Ana Rodriguez's Archive

Third Force psychology is based on the premise that all people are inherently good. It establishes that fact that through a conscious evolution of attitudes, values, and beliefs, a person becomes a self actualized individual with the inner wisdom and confidence to guide their own life in a manner that is personally satisfying and socially constructive. Psychologist Abraham Maslow was one of the primary contributors to this theory and also contributed to humanistic psychology with his famous hierarchy of needs theory of human motivation. One of the trends that I have noticed in this respect comes from the old Missionary goal. Missionary’s ethnocentric goals were based largely on converting people and ‘saving’ as many people as possible through the faith based and sometimes even forceful means. As history has told, missions has been scrutinized for the effect and long term changes made to a population. None the less, missions remains an important role in the American church. Why? Many missionaries go with the ‘save as many people as possible’ approach. They go with a bible thumping approach many times where they don’t necessarily take into account where they people they meet are at in life. What do I mean by this? Normally, missionaries come with the intention to help people self actualize or to help with esteem needs. However, those people aren’t even at that level on the hierarchy of needs. They are preoccupied with getting shelter and having clean water to drink. Needs at the bottom of the pyramid are basic physical requirements including the need for food, water, sleep, and warmth. Once these lower-level needs have been met, people can move on to the next level of needs, which are for safety and security. However, based on the theory, if these needs aren’t met they cannot move up. Based on this theory, how should mission approaches change?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&gl=US&client=mv-google&v=Khu3_SpgRas&nomobile=1

We always joke about the common phrase “there is an app for that”. However, there is now REALLY an app to tap into the sub-conscious of one of Freud’s most favorite categories in his psychoanalytical studies. There is an app now developed from graduate students at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attempts to influence how you dream. Sigmund is a new iPhone app that is priced at 99 cents that helps users choose the objects or environments they want to envision during sleep. The app was sparked from the interest of sleep and dreams in sleep-dependent learning. They studied  the role of sleep in learning new tasks and how the brain processes outside stimuli during sleep. Through this, Harvard students contact MIT to help in the development. The app is fairly simple to work. People can select up to five different subjects they want the app to softly repeat during their REM sleep cycle. The app is very subtle and it whispers to the dreamer. Dreamers can choose up to 1000 different words ranging from New York to grandmother.  They then set alarm times for the time they want to go to bed and the time they plan on waking up. Just like some common iphone apps already that use the phone to monitor sleep movement, this app gauges when someone has reached their deepest and lightest points of sleep. It is like a new form of Inception, however more practical. It is estimated that normal cycled sleepers will actually be influenced by the app about a third of the time. I definitely am considering buying this app to see if it actually works! This app reminds me of another concept that is revolved around lucid dreams. A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.   In a lucid dream, the dreamer can have some degree of control over their actions within the dream and/or to be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream. Talk about Inception is real life. Imagine how many fun dreams could arise out of having a lucid dream and using Sigmund at the same time.

Behaviorism assumes that behavior is observable and can be associated with other observable events. Behaviorism also studies the correlation between stimuli, reaction, and consequence. Just like Watson caused the baby to feel fear at the sight of the rat in his experiment, many principles of Watson’s behaviorist theory are used in modern advertising. “Planting ideas” in someone’s mind is fairly simple if the person is open to the repetitive stimuli that are set upon them on something as convenient as a television. Based on the behaviorist theory an easy way manipulate consumers was through their emotions. Ads that make the consumer any strong emotion will force him or her to formulate an opinion on the product being advertised. Advertisers can control how we feel about a product by manipulating our emotions through the use of music, children, comedy, drama, authority figures, good acting, and essentially any type of influential cinema. The famous SPCA commercial in which Sarah McLachlan tearfully asks viewers to donate to this cause is a perfect example. It uses many of these factors. However, because of the intensity of the commercial, not only did it get people to pay to the cause but it caused an equal opposite reaction. Advertising is the idea that people judge things on the basis of their subjective experience. These experiences will form patterns of their behavior and habits such as donating to a cause. If this personal experience was pleasant a person would try to repeat it.  However, if it was an unpleasant one a person would try to avoid it. For many people, this commercial means pressing the channel button in order to not ruin their day. I know that it did for me. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB1oMfs8nWY

A few years ago, the Discovery Channel premiered a show called The Science of Sex Appeal. This documentary simply showed some experiments and latest research on sex appeal, and how evolutionary psychology is the foundation in mate selection. I personally loved this documentary and have found myself actually bringing it up in normal conversation throughout the years. I don’t know if that’s weird on my part or that the research was just that fascinating that it was engraving in my memory. One of my personal favorite experiments discussed how mate selection is very primitively based a lot on physical attractive and where you fit into the scale of attractiveness. While scouting for an attractive partner, you might have to settle for someone “in your league.” This experiment contain 10 males and 10 females whom are all rating from 1-10 on the physical attractiveness scale. Not only is everything on their body covered, but the only thing showing is their face with the “physical attractiveness number” posted on their forehead to where they can’t see it.  The participants then roam around the room and they can offer their hand to another person and that person can either accept or deny it. Some people declines lower number’s offers because they think they can do better, and some find themselves “mating” (ie finding a partner and grabbing their hand) fairly quickly. The experiment supported their hypothesis that the high numbers got many offers, and ended up settling with participants with higher numbers. The lower numbers had to get denied some times and ended up with other participants with lower numbers.

