Author: Ashley

How Can Evolutionary Psychology Help Us in Real Life?

Posted on by Ashley

 

Evolutionary psychology is responsible for the identification of the human psychological traits that are evolved adaptations. While evolutionary biology, for example, is there to identify the ways in which our bodies have adapted through time, evolutionary psychology studies the psychological adaptations that people went through.

Those that study evolutionary psychology claim that our minds can and have gone through changes similar to those that our bodies went through. Evolutionary psychology is said to mainly affect our emotions, the way we behave with our closed ones and with ourselves.

So, let’s find out more about the benefits evolutionary psychology has on our day to day lives. You will be surprised with how many things we actually do just because of how we’ve evolved – and in quite a few cases, you would have had no idea that they are actually a product of evolution.

It Helps Us Love and Care for Our Children

If you are in charge of a naughty child, then you might wonder sometimes why you are still willing to do everything for him or her. Well, the past helped us greatly when it comes to this.

Before modern health care or any types of medical care that would be able to prevent most common diseases, as much as 50% of newborn babies didn’t make it past one year old. Moreover, 80% of the people living back then with no reach to proper medication, didn’t make it past eighteen years old. What’s the result?

Well, in time, we have learned to care more and more for our offspring. As we have few of them, we also put a lot of time in their caring and education. There is a small remnant of the past, back in our head, which tells us that, at any given time, we might be left without our children – and that just makes them more precious.

It Taught Us to Be Altruistic

By nature, people help one another. This trait was given to us back when we were just apes – that is if you believe in Darwin’s theory. Nevertheless, history proves to us that humans always try to help others of their kind, and not only.

Of course, not all people have evolved to be altruistic, but that’s just the influence of the many bad things that have happened so far. However, we see how important altruism is in our day to day life.

For example, people will sometimes do everything they can to appear altruistic – why? Because people, who are or just seem this way, have a better relationship with other people or with a group they’re a part of. No one likes a grumpy person who wouldn’t do anything to help his kin or donate for charity.

It Is Why We Still Love Nature

It is a fact well-known that our ancestors were not living in four-story buildings. Most of their time was spent outdoors, in nature. This has led to a human-nature relationship that is still available in some places in the world today. Nature would provide us with everything we needed for survival, while we were tending to and preserving it.

While nowadays man has a very hard time keeping this relationship balanced, we still feel the need to go a bit wild time to time and take a holiday far away from everything that’s modern.

This is why we still love going outdoors, even if our lifestyles are characterized by aspects of the modern age: staying inside all the time, working in a cubicle, being restrained by the cities’ grim look.

No matter how much we love our technology, gadgets, and living conditions, some of us would give it all away for a couple of months in the wilderness.

It Makes Us Want to Be Close to Our Kin

Until the Industrial Revolution, people usually lived in communities, of around 150 people, in which many people were related to one another. If you wanted to talk to your cousin, you would have just gone and pay a visit to her – right on the spot.

Many times, after we finish a call with one of our relatives, we feel like we would give anything just to be closer to one another – to be able to visit him or her whenever we want, without having to spend two or more days on the road, for example.

But, it is not about only wanting to be closer to our kin. It also makes us care more for those that are far away from us. We call them weekly, we ask them how they’re doing and how’s life going – sometimes with no purpose whatsoever; we just want to know they are healthy and good.

As you have noticed, evolutionary psychology does not have immediate effects on real life. However, just like evolution, it affects us in the long run, giving us traits and characteristics that help us be better people.

Victim Typologies

Posted on by Ashley

 

Sellin and Wolfgang’s typology is based on a five-group approach, which addresses situations that lead to crimes being committed instead of relations. Those classifications are known as primary, secondary, tertiary, mutual and no victimization. Every one of the groupings addresses a unique situation, which could lead to victimization and because each one of them differs, they are going to be discussed widely for clarity to avoid confusion.

Primary victimization refers to personal victimization; this implies that a person or group of individuals befall to be the first-hand victims of a planned crime. The crime committed can be because of revenge or personal grudge against one person or a selected group of individuals.

Secondary victimization occurs when a person is victimized unintentionally due to crime, for instance, murder. When a member of a family dies due to a terrible act, of course, the victim will not be around; however, his or her close and distant relatives will become victims due to the crime. The family members are not direct victims of the offense committed, but due to the member being killed, they are now secondary victims of the attack.

Tertiary victimization refers to a community as whole becoming victims. These crimes affect all the Society members and can be tackled with them together when they join hands. The government towards its citizens usually commits the majority of these crimes. For instance, when a politician rigs the election, every member of the society who voted and who did not vote will be victims since their rights to choose a leader they want will be interfered with during the election.

Mutual victimization occurs when a person who commits a crime is retaliated against and later on becomes a victim himself or herself. For instance, when a criminal commits a robbery injuring an employee who happens to be the daughter of a police officer, her father gets angry and decides to get even with the offender. He tries to murder the criminal; however, he inflicts severe wounds on him. The offender becomes a victim of mutual victimization in this scenario.

