Psyc 221 Psychology Learning Reflection Journal

INSTRUCTIONS:

Weekly Journals: During each of the assigned weeks, you will write two paragraphs, each 300 words in length (i.e., 600 words total). The first paragraph will describe a topic that you found particularly interesting during that week and what made it interesting, and the second paragraph will describe something that you have observed occurring in the real world that exemplified that topic. 

Only one topic may be recorded in the journal for each assigned week and the observed real word occurrence must be clearly related to it

Readings for this week include Chapter 11 and Chapter 12. 

Chapter 11 focuses on male-female differences, reveals how characteristics that are obviously heavily influenced by biology cannot be fully understood without also taking into account social, developmental, and cultural influences on personality. This chapter provides empirical evidence to address these questions: Are there gender-based psychological differences? What is the etiology (causal origin) of these differences? How do different personality theories explain how these differences emerge and how they are maintained?

Chapter 12 focuses on healthy and unhealthy personalities, a popular topic of interest to students. Is it true that worriers get headaches, and repressed women get breast cancer? Are there general cancer-prone personalities and coronary-prone personalities? Are there self-healing personalities who manage to live a long and healthy life? This chapter examines the relations among personality, stress, adjustment, and health.

By considering personality in an applied sphere like health, we are following the advice of Kurt Lewin, Gordon Allport, Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers and other great theorists that the individual is best understood when studied in a real-world social context.

References:

Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2012). Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research, 5th

ed. Boston, MA: Pearson: Allyn & Bacon.