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Social Influence and Group Processes
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Social Influence and Group Processes
1. What is conformity?
Conformity is any alteration in an individual’s behavior so as to coincide closely with group standards, for example, people who pick up heavy drinking upon joining college even though they were not heavy drinkers before (King 424).
2. Explain Asch’s Conformity Experiment. Include details about the experiment and the results of the study.
King (424) describes that Asch’s conformity experiment uses 6 people to test conformity. The experiment involves 5 participants who are part of the experiment and an individual who is unaware of the fact. Two cards are shown to the participants with the first having a single vertical line drawn on it and the second with three vertical lines with varying length. The task is a simple determination of which of the line sin the second card has the same length as the line given on the first card. The first several trials involve total agreement on which line is a match. On the fourth trial, the other participants pick similar incorrect lines. The conformity experiment now tests the last participant in the way they make a choice, either based on what the eyes see or through conforming to what the others said. Volunteer participants conformed to incorrect answers 35% of the time. The pressure to conform is always very high (King 424).
3. What is the difference between normative and informational conformity?Normative conformity is the influence another group or individuals have on a person because of the latter’s desire to be liked/loved (King 424). For example, an individual is likely to adopt the ways of a gang in order to find favor, such as using slang language and assuming specific attitudes to fit in a group. Informational conformity is the influence other people have on an individual because the latter want to be right, for example group members may have certain knowledge that a person lacks so the latter follows the group to be right (King 424).
4. What is obedience?
Obedience is defined by King (425) as behavior that complies with explicit demands of a person in authority, for example lifting one’s hands up when instructed by the police.
5. Explain Milgram’s Experiment. Include details about the experiment and the results of the study.
King (425) describes Stanley Milgram’s experiment where part of a psychology experiment directs a person to deliver a series of electric shocks to another individual. The role of the participant as a teacher is to punish the learner by increasing the shock intensity every time a mistake is made. The learner is a 50-year-old man with a heart condition strapped to a chain in the next room (a confederate). The apparatus to be used has 30 switches ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts marked as beyond dangerous. The learner makes mistakes early in the experiment and as the shock intensity is increased, he expresses that he is in pain. He demands that experiment be stopped at 150 volts and at 180 volts screams that he is unable to handle the pain. At 300 volts, the learner yells about his condition. Any hesitation from the participant elicits more commands from the experimenter to continue citing that the test must continue. Eventually the learner stops responding and the experimenter defines the rules that failure to respond is treated as a wrong answer. The learner is completely unresponsive and could be severely injured or dead. In the experiment, a majority of the participants obeyed the instructions. More than 66% deliver the full 450 volts.
6. Explain the Stanford Prison Experiment. Include details about the experiment and the results of the study.
King (427) presents the Stanford Prison experiment in a demonstration of power of obedience as conducted by Philip Zombardo. The aim of the research is to illustrate the potentially horrific effects of obedience to those that obey and the ones wielding power. 24 participants were assigned roles, guard or prisoner, with the prisoners being arrested in their homes, booked as per the normal process, and fingerprinted at the police station and sent to prison. They would be strip-searched and issued uncomfortable uniforms and sent to designated cells (three per cell). The guards wore uniforms and mirrored glasses and wielded wooded batons. The glasses prevented eye contact with prisoners. The prisoner superintendent, the experimenter, gave instructions to the guards that they had all power over the prisoners and that the latter had none. The guards were told to take away the prisoner’s individuality and were to refer to the prisoners by their uniform identification numbers. The results were unexpected as the first 36 hours produced uncontrollable rage from prisoners and an uprising. Some guards attacked prisoners as they behaved in sadistic ways. Prisoners are harassed and humiliated. The study was terminated after 6 days due to participant safety. The study revealed that situational factors greatly affect human behaviour.
7. Explain the terms: deindividuation, social contagion, social facilitation, and social loafing. Include an example of each.
Deindividuation is when being a group member reduces personality identity, eroding the sense of personal responsibility for example behavior of an individual in a riot compared to when acting alone (King 428). Social contagion is imitative behavior that involves behavior spread, ideas, and emotions, for example, laughing loudly in a group setting because others are laughing (King 428). Social facilitation is the improvement of individual performance because of the presence of others, for example, better performance in a class presentation compared to individual practice attempts (King 428). Social loafing is the tendency of a person to exert less effort in a group setting because of the reduced accountability for individual effort for example, less participation in a class assignment done in a group (King 429).