No victimization refers to a victimization, which is hard to explain. In most cases, crimes that are considered victimless fall under this classification. For instance, an over 18 student picking up a prostitute in a club, despite prostitution being known as a crime, the two people involved are also adults. Therefore, the crime becomes victimless.

According to the Time Magazine, after the November election whereby Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States, cases of hate crimes have increased based on individuals race, gender, religion, and ethnicity (Reilly, 2016). It is believed that may have been caused by the proposals and rhetoric, which were used by the President-elect during campaigns like mass deportations of immigrants and barring Muslims from entering the country. This situation falls under Sellin and Wolfgang’s typology of primary victimization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center received more than 200 cases of hate crimes since election whereby many white supremacists in the country decided to celebrate Mr. Trump’s win; hence, minorities feeling their oats. Various people have marched in the streets to protest such behavior while several advocacy groups have called up the President-elect to condemn such actions, which is expected for him to act on the hate issues among Americans. For instance, in Maryland, when the vicar of Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring, opened the church as every usual Sunday in the morning he was shocked to find that an advertising sign for Spanish sermons had been torn. The brick wall near the garden, which is used as a memorial site in Church, was written: “TRUMP NATION WHITES ONLY.” Other Churches in the region, which have Latinos as the majority, were also targeted thereby creating fear amongst the people in the area (Reilly, 2016).

In Pennsylvania, Black students who are a minority at the University of Pennsylvania were included in racist GroupMe message, whereby hate slurs were directed toward them (Reilly, 2016). The group was given a name of “Mudmen” and an anonymous person calling himself or herself “Daddy Trump” sent messages full of racial comments. One of the messages also indulged in the act of gender violence whereby it referenced Mr. Trump’s remarks regarding grabbing females by their genitals even without their consent while the other was calling for the lynching of black people. In Michigan, an unidentified man threatened a female student at the University of Michigan to remove her hijab or dare risk being set on fire with a lighter. Due to the reported rising hate crimes ever since September 9/11, the police in different states have promised to keep Americans safe by investigating various incidences and taking action on the criminals. The article illustrates cases of hate or bias crimes in America against black people, Muslims, and Women after the election thereby these offenses being classified under primary victimization.

Differences between victimology and criminology

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, cause, extent, and control of criminal behavior in a person while victimology is defined as the study of the victim’s position or participation in the crimes. These definitions clearly highlight the major differences in the two scientific norms. Criminology directly examines criminal behavior while victimology studies the particular victims involved in the crimes. The article used in this paper discusses many hate or bias crimes directed at the minorities in America after the election by the white supremacists. The crimes discussed range from race, gender, and religion. The subject of the type of offenses in this paper falls under victimology since it studies victims of the crimes from the clerics, whose church was vandalized to Black students at the University of Michigan who were racially attacked through a GroupMe message. It also discusses how a female Muslim student was gender abused when an unidentified man threatened her to remove her hijab or risk being set on fire.

Conclusion

Through the study of various victim typologies by Sellin and Wolfgang and studying the difference between victimology and criminology, one can notice the demand for more research, which needs to be done on the field of criminal behavior. The needs to find out the reasons as to why some individuals still become victims in our society is wanting, especially in America whereby hate crimes were reducing in the previous years. During last year, hate crimes were lesser in the United States and it was rare for race, ethnic, or gender abuse to occur. The arise situation in America calls for more researchers to figure the cause of this hate crime so that we can build a better America for our children’s children in the future.

 

Breakup Needs to Be a Solution and Not an Emergency Evacuation Plan

Posted on by Ashley

 

When unhappiness enters your relationship, and nothing seems to work out for you too anymore, you should know that it is time to press the painful, yet efficient red button called breakup. It can be a harsh decision and it might imply lots and lots of nights when overthinking and bad thoughts will accompany you, but sometimes, this is the only solution you have unless you want the situation to get worse and to be forced later to press the button just because you can’t take it anymore. Each thing has to be done at the right time and this is why we provide you the reasons for which a breakup- what seems sometimes to be the end of the world- can be, in fact, a good thing for both you and your partner.

  1. A Relationship Is NOT a Battlefield

When your relationship starts to be dominated by fights, sharp accusations that function as strong weapons and hurt you both, you should know that it is time to stop right there and decide together what the best solution would be for both of you. Sometimes, people are so different that they cannot simply be managed and solved, and this is why both partners sitting at a table and talking calmly about your future together or apart is one of the best things you should do, as your happiness and his/hers are things that matter the most.

If after long talks and fights you still haven’t managed to find a solution that can keep you together, the breakup is the only choice left: a painful decision that will leave you both lost for some time, but that will give you the strength to continue with your goals, dreams, and desires. In time, the situation could have altered even more, leaving you both even more hurt, with awful memories that will foreshadow the good ones.

  1. Postponing the Decision Will Not Make Things Better

You might still believe that things can work properly even after a huge period in which nothing seems to go well. Once a relationship starts to gather wounds, it is very difficult to heal it and usually, it requires both partners and a lot of motivation and work. If things do not seem to go in this direction, postponing the separation will only be more and more hurtful and in the end, you will be forced to get out of this because you do not have another choice left.