So what does this experiment support? This experiment was trying to show the real life struggle of competitiveness and partner selection based on physical attractiveness. This study fails to take into account other things such as security (monetary, size…etc), and personality characteristics that change a lot of our partner selections throughout our lifetime. However, if I were to be honest, I think that this study is fairly accurate. If you see a super model with Hugh Hefner, you don’t actually think that the reason they are together is for love, it is for other purposes such as money, therefore you dismiss it as a genuine fit. The same thing happens when you see an attractive male dating a not as attractive girl; you assume her personality makes up for what she lacks in physical attractiveness. However when it comes to physical attractiveness only, I think the study holds true with the less experience people have. Just as the video described, you can remember our middle school days and the prettiest girl was always getting hit on. The era of social awkwardness and self-consciousness was at an all time high. The cute guys would only focus their attention on the pretty girls and vise versa. And the awkward looking girl/boy was ignored by them. However there would be some awkward young couple walking around too.  However, once we get older, hopefully we realize that there are a lot more factors essential to finding an ideal partner than solely physical attraction. Through experience you learn.

http://youtu.be/san61qTwWsU

It became a cultural phenomenon for about ten minutes in2006. The magic, the secret stories, book, and ultimately DVD that had everyone raving about the never before heard “ultimate way to live and achieve anything”.  They shared stories of success and luxury. They taught the way of healing and happiness. Once you discover the secret, you can immediately discover the life you want! YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL! After all, if Oprah preaches it, it must be true. The idea of the Secret involves positive thinking, and energies of the universe that ultimately should give you what you desire. To me, it almost seemed like a magical genie read to fulfill your every wish. If we have a goal or a vision and focus on it, we will attain our desired reality. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions all should be firing in the same direction. The secret says that we are all just energy, and what controls that is thoughts and vibrations. Its all about the Law of Attraction.

So my question was… is this new found ‘Secret’ new? Where did this philosophy really come from?

The idea of the secret says that you live in your physical body, however you are a soul and a spirit. You are nonphysical and you live in a physical body. You have the ability to dictate the vibration that your mind and body will be in. Does this sound familiar? The ancient Greeks, and particularly Plato’s philosophy correlated a lot to this supposed ‘new found truth’.  Our universe exists in the abstract world in the form of realism. Plato also emphasized the idea of dualism in which for him the goal in life is to “free” the soul of the influence of the flesh. Just as the Secret emphasized, you need to rid yourself of the thought that your body and soul are one, and focus on just the soul, positive thinking, and energy that it sends out into the universe. Sensations and perceptions are “shadows” of the truth (just as Plato states), and your ultimate reality can be shaped if you desire. The key to this is to be keenly aware of your “feelings” (as described in the Secret) through introspection (as described by Plato) and extreme sensationalism (Plato and the Secret).

My personal definition of the good life has many different meanings, however they all revolve around my perfect idea of what life has the potential to be. For example, my vision of a good life in seventy years has a different meaning than what a good life would like to a twenty- one year old. So for now, I’ll start describing the good life in the eyes of a person who still has the rest of their life ahead of them. The good life to me currently is figuring out your identity and discovering what it is that you really want in life (or at least the beginning of it). The good life revolves around being optimistic, building relationships, establishing your morals and beliefs for yourself, and discovering your world. For me, my world is the whole world. The good life is not only starting to understand yourself, but to be able to unravel the mystery of different people and cultures. The picture I posted along with this post pretty much describes what I think a major aspect of what our generation needs to do if given the opportunity. Our parents’ generation based a lot of their importance on security, however I think our generation is making experiences very important.

       The good life to a person who “already has lived their life” has a different meaning. To me, at that point the good life needs to be the acceptance of your past, the appreciation of what happened to you, and the peace that comes with knowing you have lived a life well lived. I want to be able to look back at my life and feel like I impacted others, loved the Lord, served with a loving and open heart, was an example to others, and was a person who was joyful in my suffering.  I want to get to heaven and look at my loved once and know that I influenced them for the better, and watch my past memories and smile at all the crazy, exciting, horrible, wonderful times I had. The good life doesn’t have to be perfect, but the good life involves knowing that you tried to live fully most of your days.