8. What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?
Prejudice is the unjustified negative attitude towards a person on the basis of their membership to a given group while discrimination the unjustified negative or harmful actions towards a person because they belong to a particular group (King 433).
Works Cited
King, Laura. Experience psychology. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2019.
The discussion on water has been one of the most common in the world.
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The discussion on water has been one of the most common in the world. From the sources, preservation, supply, contamination and many other related topics, water has been a broad area to talk about, it being one of the essentials of human survival. The human species have got a role to protect water and use it to its maximum advantage but many are the times we forget on its preservation and storage and end up suffering due to lack of water or even presence of contamination in the water. The careless approaches taken towards this treasure have got effects on all living animlals and have had the greatest effect on the marine life. In my essay, I am going to summarize an article that discusses the difference and existing notion between the tap and bottled water
According to the article, the other claims that there has been six main beverages that has for ages defined human past but water has been the outstanding one. It has been highly fashionable like many drinks in history, has led to a lot of different medical views, and has had unidentified but extreme geopolitical significance. The availability of water will be a key determinant on the path to be followed for the future of humankind on earth and beyond. It is the same drink that led to the course of human development
The maintenance of adequate supply of fresh water has been very hard. Initially, there was less contamination less on other beverages like beer than it was in water. The contamination of water began to unveil in the 19th century and it became a very hard thing to tackle and has affected the human kind for a long time.
Unlike the early days when human turned to other drinks as substitutes of water due to the contamination, it is now possible to openly tackle the problem of contamination directly through things like water purification and improvements in sanitation. The growth of water popularity is a great suggestion that the danger of contamination is reducing at last though the reality is quit complicated. There has been a very big difference between the developing and developed worlds in their attitude towards water.
There has been a great growth in the sale of bottled water. The developed has enjoyed the availability of tap water which is safe to drink and highly available. Italians are said to be the most consumers of bottled water taking an average 180 liters per year each. They are followed by French, Belgians, Germans and Spanish. The consumption of bottled water has grown by 11 percent and has led to an increase in revenues which in 2013 was 46 billion dollars. Restaurants has been serving water at a very high cost as it is kept in a designer bottle which people has got the tendency of moving with all the time. In the United States gas stations, water is a bit more expensive than kerosene.
The bottled water has become more popular due to the notion that the water is healthier and safer than the tap water. This is not the case as tap water, mainly in developed countries is as safe as the bottled. In case there is a contamination scare, it affects the bottled water also. A study published in the Archives of Family Medicine, the researchers had a comparison between the tap and bottled water using the water from Ohio and Cleveland and discovered that a quarter of the sampled bottled water had a higher level of bacteria. They made a conclusion than the notion of bottled water being safer can be misguided.
There hasn’t been any evidence that the bottled water is healthier and safer to use in the developed nations. Most people cannot tell the difference between the two in a blind tasting test. The taste different between the bottled waters is higher than that between bottled and tap water. People go on buying the bottled water even being expensive.
As evident in the article, there is slight, if no difference between the bottled and tap water in the developed countries. The bottled water sales has been high in these countries as it has been a lot of people’s preference as they still have that notion of the bottled water being better. It is a duty of the human race to protect water from contamination, we knowing the benefits of that. It is also a true claim that one can now enjoy tap water in the developed countries and safe on money which is used in buying bottled water in fear of health issues.
Notes on the Muscular and Nervous Systems
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Notes on the Muscular and Nervous Systems
Chapter 11: The Muscular System
The Musculoskeletal system of the human body is made up of muscles that provide support and stiffness to the skeleton joints. The muscles act as motors to the musculoskeletal system that allows movement of the skeleton. They can actively produce tension, and that gives it the capacity to stiffen the joints enabling change.
Types of Muscles
There are three types of muscle tissues in the human body, namely:
The smooth or visceral muscle
This type of muscle is soft in appearance and are exceedingly extensible. They include the muscles in hollow organs like the uterus, bladder, intestines, and the stomach. Also, the walls of blood vessels, that is, veins and arteries, are made up of these muscles.