Two consenting adults making the right decision that will still leave them on good terms and with good memories is the best way to end an unhealthy relationship.

  1. Friends Instead of Enemies

We all know you can’t be friends with your ex, but sometimes, fights and tensioned situations only bring the worst out of you and the person next to you. You will only reach that point in which you will not recognize yourself and the other- the most painful and unpleasant situation you could experience. You’ll gather so much disappointment, that you will only want to run away from everything- an unhealthy way of ending what used to be once a beautiful period of your life.

When things do not seem to have a silver lining, a breakup can be a solution. You and your partner should definitely avoid becoming enemies, fighting over everything and reach that point when your relationship is a prison for both of you. With patience, common sense and care about yourself and your partner, an inevitable breakup doesn’t have to be a desperate decision that will leave you only with sorrows and regrets.

Emotion and Motivation

Posted on by Ashley

Why is it easier for us to walk out to our car and drive across the town, just to go and visit a family member or a friend, but yet find it difficult, to walk across our house and place our clothes on the hamper, but rather drop them on the floor? Why do we have to send gifts, chocolates, flowers, to our friends and loved ones? The answer to this question shows how our emotions and motivations are strongly connected. On one hand, Gorman defined emotions as “a unique state of consciousness which may bring happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust or fear; as differentiated from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.”

Emotions

Emotions are the main controllers of the motivation in a person’s life. By understanding how people may feel in particular conditions can inform you on their reasons for particular actions. Take for example taking a walk to go see a friend, when you return, you’d rather drop your clothes on the clothes than taking them to the hamper. Why is this so? It is because we have an emotion, a feeling to go visit the friend or family and so we are motivated enough to drive across town for a visit, to fulfill the desire. Walking across our home just to put our dresses in a laundry basket may be done with different emotions, thus our actions will also be different. Going across a room to put our dresses in a hamper is a task towards which we may not have a strong desire, with the absence of motivation for it, we may simply just drop them on the floor. If on the contrary, there was a desire for those clothes to be washed immediately, so we can wear them again as soon as possible, then this desire will develop the necessary motivation in us, to walk across the room, to the laundry basket. Just we are all different, different people look at the same event, in different manners. Events are external circumstances, and they affect an individual’s emotional stat. Crying or smiling are responses to stimuli. Stimuli may occur as responses to internal or external factors, thinking something funny or thinking something sad. It is generally known that a person who smiles is happy, it is however unknown if the smile is just a reaction or if it is the smile that causes the happiness. By understanding emotional theories and their functioning in our subconscious, it helps us in managing our lives as well as understanding others. The very core of humanity, is hidden in our multifaceted personalities that result from our upbringing, experiences, genetics etc.  Each individual is unique and therefore each of our emotions to each situation are unique as well. Shachter-Singer theory considers how emotions and arousal affect performance and human motivation. From this theory, we learn that various events first cause physiological arousal, then emotions. For example, someone walking down a dark sidewalk at midnight. Upon hearing footsteps, the person’s heart will start racing, breathing will increase faster, fearing danger. This first part is the arousal part, then follows the emotion which is fear, because this behavior is the sense of danger.

Motivation

Motivation on another hand, can be defined as “the reason(s) that someone may have for behaving in a certain way”. In many, if not most cases, the reason is emotion. Even though the biggest influence of motivation is emotion, another major influence is also having a goal. Take for example, a friend who will like to shed some weight, and this friend sets a goal of watching what they eat and do more exercises. The motivation that this friend will have are the goals that your friend had set. It is true that some people argue that the goals are also linked to emotions since those goals were made from a particular desire, and desire is none other but an emotion. According to Gorman, there are four theories of motivation. Let us take a close look at them.

 

Motivation theories

The first theory we’ll look at is the instinct theory. This theory stipulates that people are motivated and react or behave in a particular manner simple because they were programmed evolutionarily, to behave in that way. An example can be seen in animals, their seasonal migration. Although they have never really learn to do this, it is as a result of an inborn pattern of behavior. Another theory is the incentive theory. According to his theory, a person does something for external rewards. An example is an individual who goes to work every day so that at the end of the day He/She will be paid. The drive theory which is the third theory of motivation, stipulates that people perform different actions with the aim of reducing the tension or the stress, caused by unsatisfied needs. For example, someone will be motivated to eat something, to reduce the feeling of hunger. The arousal theory states instead, that people take different courses of actions to either increase or decrease their levels of arousal, so to maintain our arousal level at an optimum state. When someone feels that his/her levels of arousal is low, he/she may go out for a run or watch a movie, to increase arousal. With high arousal energies, such a person will look for ways to reduce it, by meditating or just sitting down quietly. The last theory of motivation we will look at is the humanistic theory. With a closer look, it is clear then, that motivation and emotion are strongly interlinked.

Conclusion

The strong relation that exists between motivation and emotion, is very obvious. The strongest aspect of a person’s motivation is always tied up with emotions, although this is a truth, the various theories of motivation seem more and more appealing to some people.