picture of the day: santorini

attachment theory

Learned something interesting in my Lifespan class today about attachment. So some researchers did a study where they observed baby monkeys’ behavior and categorized them into groups based on personality characteristics – shy and timid or bold and outgoing. They they took note of the type of attachment pattern the babies had with their mothers. Turns out that most shy babies tended to have mothers that were protective and anxious, while the bolder babies had mothers who were relaxed but available. The researchers deduced that the babies’ personalities were largely inherited rather than learned, because they showed these behavior patterns even within the first week of life, before it would be possible to learn them from their mother. With the assumption in mind that personality (at least for these monkeys) was genetic, they set out to test whether the baby monkeys’ personalities could be shaped by raising them with a mother that displayed a parenting style opposite from their biological mother. In other words, they paired infants that were shy with mothers that were relaxed, and bold infants with mothers that were uptight. What they found then is what is so interesting to me:

The monkeys that displayed profound anxiety and shyness as infants grew up to be fairly bold when paired with a relaxed mother. Even more interesting is that, while they became bolder and more curious when their foster mother was around, they tended to revert back to their inherently shy personality when separated from the mother.

This suggests that personality can be shaped over time, but is largely inherited and thus predisposes them to display inherent personality characteristics when in stressful situations. They don’t know if this can be directly applied to humans because obviously we are much more complex and affected by an infinite number of factors, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

 

 

picture of the day: barcelona

Best Careers 2009: School Psychologist – US News and World Report

Best Careers 2009: School Psychologist – US News and World Report

Posted using ShareThis

it made sense at the time

I feel like most people wish they were strong-willed and resilient. Who wouldn’t want to say they know exactly what they want out of life and when they set out to do it, it gets done every time and never changes in the process. I think the reality is that, while there are certainly people in the world that are more strong-willed than others, most of us have pretty regular moments of indecisiveness. In fact, I’d say more often than not, we’re affected by the weight and complexity of the world, and we let it get to us. We become overwhelmed with impending decisions, persuasive family/friends/media, and the general relativity of our life situations.

But you know what? I don’t think that has to be a bad thing. I think our inability to stick to a decision (most of the time) is a reflection of our ability to reason. Millions of years of development has brought us to this point, where we can willingly assess our environment and act upon it. But because the environment changes, so do our actions  or decisions. In addition, we are creatures who are uniquely aware of the future and our capability to change it. I think that’s another reason we have a hard time sticking to anything – we know every decision we make affects our future, so we’re a little more wary of the quick  and concrete.

The inevitable process of “growing up” is what prompted me to wonder why we are this way. Leaving my comfort bubble and joining the rest of the world is equally exciting and terrifying. I know my future is the topic of just about every recent post of mine, but what else do I know, really? All I know in life is what I’ve experienced what I’m experiencing right now, and what I anticipate experiencing in the future, and all of those things collectively seem to focus on this question: WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW?

To put my perspective in more understandable terms (because now I’m starting to confuse myself..), I’m trying to decide what academic path I want to take, which in turn will determine where I live, which will determine where I work – minor details (sarcasm). I have found myself stuck in this endless cycle of trying to choose between School Psychology, School Counseling, and Community Counseling. To most people those probably seem synonymous. I wish. They’re all very different and involve totally different programs and degrees. As soon as I think I’ve decided (for good this time!), I go and change my mind. I’ve done countless hours of research about each field and I just feel stuck. I don’t have the time to seek out the professionals and get their expert opinion, because I need to decide on this like 2 weeks ago. I know I’ll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just try and ride it out, and maybe even try to appreciate the power I have over my own future..

nonmarital sexuality

This table comes from my Psychology of Religion book by Hood, Hill, and Spilka.

