How Other Peoples Expectations Control Us - Chapter 16

Before i even read this article, i thought about it for a second, and you know, just the title of this has allot of meaning behind it. It states a really strong fact. We do this everyday! Like, if we didn't have parents to impress, would we really go to bed at a certain time? Do the things they tell us to do? Or live up to their standards? Maybe some people, but not all people. Even when you look at another person in your class and you see how much they sauced, that makes you want to try harder. But if they didn't set that standard in the first place, would you still try to do that good? Hm...

They ran a test out of the University of Minnesota to test whether this is true or not. The only reason that they tested this is because they had a hunch that people can automatically tell when people are judging them or the way another person is viewing them and start to make changes so they are showing the behavior that the person watching them is expecting.

In the study that they did, they did a series of testing that tested certain things; for example -

• They did one called, Feeling the Attraction, and this tested to see whether people judge each other on appearance and first impressions.
• Another one that they did was titled: Changing other peoples Behaviours' and this one just tested to see if the other persons expectations influence us.

This was a pretty interesting article. It relates allot to our everyday life in many ways. Every one is worried about what other people think of them, even if they don't want to. Allot of the time, people worry about looking better than others, acting more mature and being cool and fitting in. So everybody goes through a phase where they are constantly worrying about what people think.

*Chapter16.Personal.Blog*

Every time that i make a personal blog, i try to relate what we are doing in class to what is going on in my life.

The one thing that i really can relate to is how they talk about attitude at the beginning of this chapter. When i think about attitude, i know that there are many different types of attitudes. Whether they are good attitudes, bad attitudes, happy attitudes or whatever. I think that i have a relatively bad attitude most of the time. It depends on how I'm feeling, or what is going on in my life at the time that influences me the most and changes my attitude and feelings about things.

Another thing in the chapter that they talk about is obedience. To me the type of obedience that we can have is how we obey the rules that are set for us by our parents and our teachers. They ask in the chapter how obedience plays a role in our social influence. My opinion is that if our parents are more strict on us and have more rules and guidelines for us, they expect that we would be more obedient to what they say. And i do think that listening to the rules that we are given, does make us more obedient. And i also think that when we are more obedient, it does have a major impact on our social influence. When we are obedient to our superiors, we have a better outlook on like and respect ourselves, so that in turn would influence our social standing, who we talk to and how we act.

One other thing that i am going to talk about is being prejudice. That is one thing that we talked about in this chapter and learned about that i think has a major effect on people. I actually would say that i am prejudice. I know that's not a wise thing to say, but this is my blog, and my opinion, so i can say what i want. I think one of the main factors of being prejudice this day is being racist. I am prejudice, and i am a little on the racy side. But its not like i am against a certain race. I just think that because i am white, that i am better. But not that i should have certain privileges or options or anything.

So thats all i really wanted to say, and i know this isn't like a personal journal entry blog, but it does have my personal opinions in it, and i think that's good enough. :)

**Chapter16*Not.My.Type.Blog**

Attribution is: the theory that we explain someones behavior by crediting either the situation of the person's disposition.

• You can see attribution when you look at the way people act. If you are a hostile person, you would have more of an aggressive personality rather than a gentle personality.


• There are like two different types of attributes. There is a dispositional attribution or a situational attribution. The example that i used above would be a dispositional attribution.

A Fundamental attribution error is: the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of the impacy of personal disposition.

Stereotypes are general beliefs that you hold about a certain type or group of people. Like the preps, the potheads, the nerds. Things like that. An illusory correlation relates to this because you sort of have an illusion about a certain type of person, and you will believe what happens that supports your view on the subject.

-Chapter13.MultiPersonalities-

I couldn't get the spring. org websight to work. So i went online and was looking up stuff about personalities and disorders with it, and there was somthing really interesting that i found. I have heard about it before, and sometimes i think that my friends suffer from it, and that maybe even that i have the disorder. But the article i found was really intense. There was this girl that suffered from a multi personallity disorder.

