Not My Type - Chapter 16

Last Blog!! Okay, now that that's out of my system...

Attribution is blaming or explaining someones behavior on their situation or disposition. For example, Jake stole the cookie from the kitchen. But his best friend Harry tells the daycare teacher that he only did it because Karen told him she would tell everyone he slept with a doll if he didn't. In this, Harry is explaining why Jake did the bad thing - because he didn't want Karen to tell that he slept with a doll.

The fundamental attribution error is when an observant fails to recognize a person's situation and how it may impact they way they act. For example, a girl could be very quiet in school, but you may see her at night at a concert playing a trumpet solo and think, "wow, how can she be so quiet in school, but play like that in front of a bunch of people." What you fail to recognize is that she probably feels out of place a school, but at the concert she is in her element.

Stereotyping, in the book, is defined as a generalized belief about a group of people. Basically this means putting people into social groups based on what they look like, or sometimes how old they are. Illusory correlation is overestimating a link between two variables. These two things could easily be compared, because stereotyping often happens before you get to know a person, just like illusory correlation is seeing a result that is expected from data even when it doesn't exist.

Current Events #6

Last week, my sister and I went to see the movie Blindside. I don't want to give anything away if you wanted to see the movie, but there was one part in it that I thought went along with this chapter.

In the movie the kid isn't very smart, and he normally tests in the very low percentile on his standardized tests that are taken in (I think) all schools. However, it then shows up that he tests in the 98th percentile for protectiveness. Since the movie is a true story I found it interesting to think that this kid that has never done well in school, and has never been pushed to succeed, is so extremely protective of things he loves.

Now I know that they don't really have anything to do with each other - intellect and protectiveness - but that was what was in the movie and I thought the protectiveness part was a kind of cool personality trait for him to have. I'm sorry if I ruined the movie for anyone, but I really didn't give that much away.

Keirsey Temperment Sorter

I just did the Keirsey Temperament Sorter activity that we had to do for class and I found the results interesting. It told me that I was categorized as a 'Guardian'. This did not surprise me so much, but the fact that the rest of my class that had done the activity was also a 'Guardian'.

This made me wonder what other temperaments the activity could give, and if the rest of the students in my class really all think the same way as I do. I suppose we could in the respect that we are protective of other people and don't want to see others get hurt, so we do things that would least likely give those results.

Did anyone have a different result?

Case of Clive Wearing

I found this video very interesting. I have heard of people that have problems like this --like 10 second Tom in the movie 50 First Dates-- and I can't imagine having to live like that. To not be able to remember anything from your life more than 20 seconds in the past would be awkward, and very confusing.

I also felt bad for Clive's wife, Deborah. She saw him multiple times a day, but he thought he was seeing her for the first time each time she walked in. He would also argue with her about his journal- that he never saw it before, and he would sometimes acknowledge that it was his handwriting, yet sometimes he wouldn't. I can't imagine being in either of their shoes, but I think if I were Deborah it would feel good to know that, although he doesn't remember anything, he stills knows that he loves you.

Chapter 7 - Learning

In this chapter I found it interesting how many types of teaching behaviors there can be. I never realized how many different ways there were to learn things, and the assignment we had to do called learning really helped me understand them. I did, however, have a hard time understanding the reinforcement schedule part of it.

I am sure I have learned many things through conditioning throughout my life. One I suppose could be looking out the window every time a car goes by my house to see if someone is coming to my house. I'm not sure why, but I have done this since I was little. Maybe because I liked getting company.

Current Events #5

In this chapter, one of our activities dealt with illusions that your eyes see. I found this interesting because it brought back memories for me.

When I was little, my brother would pull up different optical illusions on the internet, and we would spend hours -yes really hours- looking at these types of things. Because my brother is 15 years older than me, we didn't always do a lot of things together, and this is one of the things that I remember him doing with me.. even though I was an annoying little kid.

I know that sounds geeky, but I really did always like to do it... sometimes I even look them up and go through them on my own, so I was glad when I opened that assignment this week.

Illusions blog

For this activity I went through 8 different illusions: stepping feet, stromboscopic artefacts, flash-lag effect, enigma, stereokinetic phenomenon, van der Helm's "Kaleidoscope Motion", "breathing square" illusion, and pyramid illusion.

This activity showed me that 'there's more than what meets the eye'. I know it's cliche, but really, it showed me that you may be seeing things that aren't really there, or seeing something that is there as something completely different than what it really is.

I didn't really get surprised by these illusions. I have always liked looking at these types of things. I guess this is why I didn't get surprised, I have been looking at them for so long that rather than just looking at it, I try to figure out what the catch is...

I think that what it teaches you is "there's more than what meets the eye', as I said before. This can be used through out peoples' lives on a day to day basis because it teaches you don't always know what you're seeing, so you shouldn't judge something by first glance.