Cardiac Muscle
They include the walls of the heart. Just like the smooth muscles, cardiac muscles are innervated by an autonomic nervous system.
Skeletal muscle
These muscles have a striated appearance. They have parallel stripes that are regularly spaced, giving it its appearance. Unlike the cardiac and smooth muscles, skeletal muscles are multinucleated. The voluntary or somatic nervous system controls the muscles, and hence, their contractions are voluntary.
Functions of Muscles
Muscles are involved in controlling the movement and posture of humans as well as heat production and protection. As for stability, muscles serve as shock absorbers to outside pressures, thus protecting the body. Also, vital body organs such as the heart and abdomen are covered by muscles that protect them from harm. Similarly, through the contraction, most of the energy used is released to the body as heat, thus helps in keeping the body warm. Another function includes controlling blood pressure. The skeletal muscles alter the pressure in veins during contraction leading to the venous return of blood.
Skeletal Muscles’ Structure
Microstructure:
Muscle cells look like a long, threadlike fiber that is 10-100 micrometers in diameter and 30 centimeters long. The thread is covered by a thin membrane known as the sarcolemma. The sarcolemma is then covered by the endomysium, which connects different muscle fibers to the tendon.
Each muscle fiber is made up of smaller threadlike structures, the Myofibrils that runs through its entire length. The Myofibrils are crossed with transverse and dark bands of light that give the skeletal muscle its striated appearance. The repeating unit between the stripes in a myofibril is called the Sarcomere, within which protein filaments overlap. Protein filaments are either thin (actin) or thick (myosin), and they overlap with each other at one end of the Sarcomere and join to other sarcomeres at the other end. The point of joining is referred to as a ‘Z line’ or band.
The ‘I band’ is the area that contains only actin filaments, and it appears like a light band. On the other side, the region that contains myosin filaments is darker and is known as the ‘A band.’ The band is known for its refraction of more than one wavelength of light.
Within the A band is an area where the satin and myosin do not overlap, and it’s called the H zone. M zone, or the middle disk, lies in the middle of the H band, and it connects various myosin.
Macrostructure.
A fascicle, also known as a fasciculus, is a combination of a hundred or more muscle fibers. The endomysium of each strand is connected to connective tissue, the perimysium that covers the fascicle. An epimysium is a connective tissue that binds different fascicles together to form a complete muscle. A muscle fiber contains myofilaments that run its entire length and are attached to the endomysium at the ends. The muscle fibers are joined through a series of connective tissues and are finally attached to a bone. Tendons are the cords that connect muscles to the bones.
Muscles are attached to movable limbs, and thus, the tendon move during contraction and relaxation of the flesh. The movement may create friction between adjacent muscles and, therefore, damage. Thus, there is a loose connective tissue between the muscles that help in reducing friction. A sac that lubricates soft tissues on bones and known a bursa is also available to assist in friction minimization.
Muscle action.
The contraction ability of muscles is used to differentiate them. Contraction refers to the development of tension within a tissue that causes it to pull on its attachments. Muscle action may involve shortening, lengthening, or muscles maintaining the same length.
Muscle actions include:
Concentric action- it occurs when an active muscle draws its attachments closer together, especially when the movement is in the same direction with that of the attached limb.
Eccentric contraction- it occurs when an active muscle draws its attachments further apart from each other. Mostly, it occurs when the muscle activity is in the opposite direction with the rotation of the attached limb.
Isometric contraction- occurs when a muscle is active, but its attachments do not move relative to each other. Mostly, the action occurs when the attached limb to the tissue does not rotate and thus no change in the kinetic and potential energy.
Muscles are given different terms to describe their roles relevant to other muscles or joint actions. Agonist muscles are those that can create a force in the similar direction of the motion of the joints. In this case, concentrically active muscles are agonistic to the actions occurring at the bones they are attached. An antagonist’s muscle is that which is capable of creating an opposite force to the attached joint. A stabilizer muscle prevents movement in a limb when the reference muscle contracts, especially if the change is unwanted.
