Review and Project Milestone

Review and Project Milestone Topic 1: Roots & Meaning of Psychology. Psychology is known as the scientific study of an individual’s behavior and mental processes. Behavior is known as an action of living things that can be observed. An example of this is the way we walk or talk because we are interacting with each other and our surrounding environment. These are actions that make up an individual. Mental processes are internal experiences such as thoughts, beliefs, and even emotions. All these things are influenced by our experiences and how we interpret them. The study of psychology allows us to evaluate behaviors and mental processes. I think this topic is good to know because it helps us to understand human behavior and mental processes so that we can process how we act and feel and why we do these things. I think that this can be applied to my own life because psychology can help to improve communication skills so that we can understand an individual while communicating with others. With psychology we can comprehend gestures and actions which would make communication much easier. Topic 2: Self-concept vs. Self-esteem. Self-concept is a persons’ knowledge about him or herself, including their strengths and weaknesses. Self-concept is a more specific self-judgment of personal abilities. It helps to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses within our selves and questions our potential in certain situations. For instance, you may know that you can dance like Michael Jackson, but you also know that you are no Mariah Carey on stage. A persons’ self-concept helps us to evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Self-esteem is an individual’s general attitude about him or herself. Self-esteem is an overall sense of self-worth or personal value. For example, telling yourself “I am loved. I am okay. I am loved. I am okay,” helps to boost our self-esteem. These topics are equally important and are good to know because they can heavily influence people’s choices and decisions. I can apply these topics to my own life by identifying and challenging my negative beliefs, taking on challenges, facilitating self-praise, emphasizing the positive, and establishing a comfortable environment. Topic 3: "The Big Five Trait Theory" The Big Five is considered the framework for understanding personality traits that includes five broad categories which include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Once when personality was thought to be “unscientific”, understanding these traits had little value. Personality was hard to understand because researchers and the public described people in different ways. For example, a researcher may call an individual neurotic, meaning prone to anxiety and emotional upset, while a family member may call that same individual paranoid. Therefore, to create a more common language in terms of personality, the resulting structure became known as the “Big Five.” Openness refers to how diverse our experiences are and our creativity to seek new opportunities to learn new things. Conscientiousness refers to how well we control our impulses to follow social norms. Extraversion refers to how much we enjoy seeking social interaction and interacting with others. Agreeableness refers to how important it is for us to get along with others around us. Neuroticism refers to how emotionally stable we are with commitment, relationships, coping, and anxiety. The “Big Five” is good to know because it gives us a blueprint of things such as understanding others and improving relationships by understanding why people behave the way they do. This can be applied to my own life by noticing where I tend to get out of balance with my other traits and take measures to counteract any traits that negatively affects myself or others.