Social Psychology Questions - Essay Example

Social Psychology Questions (1) Being beautiful comes with lots of benefits as a beautiful person would always attract the attention of other people and consequently find favor in their sight. The benefits of being beautiful are quite numerous. The benefits of being beautiful are that it boosts the ego and improves the self-confidence of the beautiful person. A beautiful person would ultimately be accepted in the society and would find favor in the sight of men and women alike. Beautiful ladies tend to find things easier than the ugly ones. The satisfaction that one is beautiful also helps improve the confidence that the beautiful person has in herself and her abilities. Beautiful ladies have a lot of men attracted to them and they would not have a problem in choosing the person they would settle down with as there would be a variety of men at their beck and call (Kassin et al, 2008). There are also some drawbacks that come with being beautiful, as the numerous attention and attraction that a beautiful person get could affect them psychologically (Kassin et al, 2008). The fact that a beautiful person gets numerous attentions from the opposite sex means they would be full of themselves and this could make them have an over-inflated ego. Similarly, a beautiful lady would think she is on top of the world and could talk to anybody rudely because of her beauty as she thinks every other lady is inferior to her. The many attractions that the beautiful lady gets would ultimately distract them as they would not be able to face their lives squarely without disturbance from men. Another disadvantage in being beautiful is that girls who are not as beautiful as they are would be jealous of them because of their beauty and hatred would definitely set in and this could affect the relationship of the beautiful lady with the other ladies. Beauty they say is in the eyes of the beholder, but there are lots of beautiful girls that even the man with the poorest image would affirm of their beauty. This reminds me of my friend, Jessica whose beauty attracted lots of men and she gained a lot from her beauty charm. Heads usually rolled over whenever Jessica walked down the streets. Jessica went for a job interview that had over a thousand candidates. It was Jessica’s beauty that attracted the human resource manager as he did not bother asking her any question and gave her the job. The fact that beauty has a lot of benefits does not mean that it does not have its own detriments as it also has lots of disadvantages. There is no doubt that Rebecca is very beautiful, but her beauty has now turned to a curse. Rebecca is so beautiful that men find it hard to be attracted to her as they feel that she must be out of this world. Some men deliberately do not want to get involved with her as they feel that having a relationship with her is not guaranteed. Men had the opinion that Rebecca was too beautiful and that she would have been engaged to a very wealthy man and do not want to waste their time with her. These aspersions were actually false, as all the men that came Rebecca’s way had the same opinion about her and did not get involved with her. Rebecca later discovered all this and went out of her to let the men know that she was not what people felt she was and she eventually wooed the man of her dreams as she knew that this man would not have the courage to walk up to her due to the rumors circulating around town. (2) The polygraph works as a lie detector by measuring the body response of a person to the questions they are asked. The polygraph is a group of instruments that are combined together to measure any noticeable change in the person’s blood pressure, respiration rate and pulse rate all in a bid to detect if the person is lying or saying the truth when some questions are asked from the person (Alder, 2007). The polygraph also measures the changes in the muscular movement and the activities of the sweat gland by measuring the electrical conductivity of the surface of the skin of the person being interrogated (Alder, 2007). The polygraph is usually worn by the person being interrogated and the noticeable physiological changes are transferred through a small panel piece into coordinated analysis on a parallel graph and these readings are then compared, analyzed and interpreted to establish if the person is saying the truth or not (Alder, 2007). One of the major problems that call the accuracy of the polygraph into question is that the fact that it uses a person’s body response to determine if the person is lying or not does not make a pathological liar to be detected. A very good liar might not show any measurable body response when giving false answers and this would make the task of the polygraph as a lie detector very difficult. The fact that the polygraph uses only body responses to make its measurement is one of its major problems and this has made its accuracy to be in doubt. The other major problem of the polygraph is that it takes the nervousness that people show when questions are posed to them as failing the test. Some people are usually nervous when they face a panel that asks them questions and the polygraphs assume that the nervousness shown by these people are as a result of the fact that they are lying. The inability of the polygraph to differentiate between when someone is lying and when the person is merely nervous is one of the major problems that have called its accuracy into question. ( 3) In trying to promote less risky sexual behavior among clients of a newly opened clinic, I would suggest that the physicians should adopt three strategies in achieving this aim. Firstly, they should encourage their clients on using condom consistently. They should advise their clients that the use of condom should not be compromised for anything as the refusal to use these condoms would ultimately increase the risk of contacting the HIV virus. Clients usually claim that condoms reduce the pleasure they get from having sexual intercourse, hence, the onus now lies on the shoulders of the physicians to prescribe special condoms that induce pleasures during sexual intercourse. Secondly, the physicians should regularly show the clients the rising increase in the number of deaths of AIDS victims, which is as a result of indulging in sexually risky acts. Clients believe in facts and they need these statistics to help bring their risky sexual lives to a halt and adopt safer sexual practice. Lastly, the physicians should bring people living with the HIV virus to advice the clients on having a less risky sexual behavior. Most clients believe that people living with AIDS are usually unhealthy as they believe that AIDS victim would look so lean that it would be easy to tell that they are living with the AIDS virus, hence when they see healthy sexual partners they have sex with them without using any protection. Bringing the people living with the AIDS virus would correct this anomaly as the clients would learn that people living with AIDS could also be healthy as looks could be deceptive when it comes to the AIDS disease. The AIDS victim would make the clients know that the short pleasure they had yielded a long term suffering for them. References Alder, Ken (2007). The Lie Detectors. New York: Free Press Kassin, S., Fein, S. & Markus, H. (2008). Social Psychology. (7th Ed.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Read More