Why Are We Not Responding?

All behavior was observed in such a manner that the individuals did not know they were being watched. All observation was also done in public so as not to violate the individuals' privacy. The specific variables that were used as a measure of implied interest/attention in conversation, were frequencies of smiling, and eye contact throughout the course of the conversation. All variables were measured by estimation, in terms of relatively frequent, moderate, or low.

From my perspective, the mind always seemed like a complicated and intricate puzzle. It was a puzzle that I had no desire to evaluate or even begin to learn more about. It was something that I had just accepted because I believed it was above my understanding and much too complex. However, I never thought to look at just one small piece of the puzzle. If I could just focus on one little section, maybe I could increase my overall knowledge of the mind. By reading the book, Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, I was given the opportunity to be able to specialize on one very crucial part of our mind. A part that deals with how we view ourselves and others, our communication, and the reasoning behind our actions. This is called our mindset. While reading

In the novel The Invisible Gorilla: How our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, a deeper way of how the mind works is shown. The authors explain what they call the “illusion of attention” by providing experiments and illustrations. The message being passed is that we as humans might think we are always aware of our surroundings, but we actually miss what is right in front of us. People usually focus on one thing at a time, therefore the unexpected goes unnoticed. The book explains how the brain only focuses on the object or area you are concentrating on, making you “blind” to everything else. Many experiments were held to prove to the readers that our intuition deceives us.

Often many times we wonder what it is like to understand the mind and its functions, yet to understand it we have to have the knowledge to go forth with it. The mind is a complex figure to understand; furthermore the mind is something you must understand on your own. The philosophical meaning of the mind is, the nature of mental phenomena, and their behavior, nonetheless the brain. The mind is not something easy to make sense of, its like reading a hundred pages of Spanish writings and being able to tell the whole story to someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. Things like reality, computers, conciseness, reactions, response, etc, come into factor when figuring out the mind.

In David Carr’s essay “Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You,” he explains what people nowadays normally do at social events and how it reflects on the people surrounding them. In the 21st century most people believe everything is about technology, every second there are new updates or more news feed to scroll down to and so many people are caught up on what other people are doing, rather than what is going on around them. Carr describes situations in which people are compulsively looking at their screen while they are out at a social event, which is something that is known to be fashionably rude. Carr’s argument is if society does not realize the respect they need to offer then, if in the 21st century people are going to social events to just stare at their phone screens all night, how will it be in the future?

Also, his aim which is to give a complete theory of human nature is way over-ambitious. Yet, this can be argued that cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, like our memory (Tulving, 1972), processing information (Bargh &Chartrand, 1999), and social psychology has shown the significance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). These findings have confirmed unconscious processes in human behaviour.

Taking time to consider the things going on in the world is a necessary part of a normal life. “They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won’t tell them what. I’ve got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in my mouth” (Bradbury 20). The people in Ray Bradbury’s book are used to constantly being bombarded with technology and ideas so anyone who spends time thinking is an anomaly. They might think they are content and carefree, but to a person like Clarisse they are obviously more like robots without emotions because they have no time to think

As human beings, we are constructed with human emotions and mental capacity such as the unconscious and conscious state of being that facilitate our actions and decision, but can we control our mind or is it an inevitable action and thought? In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, he elaborates that it’s possible to discipline and restraint our unconscious and conscious. This book helps illustrate the complexity and serene our human minds and self-judgement that we conspire within the first seconds of any situation as we go through in our lives separately but use similar mental strategies without thinking about them.

myriad of theories regarding the human mind and its inner workings, which have since fallen

The television series, Through the Wormhole had an episode that talked about the Subconscious of the human brain. The subconscious of the brain has long been thought of as the source of our primal fears and desires. Scientists have discovered how the subconscious makes snap decisions that protect us from harm, and that it can be trained to actually heal our bodies of disease. There was an example in the video where Morgan Freeman talked about when he was eight years old he had to memorize twelve line from a play but thought he would forget if he goes on stage in front of a big crowd. Once he got on stage, the nervousness of his body went away and recited every line in the play. This comes to show that the brain can memorize many things when it comes to reading or movement. Certain parts of the brain tend to turn off when we start on a task. Those regions of the brain become active

My experiment consisted of me asking strangers, on the streets of Downtown Grand Rapids, for directions to Rosa Park’s Circle, and invading their personal space. To start, I would approach a stranger; tell them that I am lost, and that I am in need of directions to the Rosa Park’s Circle. As strangers began giving directions to me, I inched closer and closer to them. In addition to invading their personal space, I also held intense eye contact with them, trying my best not to blink. The whole time, although it was difficult, I kept a straight face while I performed my experiment. To make sure that I gathered enough information, and a variety of results, I tested my

There was a seven year old child named Kiki who was found and dug out of rubble in Haiti after being stuck buried in there for 7 days. At first he was scared to leave the hole but when he got out he wasn't scared anymore, he didn't cry, he did quite the opposite in fact he stretched out his arms like a star and had a huge smile on his face. All the people around couldn't help but smile aswell because Kiki’s smile was infectious! Now a show of hands how many times a day you think that you smile? 4000? 20? 150? 60? On average a child smiles approximately 400 times per day but adults only smile 20 times per day teens like us are anywhere within the middle because of the fluctuating hormones. Out of the thousands of smiles we have shared by this

There are many facts that are unknown about the mind. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand how it works. We have learned that the mind has a number of different levels of processing. Before Sigmund Freud “nearly all the previous research and theorizing of psychologists had dealt with conscious, such as perception, memory, judgment, and learning“ (Hunt185). Freud brought forth a number of theories that dealt with “the unconscious and its crucial role in human behavior”(Hunt 185). The unconscious is a storage area for information that is not being used. It is also the home of “powerful primitive drives and forbidden wishes that constantly generated pressure on the conscious mind”(Hunt

processes that people are unaware of or can be made aware of. The cognitive perspective

Human behavior has been a mystery to scientists and psychologists for years. What causes humans to act the way they do? Is it learned by experience, or inherited from prior generations? The human brain is a complex machine driven by numerous intangibles that influence our thinking process directly and indirectly.