Thursday, April 23, 2009

Society's Pressure for an Intimate Relationship

For a girl, it is almost like a ritual to sit around and talk and catch up with your girlfriends about each other’s lives. Of all the aspects of our lives, our love life tends to become the main top of our discussions. In my own personal experience, I have sat around countless times, listening to my girlfriends talk about their relationships, or their lack of one. I listen to my girlfriends who are single whine and complain about how lonely they feel due to the fact that they do not have a boyfriend and how much they badly want one. Conversations after conversations and topics after topics, the discussion about our love lives has never seized to be left out from our girl talks.

Society places a lot of pressure on us to have the most perfect life possible. We tend to feel that we should have it all: impressive education, successful career, loving family, supportive friends, and a significant other who we are perfectly compatible with, as well as a fairy-tale ending sealed with an adorable little baby in a carriage. This happens even when I get together with my friends to catch up. My friends would ask me what is new in my life, expecting an exciting story about a new boyfriend or at least a new eye-candy. When my response is that I do not have time for a love life because I am too busy focusing on school, they immediately exclaim that I can have both at the same time. After these conversations, I would start to believe that I should go out and meet new guys who could potentially be my new boyfriend or eye-candy, even though I have no interest in doing so, just so I would not disappoint my friends at our next get-together. Society puts a lot of pressure on us to have all kinds of wonderful relationships, so we seek out intimate relationships in hopes of relieving those expectations.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The American Dream: The Pressure to Succeed?

In America where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are greatly and proudly emphasized, every dream is believed to be attainable. It is deeply rooted in the American dream that anything is possible if only you can dream and seek to make those dreams come true. Dreams are believed to be attainable as long as you work hard enough and are motivated enough to reach that goal. With all these opportunities and possibilities, one is encouraged, and even expected, to succeed. If one does not succeed, they are deemed as lazy and non-goal-oriented. So, along with opportunities and possibilities come the pressure to succeed and the pressure to be successful.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Weight is a factor in Infertility

It is important for teenagers to adopt and maintain healthy eating habits. Teenagers’ unhealthy weights can affect their fertility rate in their adulthood. Teenagers who are underweight or overweight are likely to have fewer children than they normally would if they were normal weight. Abnormal body weight can cause difficulties and complications in reproductions and pregnancies. It is unclear, though, if teenagers with abnormal body weights would have fewer children than teenagers with normal body weights.

In a recently finished study, researchers studied about 1,300 Finnish men and women. The research started in 1980 when the subjects were between the ages of three and eighteen and ended when they reached their adulthood and were reproducing. The research measured their body mass index (BMI) and kept a record of their health. The study showed that adults who were underweight as teenagers had 10 to 16 percent fewer children than adults who were normal weight as teenagers. Also, adults who were overweight as teenagers had 32 to 38 percent fewer children than adults who were normal weight as teenagers.

This study shows that the body weight during teen years can have a major impact on the fertility rate in the adulthood. Even if teenagers who have abnormal body weights eventually manage to have normal body weights as adults, their teen BMI can still decrease their fertility rate. For females, being underweight can break their menstrual cycle. For males, being both underweight and overweight can decrease sperm quality. For both males and females, being overweight can create problems and dysfunctions in the reproductive system.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

PsychWidget Part 2

PsychWidget is a somewhat popular tool. Since its release on August 13, 2008, there have been 14,592 downloads. Its first version was updated to Version 2.0 on March 18, 2009, with faster search engine results, more information about partner sites, and a retractable slide-out panel. It was updated again to Version 2.1 on March 28, 2009.

PsychWidget has been getting fairly good ratings. Its average rating is four stars out of five. Although there have not been many reviews, all the reviews that it has received are very good reviews. Many users comment that it is a very cool widget and that it is a useful tool. They also comment that it works fine. One user even said that it was fun. According to the Yahoo! Widgets users, PsychWidget falls under the fun category (versus the categories beautiful and useful). I think it could also fall under the category useful too because it provides you with information as well as resources to more information. The only limitation with PsychWidget is that it places a great emphasis on social psychology and might not include as much information about other aspects of psychology as you might want or need. Although it does include other aspects of psychology, its main emphasis is on social psychology. So, you would only find this widget useful if you generally want information about social psychology or topics related to social psychology.

When you type your topic into the news search engine in the widget, it directs you to the Social Psychology Network website with your headline search results. You can choose to either have all the results displayed or to only display results from the past year, the past month, or the past week. When you type your topic into the Social Psychology Network search engine in the widget, it directs you to the Social Psychology Network website with your Social Psychology Network search results. You can choose to either have all the results displayed or to only display publications (you can choose to display all the publications or only books, only journals, only articles, or only others), people (you can choose to display all the people or only Social Psychology Network profiles, only Social Psychology Network mentors, or only Media contacts), and other (you can choose to display all the other results or only courses, only organizations, or only miscellaneous). You can also do advanced search to narrow or specify your results.

