Chapt 18

What I can do with this chapter is that I can show altruism through donating quarters for leukemia and not expecting anything in return (maybe a cure.) I can use aggression when needed to confront a conflict. I can also use cognitive disonance to decide which college is right for me, like tuition cost and location by that I have to conform my ideas in order to reach a right decision. I can also see prejudice in today's presidential election where they would prefer a Caucasian man over an African American man, or vice versa that the people prefer Obama just because he's black, not looking into both people's talents. America's superiority (just-world phenomenon) declines once they turn to other countries to help for economic crisis.

Aggression, Attraction, Conflict, Altruism

Agression: Sometimes when I did something I was told to do and people said I didn't do it so I put up an argument against them. For example, when I took out the laundry from the dryer, my mom thought it was still down the basement so I got angry and showed here that I already took the laundry out. Also, I can't stand loud people talking over my shoulders when I'm waiting in a line (like at Seabreeze). I wanted to turn around and say "shut up" but that would make all other people stare at me and I'm usually a nice person. This led to my frustration-agression principle, since I couldn't walk away nor yell things back at people. Also, ingroup bias is present in this case, because those loud people wouldn't let other people in their conversation but they just talk among themselves.

Conflict: I usually have conflicts with my older sister. Sometimes she wants me to take AP classes either to torture me or to help me going to a good college... Whenever I'm watching a TV show I like, she comes up and changes the channel. This is called a social trap since she wants to watch something against my liking for her own benefit. My sister complains when I spent like 10$ on a shirt while she spends 300$ on a new lap top and that's ok since it's for school work and hw :D. This just-world phenomenon leads to me believing that there's only some justice in the world.

Video, Outside Readings, Experiments

I did the face-making experiment and found out that most of the faces have some similarities among them. Therefore, when filing a police report, people can't describe the faces clearly and often leads to misinformation. Also, people are like 99.8% the same so there's no point for prejudicing our own species/races if we all are the same in some ways.

Video games link to violence? Gameplays are social activities for boys while girls socialize in real life. Although girls play less video games than boys on a weekly basis, a girl is more prone to physical fights than boys when exposed to M-rated games. This leads to anger and aggression in youth. Limit play time to 1-2 hrs a day.

Cults are groups that recruit weak-minded, depressed, or traumatized people to do strange actions for them. There are political cults, therapy cults, and business cults. Cults tend to realize things that are not real, and convince people to do so. Also, cults want people to get rid of their normal thinking. Example is the book 1984 by George Orwell whereas the leader took control over the citizens and make them think that they have freedom but they don't, and 2+2 =5. Therefore, we have to be careful when exposing to a cult and one asks us to join.

Cognitive Control: The ability to create subjective realities for oneself, or as directed by a leader.

Pygmalion Effect: Positive change of a person's performance or perception of a situation, based on expectation and encouragement by others.

Thought-Stopping: A behavior modification technique in which independent thinking is discouraged or disallowed