Anxiety is defined as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” (American Psychological Association). Millions of people around the world suffer from anxiety, just as I do. It’s a common disorder that can affect our judgement and reasoning. Judgements and reasonings that make up our days, our life, and all our decisions.

We typically use inductive reasoning to make our judgements. We gather observations, or we can reach our own conclusions from evidence to form our own reasoning. These conclusions can be true in cases, but they are not definite. Typically gathering this information that leads to our decisions or judgements comes from either multiple observations that concluded in similar ways, or the quality of the evidence found is strong enough to base our beliefs on. (Goldstein, 2015). These methods can be useful in learning new information and understanding future rationalizations but contemplating old and new observations can take more thought and consideration than we may have the time and energy for every situation. That’s when we use a “shortcut” to gather just enough past experiences to come to a conclusion faster. This is called heuristics, “a rule of thumb that provides a best-guess solution to a problem.” (Goldstein, 2015). Our past experiences can help us make quick decisions or realizations that can help us at a moments notice, but for better or worse, they are not always precise or correct. Negative heuristics can lead to repeat negative behaviour or even worse, a domino effect in illusory correlation. Illusory correlations occur when two events exist that seemingly correlate but in reality, they do not. (Goldstein, 2015).

When I’m having anxiety about going to a large event my mind races on what could possibly happen or go wrong. For someone with no prior experience going to a large event, they may be excited or possibly dwell on what it would be like. However, I have had a negative past experience at a large event. So without being cognitive about my worries and reframing my thoughts, I automatically correlate the two events. Heuristics can be helpful in a multitude of situations but in anxiety-producing ones, that happen to have past experiences linked to them by illusory correlation, they can be harmful. My judgement and reasonings are clouded and influenced by the quality of evidence formed at the past event. Although the information provided was not quality in the sense it was good or well researched, it was the feelings surrounding it and the notable incident that make the evidence too strong to ignore in future situations.

Work Cited:

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Anxiety. American Psychological Association. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety.

Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.).

Memory is a process in which stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills are retained, retrieved and used for information after the original information is no longer present. (Goldstein, 2011).  There are different types of memory, some of them including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. I will be focusing on sensory memory, which is defined as, “the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation. (Goldstein, 2011).  Sensory memory is the first process in Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model of memory. It is where outside stimuli and information are first input into our memory. Whether the information is important or not will determine if the information will move into short-term memory or long-term memory.

Sensory memory is so brief lived it was George Sperling who concluded that the information received will then decay in less than a second. I can recall moments that would fall under my own sensory memory, one being the smell of perfume. I went to Macy’s to go and shop for new makeup and perfume. When I walked up and sprayed a perfume that looked nice, I my sense of smell was flooded by the scent of the perfume. I know in that moment I could smell the notes of the perfume, however as the mist faded and the droplets in my nose evaporated so did the memory of what the perfume smelled like and the notes I could once recall. Now, just like in those moments after the scent faded, I cannot tell you what that perfume smelled like.

Now this example shows how even though the smell of the perfume was strong, and I could instantly recall notes that I smelt in the perfume, the memory of the smell and notes inside, only lasts less than a second after the original stimulus is gone. Now, looking back I remember picking up the perfume and smelling it but the smell is gone from my mind. The retention of the stimuli is brief and fleeting. However, if I was to smell a perfume and be taken back to an old memory of a person or place that would mean that introduction of stimuli to my memory retrieved a long-term memory I had.  Without the memory retention or connection to a place or person that memory fades from my memory almost instantly when the original information is taken away.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.).

Getting into the mundane routine of life is normal, it can and will happen to anyone at some point in time. For years, I had the same nightly routine as I headed home from work. Once I’d get home, I’d park my car underneath a big oak tree on the side of the house that was near our large lawn covered in more oak trees and get the mail before going inside. I knew as I pulled up to the house, my spot would be open as none of my roommates liked parking there, and I knew there was always mail waiting for me in the mailbox.

One night, just like the other nights, I pulled into my parking spot under the large oak tree and started walking towards the mailbox. There were shadows of trees in my vision, but my main focus was getting to the mail and getting inside as soon as I could. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, in fact, it was just like any other night. Although, as I got closer to the mailbox, I heard a leaf crunch and my attention was automatically taken to my surroundings. My surroundings, which before were just a mix of shadows were now possible prowlers. When I looked to my left, I saw a deer standing so still it looked like a piece of taxidermy. I matched its body language, shocked that as I walked through the lawn I completely overlooked a large animal standing just a few feet away.

It was as if I had tunnel vision, I did the same thing every night and never noticed the things right next to me. I questioned how many possible deer’s I had walked past unknowingly before. The only reason I noticed the deer was because it got scared of my coming closer. I turned my attention when the stimuli around me changed. My past experiences of the seemingly unchanging nightly routine had clouded my perception of changes around me. The Bayesian inference may be partly to blame for my expected results of how my nightly routine would go. The Bayesian inference is defined as, “the idea that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability (our initial belief) and the likelihood (the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome). (Goldstein, 2015).

While my prior experience may have impacted how the expectation of my routine would go, the distorted view of the night, shadows, and perception similarities is what made me not see the deer standing close by. I was not actively seeking a deer and I was focused fully on my way to the mailbox making my surroundings blur into nondescript shapes. My situation with the deer is a great example of how our perception changes due to our stimulus, distance, and environment. My vision blurred around the mailbox making the deer look just like another oak tree, blending into the background. We can’t always be on high alert, taking in every inch of our surroundings, but it makes me try to be more vigilant knowing that I missed a large animal standing a few feet away.

Work Cited

Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.