Chapter 7 First Impression

My perspective on violent video games is that they do not insinuate for children, or anyone playing them for that matter, to go do something similar to what they are doing in the game. I do not think that violent video games are making children more violent and I think these criticisms of the video game industry are unsupported by meaningful research.

As far as I know, there is little to no research dictating that violent video games promote violence in children. There is research that supports the notion that video games, while some may be considered violent, do help to improve social skills as well as hand-eye coordination in many people. Additionally, who is to be the judge of what is considered violent and what isn’t? Why should a first person shooting game be considered more violent than Mario? Both games promote violence and the killing of “bad people”, yet the shooting game is considered more violent.

Also, the idea to permanently ban “violent” video games is just baffling. First and foremost, I can’t think of one game that does not have some sort of violence in it. This ban, if it were to ban all violent video games, would essentially wipe out the entire video game industry. The video game industry is worth more than $100 billion, and wiping it out would not go without economic consequences. I also think the irresponsibility of parents to allow their child to play a game that is rated for an older age group does not help the situation. Just because you let little 10 year old Timmy play Call of Duty does not mean the video game is to blame.

Chapter 2 First Impression

I watched the Ted Talk about serial killers by Jim Fallon. What drew me to it is the idea that serial killers structurally have a different brain that normal people do. This is interesting to me because they’re just another person, but their brain structure causes them to act differently.

This talk told me about how serial killers have different brains based off of brain damage, genetics, and their environment. It talks about how these things need to development at a certain time in order for the outcome of a serial killer to be present.

The most interesting thing about the talk was the idea that the timing of when the brain damage occurs affects whether or not someone will be a psychopath. I find this interesting because if someone does have brain damage, it could’ve been a matter of a few weeks difference that lends them to being a psychopath or a normal person.

I find the information presented fairly trustworthy. Ted Talks do not just invite anybody who is a self-proclaimed expert on a topic onto the show. They do their background research and see how reliable this source of information actually is before inviting them onto the show. Additionally, the information presented by the speaker was done in a very professional manner, along with photos that were specifically designated to help understand what is going on. Many people can access these photos with a quick google search, but the speaker explained what was going on in the pictures, and if he wasn’t reliable, he did a very good job telling everyone about the brains of psychopaths.

A research idea that could be interesting to investigate would be if neuron development is affected by brain damage. To conduct this experiment, you could take some individuals and determine an estimate of how many functioning neurons are in their body, and then you could take a brain damaged individual and determine the same. Compare the results to see if neuron quantity or at least functioning neuron quantity is significantly different.

Chapter 4 First Impression

8-Stage Lifespan Development

Stage 1: 0-3 years old

I think that the main psychological challenge during this stage of development is the understanding of learning so many new things. The behaviors that someone this age will go through as well as the mental processes pose quite a challenge for someone from a young age.

Stage 2: 4-6 years old

The main psychological challenge for this age is the behavioral aspect of life. At this age I think that many people are learning to act how their parents tell them to act. Also, kids go through the phase of whether they should listen to their parents or act the way they want to act.

Stage 3: 7-12 years old

The main psychological challenge of this age group is the external development of behavior. I think at this age people are beginning to understand how their behaviors and what they say affect others around them.

Stage 4: 13-22 years old

At this stage in life, I think the biggest psychological challenge is stress. Most people around this age are in middle school, high school, or college, and they are faced with new mental challenges that they learn to figure out on their own which can cause a lot of stress. Also, around this age range is when people really judge themselves for how they look, and this can lead to things like anorexia or other eating disorders.

Stage 5: 22-28 years old

In this age group, I think independence in terms of behavioral development emerges on a different level. Around this age, you graduate college, move out, find your own place and start your own life. There is no more relying on other people to help you out anymore, and the responsibility of yourself really comes to light.

Stage 6: 29-40 years old

I think at this age range the biggest psychological challenge is planning ahead. This is the age range where people work a lot and start to plan their future years ahead, possibly even to retirement. This places a lot of stress on the brain as well as the person as a whole.

Stage 7: 41-64 years old

This age range’s biggest psychological challenge is development of new skills. Many people around this age do not possess the capability or the correct mindset to make time to learn something new. This could possibly prevent true happiness or joy from occurring.

Stage 8: 65+ years old

I think the biggest psychological challenge for this age group is keeping everything in order. Around this age and onward dementia may begin to kick in which could lead to episodes of mania or maybe forgetting something or someone that was very important to you.

First Impression Chapter 1

Does Weaving Through Traffic Actually Get You To Your Destination Faster?

There were both some strengths and weaknesses when it comes to this experiment. First, one strength of this experiment is that it was tested in the real world. This is a strength because it shows the applicability of this experiment to everyday life. A weakness in this experiment is that it was only tested once. This does not help the experiment because testing an experiment one time does not prove if it was successful or not. To fix this, the people testing the experiment should have tested it multiple times and collected the data and maybe averaged the numbers. Another strength of this experiment is that I believe the same cars were used for both variables, ensuring that one car does not have a physical advantage over the other. A second weakness to this experiment is the people only used one road to test it. This is a weakness because maybe that specific road is an outlier in which the results are not accurate to what the majority of the results would be when compared to other roads. While this experiment had both its weaknesses and strengths, I do not think that it would be a reliable experiment based off of one test.

Intro to Psychology Blog Creation

Hello! My name is Jacob Vershinski. I am from Glen Mills, Pennsylvania and I just completed my freshman year at Elizabethtown College. I have lived in Glen Mills my entire life with my mom, my dad, and my older brother. We currently have three dogs, a guinea pig, and a few fish. I am majoring in Biology with a concentration in pre-medicine, but I think that I am going to switch my major in this upcoming year.

I decided to take this course because it is a pre-requisite for my current major, as well as the major I may be switching to. I do not have any background in psychology as I did not take it in high school. When I hear the word psychology, I think of the way that people act and the reasoning behind it. Another thing that comes to mind is my favorite TV show, “Psych.” To me, chapters two, four, and the drug knowledge activity appear to be the most appealing. Chapter two is about the biology of behavior which sparks my interest. Chapter four is about how psychology changes during the human life span, and the drug knowledge activity is interesting to me. Three topics that are not interesting to me are chapter one because I know it will be the basic introductory chapter, the stress ranking activity because it’s summer time and I don’t think many of us will be stressed, and the exams are definitely not fun topics. A question about psychology that I wish to answer is what kind of role it plays in everyday life. Obviously it is going to play quite a major role, but I’m just curious as to how much it impacts the everyday life.