I am very glad that my two partners were Sonia and Allie. They both made
a significant contribution to my group experience. I didn’t know them very well
at the start of the year and through the project and class, we became friends
and I’m glad that we now hang out both inside and outside the classroom.
Reflecting on the actual project, I think I must say that although the
movies we chose were not the most entertaining, my group members and I tried to
make the most of it anyway. We laughed and joked about the movies and one time even made popcorn from raw corn kernels to eat while we watched. The three movies my group and I chose (pictured below) were Bicentennial Man, E.T., and Frankenstein.
There were times while working on the project, where I didn’t
feel like I was on the same page as my partners. Fortunately though, they took
the time to explain their thoughts/ideas to me and gave consideration to my
input as well. This project taught me that creativity, cooperation and sharing
of ideas are important for success in a group environment. It was good
preparation for similar group assignments I may find myself assigned to in the
real world.
For as long as I can remember, I've had a keen interest in
and have been fascinated by my dog’s social cognition. When I was 10, my family
got our first dog, an eight-week-old Golden Retriever. She is the cutest dog in
the world and I named her Caramel after her golden brown coat. She has been my best friend ever since and
even inspired me to want to become a veterinarian.
Growing up with her, I have always been intrigued by her
ability to communicate. She lets me know her intentions and she understands much of my commands, gestures, and body language. I taught her many new behaviors, starting with the usual commands like "sit," "stay," "come," and "shake" and then games like fetch and even hide ‘n’ seek. Teaching her to play
hide ‘n’ seek, I went and hid, with a treat in hand, and then called for her to
come look (or sniff) for me. After a short time, she figured out that after she
waited, I would call for her, letting her know that it was time for her to
search.
I also performed many cooperative communicative experiments
with her. She performs excellently on the pointing task, which involves me
hiding food in one of two places and indicating to her (by pointing where it is
hidden), where I hid the food. As I soon figured out, she represents
her species well in that she only understands pointing with my hand. If I indicate where the food is with a novel cue, such as pointing with my foot for
example - not something she typically sees - she has a difficult time understanding my gesture.
Please see the video below for "What do dogs understand?" - A short segment on Dr. Brian Hare of Duke's Canine Cognition Center.
Thomas Nagel made several intriguing and thought-provoking arguments in his essay “What is it
like
to be a Bat?” In this essay, Nagel attacked physicalism, or the theory
that all
facts are physical facts, where facts are defined as propositions or states of
affairs. For
example, the proposition that "I am in pain" is about the state of affairs
of my
being in pain. If physicalism is true, then all facts about the mind, such as my state of being in pain,
are
made true by physical states of affairs. However, Nagel argues that some
facts, for instance, what it’s
like to be an organism (in this case, a bat) are characterized by the
subjective nature of the experience - not their objective nature.
Funny cartoon - Nagel's argument in a nutsehll
I liked that he chose bats as his primary example because
bats use of echolocation as a means to orient themselves in their environment, navigate, find food... etc. is rather unfamiliar to us. As
humans, Nagel argues that we can’t conceptualize what it's like to be a
bat
because the subjective character of experience (ie. sensing the world
through
echolocation) is only accessible by a single point of view (ie. the
bat). As humans attempt to
characterize the experience scientifically, or in objective terms that
are accessible
from many points of view, we move way from the subjective character of
the experience. In other words, he argues that the subjective
nature of what it is like to be a
bat cannot be explained by science or in a way that humans can
understand. Nagel thus concludes that physicalism, or everything that exists is no more than its physical properties,
is false.
My favorite economic game is the Ultimatum Game. This is an
economic game in which two players interact to split a sum of money. The first
player proposes an offer that the second player either has to accept or reject.
If the second player accepts the first player’s offer, then they split the
money according to the offer. However, if the second player rejects the offer, then
neither of the players wins any money.
This is my favorite economic game because studies have shown that people do actually reject offers. In my opinion, rejecting an offer makes no sense at all, even if the offer is too small or imbalanced. I could understand someone rejecting an unfair offer to save his or her pride, but in a game where
one’s opponent is a computer, I just do not understand why someone would ever
reject an offer.