A neutralizer is a muscle that creates a force to oppose the actions of other tissues. Synergy, on the other hand, is used to define a muscle that assists agonist muscles or a muscle whose torque adds up to the force of an agonist. The behavior of tissue is affected by the arrangement of muscle fibers or the myofibrils in the muscle. The maximum energy of a muscle depends on factors such as the cross-sectional area, length, and velocity of the tissue. Other factors include prestretch, fiber type, fatigue, and the duration of the stimulus.
Chapter 12: The Nervous System
The musculoskeletal system is managed and controlled by the nervous system. The control is done through the collection of information from the stimuli, processing it and then, initiating a response to it. The system is organized into the central and peripheral nervous systems. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord, which are covered by the skull and vertebral column, respectively. The brain acts as the central processor, while the spinal cord transmits signals to and from the peripheral system. The peripheral system consists of 12 cranial nerves and 31 pairs of spinal nerves, which detects information from the external environment and sends stimuli to the muscles.
The nervous system can also be subdivided into the somatic and autonomic systems. The somatic system, also called the voluntary system, is involved in conscious sensations. On the other hand, the autonomic system is engaged with unconscious feelings and actions. The difference between the two is that the somatic nervous system controls movement while the autonomic part regulates the functions of internal organs. Neurons form an essential unit of the nervous system. The cell membrane of a neuron has an electrical potential that can change due to stimulation.
The types of neurons include:
Sensory or afferent neurons- these neurons receive stimuli from the external and internal environment and sends it to the central nervous system. Their cell bodies lie to the spinal cord.
Motor/efferent neurons- they receive stimuli from the other types of neurons and send the signal to the muscles. Their cell bodies are located within the spinal cord.
Interneurons/ connector neurons- they link both the motor and the sensory neurons.
A motor unit is a vital unit of the neuromuscular system, and it is composed of muscle fibers and a single motor neuron. The number of muscle fibers in a motor neuron represents the number of branches at the axon end. The ratio of motor neurons to the muscle fibers in a muscle represents the degree of control over muscle contraction that a person possesses.
The muscle fibers are distributed throughout the area of the tissue, and thus, adjacent fibers form a different motor unit. The potential of an individual muscle fiber membrane is usually small compared to the chemical stimuli of a neural action. Thus, a muscle action potential is always generated by a neural action potential. The force produced by a muscle contraction can be controlled by controlling the number of active motor units in the body. Also, power can be controlled by controlling the stimulation rate of the muscle. The ability of a motor unit to generate an action potential depends on the stimulus it receives from the neurons that makes it.
Receptors and Reflexes.
The interoceptors respond to stimuli from the internal environment or the sources inside the body, such as internal organs. On the other hand, exteroceptors react to external stimuli from external sources such as the five senses of touch, hearing, taste, smell, and sight. Some receptors initiate involuntary responses resulting from the sensory input and, known as reflexes. The reflexes are mostly functional during the development age of humans, although few continue to serve the protective function in adult-life.
Types of Reflexes
There are the Proprioceptors and the Proprioceptive reflexes. The proprioceptors are the sensory organs that monitor the status of the musculoskeletal system. Receptors are located within joints to give feedback regarding the joint position or within muscles to provide feedback on muscle length and tension.
The proprioceptors include:
The muscle spindle detects the changes in muscle length as well as its stretch. It contains several muscle fibers with sensory and motor neurons connected to them. Stimulation in a muscle spindle occurs as a result of the stretches in the muscles.
The Golgi tendon organ is located within the tendons and is in series with the tissue. Its sensory fibers are stimulated by tensions caused by either contractions or stretching of the muscles. The tendon reflex turns off the active development of pressure within a muscle, thus protecting it from rupturing if the tension is excellent. An example of a tendon reflex is the collapse of the leg of a high jumper because of the extreme force subjected to the knee muscles.
The vestibular system works together with the neck joint proprioceptors to detect changes in the head position as related to the neck. The righting reflexes maintain an upright body and head posture while Tonic reflexes facilitate extremity positions when the neck is twisted. Body movement is also influenced by exteroceptors, which include sense receptors. The touch receptors are known as Pacinian corpuscles. The touch receptors are sensitive to changes in pressure beneath the legs and at the palms of the hand.