What this disorder is like: Some people have this things wrong with them in their head. They have what is called an alter in their brain. They have waves of different personalities that happens involentary and without them really even knowing. The person with this problem would have alters in their brain that would divide our memories, the way we look at things and our conciousness. They can have a really small case of it and only have one alter and there can be people that have up to 1,000 alters. So the people that suffer from this have mood swings and have quite a few issues if not taken care of or if they don't get help to resolve the issue.

So anyway, the case that i found is about this girl that did a whole bunch of things and had no idea she did them. She was drawing pictures of some things she did when she didn't even know that she did them. When she had a baby, she was knocked out and when she woke up she didn't know anybody. At one point she went to Las Vegas and noticed that her $25 dollers had turned into $2,500. She woke up with a knife under her pillow and didn't know how it got there. She found things and didnt know how they got there.

This whole situation is really weird. The doctors that were studying her found that she had a multi personality disorder and tried to treat her with a form of hypnosis.

::>Chaper13PersonalBlog<::

I can't get the spring.org website to work at school anymore, so i will have to just find an article later and write about it, but instead, right now i am just going to make a personal blog and tell you what is going on in my head.

So i was thinking that what is going on in my life right now, and how i am going through such a hard time is changing my personality. So i think its pretty cool how we are learning all this stuff in psych and i can relate it to what is going on in my life right now.

Even though i am going through so much i still am am able to keep my personality. I do believe that my personality is changing because of everything i am going through. Like the way i look at life and what i want out of life is allot different than how i looked at life a week ago. I think that the way you look at life makes our personalities and makes who we are. My personality is different now, after all these things that happened to me. My personality is allot more positive than it was a while back. I used to look at my life, and my outlook on life and think that i would never be able to do what i want and achieve what i want in life, but because my outlook on life changed, my personality changed too.

I have always been a very loud, outgoing person; and i believe that was my personality type. And now, i don't necessarily want to be that obnoxious person. I don't want to be the loud one that everyone looks at. I just want to achieve what i want in life and not worry about what other people think about it. So what i want is my personality to change.

-I know that it won't exactly be the easiest thing to do, but i guess i have to do what i have to do to make myself into a person that can get what they want out of life.

~Chapter.13.Blogging.Personality~

I think there is many things that can make or break a person. So therefor i think that alot of different things can impact us and make us who we are. Different things in our lives, our enviornment, and the way we are raised can turn us into who we end up being.

• One thing that i think has impacted my personality was how i was raised. Because i had parents that cared alot about my future and want me to be the best i am, that made me try to achive what they saw in me.
• Also i think that because my parents and family always pushed that i am who i am and that i can do whatever i want in life, that makes me think that i can achive so much and be a great person.
• One other thing is how my brother was when i was younger. He was always being negitive and still is. His outlook on life is really bad, and that normally i think would rub off on me and make me think that i should have a bad outlook on life, but because of the train of thinking that the people that care about me have me in, i tune out his outlook and concentrate on my own.

I think there are many defence mechanisms that i employ. When you are in certian situations, there are different mechanisms that you give off. Like:

- I use projection when i think about how i would make a mistake and i would want people to learn from what i did and not do the same thing.

- Another would be how i use regression, i use this when i am trying to convert my actions so they are appropriate around my neice.

- There are other mechanisms that i use as well, but i was just naming a few.

The different theories that are named in the book i also have in my life, i don't know of one theory that impacts me, but all of them make sense to me. Everybody relates to these famous theories in some way or another.

I didn't really learn much from the videos, i learn more when i read the book and other articles. I am more of an information type of person. I have to read it to belive it. I like the facts and not movies and tv shows. The facts is what i like.

Chapter.9.Psyblog

The New Science of Happiness

This was just an article that looked interesting to me because there are always ways that you can make yourself more happy than you already are. There is always something that you can do to make your life a little more pleasurable and more happy.

(I'm just going to quickly go through some of the thoughts that they had on the web page that i looked at)

What are the everyday sources of happiness?
- How we conduct our lives.
- Finding satisfaction in things we do.

How can happiness be increased?
- Practicing gratitude.
- Enjoyable activities.

Is being happy any use?
- It can make you sucessful.
- Makes you better socially and money-wise.

They talk about ancient ways people kept themselves happy, and on each little section that i went through, you can click on them and read little articles and get tips on how to be happy. This is a cool one. Like a shrink in book form.