I Am Conversion Disorder

I am conversion disorder. I may cause you to become paralyzed, blind, or give you any other neurological (nervous system) symptoms. The most curious thing of all is that these ailments will not be able to be explained by medical evaluation. I may occur because of a psychological conflict, and it is likely that I begin to show up in people after a stressful event occurs in their life. People who are at risk to have me also commonly have either a medical illness, a personality disorder, or a dissociative disorder. Some doctors doubt my existence, but it is important to understand that people who suffer from me are not making up their symptoms, in fact, these symptoms cause them real distress and they can not be turned on and off at will. The physical symptoms I cause are often said to be an attempt to resolve the psychological conflict I mentioned before. For example, a woman who has beliefs that physical violence is not the answer to anything may suppress her violent feelings, when she has the urge to hit someone/something, I cause her arms to have the physical response of turning numb. Numbness is one of my main physical symptoms. Others include blindness, muteness, and paralysis. The symptoms I cause generally begin suddenly and the person I affect typically has a lack of concern about the symptom, which oddly increases with the severity of the symptom. I am usually discovered after the doctor does an examination on one of the patients and rules out all the physical possibilities of the symptoms. I can be treated by a form of psychotherapy called talk therapy. Stress management training may also reduce symptoms. The body part/physical function I debilitate should continue to be worked in either physical or occupational therapy until the symptom disappears. I do not cause life threatening symptoms, but they can be debilitating for days to weeks, after that the symptoms usually go away.

One of my victims

Personality test results

The big five test was a very long personality test that looked for five different categories of personality as well as cognitive ability. This was my table:

Extraversion	Low				High
Agreeableness	Low				High
Conscientiousness	Low				High
Emotional Stability	Low				High
Openness	Low				High
	Percentile		0 ---------- 25 ---------- 50 ---------- 75 ---------- 100

Extraversion - on the extraversion report I scored in the 37th percentile for girls aged 14-17, which is average. I do like to be around people most of the time and consider myself a social being so I thought I would have scored higher but maybe not. I was warned that I skipped one of those questions on accident so I'm not sure how that affected my score or if it did or not?

Agreeableness - on the agreeableness report I scored in the 75th percentile for girls aged 14-17, which is considered high. I value "cooperation" and "social harmony" that comes with being an agreeable person, so I believe this to be pretty true to myself. However, I don't really care much for being 'popular', which is a trait that agreeable people tend to have. I do my own thing.

Conscientiousness - on the conscientious report I scored in the 8th percentile, which is low. This surprised me because being conscientious means you can regulate impulses, and I can. I don't usually get in trouble or do anything bad but I guess I am more id-dominant than I thought.

Emotional Stability - on the emotional stability report I scored in the 25th percentile, which is considered low. My emotions can be affected greatly in response to positive or negative situations so I think this is probably accurate.

Openness - on the openness report I scored in the 80th percentile, which is high. I am an individual and I do my own thing, so I feel like this is pretty accurate. I am open to experiences and maintain a pretty open mind. I am a very private person though.

The cognitive ability I scored 6/12 and the average is 5.7/12 so I was pretty average. I really didn't know what was going on so I'm impressed that I got half right because those questions seemed difficult for me to wrap my head around.

The second test I took was very strange. It was composed of 36 True or False questions.The questions varied greatly and were accompanied by pictures that were sometimes relevant but almost always disturbing. Examples included: My eyes are always cold, Spinach makes me feel alone. What?! When I was finished with the test my results told me that I am critical of myself, have personality weaknesses but compensate for them, my aspirations are pretty unrealistic, I pride myself in thinking independently and do not accept other opinions without proof. It also said that I have found it unwise to be too revealing to others and that while I'm disciplined and controlled on the outside, I tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside.

I am amazed. The results I got were accurate and I could agree with most of them. I don't know how these questions got to the bottom of my personality but somehow they did and I would rank this more accurate than the Big 5 test, actually.

Paul Ekman and the Evolution of Emotion

How has emotion evolved? Is it universal or does it vary significantly from culture to culture?

Paul Ekman is a psychologist who is an expert on microexpressions and provided a theory for the evolution of emotion. He has done research which has provided back up for Charles Darwin's theory that some emotion is universal, even though emotion can vary somewhat between cultures, especially the amount of emotion used in different cultures. One of his research methods was taking people and showing them photographs of people exhibiting basic emotion expressions and asking the subjects to identify the emotion pictured. He compared those in Western cultures to other cultures and found that the majority of the time, their choices matched. Ekman has also compared to human expressions with similar expressions of primates, which also backs Darwin's theory. He has said that emotions were first meant to serve an adaptive purpose, then later to fulfill a primarily socially communicative function that can influence others. Another study on the blind has shown that they even use the same expressions as those who are not blind to express emotion. To me, that is some of the most strong evidence that emotion has indeed evolved in humans.

Ekman also note that while emotions do appear to be more universal, many people have trouble with interpreting microexpressions, split second changes in the face that indicate whether a person is suppressing their true emotions, consciously or unconsciously (if it makes any difference, I got a 10/10 on my microexpressions quiz!) Microexpressions can help you understand people better, detect lies easier, and protect yourself, among other things. Perhaps being able to detect microexpressions will be the next order for evolution, you know, as sort of a survival mechanism? Who knows?

Ekman's theory of an evolutionary influence on emotion is very interesting. Do I believe in evolution? Sort of, I believe in a creation-evolution hybrid. So I can see where he's coming from and some of his evidence is very convincing (such as the study on the congenially blind). I'd say that emotion is influenced by evolution but also by environment.

