these girls she acted as though she wanted to become the president of one, shouting out greek letters left and right. At first I realized my friend just wan’t the girl i thought she was, but then after we left lunch and we were walking back to our room she became this sweet person who hates sororities and football again. It was like nothing had even happened.

I realized my friend changed her personality to fit in and especially being a freshman it is hard not too because you want everyone to like you. So by doing so you agree to what other people say and change your behavior to stay with the crow and culture norm. By saying she loved football and wanted to be in the sorority she was just simply changed by the culture, because at Penn State thousands of girls want and dream of joining a sorority and football is a huge major deal. Instead of remaining with her values and beliefs she stuck with being in with the culture norm and crowd. A group and culture can certainly change your behavior.

Very Superstitious

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It is exceptionally interesting how the brain tries to make sense of every little thing in life. You may eat Cheerios one night, have a snow day on an exam day the following day and have things rescheduled. Your brain will think something’s up. So the next five exam days you eat Cheerios the night before expecting the same results, but nothing comes of it. Maybe it was obvious that last attempt in July would not work… It happens to the best of us to varying degrees: superstition.

Now, picture this scenario. You go to a country concert, only because your best friend pulled your leg to come with them. You, being the classical, Tchaikovsky listening music buff you are, have no interest in Martina McBride or any sort of ‘twang’ in music for that matter. So what do you do? You observe the crowd and start generalizing and stereotyping the people around you. You now go home thinking that every country music listener rides tractors, drinks cold beer on Friday nights and likes perfectly fitting blue jeans and cutoff tees. (On a side note, country artists ought to start writing about different topics, but that’s beside the point.) You may have done this many times in your life: stereotyping.

The psychological reasoning behind both superstitions and stereotyping is known in the science world as illusory correlation (‘’Illusory’’ which comes from ‘’illusions’’ and correlations as in a relationship). This is the idea that our brain tries to create correlations or relationships between things, people, behaviors, or events that are not even associated with each other. That bowl of Cheerios on your study session night or the tractor loving, country music listening stranger walking passed you are simply perceptions of an illusion that your mind has created for you and in which you believe in. It’s almost like a mirage.

Personally every Sunday in the fall and early winter months, I give into illusory correlation big time. During the NFL season when I’m either at a Baltimore Ravens game when they’re home or watching it with family and friends in the comfort of my living room, superstition engulfs my environment. That’s right. We’re talking about assigned seats in the living room, only high fives on scoring drives, and bobbleheads that are placed just right. Sometimes we do things as a parody of ourselves… But yet we still perceive that our nonsense affects the game, or think it is funny to believe it affects the game.

One instance that shrill gets me today is when my neighbor would wear his Ngata jersey who is a defensive lineman for the Ravens. For five straight games he would wear this jersey to find out that each time he would wear it, the Ravens would win! The following week, his jersey was getting washed and wasn’t dry, so he wore a Ray Lewis jersey to our house for game day. What do you know, the Ravens lost. The following year, we started to test this theory that his jersey affected the outcome of the football games. Although not 100% effective, the Ravens ended up into the playoffs and became super bowl champions, all because of the Ngata jersey. Okay, actually not.

We like to perceive that our actions had affected the season but in reality, if the actual illusory correlation was true, the Ravens would be super bowl champions every year. As happy as that’d make me, it’s not happening. And I can say as a diehard Ravens fan who bleeds purple, the next super bowl win for the Ravens won’t be coming very soon. At any rate, illusory correlation in my life is here to stay. Whether you are extremely superstitious, giving into stereotypes or think you are none of the above, you have most likely had experience with illusory correlation at least once in your life. This is one psychological aspect that is difficult to explain sometimes, but is very apparent in all human beings. Go Ravens! But don’t take my seat during gameday…

Illusory correlation and control of events

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What do superstitions, stereotypes, and your before-the-big-game-ritual have in common? They are all examples of illusory correlation.  This phenomenon is defined as the perception of a connection that simply doesn’t exist.  While there is a correlation between outdoor temperature and ice cream sales, any perceived correlation between doing the chicken dance and your favored team winning the Superbowl, does not (much to my dismay and embarrassment).

So why do these correlations arise?  There is no absolutely known cause, but there are a few theories.  These theories mostly pertain to our instinct to find connections between events in an attempt to either understand or control them.  One example of this behavior is B.F Skinner’s pigeon experiment (1948).  In this experiment, food was dropped into pigeon’s cages at random intervals.  Skinner discovered that the pigeons would repeat the same behaviors that they were doing at the time of the food drops.  This behavior, of course, was not related at all to the random food disbursement, but the likelihood of the pigeons performing a certain behavior when the food was dropped increased as they attempted to control the time at which they would be fed.

Another interesting version of illusory correlation is its role in minority bias.  This was discovered and proved by David Hamilton and Robert Gifford (1976) in an experiment in about stereotypical beliefs.  The experiment involved two groups, group A and group B.  Group A had twice as many members of group B, making group B the minority.  The subject read one sentence about each member of group A and B, each depicting the individual performing a desirable or undesirable action.  The ratio of desirable and undesirable actions between the two groups were constant; however, when the subject was asked to determine which group had a higher tendency to perform undesirable traits, the minority group was often selected.

Superstition by Kevin Bearse

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Growing up in a household that has generations of baseball players, including my great grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my brother, it was almost impossible not to follow suit. I remember back to when I was 6 years old, I was sitting in front of my dad playing with my toys and he told me today was the day I started my baseball career. I’m pretty sure I was more excited that day than I was on Christmas which seems nearly impossible. My father lived towards one goal in his life; he wanted to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves. He never did achieve that goal, but he surrounded himself with baseball his entire life and I instinctively followed suit. So to sum that all up, my life revolved around baseball for quite a while. Fast forwarding to later in my career, I was playing some summer ball and really started to slump badly. For those of you confused, a slump means when you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn if that were how big a baseball was. Then finally, I smacked a pair of triples and a double, scored 3 runs and batted in another 6. It was one of the best games of my career. From then on, for the next week or so, I was on a tear, ripping everything that was pitched to me. Now, if you haven’t played baseball, or don’t know the secret to baseball greatness, it is all superstition. After that first game, I didn’t wash my jersey, wore the same compression shorts, and socks, and glasses, and wrist tape, and wrist band, and used the same bat. You can get the picture. In a baseball player’s mind, wearing the same clothes, using the same EXACT routine, or using the same equipment meant you would be successful. This is a classic case of illusory correlation, when someone believes there to be a relationship between two things when no such relationship exists. In my mind, it was not washing my clothes and using the same routine that allowed me to break the slump. Do you really think that the dirty socks I’m wearing has anything to do with how I perform at the dish? Probably not, but that is how our mind works. Just as is the case of illusory correlation, our mind is making connections between two very arbitrarily irrelevant things. Much of the time, we like to see things that aren’t really there. Taking this one step further, it’s also a case of correlation, not causation. That is, although my performance may have been better during the time I wore the same clothes, but there is no physical evidence, or logic for that matter, proving the socks gave me some special power to hit the ball better. Most experts will tell you that slumps are entirely in your head, a mental block if you will. But being born and bred a baseball guy, I don’t believe in explanations. I believe in the socks.