JOURNAL

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Assignment Type Term Paper
Subject N/A
Academic Level Undergraduate
Citation Style APA
Length 5 pages
Word Count 1,771

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Journal
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Number and Name of Course
Instructor's Name
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Journal
Do you Agree or Disagree?

When a new behavior is rewarded, it is quickly learned.
A new behavior may not always be quickly learned, but when it is rewarded it is learned more quickly than a behavior is not. I base this upon watching the way children learn. When children are given a treat of some kind for achieving something, they not only repeat the behavior they learn to do it better and more quickly. The things that they learn in this fashion build a base for learning other things.
Our earliest life experiences determine who we are.
The things that we learn as children determine who we are. Children who are mistreated and abused have a much greater chance of growing up to abuse their children and spouses. In the worst possible cases, they may grow up to become the next Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy. Children who are brought up in kind loving homes simply have a different outlook on life than children who are used, and abused. This is one reason that programs like Head Start were developed in the 1960s, to try to equalize the early lives of families that had advantages and those that did not.
Money is the primary motivator for people.
I don’t believe that we can say that money is the primary motivator for people any more than we can say food is the primary motivator, or warmth, or sex. What I do believe we can say is that the drive for survival is a primary motivator, and money pays for the food and shelter that we need to survive. I think that Maslow’s needs hierarchy is fairly adequate.
Optimistic people just don’t see the reality of the situation.
Optimistic people see the reality of the situation as they believe it could be, which stimulates them to strive to make it that way.
What you believe will happen, will happen.
People who approach the world with a positive outlook are more likely to achieve the things they dream about than people who dream but then decide they cannot achieve. See “optimism.”































Practice Making Predictions

Alcohol consumption and grade point average
Alcohol is a depressant. By its nature a depressant does not stimulate the nervous system, it depresses it. Too much alcohol causes people to lose concentration; as people drink more they eat less, and get less nutrition. When they take in less nutrition they are less able to cope with the trials of daily life. The less concentration, nutrition, and ability to cope, the lower the grade point average the person is likely to achieve. The events move in different directions because the more that alcohol consumption goes up, the more than grade point average goes down. It is a strong relationship.
Length of sleep and number of dreams
The longer people stay asleep the more they dream. When they have a longer sleep, the number of dreams increases, because each dream is not very long. Sleep runs in cycles; the graph of good sleep looks similar to a city skyline. Dreams occur in REM sleep, which occurs periodically. The longer the sleep the more ups and downs in the patter and thus the more REM sleep and the more dreams. There is a link between the length of sleep and the number of dreams, and it is fairly significant. The longer the sleep, the more dreams.
Anger and heart rate
When people get angry, they feel their blood pressure rise and their heart begins to thump. Many times they feel the blood rush to their head. There is a positive, direct, and strong correlation between anger and heart rate.
Perfectionism and procrastination on assignments
Is there a link between perfectionism and procrastination on assignments? Flylady, an online life coach for the desperately disorganized, swears that she has found that there is nearly always a link between perfectionism and procrastination (Flylady.net, 2012). Other home-organization specialists say the same thing: it is our desire for a perfect job, which we know to be unattainable, that causes us to put off doing a job at all. I am not sure that I believe this; I tend to procrastinate when I simply don’t want to do something and am looking for a way out. However, when I looked this question up on the internet, the search showed over 109,000 hits on Google.
One of the sources that I pulled up, however, stated that there is no link between procrastination and perfectionism. Curious, I turned to the “expert”, Google scholar. There are over 1400 studies investigating a link between procrastination and perfectionism. Several, in fact, showed a link between perfectionism, procrastination, and anxiety. I was forced to concede that perhaps Flylady knows what she is talking about. While I personally still consider the link rather weak, apparently it is there. It appears that for some people, the more perfectionism, the more procrastination.
Number of people present during an emergency and number of people helping
The number of people present during an emergency is negatively correlated with the number of people who will help. This is called the diffusion of responsibility or the bystander effect. This is reported in Psychology Today (2012). According to Psychology Today, studies showed that if there are few or no witnesses, people are more likely to intervene (diffusion of responsibility). When there is a group people seem to look to others to figure out what to do (social responsibility). People tend to conclude from other people’s inaction that their assistance is not needed (Psychology Today, 2012). This is a strong correlation.
Psychology Today (2012) Bystander effect. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect
Natural Observation

Observation
My friend and I went to Wal-Mart, and chose a worker to observe. We chose to go at 10pm, not long after the night shift comes in to work at the Wal-Mart near us. I chose a worker to observe. She was a tall, heavyset woman with a frown. During the fifteen minutes that I observed her she walked from the middle of the store to the back of the store, entered the warehouse, and came out empty-handed three different times. She appeared to be doing nothing. She frowned a great deal. The third time she left the warehouse she leaned up against the wall in the photo area and did nothing. The observation ended at that point.
Judgmental words removed
My friend and I went to Wal-Mart, and chose a worker to observe. We chose to go at 10pm, not long after the night shift comes in to work at the Wal-Mart near us. I chose a worker to observe. She was a tall woman who was not smiling. During the fifteen minutes that I observed her she walked from the middle of the store to the back of the store, entered the warehouse, and came out empty-handed three different times. She never smiled. The third time she left the warehouse she leaned up against the wall in the photo area. I did not observe her doing anything beyond these actions. The observation ended at the 15 minute point. .
Evaluation
This exercise helped me understand how difficult it can be to describe without putting in an opinion or to explain what someone was doing without putting in an opinion. I am not sure it helped predict or control behavior. In fact, by the third time she came out empty handed I would have predicted she would just make another big circle; I was actually surprised when she stopped and just leaned on the wall.
Response to Exercise
I have a secret addiction to Farmville on Facebook. I tried to give it up for a day. The day that the experiment took place, I did not get up as usual and harvest animals and rotate a crop. It actually made me nervous not to do so. Although my mind realizes that these are only pixels on a screen, my heart and soul does not. The competitive side of me kept thinking that I needed to go harvest my crop, it would die and I would lose all this money, even though the money isn’t real.
Dairy
By nine o’clock, I just about had convinced myself that the instructor would understand, as long as I only harvested once. Then, I rationalized, I could plant something that would last a day or two and would not interfere with the experiment.
At ten o’clock, I realized this was Tuesday and the new updates should be installed. What new features did Zynga have in store? I knew that if I didn’t get online and get started, I would be behind everyone else. I was very nervous.
By eleven o’clock I was thinking that maybe I could download the app to my cellphone, because that way I would not be playing on the computer and that would not be technically breaking the rules.
At lunch time, I actually hovered around a friend with a laptop, hoping that they would let me get on Facebook. Yes, I was going to do it, classwork be damned. They didn’t, and my integrity was saved, such as it is.
At 1:30 or 2:00 pm, I had trouble concentrating because I was thinking that my grace period on the crops had expired and now they would all be dead. Luckily I have a lot of trees planted and they hold forever to harvest so I didn’t have to worry as much about them. But I was very worried about the squash.
3:00 pm found me trying to justify going back online by figuring that the “work day” was almost over so it would be okay to go online. My friend reminded me that I couldn’t, but it was getting to be too much.
Overall Experience
The overall experience was miserable. I had an insight into why some women hit their children when they interfered with Farmville. I understood that I really would justify spending money on Farmville – REAL money – by saying it was something I enjoyed, and if I didn’t spend it on Farmville I’d just be spending it on something else. Reading this I think of a friend who is a drug addict, who spends money on drugs because otherwise she might spend it on hair dye. That is exactly what I felt like, making crazy excuses to go pet imaginary cows and harvest imaginary plants.