Saturday, July 5, 2008

Urgency hypothesis

Urgency hypothesis is a term that I found to make a lot of sense to me. Everyday when a person steps out of their house they are hoping that they are going to have a great day and that nothing will ruin their day. In part with keeping this true they must try to be polite, appropriate to others around them, however this can not always stand true. There is always that one person who will get you mad by doing something rude that will set you off and make you act rude. For example, this happens a lot to me malls, people bumping into me and not saying sorry. I think that is totally rude since it is not that hard to say sorry. When ever I bump into people I always make sure to say I'm sorry or excuse me. If people don't say it to me I get upset, but I don't say anything because its really not worth my time to make a huge deal of it. However when it happens to me, I stop and think that one day these rude people are going to bump into the wrong person and they are not going to be as nice as me. So in other words take time to be polite and say "excuse me", or "I'm sorry" in the long run it may save you a lot of trouble!

Chapter 12

In Chapter 12 it talks about reward power, I found this to be really interesting. This is when one person is trying to influence another person to do something and in order to get them to do it they offer them a reward. Rewards don't always have to be money this can be positive praises to let the person know they are doing good, or throughout the process letting them know of the good that can come out of what they are doing. These little words for the most part act as encouragement for the person to do this task. For example, I know that my little sister wanted to go to a concert, but she didn't have money. I needed my old room to be cleaned out since I moved, so I offered her $30 to clean my room. Which meant that I got my room cleaned and she got to go to the concert. At the end of the day we were all happy! I now am able to do this a lot with my younger siblings, but my parents did it a lot to me when I was growing up. This is a really good reward if used the right way and not taken advantage of. I also think that this is a really positive way to help people loose weight!

Friday, July 4, 2008

My momma loves me

This chapter that I read talked about how men and women differ on show their affection with their children. Women are more affectionate and they tend to give their children hugs and kisses, while men show affection by throwing a ball or watching a game.
I found this to be true with my parents, but they are both affectionate and tell me they love me. I am my dads only child so we shared a lot of our time watching sports and playing games, but he always told me that he loved me because he didn't want me to feel that he didn't love me. My mom always makes sure to tell me that she loves me on an everyday basis, but she is not the hugging and kissing type. Which is weird to me since I always thought that moms are suppose to do that type of things. However when she does it, it makes me feel that much better! On the other hand with my step father I don't believe that he has ever told me that he loves me. I know that he does and that he is proud of all of my accomplishments, but hearing it once in awhile would make me feel that much better. Even though I know that all three of my parents love me so much its odd how none of them fully fill the description of how parents show their affection, but it has worked for me for the 24 years and I feel like I have came out good!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Chapter 15

Attachment styles are a major part of our lives. We seem to use them everyday since they help us to deal with conflict, falling in love with that special someone, act normal, and other actions such as those. In chapter 15 the author talks about three kinds of attachment styles that people fall under. These are, Secure this is who you are most comfortable with and feel you can become close to, Avoidant would be a person that you do not trust and try to stay away from, and Anxious/ ambivalent is where you might feel comfortable with something or someone, but still scared of rejection so therefore you don't open up fully. All of these styles I feel that we first learn as a child when we are close to our parents. Then as we grow older we start to share these feelings with our significant other and finally with our children and grandchildren. Even though I did not carry my niece for 9 months, I still feel as though I share a lot of these traits with her since I have been around her since day one and play a huge role in her life.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Jealousy

I really liked reading about this topic a lot because I feel that this is something too many relationships have to deal with. Jealousy I feel is something that comes from two people either one not trusting each other, or two the are insecure with themselves. I have said this many times in my blogs that I feel trust is the basis of relationships. And in order to not think that your significant other is not cheating on you, you need to trust them. Also there are people that have jealousy issues because they have had prior relationships that the other person has cheating on them and they think that its going to happen to them again. I have a friend who was married for 5 years to this women and she cheated on him with her current husband. My friend is now remarried, but he had really bad trust and jealousy issues because he feels as though his wife is going to cheat on him. Every time she talks to co-workers that are guys he gets really jealous and accuses her of cheating. I tell him time and time again that he needs to trust her because she is a wonderful women and if he keeps acting this way that he is going to lose her. After reading this chapter, I might try to suggest the study and tell him to heat up the bedroom and maybe that will help their marriage. I really hope!!!

Friday, June 27, 2008

Impartiality-Favoritism

Impartiality Favoritism is something that I have to deal with all the time with some of my friends. These are the friends that don't want to hurt each others feelings so the act "fake" so they stay neutral. For example I am not getting along with one of my friends that I have had for about 5 years. As we got older we just started to drift away and like different things. Even though we don't talk we still have a lot of mutual friends. One of these friends in particular tries to play us both and act like she supports us both when the other is not present. I find this to be really annoying since I totally understand that she is trying to stay neutral, but she is not being a good friend by saying stuff behind the other persons back. This to me is a very negative way of staying neutral. The people that stay good friends to each other no matter what and don't say anything bad about the other no matter what problems they are going through; those are the good friends!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Maintenance of a Relationship

I really found this part of the chapter really interesting since my boyfriend and I have been talking a lot about it these last few weeks since we are moving in with each other. This basically talks about being positive and sharing tasks are a big part of keeping a relationship alive and strong. Since this is a big step for us we talked about ways we can do things to not make our relationship go bad. For example sharing tasks around the house. We are both going to be working full time jobs so there is no reason why we should not be able to do equal amount of work. Also always keep positive about the issues that surround you. At times things may get tough, but if you keep a positive attitude everything will work out for the better. I really enjoyed this whole chapter because it gave me a new out look on relationships and how to communicate. Since that is the basis of relationships!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Chapter 9

This chapter I found reinforcement perspectives to be really interesting to me. There are a lot of people out there including me who will change their opinion on a person because they don't react in a way that they would have wanted them to. For example I had a friend in high school who thought she was really pretty. Every where she went she felt that every guy wanted her and every guys was looking at her. During a conference one year she had her eyes on this one particular guy the whole weekend we where there. It was not till the last night where she finally tried to pick up on him. Well to her surprise he didn't like her and was actually interested in one of our other friends! Once she got turned down her attitude from he is the cutest guy in the world went to... well he was not that cute any way. That story really reminded me of this term!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Nature of the Relationship.