I think what’s interesting about this study is how the “nonaffiliated” group compares to the religious groups. I wonder if the “nonaffiliated” people would be representative of the general population on average?

operational definitions

Religious ideas have arisen from the same need as have all the other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature…

- Sigmund Freud

Freud was one of a long legacy of influential figures who have discounted religion as illusion, fraud, or fiction. Based on this quote, I would assume that he believed religion is simply a clever derivative of our instinct for self-preservation. We have this innate need to protect ourselves, so we contrived this convenient explanation that we call religion. Many questions about our existence can be answered with religion, and those that cannot be answered directly are explained away with terms like “faith” or “karma” or “divine will”. When we have a way to explain uncontrollable phenomena like death or natural disasters, we feel safe. I agree with that idea to a certain extent. I think it’s human nature to seek meaning and understanding of the world around us, and when we can’t find it, we find a way to explain it. The problem I have with the above quote, then, is that it assumes that the “superior force of nature” is purely corporeal. I think nature is God, and God is nature. God’s force is indeed superior, and we do tend to try and find ways to defend ourselves from it. This is why people become Christians – to defend themselves from what they believe is inevitable damnation unless they accept Christ as their savior. So in other words, I think there is some truth to Freud’s statement, but I also don’t think it necessarily reinforces his assumption that religion is an illusion.

saturated

Ok. I don’t know if it’s hormones or stress or what, but I have become completely exasperated with my situation. At the same time that  I’m trying to plan my future (moving, finding a job, a place to live, applying to school, etc.), I’m also still stuck with all these meaningless obligations and I am just so ready to be through with it all. Some would argue that routine brings comfort, and that is certainly true in many cases, but for me right now, I am so unbelievably tired of getting up at the same time in the morning to the same apartment that I hate, parking in the same place, running late to the same stupid classes that I am completely uninterested in, and striving to make decent grades when I can hardly motivate myself to open a textbook. School has become a chore and it upsets me because I have what a psychologist would call a “high need for cognition.” I like to learn for learning’s sake, and I like to challenge myself intellectually, but for whatever reason, being here has started to reverse that. I find myself skimming through chapters in my textbooks just so I can say I read them, and memorizing the information just long enough to take the tests. I don’t care about my classes, my teachers, my classmates, and I only marginally care about my grades at this point. And I know it’s school and not just stress in general that’s weighing me down, because I’m actually kind of enjoying the “stress” and newness and unexpectedness of graduating and trying to scramble to find a place to live and work. To borrow Karen’s terminology from her latest blog post, I am just saturated. I can’t find any more room for caring about school – I am full to the point of breaking.

And I want to make the same point Karen did (such a wonderful, insightful writer), I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I have an amazing dad who has committed to paying for most of my college education, and that is more than a LOT of people can say. I am incredibly fortunate, and I honestly think about that on a daily basis. I’m just frustrated and feel like I’m stuck, stagnant, and am just counting down the days until I’m done with this place and can start my own life the way I want to, and not the way “they” tell me to.

tomorrow if a golden train came to take you away…

Thought of the day:

People change their minds because they cannot change outcomes.

That idea was brought up during my Psychology of Religion class the other day (which, by the way, might be one of like five classes total that I’ve really enjoyed at Baylor.. how sad). It suggests that people have a tendency to accommodate their values or beliefs in response to their situation, particularly when they cannot change their situation themselves. For example, a person may shift from believing in intercessory prayer to not believing in it after many fervent prayers went unanswered. Instead of continuing to try and change the outcome, they decided to change their set of beliefs. Or as another example, a person might begin believing that every event is part of God’s plan when they didn’t before because no matter what they do, every event in their life goes unexpectedly and in a way that is out of their hands. In a non-religious context, an example might be when a person faced with a terminal illness changes their mind about being resuscitated. Once they realize they can’t change the outcome of their situation (inevitable death), they may go from believing that doctors should keep patients alive by any means necessary to believing that when a patient approaches death, then it is their time to go.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this necessarily. I mean it seems natural that we experience life as it comes, and accommodate our beliefs accordingly. To take the idea even further, though, it was also suggested in class that behavior precedes belief. Whereas the earlier quote implies that we adjust our cognitive mindset according to external events, this notion implies that we adjust our cognitive mindset based on our own behavior. In other words, we behave a certain way, and if that works for us, then we adopt that belief even if it’s contrary to what we believed before. Something to think about anyway.

i heart technology

It’s officially Fall Break! Yay! I was originally planning on camping at Lost Maples this weekend but it just didn’t quite come together. It would’ve been really amazing to see this time of year, but I’m happy to have a day off either way. And it’s probably better this way because I would’ve had to skip my last 2 classes today to go claim a campsite with Cory before it got too late, but it turns out my Lifespan test was postponed to today at 3:30. I was supposed to have the exam on Tuesday, but there was a chemical spill at the science building and they cleared the whole building! [Chemical Spill Clears BSB] They made us keep a good 50 feet from the building, blocked off the roads.. it was a big deal! I felt bad for all the professors whose students were outside with their midterms in hand, unable to find their class and with no idea what to do haha. I’m sure they had to take their midterms all over again! They ended up letting people back in the building like 3 hours later. Obviously my class was long over by then so that’s why I took it today.

