Nathalie Prudencio

Psychology 1010

Personal Reflective

Psychology. What is psychology? You might wonder and the definition for it is that psychology

is the scientific study of behavior and mental process. Psychology involves learning the reason of

a behavior, learning about memory, and discovering what factors influence us as children.

After my project in which I talked about solutions for people who have a problem with

alcohol addiction and other cognitive substances such as heroin, cocaine and others I learned that

having a plan and recognizing in what aspect you can improve could help you manage your life

to a higher level even if you were not within this group. The way this works is by creating a

SMART goal where you write down what your strengths and weaknesses are as well as come up

with a realistic plan that can cope with how far you have come in certain timeframe. For

example, write down your goal and steps how you can achieve it. Say, I want to stop drinking

caffeine. My goal is to stop drinking coffee (long-term goal) and reduce the amount I do

consume within a week. (Short-term goal) In a week, I will reduce the amount of 3 cups of

coffee to 2 cups and increase the level of water.

In addition, I learned to try my best to criticize less and cut the paradigm I had about

people who drink alcohol. It was an eye-opening experience to see how many people want to

become better for themselves and to be able to do it. I feel like we should show more respect and

affection to people that go through this process.

My second point to discuss is memory. Overall, with this class, I have learned a lot, but

memory was one of my favorite chapters to read about. In chapter 6, it discusses explicit memory
and episodic memory. Explicit memory (declarative memory) is the conscious recollection of

information, such as specific facts or events and, at least in humans, information that can be

verbally communicated. For example, when you take a class and as time goes by there are things,

and words that you still remember. Episodic memory, the retention of information, about the

where, when, and what of life’s happenings, is how individual’s remember life’s episodes. For

example, when you remember what places you visited while dating someone, what you ate for

breakfast, and what was said in a tough moment. Personally, I was able to recall some events that

happened to me a while back during some information and I was able to pull some family

memories when I was very little, so it was quite fascinating to me.

My third point is what factors influence us as children. In Chapter 8, it explains how the

development of a person can influence the person they become later somehow. In autonomy

versus shame and doubt, it speaks of infants gaining will of their own. After little kids gain trust,

they develop their will, but when infants are restrained too much or punished too harshly they

create a sense of shame and doubt. This along with some information I was able to watch in a

Ted Talk was something I was able to match while I see my little nephew grow up. For example,

my sister came home the other day and she mentioned that when she counts 1, 2 and 3 the baby

stops doing something bad, but when the dad raised his voice to the baby he got scared away.

Maybe the father shouldn’t do that, but now they are working on strategies to make my nephew

understand when something is good or bad. I was also exposed to this kid the other day when I

went to buy me Nike and how playful he was grabbing my stuff when I was at the counter and

his mom and dad were telling them to “Stop it, right now.” It was in a calmed, but educative

voice I will say. He did stop and luckily, I was able to pay for my shoes and walk away.
 In conclusion, psychology does help understand people’s behavior and help you make a

better judgment of what type of person you are surrounded it with (Empirical research). This

class also taught me to better understand other people, for example the things we go through that

are different and how being able to show more affection and comprehension can make a

difference in others. I was able to gather some tips while assisting with my project class like

writing down things that I cannot control and minimize them and have a better attitude while

regaining confidence on what I can work on now to become better. Memories are amazing to

create and while I read the chapter that talks about it, I manifested some memories myself of joy

also when I was younger and would spend time with my older siblings at home. Autonomy

versus shame and doubt taught definitely what I can improve on when it comes to interacting

with kids and how to accomplish a better atmosphere to provide trust rather than being too harsh

being kids, not only about being near my nephew, but also about infants like my friend’s kid, my

family and just people overall. I found this class very fun and love the methods we had in order

to be able to learn like the videos and in-class activities in group. In a broader point, psychology

can make you understand the behind the scenes of a person and how to be able to shape your

own personality for better.