I found this chapter to be really interesting to me since I have been in a committed relationship for over 3 years now. We did have our difficulties because we went to different colleges that demanded different amount of time from each of us, but some how or another we ended up sticking together and making things work out. There were many times when he had events that took place at his school that I could not attended because I didn't go there, which made me feel left out like he was having fun with out me. As time went on we learned to talk about how we felt and started to make each other an active part of the others social life in school. Once we started to do that things in our relationship started to go really well. I feel that communication is a major part of a relationship. If there is not communication then the relationship is not going to last.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was a really interesting chapter for me since it talked about embarrassment. This is something that I can say everyone has experiences at minimum one time in there life. Even though we all experienced this feeling its something that after you experience it, you wish you would have never done so. I know me personally have experienced this MANY times over the spanned of my 23 years of life. The one embarrassing moment that sticks in my head the most is when I was in 6Th grade. I was part of the "big" kids at school and we did not look dumb, in fact everybody looked up to us. So we thought! Well one day I wore a dress to school because my friends and I thought it would be cool to dress alike. During one of our recesses I went to use the bathroom and when I came out the back of my dress got stuck in my underwear! When one of the boys came and told me I was so embarrassed. Everybody was laughing at me and my first reaction was to cry and go home. For the next few days I had to live with them making fun of me because of what happened. I till this day hear about it since I have many of the same friends. As I look back at the situation I should have turned it into a joke as the book suggests. I know almost turn every embarrassing moment into some type of joke. It takes the spot light off of me and the focus on how I managed to change it. Still I don't think that anybody enjoys getting embarrassed, humor or not.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Chapter 7

With in chapter 7 there was a section on secrets that caught my attention. The reason I like this book so much is because it breaks down the terms really good. Terms that I face on an everyday basis, but never knew what they meant. This sections talks about the reasons why people keep secrets, and why some people decide to share secrets. I really was able to understand why my family in particular keeps secrets after looking at the chart on page 193 of the book. That section broke reasons down into three different categories: Taboo, rule violation, and conventional. I found that I fell under the taboo and rule violation section because of financial problems that we have and keep secrets and the fact that I am moving into an apartment with my boyfriend before we get married. My family does not have a problem with that since we are more Americanized, but his parents are not so as much as we hate to we are going to have to keep it a secret so we don't upset a lot of people.
I am one that hardly tells secretes because I fill like they are secretes for a reason. The are people however that do know my deepest darkest secrets, but I am very selective on who I tell those to because you never know if they will spill it to another person tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Week 3

As I was reading chapter 6 I found dramaturgical perspective to be a very interesting term. I have always observed how people will act differently around certain groups of people, but never thought of these roles to be slit up as they are in the book. As I read the terms more closely I found myself to have fit in one of those roles through out my life. The most interesting one was the "actor". Even though I try to be myself and not act differently there are times that I feel I have to act more "proper", for example when I am around the elders in my life. Since they are older then me I don't fell its right to use slang words or even use a curse word, like I would with my friends.

I also found audience segregation interesting. I used this a lot in high school with different friends that I hung out with who did not get a long. I use to joke with my friends saying I was doing "traffic control" trying to keep them away so there was not a wreak! This term also made me think about my facebook and myspace and what I put on there, especially now that I am looking for a full time job in the "real world". It never crossed my mind that perspective employers would go on these sites to get a better understanding of who you are as a person.

After reading this section of the book it really made me think of my life in a different way. My mom had always told me growing up that I was so dramatic, if she only knew that we all were actors in our own way!

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Week 2 Entery 2

Stereotypes are something that I feel people deal with everyday. I know I am guilty of doing it a lot. My boyfriend goes to SCU and a lot of the students that go there are white and rich. So I always assume that all of the students that go there are rich if they are white. Which is bad for me to do because I never give these people the time of day because I automatically think they are stuck up. On a normal basis I find myself to be a very friendly and down to earth person, which is why I don't understand why I treat them so bad. I think that it may have to do with the fact that I have struggled through College having to work full time and go to school full time. And I see that they don't have to work and they still have nicer things then me. It may be that I am jealous of these group of people and wish that I could be like them.

I honestly hate stereotypes, I feel like it is mean and rude, but yet is something that is really hard not to do. Even if we (I) try to stop doing it.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Chapter 4

As I was reading chapter 4 I found the concepts related to my everyday life more than I realized. Yes I know that as humans we communicate with people on an everyday basis, but to know the way we communicate with one another has concepts and meanings behind them, that was the crazy part. The concept that I found related to me the most was effective listening. I have always been taught going through school that the better you listen to a speaker the more that you get out of what they are saying. For example, I work with elderly people so their level of communication is different from mine. When I first started to work with them I found myself getting really frustrated because I was not understanding them, and they were not understanding me. The communication between us was not happening. I finally realized that maybe I was not taking the time to listen to what they wanted from me. I was jumping to conclusions; therefore getting them upset when I was giving them the wrong service. So I decided to take my time when it came time to help the elder people that come into my work. Yes, it might take me longer to help them, but in the long run we are have better communication between each other and having a much better experience.