Abstract: Psychology and Media Essay

Kendra Lipscomb
Mr. Dupuis
Psychology
5th hr
1/5/15

Abstract
In this paper you’re about to read, I will be sharing with you how psychology plays a huge part in our environment, media and even our mind. This is just a small fraction of what I going to write about and try to explain to you. This paper will consist of the following(s):
- Abnormal Psychology
- Adolescence
- Childhood or Elderly Issues
- Heredity & Environment
- Memory & Thought
- Social Psychology
- Stress & Health
- Workings of the Mind & Body

Abnormal psychology
What is abnormal psychology: A branch of psychology concerned with mental and emotional disorders (mental retardation) and with certain incompletely understood normal phenomena (as dreams and hypnosis).

Environment and Heredity
Some disciplines are too focused on either nature or nurture when it comes to human behavior-- biologists are not trained in how culture can affect behavior, and anthropologists, sociologists and cultural studies scholars are not trained in how genes work. These fields get exposed to work that supports nature or nurture, and then they tend to be more dismissive of the other.
My cognitive psychology professor at Georgia Tech said that the nature-nurture debate kind of defined psychology. That's not a bad thing. One of the great qualities of psychology, as a scholarly field, is that it can actually address the nature/nurture question
Culture can also affect genes! For example, Northern Europeans drank more milk, where the Mediterraneans ate more cheese. Over the years, the Northern Eurpoeans evolved to be more likely to be able to digest lactose into adulthood.
The best way, experimentally, to determine the influence of genes and culture is with separated twin studies. When genetically identical children are raised in different cultures, we can, to some extent, control for the effects of culture. But these studies are expensive and difficult to do.
It would be great to be able to look at genes and cultures themselves and come up with good guesses for hypotheses, but how is that possible when genes can affect culture, and culture can affect genes?
We can look at genes as causing a predisposition for a behavior (making it more likely), causing no relevant predisposition, or actively inhibiting a behavior. Similarly, we can look at culture as supporting, being irrelevant to, or inhibiting a behavior. These can be crossed, giving us these combinations:

Memories and thought
Memories
It turns out the more Trans fat you eat; the less you may remember, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association’s scientific conference last week. Maybe that explains why some people don’t know how they pack on the pounds over the holidays.
To look at what role Trans fat played in memory scientists in this new study looked at the diets of about one thousand working age healthy men.
The participants were shown 104 cards with words on them. With each new card the adults were shown, he was asked whether the word was new or had been repeated.

Thought
Most people don’t really think much about what they hear or see. The information gets filed somewhere deep into the brain, seemingly never to be thought of again, or maybe it just goes in one ear and out the other. However, repeated stimuli can leave lasting effects. For example: a woman goes to the grocery store, and while waiting line to check out she glances at the magazines. The cover boasts a thin, beautiful woman flashing a bright smile, and one of the taglines says “lose 6 pounds in 6 days!” initially, she may not internalize that. The following week, she again goes to the store and sees a different magazine with another beautiful woman with a line that reads “10 foods that help you lose weight”. She may now start t wonder if there is something to this weight thing. Is this how I should look? Do I need to lose weight? Is that why my boyfriend/ husband doesn’t pay attention to me? Does he want me thinner?

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