Israel R. Parsons
Psy201: Reection Paper
Fall 2016 — MWF 9-9:50
Reection Paper
1. Which psychological needs, traits, characteristics, or qualities do you believe all human
beings have in common? In other words, what is your view of human nature?
It is believed that some of the most basic needs of physiological are breathing, eating and
sleeping. If I am correct all of those are held in common with almost all human beings living on
the face of earth. The exception to this rule are those that have psychological disorders like
eating disorders or insomnia. there are other sorts of needs like con.dence, achievement and
morality which in my belief are on a high level of human needs. Some may say that these are
not necessarily on a high level of human needs, but to those nay sayers I say the contrary. These
are necessities to lives of many humans for example in my life I have found that having higher
levels of con.dence has helped me to be more successful in my life. Like when I was in high
school I was an active member in my school whether that was in sports or in student
government, if I had not had con.dence in myself I would not have “stepped out” and
a3empted for those sorts of activities. My junior year of high school I joined football in a
replacement for cross country, I had con.dence in myself believing that I could make the varsity
squad despite my late start in the sport and on the team, and I ended up making it and earning
a starting spot as a wide receiver. If I had not had all of the achievement in these sorts of
experiences I would not have become who I am today and I would not been able to experience
what I have experienced shaping me to be the human being that I am. Everyone in my opinion
have the commonality of being con.dent and .nding or feeling achievement.
Like mentioned in the above paragraph with out the con.dence there is no possibility to de.ne
introversion or extraversion. Extraversion being one of the “big .ve” personality traits and
introversion being the absence of extraversion. I believe in this that there are humans that do
and humans that do not all have the commonality of having the “big .ve” personality traits.
Those traits being: Neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness,
there are humans that possess the opposite of these traits. All humans do not share all of the
psychological characteristics and the qualities, but there are a strong majority of people that
.nd commonalities in their psychological characteristics and qualities. A lot of this is due to the
way these human beings had been brought up or raised by their guardians, for example my
siblings and I, who were all raised by my conservative parents, all have rather similar
psychological characteristics which is rather opposite of my friend who was an only child with
rather liberal parents.
2. What have you learned about yourself in this course? Include at least three lessons. Be
speci.c and provide illustrations from your life.
There are many things that I have learned in this class. Although there are many things that I
have learned about myself in this course here are the top three things that I had learned the
most about myself:
First, I have learned that I when I have children one day am going to most de.nitely execute
my own experiments on my children (if I have children) , although I am not going to school to
become a psychologist. I think a thing that I will take away from this class is the concepts of
conditioning. I will produce experiments on my children that include the concept of
conditioning I will have an experiment where I will teach my child to do a certain chore and
positively reinforce (incentive) their successes, but if there is a failure to doing the chore there
will be no reinforcement. I will study there behavior over the years of them growing up and
continuing the chore and see if the chore becomes a natural and a sort of habit for them to do.
And one day when the child is around the teen years I will totally change the way to do the
chore and completely get rid of the chore and see how they react to this change up.
Second, I had found that I found certain parts of psychology interesting and how it can be
related to myself and how I can put two and two together and .gure out why I might have
ended up the way that I did. I found that in the theory of self-motivation by Deci and Ryan I
have a few things that I .nd myself Intrinsically motivated. Examples of me being intrinsically
Motivated are in items that I .nd enjoyment in like drawing, participating in physical activity
such as running, playing tennis, playing pick up basketball, and a few others. I Also .nd myself
intrinsically motivated in classes that I .nd are more interesting, usually the classes that I .nd
more interesting are classes that have less reading and a lot more hands on activities because I
.nd myself pu<ng more time into my schooling when I get to literally see the material put to
work. I .nd myself constantly ba3ling the classes and chores that have the opposite of intrinsic
motivation; extrinsic motivation. Courses that are not hands on and require a lot of si<ng and
listening or reading material are hard for me to be motivated about because I am usually an
active learner when I am actively engaged. Ways that I engage in these classes is by trying to
.nd ways that I can incorporate my learning techniques and by asking questions that interest
