To Work in Groups or to Work Alone?

Hello everyone,
It is common to see some people in a class getting excited about group work and others wanting to work alone. This past week we learned about certain behavior in groups. Social loafing, for example, might cause a person to do a worse job than they would on their own, even without realizing it. When giving group assignments, teachers are looking for equal participation from the students, but the students might not see it this way. They might think that they are getting the easy way out by acting like they are doing their fair share of the project when really, their partner is the one doing it all. This is a difficult concept to grasp, especially because working in groups can teach us important skills. Despite the fact that working alone could be more effective for students who would generally not contribute to group work, group work is still important in my opinion. Is it more important for people to work in groups to achieve a common goal, or to work individually? Sometimes it is good for a person to be put in a situation where there is deindividuation. They will not feel the pressure of working alone and will be able to put their ideas into the group and go along with whatever morals the group has instead of focusing on themselves. I believe that the skills of group work and individual work are necessary for success and will help a a person see the perspectives of others.

Is Therapy Effective?

Did anyone ever wonder what type of therapies really work and which ones don't? There have been countless studies to try to determine the effectiveness of therapy. For example, it was found that psychotherapy is not the best form of therapy. It is time consuming and costs a lot of money. It is also not seen as a permanent solution to a problem. Furthermore, research has found that many people reported to be content after therapy no matter what type of therapy they received or what situation they were in.
      Because of this, I wonder if it really matters what type of therapy one receives. It seems important to choose the right type of therapy in order to treat a specific problem or disorder, but will it really be effective? I believe that certain therapies, like behavior therapies when a person is conditioned to change their behaviors, will be good for people with certain issues, like addictions. This seems to truly work. However, it is certain therapeutic techniques, such as therapeutic touch and light exposure therapies that do not seem real. In the end, does it really matter if the therapies are proven to work by researchers, or is the affect that the therapy has on a person what really matters?

The Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help in an emergency situation to the victim when other people are present. This is because each person in the group assumes that someone else will help, so they do not need to get involved. Of course, everyone is thinking this, which means no one helps at all. This may seem like something minor, but sometimes, it can have enormous consequences.

1. March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was entering her apartment building in Kew Gardens at about 3:15 AM when a man stabbed her twice in the back. Genovese screamed something like "He stabbed me, help me!" and then collapsed. Several neighbors in surrounding buildings reported hearing her, but just assumed it was an argument between couples or a drunken fight, and they did not want to get involved. One man did shout from his window for the attacker to leave her alone, but did nothing as she crawled across the street to try and get to her apartment. The attacker returned 10 minutes later, beat her, and then raped her as she died. The whole thing took 30 minutes, and not one person tried to go and help her. 12 people claimed to have seen the attack, and many of them later said that they just didn't want to get involved, assuming someone else would obviously help her or call the police.

Another interesting case that I read about but won't write about because it would make this post way to long: Research the Murder of Shanda Shear. It is a very sad case of the bystander effect.

Behavior in Groups

When learning about behavior in groups I thought a lot about 21st century, collaboration, block scheduling, and all of that good stuff! Social loafing, which I now realize I got wrong on the essay today, is the idea that people will not do or act as much when in a group achieving a common goal. When doing something individually, people are more likely to act and do the work because there is not someone that they can depend on to do the work for them. With some block scheduling periods and a push towards collaboration this year, we are working more in groups. This could be both a good thing and a bad thing. I think the idea of social loafing is somewhat true. Working in groups can sometimes be annoying because you may be paired with someone who is frequently absent or doesn't really show interest or participate in the assignment. However, sometimes it helps me because I am forced to sometimes teach the person the material and that way I am actively learning and reviewing. I also think that if you are with a person or a group of people that you work well with, social loafing will probably not occur. When I work well with someone, we tend to do things together and don't just split up the work and then copy each other's work afterwards.

Another idea that I find interesting is group polarization. This is the idea that at first when you are in a group, the differences become more intense. However, overtime actions and attitudes line up with the group as a whole. This makes the group stronger. Usually the first day of working on a group project or assignment, is terrible because each person has their own way of doing things and everything. At least for me, it is sometimes hard to cave in to the group because you like your idea the best. Sometimes people's feelings also get hurt if their ideas keep getting rejected. However, it is true that overtime it usually comes to a point where everyone realizes that they need to get the work done and the differences seem to line up. I think working in groups is important because in the real world you're not going to be doing things by yourself. You will most probably either have a boss, different colleagues, etc. Although it can sometimes be challenging it is important to learn to work in a group. 

