Archive for ‘Beginning of Scientific Psychology (Part III-A)’

In contrast to biological psychology, I chose to look at the power of choice through the lens of environment.  In the attached link, I watched a presentation done by Sheena Lyngar over the power of choice.  Lyngar broke down common paradigms about how we as Americans make choices compared to that of other cultures.  In the 4-7 minutes of the presentation, Lyngar related a case study in which she took American six year olds and Asian-American six year olds and administered a test on choice.  The children were divided into three groups, group one was taken into a room and given many different anagram puzzles and markers that they could choose to use.  The second group came after and was assigned puzzles and a marker to use, while the third group was told that their mothers had chosen for them.  What Lyngar found was that American children that had free choice of what they used did two and a half times more anagrams compared to the other two options.  In contrast, the Asian-American children did two and a half times more anagrams when told that their mothers had picked their materials for them.  What this shows is that the way we are raised, our environment, has a significant role in how and why we choose what we do.  It would be extremely interesting to test the decisions we make in other areas of our life such as marriage, career, etc; but regardless, I think it is clear that our environment is a prominent influencer of our decisions, maybe even more so than our biology.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html

This weekend, one of my close friends came to visit from Oklahoma. My friend is an extremely logical girl and is very responsible, but right now she is not content. She’s answering age old questions and trying to reconcile faith and reason. Matters of the heart have always been hard to discuss with her, and this weekend was no different. She made statements like I know what is logical and makes sense in my head, but I cannot always convince my heart one way or the other.

Oh the nature of man! How conflicted we are! At that moment when my dearest friend told me she had no idea what to think or how to move on, I was in complete agony. I wanted to pick a theory and cling to it completely. I wanted to say something besides “these things are never easy for anyone.” What I wanted to say was “you have these strong irrational emotional bonds to these people because back in the day this was how women survived in society.” Wouldn’t it be nice to think oh, I’m simply this way because I have been subconsciously wired with the overriding desire to pass on my genes? At least it would’ve lightened the mood.

Needless to say, I realized I don’t really value evolutionary psychology at all. And although it must have SOME importance, as there is a chapter over it in our textbook, I ask the question, “in what way is it even relevant, let alone important?”

best goalie ever

Anyone that watches this would probably laugh.  It isnt that we laugh because it’s funny that people get hurt.  Sometimes it is the circumstances that lead up the injury are funny, like the guy in this video.  I laugh everytime I see it because I too have been there, and even though it ended in a concussion I still laugh to this day.

I was very interested in the discussion we had last class on the evolution of laughter and its connection with pain. Laughter does seem to come about far too often when we watch someone get hurt. The television show America’s Funniest Home Videos is a prime example of this. It is one of the most popular tv shows in America and has been airing for 20 years. However, even with a TV PG rating, it is one of the most, if not the most, violent show on television. The whole show is centered on people getting injured whether it was an accident or some stupid choice. Why is this so funny to us? Is it because we have no personal attachment to the people we see getting hurt? Is it because we empathize with them, yet since they sent in the tape we know assume they are ok and “laugh with them”? Or is it because of their stupidity? There are many different theories people from our class have stated on why laughter is found after an injury. I think a big part of it is to show a mutual agreement between the observer and the person getting hurt that everything is all right. Yes you just got hurt, and I am concerned for you. However, it was not bad enough to cause any prolonged injury, so we laugh in agreement that something bad could have just happened and didn’t. Thus relieving some of the stress and discomfort from the situation.

I found the evolutionary psychologists’ view of love and how one picks a mate very interesting. I disagree with this viewpoint, but I think it is mostly because I do not want to believe that it is true. I want to believe that I am with the person I am with because I like their personality and heart, not their genes. To me, that idea seems so selfish. It seems that if the only reason we are attracted to someone and love them is to give our kids a better shot at survival, then love becomes self-serving. This goes against everything I have ever been taught about a husband/wife relationship.

Also what does this say for couples that marry, have normal, healthy, children and then divorce? Their genes have matched up and done their job of producing healthy offspring. Does the divorce not matter since the union has done the duty of producing healthy children? Along the same lines, what about the couples that have disabled children yet stay together and work through the hard times as a family? If this couple was attracted to one another because of genetics, theoretically there should be no disability to begin with.

It is my personal viewpoint, like others that mentioned this in class, that there are different personality types that we best mesh with and that you can find a good partnership within that range. Again, most of my disagreement on this issue comes from hoping it is not true. I feel like love is a give is a gift, and if I were predestined to give that love to a certain person, it would not be as special.

When I am preparing for my blog post I like to visit the WordPress site and see if there is a discussion that is already in the works that perhaps I can contribute to.  There have been many ideas that have been brought to the table in the last 15o years in the nature vs. nurture debate.  I had always leaned toward a belief that we take our strongest characteristic attributes from our upbringing.  However, when you see evidence of how much of these concepts might be things we take for granted because we do not readily see the genetic underlying influences then it can be a little intimidating.

When something as simple as a smile may be linked to thousands of years of evolution then you have to stop and rethink how you see certain things.  The evidence of what happened to Phineas Gage shows what a powerful motivator biology plays in our characteristics.  A couple of the blogs have related to the idea of a soul, and how it plays into our choices if our biological structure is changed.

