Chapter 13~ Personality

To me my personality is one of a kind and unique, but pretty much everybody says that about their personality. Some of the things that influence my personality are my love for sports, my family and friends, and society. My love for sports makes my personality competitive and a hard-headed type personality. Sometimes during a game or practice I become mean but that's just the athlete inside me. My family isn't very close so part of my personality is being an individual and doing things on my own. When I am at home I'm always by myself so I have no way of really showing my fun and outgoing personality. The people I hang around with definitely affect my personality. I choose the group of people I hang out with because they all have an outgoing and crazy personality just like mine. You won't see me hanging out with the emo's at school; their personalities just don't clash with mine. I tend to hang out with the "jocks" because we all have sports in common and I guess I consider myself a "jock." The test I really enjoyed was the Big 5. The first time I took the test it was dead on with my personality but the second time I took it, the test was not so close. I think the kind of questions they asked could really help them to identify what kind of personality you have. I thought the North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Theory was a fun one. At first I thought the questions they were asking were stupid and pointless like the question that asks "Does spinach make you feel alone?" To me those questions were outrageous but after I research why the test was designed I understood. I found out that those questions were designed to test if you had brain damage; I'm not sure how they can tell if you have brain damage or not through those questions. I watched the traits video and learned that our personality traits may not be the same as your actual personality. In the video an adult when from being a Marine to being a counselor. He took the trait theory test and he found that he would be good at mentoring people. He changed his career goal just because of what the theory told him. I also learned that personality is effected by heredity. I'm not sure if I believe that because my personality is so much different than that of my parents. Both my parents aren't very outgoing and they like to stay home and not be social. I am completely different. I take every chance to get out of the house and socialize with other people; I enjoy meeting new people.

Chapter 8~ Memory

This chapter was very interesting because I got to test my memory, which I learned is not very good at all but that is old news to me. In the memory activities we did in class, I noticed that the one she made us count down from 21, I couldn't remember any words from that activity. I knew that once I had to count from 21 to 0, my mind would be taken off the words that I just tried to memorize. When I watched the eyewitness testimony I was shocked that she got her rapist wrong. You would think that because she studied him during her rape, she would know every detail about him and she would be able to pick him out in a crowd of millions. She did indeed pick him out twice; once in a picture line up and once in a live lineup. It turned out that her memory led them astray and she chose the wrong guy. He spent 11 years in prison because of it. I wasn't able to watch the eyewitness testimony part 2, the one that explained why she mixed them up, but I am guessing that her memory mixed up certain details about her rapist. This makes me wonder if my memory has ever done this to me and I didn't know it. The fact that our memory can mess up observations just scares me because if I was ever in the position of the woman in the eyewitness testimony, who knows if I could give the police the right information.