PSYCH 1010

Ever since I took a general Psychology class my freshman year at Utah State, I can’t get the philosophies and theories out of my head. I’m in the car with my little brother at a red light. A car pulls up to us in the next lane. The light turns green and the car zooms ahead of us as fast as it can – like the driver is pretending to race us. I turn to Cache as we follow the car through the green light,

 “Cache! I learned all about that in…”

“Your Psychology class, I know.” He finishes for me. Cache could probably take the same tests I took and pass them without ever taking the class – that’s how much I talk about it. (People really are much more likely to go faster when the light turns green if there is another car next to them as opposed to being alone when the light changes – true story.)

Every time I’m talking to someone and they experience a slip-of-the-tongue and say something totally random and weird, I can’t help but yell “Freudian slip!” I’ll use myself as an example. Oft times, I get the words anonymous and unanimous mixed up. When I’m talking about my dad anonymously donating his kidney, I’ll sometimes slip up and say that he unanimously donated his kidney – that would be a Freudian slip. Freud was all about the unconscious. He believed that these slip-of-the-tongue experiences showed the unconscious thoughts and desires of the person experiencing the slip. Freud would say that unconsciously, maybe I feel like my dad should have told the world about what he was doing to save another person’s life, instead of just shrugging it off like, “oh, people donate their kidneys to random strangers all the time”. In reality, my dad’s story is life-changing – for the person who received his kidney, and for those lucky enough to have heard it. And I can totally respect the fact that he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it – at least consciously I can…

Just one last thing that is constantly running through my head is Ivan Pavlov and his classical conditioning phenomenon. While conducting an experiment on the gastric function of dogs by collecting saliva, Pavlov noticed that dogs tended to salivate before food was delivered to them.  Redirecting his research, Pavlov began introducing an unconditioned stimulus to the dogs before the food was brought out to them. A conditioned stimulus is one that our bodies have a natural reflex toward. In this case, the dogs salivate when they are brought food. An unconditioned stimulus is one that our body is not trained to react to. In this experiment, Pavlov used a bell. He would ring the bell right before the food was brought to the dogs. Soon enough, the dogs would begin to salivate as soon as the bell was rung because they knew it meant that food was coming. The dogs were classically conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. I have classically conditioned myself to fall asleep to certain songs by Norah Jones. A couple months ago, I would play her CD every night as I was falling asleep. Now, during nights that I can’t sleep, I pop in my good ol’ Norah Jones CD, and I’m out before the 5^th song is over. My body has associated Norah Jones’ music with falling asleep. If I listen to that same CD during the day, my body thinks it’s time for bed and I start to get super tired. Every day, I see people doing things, and I think to myself, “They were TOTALLY classically conditioned to do that!”

At the beginning of my class, the professor asked what we, as students, expected out of the course. One student raised his hand and said that he wanted his “mind to be blown”. Boy, did my teacher ever come through! It blows my mind, the things you can do with your… mind. I’ll tell you, if you ever get a chance to take a psychology class, don’t let it pass you by. Maybe your mind will be blown, too.