Chapter 1
While traveling through the airport on our way to Florida my sister and I were on our way to gate E and we were at gate A. I hadn’t been in an air port by myself in a while so I was not completely confident on where we were supposed to go. The signs were all clearly marked, but there were two ways that I thought we could have gone to get to gate E. Since we were running a little late I just decided to ask to make sure that we were going in the right direction. Once we got directions, my assumptions were confirmed and I realized I didn't have to ask because I knew we were suppose to go that way anyways.
This is an Example of Hindsight Bias because in the beginning I was not sure which way we were supposed to go but once we asked and got directions, I thought to myself that I already knew the answer before I asked. In reality if I wouldn’t have asked and went the other way we could have gotten lost and missed our flight. But since the answer was so obvious I told myself I knew it all along even though I didn't.
Chapter 2
In the airplane on our way to Florida it was night time and everything was dark and quite. It was also very bumpy in the air because it was raining a little bit. I am not very fond of airplanes in the first place so the weather just made me even more uncomfortable. When it started to get really rough my heart started to beat and I got all tense and nervous. After a while I calmed down and relaxed and was able to fall asleep.
This is an example of my Autonomic Nervous System in action. My Sympathetic Nervous System aroused me because something was alarming me. It made my heartbeat faster and rose my blood pressure. When I calmed down my Parasympathetic Nervous System was in action, it decreased my heartbeat and lowered my blood pressure.
Chapter 3
Friday morning I had to wake up at three o’clock to get to the airport to make our flight on time. That night even though I woke up extremely early I couldn’t fall asleep early, I still ended going to bed at 11. Then I had to wake up early the next morning again. By Sunday morning I was exhausted and I couldn’t focus on my homework and I was really slow for our soccer game.
One item that relates to psychology about this situation was not being able to fall asleep early even though I had woken up very early. This is because of a circadian rhythm, which is our biological clock. Bright light makes us stay awake and when it starts getting dark then our body starts getting tired. So when we try and sleep when it is still light out it is unnatural and it is harder to fall asleep.
Chapter 4
This Sunday for our soccer game I arrived early to the field so I watched some of the boy’s game. I have noticed this before but boys always play much more aggressive than girls. In every single play in the game the boys made contact with one another. Even if they had the ball by themselves they would go ahead and push the other player with their body. The referees didn’t call very much pushing unless something was way too aggressive. When it came time for our game I paid attention to how we played. Girls liked less contact. If it came down to a one on one situation they would obviously fight for the ball and become aggressive but many of the players would not go out of their way to be aggressive. Also I noticed referees called a lot of pushing in our game. There were many more calls for less aggressive actions.
In chapter four they talked about gender and aggression. In surveys, men admit to being much more aggressive than women do. It is not only aggression in violets crimes, but men are also more active in violent sports throughout the world such as hunting and fighting. This explains why the boys are much more aggressive than girls. Also it explains why the referees called much more penalties for girls, because it is more common for men to be more aggressive and when females are extremely aggressive it seems a little more out of the norm.
Chapter 5
Every morning my grandmother does her crossword then every night she watches wheel of fortune. It amazes me how fast she comes up with the correct answers. When trying to figure out a word on wheel of fortune a lot of the time she comes up with the answers before the guests on the show. Also for her cross word puzzles there are so many different terms I had never even heard of before that she comes up with. But for the few that she doesn’t know at the end I look over and they are usually more recent topics like a television show or certain types of recent music. Those are the ones me and my cousin and sister get. Also, on our last night there my cousin gave a tutorial on how to use the television for my grandma and grandpa. He showed them how to program their favorite channels and to find a TV show they were looking for. My grandma ended up taking notes because she couldn’t remember or figure out how to do what he was trying to show them.
These examples of learning and memory are called fluid and crystallized intelligence. My grandmas crystallized intelligence was the knowledge she accumulated over her years of her existence. All the vocabulary and facts that she uses to help her solve her cross word puzzles and her TV shows questions. She obviously excelled more than I did at these topics because she had much more time than I have had to gain more of this knowledge. Her Fluid intelligence was not being able to figure out how to use the TV. It took her much more time to grasp the concepts of what my cousin was trying to teach her. It is harder for older people to learn new things and it is also harder for them to learn them speedily.