This reminds me of a personal story that I encountered when I was young.  I had an Uncle Jeff (who my whole family called Uncle Jeff, however he wasn’t really related to us.  I’m sure everyone has one of those), who had been divorced.  His first wife, whose name was Becky, suffered from extreme bouts of Bipolar Disorder.  Uncle Jeff told stories of her running away, and it sometimes taking her weeks to find her and then weeks to adjust her medication to try and re-regulate her extreme moods.

He described her life as the very definition of misery.  When I was 8 years old, Becky took her own life.  I had never met her, however through all of the stories I had heard and how close I was to my Uncle Jeff I came to understand her suffering.  The reason this story sticks out in my head is this:  Uncle Jeff took her death very hard, he had feelings of guilt and felt very sorry for her, and on many levels still cared for her very much.  At her funeral, the preacher made several statements regarding her no longer having to suffer, that she had at long last found peace in heaven.  This was a statement that gave my Uncle Jeff a lot of comfort and he referred to this belief often.

What really struck me was that later, in a casual conversation between my mother and I, she stated that Becky would not be going to heaven and instead would suffer damnation due to her making the decision to take her own life.  I was greatly bothered by what she said and tried to argue that God would be able to understand her condition.  In later conversations with my preacher who backed the statement and belief that my mother shared he used the example of when the servants who were moving the Arc of the Covenant reached up and touched the sides of it to prevent it from falling died suddenly.  He argued that God had made a commandment and that commandment had been broken.  He stated that Becky had made a decision, and subsequently she had broken that commandment.  He explained that one of the true gifts of God was our ability to choose.  I have read several articles on the complex relationship between decisions made being a result of choice, Sick or Sinner?

Some of the deeper arguments would say that her soul would have been spared because she really didn’t have a choice in taking her own life, that the act was a byproduct of her illness and couldn’t be helped. What do you think?

I have linked an article that makes some interesting observations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2280322/pdf/canfamphys00143-0077.pdf

The familiar story of the man who was speared through his frontal lobe has haunted me since “Introduction to Psychology” with Doctor Acorn at the University of Texas at San Antonio some four years ago. Many of you will perhaps find this slightly amusing or believe that I am in jest, but I think you too are afraid, you are simply in denial if you think you are not (no insult intended). Think of who you are… what is it that defines you? I am not speaking of your relationship with God which should define Christian’s because thousands of spears through the brain could have no power to alter one’s eternal relationship with God. But who are you? And what if who you were completely changed? For example, what if one of your core qualities that defines you is faithfulness? However, you are in an accident and your brain is damaged and you are no longer faithful and, as a result, you abandon you spouse and children!!! Are you the same person having lost a core quality that affects your life and the life’s of those around you? No. I would argue that if you lose those qualities that make you who you are, faithfulness in this example, you are not the same person. I asked the question of “who are you” and I have asked the same question of myself. The answer I have come up with time and time again is that I am a lover of people. I literally, almost without reservation, love everyone. Furthermore, that is how I define myself by how much I love others. For instance, I work hard to maintain a close to perfect GPA because I want to be a child psychologist and help children. I work extremely hard in my studies so I can be the best child psychologist possible so I can be the best possible help to the children I will treat. Therefore, my whole motivation for working so hard and clinging to perfection is to help others because I love them. What if that was stripped form me and I no longer cared and loved others? Then I would lose who I am and I would cease to be Rebekah Grace Hernandez. More often than not, I do not support assisted suicide especially not for myself. However, if I ceased to be myself by no longer loving others because of an accident, for instance, I do not know if I would want to remain on this earth. This is almost the point at which I would say to myself… yes, pull the plug. Now I think you can perhaps understand why I am afraid of Phineas Gage and why his story has haunted me for years. It is because I am afraid of losing who I am and my friends saying, like Phineas’ friends said of him, “She is no longer Rebekah”. Not only is there fear involved in this idea, but also multitudes of questions. Namely, if we can lose the core of who we are in an accident are we still that person somewhere deep down or were we ever that person? Or, a religious question: what if you loved God and tried to follow him before the accident and then after you ceased desiring a relationship with God and sinned in excess… would that change where you spend eternity? While I realize that the case of Phineas Gage was not as extreme of a change as some of the other hypothetical situations I have posed, I hope the exaggerations of Phineas’ past condition have conveyed my point of how frightening what happened to Gage is in reality. Perhaps, you like me, have realized that you are afraid of Phineas Gage too… if not then watch this clip from Finding Nemo about denial (obviously intended as a light anecdote to a heavy discussion).

Finding Nemo Denial

(If i put the link in wrong here’s the address.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX45UT-NQ3E

It was interesting to hear that eugenics was brought up in class this week.  You almost never hear about eugenics and the eugenics movement of the 20th century brought up in a science class, much less at Abilene Christian University.  I’m not sure how many people are even aware that the eugenics movement existed, or that it still exists today.