Novel

Today I am presented with a bunch of new information I have never thought about before and a question: is testing intelligence fair? I thought it was, after learning how standardized modern intelligence tests are, but there is another thing to be considered: intelligence varies across different ethnic groups and cultures. Different cultures have different values and intelligence is one of them. In class, my group and I took several different quizzes, I saw that they said they were Australian intelligence tests. I figured since Australians spoke English that the tests would not be too difficult. However, the questions were quite strange and while some seemed easy, my group found ourselves only getting a few questions right. My psychology teacher informed us that these questions were basic knowledge for the people in that specific culture and that we probably fell into the "mentally retarded" category of their intelligence.

In order for intelligence tests to be completely fair, people should be tested on what they put values on. It wasn't fair for me to be considered 'mentally retarded' because I wasn't aware of wallabies and kangaroos. Nor is it fair for members of various tribes to be considered 'mentally retarded' because they do not put an emphasis on counting and math. Intelligence is very complex, so the testing should be complex too, it's the only way to make it completely fair.

We also took a test on "street smarts" written by a black sociologist. I thought that my group had maybe gotten most of the questions right but we ended up only getting two right. Many of the answers we chose were based on stereotypes and things we had heard, rather than facts we knew. This relates to an article I read for psychology too, an article titled "You Can't High Jump If the Bar Is Set Low" by Connie Leslie. This article was very interesting and proposed a perspective I had never thought of before. It proposed that the reason black students do not fair as well educationally is 'stereotype vulnerability'. This means that the threat of a stereotype on people can affect their performance. The article says "when blacks (or any other group) are confronted with a stereotype about their intellectual skills before they take tests, they tend to perform according to the stereotype). The article was very clear in providing studies with evidence to back up this statement. It makes perfect sense, too. Imagine if nobody believed in you and thought you were stupid, what would you do? Many would probably say "I would work hard to prove them wrong" and maybe they would, but it is easy to say that when it's not the reality. It makes sense that people would succumb to the negative stereotypes of others because they feel bad about themselves and how people perceive them.

Stereotypes are all around us. As a teenager, some of the worst stereotypes are set on me. Stereotypes like "bad tippers" or "trouble makers" have caused me to have rude waiters and openly suspicious store clerks when I'm with my friends. Do I act on those stereotypes? No, I actually try my best to disprove them, but I can see why some teenagers do. It is annoying for a waiter not to be friendly to you just because other teenagers haven't tipped them before, but I am always a good tipper and try to give them hope for teenagers. I understand that I do not succumb to 'stereotype vulnerability', but several other teenagers do. Discrimination and stereotyping are not okay, whether it be because of ethnicity or age. I believe that stereotype vulnerability exists and is important to keep in mind before judging someone on their actions and abilities.

Photographic Memory: Does it exist?

This article from Psychology today struck me. We have started to discuss the Memory chapter in class lately. This article is about 'photographic' memory and what it is and whether it exists. I was quite interested in this article because I had a teacher my sophomore year (who has since retired) that claimed to have a photographic memory, and she seemed very credible. She could pick up a book she had never read, glance at a page, and recall what happened. (Wow, what a talent!). It made for her to be a very fast reader.

This article makes the claim "It's impossible to recover images with perfect accuracy. The myth of photographic memory". That is interesting and I wonder if it works the same way for images with text on them or not. While the article does not acknowledge photographic memory, it says that memory that comes very close is "eidetic memory". Good eidetic memory is something people are born with, it can not be learned. After staring at a picture for 30 seconds, people with a good sense of eidetic memory can remember the image with very great detail. Still, even for seasoned eidetikers, their reports may contain flaws and the vivid memory only lasts a few minutes. Children have a very good eidetic memory that seems to fade over time. This might explain why children have a very keen sense for detail.

So, was my teacher a fraud? Well I'd like to hope not. I bought into it. Maybe she never lost her "eidetic memory" that she had as a child. I think it'd be very interesting to get inside her mind.

Cry baby

No parent likes to see their child sad or to hear them cry, but how should they deal with it? If a parent gives their crying child a cookie, will they stop crying? This video suggests otherwise. This child, after receiving their cookie, starts to fake cry in hopes of getting another cookie from his mother. This is an example of positive reinforcement, something we learned about in class today. Positive reinforcement is part of B.F. Skinner's Operant Conditioning theory. The behavior (crying) will increase because a stimulus (cookie) is added. It is somewhat confusing because crying doesn't sound positive, but you can't exactly think of it that way. This mom has gotten herself into a pickle by rewarding a behavior that I'm sure she does not want to continue because as I said before, no one wants to see their child sad.

Hail to thee Ashwaubenon...

In our project for AP Psych, we had to make a PSA convincing possible movers to Ashwaubenon. Upon watching my classmates PSAs at home, I found myself more interested in the ones that were filmed instead of the picture slideshows. They kept me much more entertaining and gave me a better sense of Ashwaubenon and what the people in the videos really had to say for them.

That being said, I would have to say my favorite video was Ric, Tommy, Tyler, and Elliott's video. I will embed it at the bottom of my blog post. Even though I did not see all of the PSAs because not all of them are on youtube (heck, mine's not even on youtube), I liked theirs out of the ones I did see. It was engaging to watch them film theirs, going from location to location. I also really liked the fact that it was set to music. It was not boring because they gave quick, clear, and concise definitions and examples that, while they were easy to understand, were not read from the textbook and boring. I quite enjoyed all of the different places they went and the slight humor was very entertaining. Their voices were very engaging and not monotone and I wouldn't mind if it was longer because it entertained me and made me want to move to Ashwaubenon. I also liked that they exposed the dark side of Ashwaubenon (literally it was dark the entire video, but also they seemed to have caught a drug deal outside of the School House). While not ideal, no neighborhood is perfect and people should always know that. Ashwaubenon, though, in my biased opinion, comes pretty close :) Nice job guys!