Decisions

In class I was reading about Attraction. I learned that there are many reasons for attraction the most basic reason for why we get attracted is because of proximity, which is the geographic nearness towards others. This means that many times our locations determine who we are going to be friends with, and get attracted to( since we also learned that the surrounding groups might alter your attitude towards others). I thought this was very true and obvious since for example the school you go to determines who you'll meet and who you will spend your time with. The same thing happens in college. My parents met at a university. This means that if either one of them would have chosen not to attend that university, they would have possibly never met (and I would not have been born yet.) This shows how important our life decisions are and that we should always put ourselves in good environment since we all know that the environment is a very influential but also life changing factor.

Our Mind

Chapter 18 is all about the social perspective of psychology. We learned in class about the different ways in which our attitudes shape our behaviors, but also how the people around us can change and shape our behavior. We learned about cognitive dissonance which is described as being a desire to have our actions and attributes alligned. therefore we might end up changing our thought because of the actions that we did.
This really surprised me since I feel like this is a strange thing, that we would change our actions only because we feel bad after role playing, wanting our thoughts and actions to be alligned.

I think a big part of why this is, is because actually our body and mind is trying to stop us from doing things that we do not believe in, but our creative mind has found a way out of this. It ends up tricking itself by taking on that belief to make it easier and possible to fufill those actions

Another reason could be that because of the role playing, and because we act that way we end up getting used to that idea more and more until we think that it actually is the right thing to do.

It is scary and interesting how our mind works. What do you think?

hello my dear fellow classmates,

so this week we learned about social psychology and i had to read about the bystander effect in class. I actually found it very interesting since this concept totally applied to me. The bystander effect is somebody is need of help, we are less likely to come to their aid if there are other potential people around who could help them. This probably occurs because we just assume that somebody else will come to their aid and thats why we dont need to step up. I actually completely see how that could happen. I am much more likely to help people if i know that i am the only person who can come to their help. I will just assume that they have someone else who can perhaps help them more than i could. Nevertheless, there are instances where i actually dont want to help certain people who obviously need help because those are the kinds of people everyone wants to help anyway. Personally, i like to help people who actually need help, no matter in what regard, but it is actually more subtle and less obvious that they need help. I like to help those kinds of people because i am certain that few other people would be there to help them so i like to step up and help them. I think that that is also a different version of the bystander effect.

hello my dear fellow classmates

so i was reading through chapter nine. There was a section about bilinguals that i found very interesting. Firstly, it said that bilinguals are actually better at detecting grammar mistakes. I found that very amusing. Last week of school, right before this lovely break, we had a grammar test in english. It was really funny that sharon and i did well and Mrs. Johnson was very proud and we were a little shocked to have done so well. However, after reading that its actually easier for bilanguals to detect grammar mistakes that explained a lot and actually made me chuckle a little and it really made me understanding something new that applied to my life which i loved.

Then, there was another thing that i read about. Apparently, when children learn a language before the age of 12, they are more likely to not have an accent and have less grammar mistakes. I found that very interesting since i actually started learning english when i was 12. it caused me to wonder. Do i have an accent? how bad are my grammar mistakes? Hopefully it doesnt apply to me as much since my accent isnt as bad as lets say adults who learn a language even later on in their life.

Cinderella

In class this past week we did something completely new and exciting in order to help put all of the information together. After learning about the different types of therapy, we read mini situations where the events that occurred in "Cinderella" were actually problems that she needed to resolve using therapy. This really caught my attention and helped to further understand the issues.

When reading about the Client-centered therapy, I realized that it could be very effective because the therapist is becoming personal with the client and is showing them a sense of trust and openness that the client really needs. However, on the other hand, I realized that psychoanalysis, for example, seems to be a waste of time. A person will spend countless hours and a lot of money to sit on a couch and say words that come to their mind. After reading all of this, I came to the conclusion that in order to be the perfect therapist, one must use the Ecclectic approach. This means that they can combine different therapy methods when dealing with their clients. This way, they will be able to use the appropriate therapy for each specific case. (It will also ensure that the therapist is well educated!)

Reflection

After having spent all of Shabbos studying for the AP Exam/Test thing, I realized some really interesting things.

First: The first week of school when we learned prologue through chapter one, I was utterly confused. I didn't understand any of what was being said. But after rereading the chapter and my notes, I realize that I understand all of it because it just summarizes the entire book. All of the chapters are squished together to bring us chapter 1 and the prologue.

Second: Every new chapter we did incorporated information from the previously learned chapters. When we did chapter 2 and had to memorize all of the different brain parts and their functions, I remember being relieved that I'd only need to know it for the one chapter. But we actually use that information in every single chapter, and now I don't have to study the functions at all. I can recall them too, not just recognize.

Third: We are almost done with the book, and the AP is in a few weeks! I'm not at all concerned because Mrs. Perl is doing a fabulous job as our teacher, preparing us to ace this exam. She's helping us set aside time during the week to study that we won't be stressed, and after it's all over, we are going to feel immensely relaxed and satisfied. She is motivating us to remember all of the material and I'm excited to actually take the AP.

Thanks Mrs. Perl!!