Above is a short video clip explaining the Ultimatum Game in terms of two children dividing a dozen cookies.
I was brainstorming of all the possible things I could do to
violate a social norm, but felt that by doing some of them, such as randomly
standing up and doing twenty-five jumping jacks in the middle of class, I would
severely put my reputation at stake. Social norms, or the unwritten laws of our
society that tell us what behavior is acceptable and what is not, take some
courage to break. My reluctance to do such tasks like jumping jacks in the
middle of class goes to show just how powerful social norms are in guiding our
behavior in society. In the end, I decided that for my violation of a social
norm, I would cut in line.
People waiting in line for the iPhone5
Standing in line, or waiting one’s turn, is a very common
practice that people do almost everyday when there are only a certain number of
people that can be helped or served at any given time. Waiting in line can be
boring and sometimes even frustrating since the item or service that is wanted
is in high demand. Unfairly gaining an advantage by cutting in line is
disrespectful to other people who have been patiently waiting their turn and
they are likely to get upset.
Upon violating this social norm at Au Bon Pain, I expected
someone to react and get upset and tell me to wait my turn or go to the back of
the line. However, no one said anything to me and I didn’t even notice any
dirty looks. Perhaps no one noticed that I cut or didn’t feel like speaking up
to tell me to get back in line. Either way, violating this social norm was a
bit uncomfortable, but in the end worth it as I got my sandwich about 10
minutes earlier than I would have if I hadn’t cut.
A case that comes to mind when I think hormones affected
someone’s behavior was a time during my freshman year when I went out to a
party with a friend. My friend and his girlfriend had just broken up and he was
devastated. We decided to go to a party at UNC and help him get his mind off
the subject. He drank a lot of alcohol before the party and even though I had
seen him drink this much, I hadn’t seen him act this way before. After drinking
he soon became very aggressive and belligerent (very atypical behavior for him)
and eventually got himself in an altercation that lead to a fistfight. The next
morning, except for cuts and bruises, he seemed to have forgotten the whole
event and was “moving on.”
Testosterone
Now that I think back on the event, I’m thinking that the
break up with his girlfriend triggered a surge of hormones that caused him to react
the way he did. I’m not sure which hormones caused him to behave this way,
but some studies have found that aggressive and irrational behavior in males
aged 13 to 20 tends to rise when testosterone levels are high. Due to an
increase in his testosterone levels, the fistfight may have acted as an outlet
for all his built up tension, which allowed him to start getting over the break
up.
To me, there is no one thing that can describe emotion. Human
emotion is very complex in that there is no one single thing that must be
present and if present means that there must be an emotion associated with it. Emotions are sometimes there for purposes of communication in that nearly
all emotions have a signal in our faces or voice that informs others to an
extent what we are feeling. I also think that emotions can signal to other
species (such as dogs) what we are feeling.
The six universal human emotions
From studying emotion, I’ve learned that some are universal
across people, such as anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise and enjoyment. However,
these can often be broken down in several, very distinct categories. For
example, enjoyment can be broken down into relief or amusement. These emotions
share the same basic facial expression (a smile along with the flexion of
muscles around our eyes), but in terms of voice, they are expressed very
differently.
Also, another aspect I think is important in defining
emotion is that neither observers nor the person feeling the emotion can
always pinpoint the object or event that triggered the specific emotion. Emotions
can be triggered by almost anything, whether it’s from one’s memory to
imagination to the weather, people can become emotional about almost anything
(sometimes you don’t even know why you’re emotional). Emotions can also occur
very briefly. They aren’t voluntary in that they seem to just happen to us - from one moment to the next you may be happy and then
sad.
In the Youtube clip above, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson of UNC discusses positive emotions. Hopefully in the future, we will be able to use fMRI and
other techniques to look at the activity of the brain associated with specific
emotions and be able to decipher what exactly a particular emotion.
