Psychological Issues of Goodness and Willpower - Essay Example

? Psychology Psychology Fostering Goodness (Q.2) Zimbardo’s claims did not fall short of any truth, rather, his claims brought to the front what sounded so obvious yet so true. The creation of goodness and badness in behavious or good and evil in the society could be compared on equal measures. Zimbardo’s claims laid justification in numerous experimental examples that were based on the influencing factor of the environment. Subjection under some conditions of the environment could easily foster goodness and badness in individuals, despite their initial being. Deindividualization, misattribution of arousal, and group submersion were other aspects that laid more foundation for Zimbardo to lay his claims bare. However, social psychology gives a ruling on change or influence of behavior entirely based on social and biological bases. Influenced by perspectives from both Zimbardo and Social Psychology, this section of the paper will give suggestions on what we as humanity and the society should do to create more situations that foster goodness in people, the tools that could be used in this campaign, and an addition to Zimbardo’s ideas. The environment is a significant aspect when it comes to the determination of behavior in humans. To ensure good behavior is fostered, individuals in the society need to be raised up in an environment full of good deeds. The environment should also be void of situations that would pressure anyone into subjecting to evil or bad behavior. Such situations include unfair discrimination, exclusion or isolation, unfair prejudice, and other social vices that include corruption and injustices. In addition to this, we also need to avoid chemical intoxications that would alter the state of the mind, exciting individuals to overreact to certain situations. Chemical substances have the ability to alter the mind in a way that would distort normal reaction. Most chemical substances are taken without the knowledge of the partakers, such as caffeine. Inclusion of mentorship programs and the population of positive mentors in the society would do a lot in fostering goodness. Positively influential people have the capacity to inspire masses to head in the right direction. By doing this, we would be improving the social base of the society to help foster goodness (Myers, 2011). There are several tools that could be used to foster good and good behavior. The media in the contemporary technological world has the capacity to spread information in real-time. By using the media to preach good and encourage the same by using leading roles in life such as celebrities, many would get accustomed to the obligation to act right. Leadership is another tool that could be used to foster goodness. The society looks up to leaders for inspiration. A crop of good leaders could easily motivate a multitude of people to practice good deeds. As a recap, in addition to Zimbardo’s ideas, I would add that naturally, there are no good or bad people. Citing his words, good and evil could only be created in an environment and the same would corrupt minds in the vicinity of those situations. Personal effort is thus key in ensuring that one evades corruption by all means and attracts good in order to act in a positive manner (Myers, 2011). Willpower as Perceived by Joachim de Posada and the Power of Delayed Gratification (Q.6) According to Joachim de Posada, willpower gets itself manifested in different individuals as both an individual or unique variance and through teaching. This is entirely true as willpower has been over time been misunderstood as the careless freedom to freely choose and act instead of the proper definition equating this powerful aspect as a responsibility in which each one of us should be accountable. Responsibility and accountability are societal virtues that are not hereditary nor imparted on individual brains, rather, these are norms that one should be taught from the onset of life. This justification quantifies willpower as both an individual difference and an aspect that can be taught. In emphasizing this fact, Joachim repeatedly referred to the Marshmallow test where children were put under the test to practice willpower by following instructions not to eat a marshmallow put right in front of them for a period of fifteen minutes. Those who postponed gratification were rewarded, while those that did not, were left yearning for more, and this was exhibited years later, where those who had earlier persevered seemed to have practiced the same virtues and turned out more successful in life. This section of the paper will discuss how to structure early experiences at home and in schools to actually teach children to practice delaying gratification. Initial steps in this structure would be to make aware to the children of their freewill to act according to their willpower. A proper definition of willpower would have to be provided to avoid the children from getting the definition as perceived by the general world. The definition in question should contain responsibility, accountability, and reward as the key words. By including these, the children would be aware at an early stage that actions partaken by any individual should be accounted for