What Would You Do?

This is a video of a popular show on ABC call "What Would You Do?" This show is very interesting because it is real life application and their experiments don't have to go through IRB's because they aren't accredited by an academic institution. This specific excerpt of the show is about racism, which is a very popular topic in psychology research currently and expected to grow. 

 

As with everything in life from now on think about what you do because you never know who is watching!

Oh Watson.....

My least favorite psychology researcher is John Watson. From what I have read I feel like he was very arrogant. He raised his children emotionally detached and was extremely critical because he felt like everyone should raise their children this way. He also had an affair with a graduate student assistant that caused him to get fired from John Hopkins University. Watson performed "Little Albert" experiments where he experimented on this baby to be afraid of anything white and fluffy, and other experiments. Today this would be considered unethical. Later he joined the business world after loosing his university position. I know he made contributions to the field, but it is hard to have respect for him personally.

Agnosias

Agnosias are severe deficits in ability to perceive sensory information that are often caused by lesions. Psychology research in this area is usually case studies of people who have been in accidents that caused lesions on their brain and the agnosia to develop.


Some examples of agnosias: 

• Similtagnosia: inability to pay attention to more than one object at a time
• Spatial agnosia: severe difficulty in everyday environments (getting lost in your own house) 
• Prospagnosia: inability to recognize human faces
• Auditory agnosia: no recognition of music melodies, even from your own collection 
• Apperceptive agnosia: no ability to recognize familiar objects  
• Akinetopsia: loss of motion perception (a woman in Zurich saw cars as a series of frames—she was afraid to cross the street).

 

The Magic Pill

Sometimes in psychology research as in other forms of research placeboes are used. A placedbo is described as a "magic pill" because it doesn't actually have any medical value to it, the only reason it is used is to make the experiment particants blind to which treatment group they are actually in. The psychological value is the important part, because we do not know what the mind is capable of so some participants in the placebo groups will have an improvement even though they weren't actually given anything.

I Feel For You With My Mirror Neurons

“Experiencing disgust and perceiving it in others appear therefore to have a common neural base…overlapping of the cerebral activations found following the inhalation of disgusting smells and during observation of expressions of disgust on the faces of other people confirms the hypothesis that the understanding of the emotive states of others depends on a mirror mechanism that codes sensory information directly in emotional terms” (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2006).


This shows that we really can feed off each others emotions to offer empathy. It also shows why we like to be around others because we are social creatures. We like to be around each other and that is also how we can tell how others are feeling.

Where Are Mirror Neurons?

Adding to the previous post...

In the lateral view of the brain: 

Reddish Area - Action execution and observed execution


Yellowish Area -  Also activates


The wwo sectors form the action mirror neuron system in the brain.

What Are Mirror Neurons?

“There are neurons in the brain that respond when a person or animal observes another person or animal carrying out an action. These same neurons also respond when the observer carries out the same action him- or herself.” (Goldstein, 2008)

These are important for psychology research because they could help us discover ways to learn more efficiently.

Something to Think About

Many psychology experiments have been performed with Ritalin on working memory and attention. Results have found that it does improve working memory compacity therefore would help on like difficult math tests because you would be able to have more numbers and formulas in your memory at one time.

This means that taking Ritalin before an important test such as the ACT, SAT, or GRE would improve your test scores. Is it fair for someone to take this drug while someone else doesn't? It's a controversy that I believe will continue to grow as prescribtion drugs abuse also continues to grow.

Oliver Sacks, M.D.

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and author of numerous books about psychological disorders. He has performed many case studies that appear in many psychology textbooks today. A short excerpt from his biography:

"Sacks is perhaps best known for his collections of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette’s syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer’s disease."

For more information check out his website: www.oliversacks.com

Psychology Research Humor :)

Pavlov did research in classical conditioning using dogs because he noticed they would drool before food was brought to them when they heard a bell due to an association previously made, this is a humorous cartoon of what he did.

Accuracy of Eye Witness Testimony...or not?

"A real life example of the eye witness testimony flaw is the Harris and Adams case. A police officer pulled over a vehicle at night to let the driver know that his headlights were turned off. The driver pulled out a gun and killed the officer. Suspect Harris was found a month later denying that he shot the officer. Harris claimed he picked up a hitch-hiker who was driving the car and the hitch-hiker shot the officer. The second suspect Adams who was the hitch-hiker claimed he was innocent but three witnesses claimed they saw him shoot the officer because Adams had a mustache and long hair which fit in to their description. Although Harris confessed that he stole the car and the loaded handgun, Adams was charged for the murder because three witnesses claimed they saw a description of Adams shooting the officer. Years later, the freed Harris was charged for a different murder and confessed on death row that he also shot the police officer twelve years earlier. Adams was finally released after an innocent twelve year sentence. Three witnesses pointed the finger at the wrong person."
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Accuracy-of-Eye-Witness-Testimony-and-Its-Flaws&id=328261


This shows how eye witnesses could potenitally put innocent people behind bars while guilty people go free. Eye witness testimony is very influencial in court because people like to hear what happened from other people who were there, with improving DNA testing and surveylliance hopefully we can have more accurate information about crimes. 

Lucky Number 7!

Seven is the magic number! Did you know you can hold an average of 7 pieces of information in your working memory? This is why it is easy to recall a phone number after you have repeated it several times. Experimentors have also discovered that if you chunk pieces of information together, such as remembering a list of numbers by double digits (instead of 7...9, remember 79), you can retain even more information in your working memory.

Clorox Bleach Commercial

The other day when I was watching TV therea was a commercial that came on advertising Clorox Bleach. In the commercial the man was carrying a board that had two white socks tacked on it and one had the Clorox logo under it. He then would ask people on the street which one was brighter. What's wrong with this "experimental" design?

By placing the logo under one of the white socks it ruins the idea of testing people on which sock they really think is brighter because of bias towards Clorox. If someone knows that Clorox is bleach and bleach is suppose to make things brighter then just being exposed the logo ruins your ability to eliminate bias for judging which one is brighter. For good experiments you must eliminate biases.