Major Depressive Disorder

I am Major Depressive Disorder, the "common cold" of psychology. I tend to give people persistent feelings of sadness and take away their interest from the things they love. Not only do I affect how you feel, but I affect how you think and behave as well. I fill people with feelings and thoughts about how life really isn't worth living. If I'm lucky, I might be able to cause emotional and physical problems. I am not a weakness. I am a chronic illness. My only weaknesses are medication, psychological counseling, and treatment. I'm a tough cookie and it takes awhile to really get me down. There are a few different things that attract and cause me to show up. I can't seem to resist stress, discouragement, irritability, frustration, extreme sadness, suicidal thoughts, or slowed thinking.

Personality Test Reaction

I'm always kind of afraid to take personality tests because I feel like they're going to tell me I have a really crappy personality. haha. Some personality tests are completely ridiculous and inaccurate. I have to say though that these two tests were actually pretty accurate. The big five test had somewhat difficult questions. I never like rating myself like that. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's kind of difficult to pinpoint those types of things about yourself. The North Dakota personality test was really odd, but surprisingly spot on. It was by far the most accurate personality test I have ever taken. When I first started, I was a bit confused by the questions..or statements, I guess. Some of them made perfect sense, but others...eh..not so much. Luckily it all worked out in the end!

*The truth is written all over our faces.

I think that microexpressions are the single most interesting thing on the planet. I am beyond fascinated with them. Paul Ekman is by far one of the most important and well known psychologists to study and work with microexpressions. He started researching back in 1954 and hasn't stopped since. He is constantly working on new research or traveling the world teaching people what he knows. A microexpression is an involuntary facial expression or movement lasting only 1/25 of a second. A person can never really tell a lie, because their facial expressions (microexpressions) will always give it away. They cannot be controlled. A microexpression will always be backed by some sort of emotion even if the person expressing it does not realize it. Many times they can be difficult to pinpoint simply because of the fact that they happen so quickly. You have to know exactly what you are looking for. If someone is reading someones face/microexpressions the first thing they have to do is establish a base line. They will usually ask questions that they already know the answer to, which allows them to later determine if someone is lying.
My favorite TV show is called Lie to Me. It is based on Paul Ekman and his work with microexpressions.
I found a clip explaining a little bit about the show and the microexpressions. The Truth Is In Our Faces

I also found a picture from the show that points out some of the different microexpressions for each emotion we experience. 

my reaction..and stuff. :)

Today in class we took multiple intelligence tests. Hunter and I worked together. We started taking the first test and we were like ohh yeahhh! We've totally got this! This is easy! We're so smart! Go us! And then we continued on to the rest of the tests and realized we had spoken too soon. We scored a solid 7 out of 10 right on the first test, but our scores continued to decrease as the tests went on. The hardest part about the tests was the vocabulary they used and they way the questions were written. Towards the end, there were all kinds of words and sayings that neither of us had ever heard of, which made it difficult to answer the questions. It was actually really frustrating trying to answer the questions on the Australian, Chitling, and Reddon-Simons test because they were from different cultures. I have never really been exposed to any of those cultures before, which made it even more difficult.

At home tonight, I read the article You Can't High Jump If the Bar Is Set Low. I thought this article was really interesting, and it made good points that I really had not thought about before. I thought it was interesting that when they conducted experiments on different stereotypes the different results they were able to find. It almost seems as if the test results that they received were more based on a mental attitude than actual intelligence. When they were asked about their race they tended to score close to the stereotypical score, rather than what they were actually capable of. I also never really thought about the fact that there are gender stereotypes, not just race stereotypes. Overall I thought the article brought up some really interesting points.

Oh The Joys of Framing.

So there's this thing called framing. It's the way an issue is posed. How an issue is framed can significantly affect our decisions and judgments. When the same issue is presented in two different ways, the result is that people usually respond in two different ways. People use framing all the time to get the response they want. Large companies use it when selling and pricing their items and it is also very popular among statistics. For example, if a drug company were to propose a new drug that had a 60% chance of severe side affects, most people wouldn't approve. If that same company were to propose that exact same drug, but this time said that it had a 40% chance of no side affects, people would most likely be more open to the idea. Framing is a really simple thing, but for some reason it continues to trick people on a daily basis.
I found this super lame video on YouTube of these weird animated people explaining the concept of framing. haha. It's weird, but it works!
Framing Video

Hi! I'm Tom.....Hi! I'm Tom.....Hi! I'm Tom.....

This week we talked about memory. Most of it was a review from regular psych, but it still amazes me every time. Without our memory, life would be super crappy. We would all be going through life confused and frustrated. Everything, for the most part, would be pointless. I also think that most of us take our memory for granted. If we were to damage a part of our brain we could lose part, or all of our ability to process and store memories. In the movie 50 First Dates there is a guy named Tom. Everyone calls him Ten Second Tom because he lost part of his brain in a hunting accident and now his memory only lasts ten seconds before it relapses. Tom is unable to encode new memories because the part of the brain that transfers information from the working memory to the long-term memory is damaged. I couldn't imagine living my life like that..

I did manage to find a link to the part of the movie that shows Ten Second Tom. :)

Ten Second Tom

classical conditioning

This week in class we learned about classical conditioning. I really enjoy this chapter, partially because I find it somewhat simple to understand. I was looking on YouTube at a few different classical conditioning videos and I found a clip from the office. Jim is conditioning Dwight. Every time the computer makes a noise, Jim offers Dwight an altoid.  Eventually when Dwight hears the computer make a noise he automatically sticks his hand out for an altoid, even though Jim didn't offer him one. The whole concept of conditioning amazes me.

Office Conditioning