I think that it would be important for us to start bringing eugenics into modern day discussions of science, we are fast approaching a day where we may be able to manipulate human DNA and craft “perfect” humans.  The whole eugenics movement was all about removing trash and faulty genetic material from the human race so that it would no longer plague human society.  It led to the casting out of and sterilization of many people considered mentally unfit or genetically unsuitable to reproduce.

Not to mention eugenics inspired the practices of Nazi Germany and its racial genocide against European Jewish people.  A lesser know fact is that eugenics inspired Margaret Sanger, the founder of Family Planning Clinics in the United States, there is still an undertone of eugenics there even today.

I think that eugenics is an important topic to discuss in modern science.  We currently do not possess the ability to manipulate DNA on a scale to allow genetic screening, and we may never reach that level, but the possibility exists.  Movies like Gattica are a good reminder of this possibility and raise the question about who will be the one to decide what passes and normal/desired genetic traits and which will not.  Perhaps we will never reach the level that eugenics did in the 20th century, but some how negative social trends always find a way to creep back into the social conscious.

I had never heard of the concept of a phantom arm/leg before class on Friday, and it was quite surprising to me. Since the problem at hand has to do with perception and reality, my first thought was this, “Would a prosthesis help the individual at all? And what kind?” Growing up, I was around many individuals who lost limbs and choose to wear a prosthetic or a compression sock because my father was a specialist in orthotics and prosthetics. I remember watching my dad make plaster molds of legs and then bring them to fruition over the next several weeks while it was my big and exciting job to hammer the hard plaster out of the buckets he used. So several things went through my mind from what I know of the area (which is still very little). Would a prosthetic help? What kind? Is a multiple-function hydraulics leg (a C-leg) better than a general walking leg? What about special carbon fiber legs made for exercise and running? Would the ability to move your body more vigorously help? Who has the worst pain? Is it diabetics, or those who lost their limb from an accident, or a degenerative condition? And is there a large difference between below the knee/elbow patients and above the knee/elbow patients? Finally, phantom leg and arm pain isn’t just for patients who have lost a limb. I remember my dad seeing a girl my age (maybe 7 or 8 at the time) in his office, and as usual I asked how she had lost her leg. He told me that she was born without one, and the world finally showed itself to me as fallen. When researching the concept of phantoms, I discovered those born without limbs also experience phantom sensations, usually painful but not always.

Generally, what I found was that better fitting legs and compression socks could be a big help, but not as much as the mirror box or a virtual reality simulation. Heating or cooling a limb, massaging it, putting a prosthesis on, taking it off, exercising the limb, wearing a sock, etc. were ways to cope with the pain, but even the visual perception of the arm didn’t replace a real arm. It couldn’t perform the same functions. The hand is so complex, there are few good prototypes of a working prosthetic hand. There is no way to replace that visual perception of an intricately functioning hand except by creating an image of a working hand. Though I tried to find more information on the subject, most resources (like the Mayo Clinic and small clinics using the mirror-box system) either said the condition was largely untreatable or spoke of Ramachandran’s system. It seems prosthetics cannot make a perception so realistic that it becomes reality to the individual.

And I guess that is the catch with psychology. When the situation is unfavorable (having phantom pains) we seek to trick the mind and believe something that isn’t real (I have two arms now). However, if someone perceives that they are Jesus or that aliens will abduct them, then we seek to help individuals have an accurate perception of reality. But I must be fair, the first situation used an untruth so the mind would begin to send accurate signals (you don’t have phantom pains because you don’t have a phantom arm). Can anyone else think of situations that involve tricking the mind in order to create an accurate portrayal of reality? Or can you think of any ethical situations? What about individuals who perceive themselves as one gender but in reality are not? Do you correct the perception to meet the current reality? Do you trick the mind somehow? Do you change reality to meet the current perceptions? And how do ethics come into play?

It seems that there are as many theories available as people on earth.  If you want to explain why anything, there is probably an existing theory to help you out.  I would like to spend my blog post time in discourse on a theory that Dr. McAnulty mentioned in class in passing.  I heard of this theory many years ago.  I remember thinking at the time that it was an interesting theory and something I might be able to believe.

This theory, an extension of the young earth theory (which says that the earth is less than 10,000 years old—around 6,000—much younger than evolutionists believe it to be), is called the mature earth theory.  This theory posits that God created a “mature earth” complete with layers of fossils.  I find this theory very interesting.  I assume that God created man as a mature being and the first animals as mature beings (else how would they have survived).  If he did that, why would he have not created a mature earth.

Some people brush off the mature earth theory by saying that God is not a trickster.  I would agree with that position, but I think that God knows humanity (as he created us).  He knows that man loves challenges and mysteries.  He knows that man wants to understand the world and the workings of it.  Why wouldn’t he create a few mysteries for us to solve?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (New International Version)

The mature earth theory drives my husband crazy as he has a degree in Geology and is quite fond of dinosaurs.  I am not ready to abandon all other theories to adopt this theory as my own, but I think it is an interesting theory.  I think that there is no way to prove it, just as there is no way to prove it is not true or to prove that evolution, the big bang or any other creation theory is true.  I think that as long as man is on this earth, there will be difference of opinion and a plentitude of theories.