Chapter 6
My grandfather has very bad hearing so he uses hearing aids. He never had good hearing but now that he is getting older his ability to hear is declining more and more. My mother also doesn’t have good hearing and I know my aunts don’t either so it is probably a hereditary issue… While we were spending time with my grandparents i noticed that my grandpa’s hearing aids always make this loud-pitched sound, I am not sure why they do this but it usually lasts until he adjusts them. Although he usually never adjusts them until one of us tells him that they are ringing. At first I thought he couldn't hear the sound because it wasn't loud enough but then i realized it is probably because he can't hear that pitch. ( my grandma never heard the sound either)
This is an example of pitch, or the highness or lowness of a sound. As you age your capability for perceiving high and even low sounds diminishes. Like in Whales where they use a high pitched sound to get rid of teen loiters, the high sound doesn’t affect older people because they can’t hear the sound. Also my grandfather has sensorineural hearing loss, because when he was growing up he spent a lot of time on the farm using loud machinery. Also I think hearing loss in our family is also from our genes. Another culprit for my grandfathers hearing loss is his aging, hearing declines with time.
Chapter 7
Throughout my vacation my sister and cousin were constantly bothering me. They would poke me in the side because it obviously bothered me and they evidently got a kick out of it. After a few days when ever they would be sitting right next to me and one of them would move suddenly I would flinch. I learned to flinch because whenever they would move I would get poked in the side and it would hurt so I would flinch.
This is an example of Classical Conditioning. It is when a person learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. Before I was conditioned when they would move suddenly I wouldn’t even notice it, but when they started poking me more and more I learned to associate the stimulus with the result of it. My cousin and sister trained me to flinch when ever they moved suddenly because I thought they were going to poke me, even if they weren't going to.
Chapter 8
One day we decided to go to the mall and since it was hot I dropped my grandma and my sister off close to the stores they wanted to go to. It was extremely busy so I had to park very far away from The Circle, which is the shopping center. When I got out of the car I told myself ‘I parked on a side street next to the restaurant Tokyo’, I repeated that to myself about three times then I went to find my grandma and sister. After about three hours of shopping they wanted to leave so I went to get the car. For the life of me I couldn’t remember where I had parked it. I literally walked around searching for 20 minutes. Walking up and down side streets and circling the shops. When I was getting ready to call my sister and tell her I couldn’t remember where I had parked I walked passed the Tokyo restaurant and almost immediately I knew I had parked there without even seeing the car.
This frustrating and embarrassing event is an example of context effects. When I put myself back in the context of where I was when I experienced something I can more easily remember something.When I was wondering around looking for the car I couldn't remember where I had parked. This was because nothing look familiar to me and because I was never in the right spot or near the spot I had parked it. But when I passed the place that I had parked it even without seeing the car I knew I had parked it near there because the surroundings look familiar and the Tokyo restaurant triggered my brain to remember thats where I had parked.
Chapter 9
Throughout the vacation my sister wanted to get really tan so I told her to go in the water because I thought you tanned faster when you are in water. She didn’t believe me because she said you obviously tan faster out of water because it feels much hotter when you are out in the open. I wasn’t exactly sure about how you tan faster so I decided to look it up just to try and prove my sister wrong. When I looked it up I didn’t find a definite answer but I told my sister I was right and showed her the results I found. Once source said you tan faster in the water because the water reflects the sun rays toward your body. Even though this proved I was right my sister still didn’t believe me because she thought her explanation was better.
This is an example of Belief perseverance. When you cling to your initial belief even after it has been proved wrong. My sister thought she was right even though I looked up on the Internet that you tan faster in water and this proved that my theory was right. She still gave me her reasons on why she was right and I was wrong. I thought she was just a stubborn person but I guess it is a proven fact that in human nature once you believe something it takes a lot more evidence to believe something else.
