What I've Learned

There first chapters have been very interesting and I've already learned a lot from them.

In the first chapter I learned about psychology's history and how it was first established as a science by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879, and the subsequent ways it branched off into structuralism, the school of psychology that used introspection to discover the structural components of the mind; and functionalism, the school of psychology devoted to determining how our mental and behavioral processes work. It was really interesting to learn about the differences between the two earliest schools of psychology. Psychology's history is important because it shows us how far it has progressed as a science since it was first founded. It's still relevant because by using techniques that have been proven to work and discontinuing methods that don't work so we're able to improve and expand our knowledge.

In the second chapter I learned about the different research methods psychologists use: case studies, in depth studies of one individual; surveys, less in depth studies that ask people to report their own behaviors or opinions; and naturalistic observations, records of the subjects' behaviors in their natural environments. I've used all of these methods in the past for various science and math classes. The survey method is probably the most commonly used by lay people of the three methods; they are used for everything from getting feedback on different services to finding out people's political opinions.

In the third chapter we covered the affects of nature and nurture, evolutionary psychology, and natural selection. We learned how the criteria that the different genders have for acceptable mates (men look for women at their peak fertility age with wide hips, and women look for mature men that are dominant and can provide for them and any children they have) can be traced back the humanity's beginning when the main goal of mating was to produce offspring that would survive to procreate again. This explains why still today, women are more likely to marry men that are well off financially, and why men are most interested in healthy, skinny women in their mid-twenties.

The most surprising and intriguing thing I learned from these three chapters was that identical twins share many personality characteristics, even when they were separated at birth and raised in completely different ways. This surprised me because I would have put more stock in nurture for being the determining factor for most personality traits rather than genetics, but when separated twins were reunited they found amazing similarities between the twins.


Question 1: Despite being raised in the same environment how can two siblings be polar opposites?
Question 2: If environment plays a part in the development of cultures, why do some cultures in similar environments differ so much?
Question 3: How can a child look so much like one parent yet have the personality of the other?

Birthday cards really reflect social attitudes about aging and the developmental theories about aging. Cards for young people are happy and bright, cards for people for about age 30 and after contain more jokes, often about aging. By making jokes about it ageing gets a little less stressful and frightening.