I don’t know why I’m looking more forward to this weekend than others before. I guess just because I have a full extra day to do NOTHING, which is how I usually spend my weekends haha. Well, I say nothing.. what I mean is nothing really productive. I do a little homework Sunday nights but other than that it’s a lot of spending time with Cory (can’t complain!) and watching movies, eating good food, napping.. things that I’ve come to find may not be “productive” but are essential to my well-being. Seriously! I guess that probably sounds like I’m rationalizing being lazy, but really, those are the things that make me happy. So spending a lot of my time and energy on those things is a good thing. I’m overall a really happy person, and I think that has a lot to do with it.

Other things… tonight I’m hanging out with my friend Morgan! We haven’t really hung out since last semester. I was dating Ben then, and living with Lacey. Weird how circumstances change so much so quickly! It sucks living here sometimes because I don’t like having people over since I don’t know my roommates very well. And a lot of times I wish Cory lived here. It was nice when I was dating Ben because if I wanted to see him he was just 5 minutes away. But at the same time, living 3 hours from Cory gives me a chance to spend time with my girl friends. Because I know if he was here I’d never leave his side! I mean I probably spend the majority of my time with him anyway and we don’t even live in the same city. He’s gonna get sick of me one of these days haha. I cannot get enough of that boy.. Nothing he doesn’t already know though Hi Cory!

Another little side note.. I just heard about a site called Grooveshark that’s kind of similar to Pandora. I LOVE Pandora, but you don’t really get to choose the actual songs you want to hear, just the genre. I like that when I don’t have anything in particular I want to hear, but Grooveshark lets you choose specific songs and make playlists out of them. Both have cool features so I’ll probably switch off between them.

I’ve come to realize this period of time – whether you define it as this decade, this era, this generation – is marked by convenience. Among other things of course, the past decade or two has seen a huge surge in consumer products geared toward convenience. There are a lot of great things about that, because it means we can use our time more efficiently and generally makes life easier. Obviously there are plenty of negatives too.. laziness, depersonalization, etc. I think as long as you pick and choose the conveniences in life that are most beneficial without being detrimental, you’re fine. Like take microwaves for example. They make it quicker and easier to get food cooked, as long as you don’t eat eggrolls and hot pockets all the time haha. But the reason I bring this up is because it seems like every day I find something else new and exciting that makes my life just a little bit easier. Case in point: Redbox. Not only are movies only $1 a night (which is awesome because who needs a movie for more than a night?), but you can reserve them online to make sure no one else gets the one you want, and just show up to any Redbox (they’re everywhere), swipe your card, and your movie pops right out. Netflix is the same concept except you don’t even have to leave your house haha. Another convenience that I love: iPhones. Everything about them is meant to be convenient. There’s an app you can get for iPhones called Shazam, and it identifies songs that are playing. So if you hear a song you like and want to download, or you hear a song and cannot think of the artist’s name, you turn on Shazam, it listens to it for like 30 seconds, analyzes it, and then tells you all the info about that song. As if that weren’t enough, it also gives you links to watch the music video for that song on YouTube, read the lyrics, and download it on iTunes. It cracks me up to think back to when I was my youngest sister’s age and we had only gotten dial-up internet in our house like 3 years before that. There was no such thing as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and no one blogged. How did people survive?!

Anyway. I don’t know why I explained all that stuff as if no one knows what Redboxes or iPhones are. Even my dad has mastered the art of technology. My grandparents.. well I think maybe they were a little too far past the threshold of learning by the time computers made their way into every household in America. But anyone 60 and younger could probably tell you what DVR or a Blackberry is. What a world we live in…