Author Archives: Mia Jean Gasparovic

Group projects only lead to failure

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Did you ever wonder why the majority of students dislike working in groups on projects? It is not just because the person you got stuck with smells funny. Groups affect our performance. This is called Social Facilitation. Your performance will improve in the presence of others because having other people around you increases your arousal level which strengthens the most likely response. For example, if you feel confident in the action like basketball because you’ve played on a school team the majority of your life then you will have an improved performance. The opposite effect can also happen. If you feel like you are not very good at that task your performance will only get worse, which is called Social Impairment. Depending on your base confidence level you will only get better or worse if this action is done in the presence of others.

This could have something to do with why when you are in a group no one likes to take point. It is because you are all learning this material as you go so no one is too confident in themselves and their knowledge. You tend to second guess yourself more than once. But Social Facilitation and Social Impairment are not the only possible answer for why group work or group projects tend to be more of a burden then the help that is intended. It could also be explained by Social Loafing. Social Loafing is the tendency of an individual in a group to exert less effort toward attaining their common goal than when tested individually. Studies have shown that 18% of people, not just students, put less effort into that project when they think they are on a team. It gives them a certain mind set that others will pick up the slack for them or that they don’t have to do as much because they have a “smart” person in their group.

Next time a professor or maybe your employer puts you on a team project or task you can explain to them the benefits of working solo instead. Make sure to state the long list of cons as well. Maybe, just maybe, they will listen.

Anxiety disorder ruling your life?

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I’ve been living with the same girl for almost two years. We always knew she had anxiety and depression issues but it was just never diagnosed. At random times, normally after talking to a family member or being pushed into an unfamiliar social setting, my roommate would slowly start to freak out. It would start with her eyes darting around, her attention running in circles always back to the topic bothering her, and she would physically start to shake. We learned to keep her away from certain things or certain people that would trigger extreme fear that sometimes in rare instances she would start hyperventilating. It would then develop into a full blown panic attack.

It astounded me that someone could feel the flight-or-fight response so intensely when it was uncalled for. There was no life or death situation, no man threatening to kill you, so why the exaggerated response? Why is your brain telling your body to react this manner?

I learned in my psych 100 class that anxiety doesn’t necessarily have to come an extreme threatening situation. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. It is a feeling of fear, unease, and worry. The source doesn’t always have to be known. It can be something general like everything causes you excessive worry and you cannot pinpoint the actual trigger.

 

Childhood Amnesia: false memories

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Being in my early adulthood, it is very difficult for me to recall memories from my childhood. This is referred to as childhood amnesia, where the older you get you do not have the ability to retrieve majority of memories before the ages of three or four. It is contributed to parts in your brain dealing with memories, such as the hippocampus.

You know those memories of when you’re really little? You can remember them perfectly from your viewpoint but are they really yours? We all have at least one. Mine is when I was about two years old in the winter. It had just snowed the night before so my older brother and sister got a snow day. My mother took us all out front to play in the snow. I had never seen snow before and didn’t realize the severity of the cold on my bare skin. So like a genius I remove my gloves to touch it and eat it. I’m immediately freezing with bright red hands. I turned back to my mother trying to get her to go back inside with me, my excuse being, “I’m veezin!” I couldn’t pronounce my F’s or G’s yet.

I remember this scene with such clarity it had to be from first hand experience. A few years ago, my mom broke out the home movies from my childhood. It turns out that my exact experience and memory was on one of those VHS tapes. I saw the entire scene unfold but from my mother’s perspective behind the video camera. Those were never my memories. They were adopted memories from our home movies. Because of childhood amnesia, it proves that these memories couldn’t have possibly have been mine. There is a sub-section of childhood amnesia called false memories where you subconsciously implant stories or videos from your childhood to substitute like they’re your actual memories. This is what I had done with my home movie of me in the snow when I was two years old.

Blog post #1 Conditioning

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Blog Post #1

Classical Conditioning

            Conditioning isn’t just a great way to make your hair shiny and silky. It is also the way you train most animals, including dogs. It was discovered and named Classical Conditioning by Dr. Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900s.

He rang a bell before feeding his dogs. Eventually, the dogs would salivate at just the sound of the bell. They were trained to expect food whenever that bell was rung. In reaction to this they would salivate because that is what they did every single day. Do something the exact same every day for a long enough period of time and that animal, be it canine or human, will expect it without realizing it.

When you get hungry what happens? Your mouth starts producing saliva, your stomach rumbles and/or aches, and your mouth will feel dry. You instinctively want nourishment. It is the same thing with the bell and the dogs. The bell is just the trigger that initiates the salivating to begin.

For example, my family owns two cats. They roam around in my backyard during the day and come in at dusk for the night. The way they are brought inside is by my mother shaking a bag of cat treats on our back deck. They hear the sound of the treats moving around in the plastic bag and come running to her feet. The sound of the bag being shaken is the trigger. That sound lets them know that they will get treats and then go right inside the house. My mother conditioned them to do the same thing every night. They are only given said treats after they are inside and the door is locked. If they do not follow this order then they know they will not get a single treat that night. It happened quite a bit in the beginning. But they have learned since then because they want the treats.

This is just another way to condition someone or something. You train them over a certain period of time to do a certain act and they will be rewarded for it, either by Pavlov giving his dogs dinner or my mother giving her cats treats. It is even possible to condition a human being. They use similar tactics in the military. Though I don’t think quite as nice as getting a treat.