Annagrace Presley's Psych Blog

1. Taking a look back at my first post, I remember not knowing what to write because I knew little about psychology at that point. Now, I am happy to say that I know much more. In my first blog post I write about how I had heard that psychology could be hard because it required a lot of memorization. I found in our course that this was true, but it was not a huge issue for me personally. I found that I was highly interested in many of the topics we learned about, which made it much easier for me to remember the information. Another thing that I know now compared to the time of my first blog post is how often concepts of psychology come up in my every day life. I have found that as we learn about new concepts, I would continuously see those concepts appear in my everyday life. 2. The fact that I am able to see how psychology appears in my everyday life, has helped me to realize how it can be relevant to my life, school, and future career. I have seen that learning about attachment style...

 As we have spent some time discussing stressors in class, I have learned a lot of new things about how stressors can impact our well being. I understand that increased stress causes our brain and body to not function at its optimal level. According to what we have learned about General Adaptation Syndrome, the body responds to stress through alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Obviously, if someone were to be in a constant state of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion it would not have a very good impact on their well being. When we're under stress, the body and internal organs focus all energy toward fighting the stressors. If this is happening, your body is ignoring other needs you may have, causing a very negative impact on one's well being. Stress causes exhaustion of the body's resources, and that impacts well being in a negative way. As the end of the semester approaches, finals are stressors that I am anticipating. I am feeling pretty stressed about them. Over the break...

For my fourth blog entry, I would like to discuss the concept of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that refers to the discomfort experienced when an someone holds beliefs, ideas, or values that contradict their choice of action. This state of mental discomfort often leads individuals to modify their attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce this inconsistency and restore cognitive harmony. Understanding cognitive dissonance is crucial as it allows us to see the human tendency to rationalize conflicting beliefs or actions. It explains how people strive for consistency in their thoughts and behaviors, often resorting to justifying their actions or changing their attitudes to align with their behavior. I believe this concept is important to understand because it allows to recognize when I am rationalizing my beliefs or actions to myself, which I know see is something I do often. Because of this, an understanding of cognitive dissonance is releva...

Some of the study strategies I have used and use currently are avoiding distractions and multitasking while studying and working on assignments because I know that I am easily distracted and will not retain the information or focus if I am trying to multitask. I will stay off my phone until the assignment is complete and only focus on one assignment at a time. Another tactic I have recently implemented into my study strategies is planning and making a schedule of things I need to get done a few days before and when I should do them to get everything done on time without having to be stressed. I had been staying up too late getting assignments done because I was not expecting the work load that I would have, and then I would be stressed and not able to focus during the day. The schedule has helped me tremendously to get things done early and have more sleep and free time.  A strength that I believe I have in my study habits is active listening and note taking. I have made an effort ...

 This week in class, we learned about the concept of critical thinking, or assessing claims and making judgments based on well supported evidence, according to the text book. In other words, I would say thinking critically is taking the steps to come to a conclusion based on researched evidence rather than bias. We also learned about a few different types of bias that people commonly use, consciously or subconsciously, that affect their judgment and decision making on many things in life. I think thinking critically in life is a very important skill to have, because it can help me make the right decisions with school, money, career, political beliefs, and other people. Personally, I think remembering to think critically is important because it can be difficult sometimes. It is not the easy way when going about making decisions. It is usually easier to believe what I want to believe, rather than taking the time to look at evidence objectively, and make a well though out and unbiased...

 By Annagrace Presley     I don't know too much about psychology yet. Mostly, I know that there are many different types and applications of psychology, and I know that it is the study of how the brain works. I also have heard that studying psychology requires a lot of memorization. I've heard about people who think that psychology, or therapy more specifically, is arbitrary or not useful. I disagree with that idea. I think that learning about psychology will help me in many different areas of my life, and I hope that it will help me to understand different people better. I expect to be able to utilize psychology in my career and in my relationships. Understanding people is a helpful tool to have in a career because most careers require you to work with others, and gaining a better understanding of them can increase communication skills. I hope that in psychology I will learn about human behavior and what causes humans to do what they do, and I expect that this will ...