When you click on the forum button in the widget, it directs you to the Social Psychology Network website that provides you with either student discussions or professional discussions. In these discussions, you can choose a discussion topic you want to discuss about. You can also post or look for jobs that are hiring under Job Postings. Also, you can add and share website links under Add-a Link. When you click on the directory, it directs you to the Social Psychology Network website where you can search for Social Psychology Network profiles, or you can choose to specifically search for Social Psychology Network mentors or media contacts. You can even use the GeoSearch Profiles to locate them by regions. You can also browse through certain topics such as attributions, emotion, and gender.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Usefulness of PsychWidget

PsychWidget is a very useful tool for the readers of this blog. It provides a resource for psychology-related topics, particularly social psychology. It places an emphasis on social psychology while still providing a wide variety of other psychology-related topics. This is helpful because although our topic mainly falls under the category of social psychology, it can also fall under a variety of other different psychology categories as well. By using PsychWidget, you can specifically search for social psychology topics while still being able to broaden and expand your search to the general aspect of psychology.

PsychWidget features a search box for psychology news stories and even includes the latest psychology-related headlines from all around the world. You are constantly updated with the most recent news and you can also search for certain news stories. PsychWidget also features a search box for psychology web links and allows you to do advanced search on your topic. PsychWidget provides forums so you can communicate with other students or professionals about psychology or about topics related to psychology. It also provides forums for job postings, sharing website links, and sending e-mail messages through the listservs of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology to get information. PsychWidget provides a directory where you can search for Social Psychology Network profiles, or you can choose to specifically search for Social Psychology Network mentors or media contacts. You can even use the GeoSearch Profiles to locate them by regions. You can also browse through certain topics such as attitudes, emotion, and culture/ethnicity. PsychWidget also provides links to a couple useful Social Psychology websites.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

PsychWidget

I have found the most perfect online tool for the topic of this blog: PsychWidget. PsychWidget was created by the Social Psychology Network organization (SocialPsychology.org) and was funded by the National Science Foundation. It is designed for psychologists, students, teachers, faculties, and others who are interested in psychology. PsychWidget is a very useful tool for psychology-related topics, especially social psychology. Although it includes a wide variety of psychology-related topics, its emphasis is mainly on social psychology. This is helpful to this blog because our topic can also fall under a variety of different categories although it mainly falls under social psychology as well.

PsychWidget features a search box for psychology news stories and even includes the latest psychology-related headlines from all around the world. It also features a search box for psychology web links and allows you to do advanced search on your topic. PsychWidget provides forums for student discussions, professional discussions, job postings, adding website links, and sending e-mail messages through the listservs of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. PsychWidget provides a directory where you can search for Social Psychology Network profiles, or you can choose to specifically search for Social Psychology Network mentors or media contacts. You can even use the GeoSearch Profiles to locate them by regions. You can also browse through certain topics such as attitudes, attributions, emotion, gender, and culture/ethnicity.

PsychWidget displays icons with links to the main Social Psychology Network website and other websites that are owned by or partnered with the organization:

*Society for Personality and Social Psychology – Seeks to expand the interest and research in personality and social psychology by providing information, journal articles, links, and a search engine and by promoting membership to the society. The organization also offers funding and educational programs to people interested in studying personality or social psychology. As a member, you can communicate with other members through bulletins, announcements, and discussion boards.

*Society of Experimental Social Psychology – Seeks to advance the research and experiments in social psychology by providing information and a search engine and by promoting membership to the society. As a member, you are given access to the organization’s journal articles.

*Understanding Prejudice – Seeks to help others understand the causes and consequences of prejudice by providing links to prejudice-related resources, searchable databases to prejudice-related topics, and interactive exercises online on prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.

*eInterview - Conducts web-based interviews that can change questions, response options, and wordings based on previous answers to the questions.

*Research Randomizer – Generates random sampling and random assignments for trials, surveys, experiments, etc.

*Stanford Prison Experiment – Gives information about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Provides a slide show on the experiment, a discussion board for the experiment, and links related to the experiment. It even sells the experiment on DVD.

*Jigsaw Classroom – Advocates the Jigsaw Classroom, a technique that reduces racial conflicts amongst young students while increasing cooperative learning.

*Joe Chemo – Educates about the causes and consequences of smoking.