Social Norm Project

The social norm I violated was talking about condoms with strangers. This acts as a mechanism of social control because it is not something that is generally talked about aloud. Sex isn't seen as an appropriate topic of conversation, and neither are condoms. By avoiding talking about condoms in public places, let alone with strangers, it eliminates awkwardness and embarrassment, and people can avoid talking about their personal sex-lives.

I am breaking this norm in Lucky's grocery store around late afternoon. I am observing a woman worker and her reaction to my question.

Before I started recording, I picked out two different brands of condoms. I walked over to the closest area of the store and approached the worker. My sister was standing across from her recording the scene with my iPad in her purse. I approached the worker and asked her, "which brand do you prefer?" After she looked at the boxes and realized what I was asking, she was really confused. She looked at both boxes and told me that it was up to me, and it was personal. I asked her again which she preferred, and she eventually said she preferred the "ultra thin" brand.

After I violated the norm, I felt a little embarrassed and amused. I felt embarrassed because condoms aren't something you bring up, especially to a complete stranger. I felt like she was judging me and labeling me because she assumed I was going to use the condoms. In terms of her reaction, I expected the confused look on her face. However, I didn't actually expect her to suggest a brand (hence why I was amused). The difficulty I encountered was that I was scared. I kept chickening out and I didn't want to go through with the project. 

I learned that social norms are used and followed in order to avoid awkward encounters and feelings of being uncomfortable. I learned that a lot of the time people choose not to act, ask a question, or do something different because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable. I noticed that though social norms help keep a sense of conformity, they may also hinder people from being themselves or asking questions.

Missed Midterm Concepts

The overjustification effect

PET scans

Proactive Interference

Basilar membrane

Dissociation

REM sleep

A token economy

Schacter-Singer

Brain scanning tecnique

Procedural memory

Auditory processing

Dopamine

ECT

Interdependent

Sense of touch

Trichromatic theory

Debriefing

Conversion disorder

Rorschach Test

Hallucinations

Negative reinforcement

Happiness Phenomenon Haikus

Relative Deprivation Phenomenon

I go to SI

My classmates all get new cars

I deserve one too.  

Adaptation Level Phenomenon 

After school I run.

Lately I increased distance.

Now, I'm running more. 

Song Emotion Paper

The James-Lange Theory of Emotion states that you experience fear based on your body's response to a emotion-arousing stimulus. I have experienced this before while driving. One time I was driving in a relatively quiet area and I drove by a car who's alarm went off right when I drove by. I immediately jumped and my heart started to race. After my body's reaction, I then realized what happened and why I was startled. 

Schachter's Two Factor Theory of Emotion states that to experience fear, your body has to physically react while you are cognitively processing why your body is aroused. This theory of emotion relates to certain situations when I'm crossing the street. Sometimes I will cross at a cross walk and I see a car approaching the stop sign. Sometimes it appears that they aren't slowing down so my heart starts to beat faster and I'll start walking faster while thinking in my head "the car is going to hit me." 

The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion states that when you experience fear your body and mind will both react at the same time to the stimulus. This applies when I'm watching scary movies. When a scary person appears on the screen, I cognitively register my fear and in turn get scared. At the same time, my body registers the stimulus and reacts by increasing my heart rate and making me sweat. 

My Good Deed

I picked up trash in the student center. Though this wasn't a good deed directed toward someone, It made me feel good about myself because I was doing something to help the school. Seeing other people do the same as me also made me feel good about myself because I felt like I was setting a good example.

Hunger Motivation Project: Children's Story

Midterm-FRQ Rewrite

The operational definition of the dependent variable would be the time in which the participants recalled the definitons of the words. The dependent variable would show us the significance of the distributed practice group and the massed practice group.

The ethical flaws in this study are that the researcher did not brief the participants after the study was completed. He also provided the names and scores of each individual to everyone in the study. To fix these ethical flaws, the researcher should first keep all the data and participation information private. If he was to release the data he found, he shoulkd keep the people who earned the scores anonymous. Also, to fix the other error, the researcher should brief the participants after the study is completed. He needed to sit all the participants down together and explain the purpose of the study, the methods used, and his findings.

The design flaw in the research would be the ages of the participants in each group. Age could be a confounding variable in word recollection, so the researcher should have randomly assigned people to the groups. This can be corrected by randomly selecting 60 volunteers at a local grocery store. After the random sample is collected, assign each person either a #1 or #2. All the ones would be in group A and the twos in group B. This will hopefulle ensure a mixture of ages in each group.

In a well-designed study, there is statistical significance if there is a 5% margain of error in the results. Also, if you recognize that there is a chance the findings could be wrong.

Fluid intelligence can affect the results of the study especially when dealing with different age groups in the study. Fluid intelligence peaks in yunger people, especially in their 20s, and it allows for faster problem solving and quicker thinking. As people get older, their fluid intelligence decreases and becomes crystalized and they lose the ability to think and put things together quickly. Because group A is in their 20s, their high fluid intelligence could have skewed the results, giving them quicker word recollection than group B participants in their 60s.

Semantic encoding deals with the encoding of words and relating meanings to personal experiences. Because of of this way of encoding, the results would be skewed because people who use this strategy of relation definitions to experiences would score higher.