by that individual and burdens bore. The children should then be let loose and given the willpower to make own decisions and act by them. The next set of procedures would be to analyze each child’s actions based on their willpower and make them aware of their actions by judging them as good or bad. An extra mile could be taken to explain to the kids on past experiences that contained both positive results for delaying gratification and negative results where delayed gratification was not observed. This would make the children familiarize themselves with similar situations that parallel happened in their life and figure out what they could have done in order to get better results. Finally, a correction should be stated to the children and accountability should be observed by each child’s action, despite the results being extremely bad or good. This would impart a firsthand lesson to them on the importance of delaying gratification for the sake of better results in the future, and impart responsibility and accountability in practicing willpower. Article Review: Playing Hard to Get: Understanding an Elusive Phenomenon The author of the article Playing Hard to Get: Understanding an Elusive Phenomenon goes to great lengths in supporting his thesis that states “a hard-to-get woman is a valuable and desirable woman.” Studies dating back to Socrates and numerous experiments that amounted to six major experiments finally bring out a clear picture and a conclusion that supports the hypothesis but in a slightly twisted perception as earlier viewed. This paper shall analyze the article and give findings on the questions posted by the article, the hypothesis proposed, the outcomes, the suggestions about human social cognitive perspective given, three points that the author makes, the questions left unanswered, the limitations of the research carried out in the article, and finally, my own reaction to the article. The questions posted by the article, ad to which the entire article revolves around is whether to justify the common perception that the hard-to-get woman is always more desired and valued. In a bid to answer this question, the writer refers to previous intellectuals that include Socrates, Terence, Ovid, Dear Abby, and Kama Sutra, all who seem to support the hypothesis. However, in a bid to satisfy curiosity and come up with more precise answers, there is a series of six experiments partaken, all which seem to go against the hypotheses, but seem to support it in a way that exhibits manly norms. However, a final conclusion is drawn after an intensive sixth experiment. The conclusion drawn from the series of experiments and in-depth references and researches is given in three points that the author brings out: The theoretical notions of liking a hard-to-get woman lies in theoretical rationale that include the Dissonance theory, the learning theory, and the Schachterian theory The selectively hard-to-get woman is strongly preferred, beating her rivals of uniformly selective hard-to-get, selectively easy-to-get, uniformly easy-to-get and neutral given her desirability intensified by containing a reputation of hard-to-get but stating clearly to one romantic lover about her affection to him Men would be dreaded by the potential harassments that would be caused by both hard-to-get and easy-to-get women as each of them has advantages and disadvantages The research suggests compulsive theoretical social cognitive perspectives that could be sometimes misguiding if not well interpreted. These are contained in the three theories that justify the value of a hard-to-get woman: Dissonance theory, the Learning theory, and the Schachterian theory. Instead of stagnating and being tied down by such theories, the research instead suggests that each of us needs to go out and experiment and bring out a clear analysis on self-experience in order to bring out conclusions with better clarity. These conclusions should then be the guiding principles that each of us should abide in our social lives. Despite the limitations that might have marred the research which included excessive obsession to prove the hypothesis right, performing the experiments on selective groups, undermining the hard-to-get woman from the start, and limiting the perspectives from interviewees within a particular timeline, the conclusions brought out are true. No man would honestly like to exhaustively pursue a hard-to-get woman and end up losing a lot in a bid to satisfy the compulsive idea from the theories that a hard-to-get woman is always the most desirable and valuable. In fact, the fact stated that all the positive attributes loaded on the selectively hard-to-get woman draw a fine line that negates the uniformly hard-to-get woman as not only unpopular, but most undesirable, and highly likely, practically the most undervalued. The one question left unanswered, however, still lingers, flawing the research as a one-sided affair: what are the diverse perspective of all the woman on the conclusion made, especially on the conclusion that selectively hard-to-get women are most desired and valued, while the reverse is true for uniformly hard-to-get women? Reference Myers, D. G. (2011). Psychology (10th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers. Read More