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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.

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.

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.

Portfolio (Paper #1)

Hello

Hi! I am an aspiring psychologist who is naturally inclined to the field of psychology, especially social psychology. I am interested in people’s thoughts and behaviors and why they think and behave the way they do. My blog might not be as bizarre and absurd as some of Sigmund Freud’s theories (although I must say that his theories, no matter how bizarre and absurd they seem, are highly valid). Do not psych yourself out. I will not be blogging about how your behaviors are driven by your libido (your sexual impulses), nor will I be blogging about how you are unconsciously jealous of your same-sexed parent because he/she is taking away the attention of your opposite-sexed parent that would have otherwise been given to you.

I will be blogging about society’s pressures on people and how those pressures affect the way people think and behave. I will be blogging about the different pressures that society puts on an individual: the pressure to be good-looking, the pressure to be successful, the pressure to get married, etc. It interests me how society’s pressures affect us: the way we think, the way we behave, the way we live. We judge what we should be and what our lives should be like based on what society thinks. As much as we would like to think otherwise, we, in a way, conform to society’s pressures. Ironically, though, we do not realize that we individually make up this society. So, in a way, it is not only society’s pressures on us but it is also the pressures we put on ourselves and the pressures we put on others.

I am interested in this topic because I feel like everyone, including myself, gets overwhelmed with society’s pressures from time to time. As a young adult, I have been faced with many societal pressures such as the pressure to obtain higher education, the pressure to dress well, and the pressure to know what I want to do with my life, to name a few. Sometimes we do not realize that everyone else faces the same societal pressures as we do. We are all affected by societal pressures. These societal pressures cause us to think and behave a certain way, whether we realize it or not. I, for instance, might not be studying as hard in school, go shopping as often, or fixating on my future as much if it were not for the pressures I felt from society.

For the next couple weeks, I will be blogging about how societal pressures affect the way we think and behave. I will be trying to decode the reasons why we think and behave the way we do in response to a societal pressure. I am hoping this will help me and my readers to understand the role of societal pressures in our lives, and how influential it is.

Daddy Dialectic

Daddy Dialectic is a blog about parents of the 21st Century America. Although the blog consists of six contributors, the blog starter and the main contributor is Jeremy Adam Smith. Smith is the senior editor of Greater Good magazine, the author of The Daddy Shift, and the co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct. His essays, articles, and short stories are also in many books and periodicals. He has a son and he used to be a stay-at-home father. He seems to be very passionate about parenting and about expanding knowledge in family and parenthood. Smith has two other blogs that he has worked on: his own blog, Jeremy’s Journal on Media and Democracy and another blog with other team members, Science of the Greater Good. His most recent posts are from Daddy Dialectic, where he blogs every couple days. Some of his interesting posts from Daddy Dialectic include: The Failure of Success, about how different parenting styles have different influences on children’s success, and The Way We Were vs. The Way We Are, about how marriage has transformed from business-based to love-based. Based on the number of comments the blog receives, Daddy Dialectic is not a very popular blog.

Daddy Dialectic does not relate to my topic very much. It consists of a lot of other subjects that are unrelated to my topic. Also, the subjects that do relate to my topic tend to be more focused on society’s expectations of people rather than society’s pressures on people. However, although it does not completely relate to my topic, it still relates to my topic enough to be helpful. For instance, in the post The Failure of Success, Smith talks about how middle-class and upper-class parents are more concerned about their children’s success than working-class parents are. Smith points out that the reason for this is because middle-class and upper-class parents live a lifestyle where success is expected of them and their children. Simply put, we feel pressured to live up to expectations because

“[w]e feel intense pressure to follow the norm around us.”

Daddy Dialectic could be considered a scholarly and academic post. Smith often makes references to books and journal and magazine articles. He also often includes studies and research that have been conducted on the topic he is writing about. In The Failure of Success, Smith made references from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: the Story of Success and included a study conducted by sociologist Annette Lareau. Smith’s posts are detailed enough to give his audience an understanding of what he is talking about and what he is trying to prove. Daddy Dialectic’s intended audience is "twenty-first-century parents” (or in other words- modern parents), although not all of its topics are limited to parents or parenting. Parents are relevant to Daddy Dialectic because the blog was written by, about, and for them. Daddy Dialectic will give me topics about the different types of societal pressures that parents, wives/husbands, and families face. However, my blog is not going to be limited to only parents, wives/husbands, and families. It will reach out to everyone who feels pressure from society in general, not just to people who feel pressure for the particular roles they hold in society.

Voice Critique

Weight has become such a huge problem in our society today. Eating Disorder Hope is a blog concerning the health of girls and women, particularly their weight. It is written by Jacquelyn Ekern, the founder of Eating Disorder Hope website. Eating Disorder Hope seeks to help girls and women with eating disorders to recover and to adopt healthy eating habits. It encourages eating-disorder victims to seek help and promotes eating-disorder survivors to guide them and to share stories with them. It explains to family and friends of eating-disorder victims how they can help them, such as how to listen to them and how to approach them about the disorder. It also advertises ways that other people can help victims with eating disorders, such as attending fundraising events like benefit concerts and fashion shows.

In Eating Disorder Hope, not only does Ekern seek to help girls and women who have eating disorders, she also seeks to prevent girls and women from getting them. She discusses the causes for eating disorders and their effects on girls and women’s thoughts and behaviors. She blames society’s pressure to be thin for the increasing eating disorder amongst girls and women. She exclaims that girls and women who have eating disorders are misunderstood by society because society blames them for having the disorder when in fact it is society’s fault for putting pressure on them to look a certain way. Due to this misunderstanding, eating-disorder victims lack help and support from society. In Fight Back Against Eating Disorders, Ekern points out that

“shame, stigma, and lack of awareness lead to eating disorders being largely misunderstood.”

For this reason, she felt the need to create the Eating Disorder Hope site to help victims with eating disorders. At times, she is a bit too harsh on society. She completely blames society for the eating disorders amongst girls and women and she accuses society of not being concerned with eating-disorder victims.

Ekern shows a lot of passion for her cause. She has been blogging in Eating Disorder Hope since May 2005 and blogs about once a month. Most of her blog posts are of resources for eating-disorder victims, their family and friends, and potential helpers. She offers resources to give them access to help and knowledge about the disorder, such as websites for information and places for treatment. She also promotes and advertises resources where other people can help eating-disorders victims, such as applying for a job that specializes in treating victims with eating disorders. Ekern shows a great deal of sympathy and compassion for eating-disorder victims, particularly because she had an eating disorder herself. In Hungry For Hope - Restoring Identity: 2009 Remuda Ranch Christian Conference on Eating Disorders, she related herself to other victims of eating disorders, explaining that

“[t]heir identity can feel lost in calories, numbers on the scale and habitual behaviors.”

Through her use of language such as this, she attempts to gain her readers’ sympathy and compassion for eating-disorder victims, which can be a bit overwhelming at times.

Ekern’s goal in Eating Disorder Hope is to gain support for victims with eating disorders. Because she mainly posts resources, her use of language tends to be simple and straightforward and she makes her points obvious. Her posts are really more like announcements rather than typical blog posts. Her post titles are usually the announcements (such as programs and events that are going on) and then her actual posts usually contain descriptions of the announcements (such as when and where the programs and events are being held). She sometimes uses banners as links to her resources. Through her advertisements of programs, events, etc. on her blog, Ekern has maintained enthusiastically supportive of eating-disorder victims by promoting eating disorder awareness for almost four years. Her passion for this cause is quite inspiring.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.